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soveryanon · 5 years

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Reviewing time for MAG151 /o/

- And Peter’s “friend” was, in the end, Simon Fairchild:

(MAG144) PETER: I’m absolutely delighted with your progress, and I feel you’ve earned some straight answers. MARTIN: But not from you. PETER: Oh, no. That sort of conversation makes me very uncomfortable. No, I’m owed a favour by a friend of mine. I’ve asked him to stop by, when he’s back in the country.

(MAG151) SIMON: Peter asked me to look in on you and… have a small chat. Well! A big chat, really. Answer all those… nagging questions. […] I lost a bet, and this is how the good captain chooses to use that. The second is… sort of?

Simon himself pointed out the compatibility between The Lonely and The Vast, but the Lukases had also collaborated with the Fairchilds on the Daedalus project (together with the Church of the Divine Host, although they were mostly invited into that project by Rayner to cough up the funding, according to Manuela). And Peter was indeed “owed a favour” because said friend had lost another bet. (So, amongst the gambling club, we got Salesa > Peter > Simon, so far. … Given how Peter had apparently betted on MAG066’s statement-giver’s death with Salesa, I’m… not sure I want to know what Simon and Peter had betted about, for Peter to win.)

Jon had kinda jinxed us that we would meet Simon this season, but Jon also avoided the Worst Of It:

(MAG124) ARCHIVIST: Simon Fairchild is one of the… recurrent figures that I think disquiets me the most. Not simply for what he does, the endless spaces of highs or depths to which he’s so quick to condemn his victims, but… the joy he seems to take in doing so. And I don’t think there is much to this tale beyond that: an evil man tormenting and killing simply for his own pleasure, and to feed the power that sustains him. […] I do not think I ever wish to meet him.

Congrats, Jon, you managed to not meet him although he came to the Institute! /o/ Staying holed up in the Archives has its perks. (… Especially considering how Jon had lost it in front of Breekon, I’m… not sure that he wouldn’t have thrown a fit in front of Simon. I mean. If Martin lost his cool so easily despite knowing how dangerous Simon is, Jon would have been a living nightmare about that guy.)

“Simon Fairchild” had been linked with a few “firsts” in the history of the series. He was one of Jon’s first cases at the Institute; he was in the first Vast statement we heard in the series, which had… been interrupted by Martin himself, as Martin was just returning from Prentiss’s entrapment and would give his statement in the very next episode:

(MAG051) ARCHIVIST: […] One of my first cases as a researcher for the Institute in 2012 was looking into the history of a jeweller in Hackney, that had reported cases becoming cracked in the night. Nothing was ever taken but, each morning it would be like a heavy weight had been dropped upon them. Looking into it, it turned out that the jewels had, in the 1930s, belonged to a con artist and fence, who had attracted the displeasure of the local population. When one particularly irate customer threw him out of a fourth-floor window into a crowded street at midday… no one claimed to have seen anything. A minor possible haunting with a decidedly pedestrian backstory, but notable because while I was never able to discover the original name of the con artist, one of his many, many aliases was Simon Fairchild, and it appeared on several business listings around the time. Whether it’s a coincidence or not is something of a moot point at this stage, however.

(MAG021) ARCHIVIST: […] It might just be a coincidence, but I recall the name “Simon Fairchild” was one of the ones used by– [DOOR OPENS, CHAIR TUMBLES] My god! Martin?! [SOMETHING SQUELCHES] What… What the hell is–? What are these things?! [CLICK.]

MAG124, “Left Hanging”, which featured Simon in the statement, also marked the first time that Jon had tried to interact with Martin since he had awakened from his ~coma~. So: it feels like “Simon” had been around for a while, surrounding important events but always escaping us a bit, before, finally, we met him in (what’s left of) the flesh.

- We had heard the name “Fairchild” since MAG021, and Gerry had mentioned that it wasn’t actually a family (MAG111: “Well, Fairchild’s just a name, they’re not really family.”) but we had heard of them as being… a clan of some sort (MAG089, Jude Perry: “Hangs around with the Fairchilds sometimes.”):

(MAG051) ARCHIVIST: […] A cursory bit of research reveals the Fairchilds in question to be an exceptionally wealthy family, based down in Cornwall. No real business to speak of, but it appears they’ve invested very wisely in aerospace technology, shipping logistics and underwater drilling and construction. Whatever their origin, I feel it’s worth keeping an eye on them.

… and turns out that HAHA:

(MAG151) SIMON: I’ve been “Simon Fairchild” about, um… eighty or ninety years, maybe? For business purposes, mainly – by which I mean I was bored of not being wealthy, so I made some arrangements and sent Mr. Fairchild on a very long fall. I could go into details, but without a certain amount of knowledge of 1930s tax practices, it wouldn’t mean very much to you.

It’s… not even a stolen name, it’s a stolen alias. And they all developed around it / kept Simon’s alias as a sign of respect / just used it for tax fraud and get rich, all along.

- Simon was a BLAST, rambly, jumpy, losing his breath here and there, living his best life of being terrible (only caring about the people he had traumatised/deprived of their closed ones when it came to introduce himself, casually threatening Martin, absolutely chill about the idea that yes, people are suffering and are meant to suffer or to disappear) – I’m especially fond of that moment:

(MAG151) SIMON: And honestly, the idea that this is all some… “grand cosmic joke”, thousands of us running around spreading horror and sabotaging each other pointlessly while these impossible, unknowable things just lurk out there, feeding off the misery we cause… [INHALE] I find that interpretation quite appealing…!

He just spat the whole sentence at full velocity, and we could hear the lack of oxygen towards the end, it was great and fitting for an avatar of The Vast! And he was an utter troll, to the point that Martin actually tried to threaten him?

(MAG151) SIMON: Peter said you’d have a lot of questions about that one. MARTIN: I do. [PAUSE] How are new powers born? SIMON: Hm… don’t know! MARTIN: How soon could it attempt its ritual? SIMON: No clue! MARTIN: How do we stop it? SIMON: Can’t help you! MARTIN: [THROUGH GRITTED TEETH] Could you, at least, try? SIMON: [FRANTIC] … No–no–no–no, you’re right, of course!

… TWICE:

(MAG151) MARTIN: I don’t see your point. SIMON: [INHALE] My point is… [PAUSE] … You know? I’ve quite forgotten! MARTIN: [EXASPERATED SIGH] SIMON: [PANICKED SOUNDS] I’ve just not been doing much recently, it’s not a good time for perspective, you see.

Martin meeting what is for us the oldest avatar around (… at least officially; what is Elias, etc.), even older than Rayner, somehow translated to “Martin on the verge of beating an old man, twice”. S2!Martin was bringing you tea; S4!Martin is done with each and every one of you and has gained so many levels in bossy from having to deal with Peter for excruciating months:

(MAG151) SIMON: [CHUCKLING] And this has been fun! [INHALE] Now. [CHAIR SCRAPING] If we’re about done– MARTIN: We’re not. Sit back down. SIMON: Boooold~ [CHUCKLE] [CHAIR SCRAPING] I like it.

(redusijnferd why did you sound so flirty, you pink skeleton of a man. Get in the queue to get a Power Claim on the boy.)

- We could perfectly feel that Simon was older than your regular avatar (if he worked under Tintoretto, it means he was born in the 16th century) through his way of looking at the Fears, the sheer… chillness? with the prospect of everyone dying/disappearing, but also more personally, in the portrait he was painting of Peter:

(MAG151) SIMON: Yes, well! You have to understand how it is with Peter. He finds talking to people directly very difficult, especially explaining the more, hum… esoteric side of things? MARTIN: Mm. SIMON: Charming chap, I’m sure you’ll agree, absolutely lovely, but… even if you can convince him to actually give you a straight answer, he’s just not that good at actually putting these things into words. Something to do with his upbringing, I think. [CONSPIRATORIALLY] I’m pretty sure he was home-schooled, you know! […] He is what he is, Martin. For a creature of The Lonely, the urge is always to isolate; never to communicate or connect. I suspect that’s why he’s so keen on wagers: it allows him a framework for cooperation that doesn’t risk any sort of intimacy.

… Simon was describing this awkward, kinda sweet guy who is trying his best to save the world but has a few disabilities and tries to manoeuvre around it. Meanwhile: we witnessed live Peter Lukas sending Brian Finlinson to The Lonely in MAG100 apparently Just Because He Could, and he whooshed two researchers who were only ignoring his directives while Jon was still unresponsive, and there is the whole Tundra deal; he also began to ramble in front of Martin about how he would have gone for Gertrude’s throat… I’m glad that Martin didn’t fall for it and was rightfully unimpressed (he also told Basira that Peter was “awful” right after). But it was telling that Simon would present Peter as this uwu sweet child uwu, when… really, absolutely nope.

(About the “home-school” bit: and how many Lukases children are “raised” in Moorland House, right now…?)

Simon was also… absolutely unsurprised by Little Institute Things:

(MAG151) SIMON: Ouuh! Hello? [CHAIR SCRAPING] Hmm~ […] Hm! No wonder I’m so sympathetic to The Lonely. You know: this really is a place for self-discovery, isn’t it? [CHUCKLE] “Statement ends”, I suppose! MARTIN: Uh… I’m sorry? SIMON: Oh! Nothing, just my own hubris. I should have known. When I came here, I said to myself: “Simon,” I said, “you’re going to answer this young man’s questions, but you’re not going to give The Watcher a statement. You’re better than that.” But it’s a hard one to resist, isn’t it? You get in the flow of talking about yourself, and it all just… tumbles out. MARTIN: Mm, does seem like it. SIMON: [CHUCKLING] And this has been fun!

(Oliver had also described Jon’s effect: “Be easier if you could talk back, right? Ask me questions and just have it tumble all out.” (MAG121)) Simon greeted the tape recorder (?), and knew about the “Statement ends” phrasing, and that one is… noteworthy, since it’s Jon’s trademark (later copied by Martin). Gertrude wasn’t using it, she immediately announced her “Final comments” after her readings - how did Simon know about Jon&Martin’s formulaic “Statement ends”? Did Peter describe it to him? (… Or Elias?)

- That episode was indeed a MAG111.2 (30th episode of season 3 / season 4!) – except it wasn’t Jon receiving the information, but Martin, and it was… less about categories and repartitions, more about how the Fears tend to operate in their irregularities. We didn’t even learn a lot about structures or terminology; technically, we… didn’t learn a lot, but mostly got a few confirmations for things that had been there for a while, although not fully assimilated, through an ~exterior~ point of view? The biggest information was probably that not all avatars are as afraid of The Extinction as Peter is:

(MAG151) SIMON: I’ve actually been toying with the idea of trying to do something with the scale of humanity itself; you know, emphasise all that “overpopulation” nonsense, but… honestly, it just… doesn’t ring true for me. We’re all just so tiny and pointless, you see; it’s hard to really get past it. Also, I worry it might be straying into territory that emboldens our potential new rival. MARTIN: … The Extinction. […] You don’t sound worried. SIMON: That’s because we disagree on exactly how bad it will be. Peter seems convinced that The Extinction is different. That its actual birth will be as bad or worse as another power fully manifesting. He believes its advent will be heralded by all sorts of disasters and catastrophes, and global upheavals, and whatnot. That kind of things. MARTIN: Sounds like a rich feeding ground. SIMON: Well, exactly! Peter, however, seems to think that it will upset the balance that we all have an awful lot invested in. And he’s not at all certain the world as we understand will come out the other side. MARTIN: And let me guess – you think he can’t see the “big picture”? […] You don’t think it will be the end of the world? SIMON: Oh! It very well might be, but… MARTIN: [EXPLOSIVE EXHALE] SIMON: Life has continued through dozens of apocalypses already. Ice ages; pandemics; calamities; extinctions… The only reason this one feels special is because, well… it’s happening to you. And that’s the sort of solipsism that tends to come with loneliness – in my experience. So. My feeling is that I’ll help out where I can; but ultimately, if this “Armageddon” comes off, then… so be it. Either billions suffer and life goes on; or billions suffer and life doesn’t. In the grand scheme of things, it’s all… much of a muchness.

(… That depiction of avatars as finance workers basically sharing the cake and eyeing cautiously the newcomer, not because of the positive or negative outcomes it could bring on clients/victims, but because it could steal some parts of their market…)

And it indeed fits: the one who had been doing all these researches about the new emergence is Adelard Dekker who, as far as we know, is human, and had explained in MAG113 how his own biggest fear had once been to die without realising it, such as in his sleep. It might have coloured how he researched and described The Extinction, how devastatingly annihilating he perceived it? And Peter has essentially based his own investigations on Adelard’s research, while Simon… tends to regard it as just another Fear – it’s bad, but then, they’re all bad and relying on people’s suffering (and coloured by his affiliation to The Vast – even if it’s worse than the others and supplants the other Fears, the universe will still be there, with or without humans).

So, at this point, it’s… possible that no, Peter and Martin won’t manage to stop The Extinction from being born, because it has already grown enough? But it doesn’t mean, either, that it would throw off the balance of the Fears game so much. However… it would probably be shattering for Martin, if his sacrificing his life for the Greater Good for almost a full year, not indulging in things he loved anymore (he stopped writing poetry, he turned away from Jon and contributed to his isolation, making him more susceptible to use his Powers thus going further into Beholding/monsterhood and increasing his victims count)… doesn’t lead to an achievement of any sort.

- In season 4’s own flavour: Simon also pursued the idea that nobody and nothing is exactly in control, that there is no Grand Scheme – but mostly things happening, an unidentified and anonymous system going around, in the frame of which avatars&monsters operate (and as Jon had put it in MAG145, run by the idea that “we’re all just… ‘groping about’. Trying desperately to find out what we’re actually meant to be doing.”). The Lightless Flame and The Dark respectively created Agnes and the Dark Sun mostly by believing strongly in their aims; and, overall, rituals are indeed attempts at putting a dream, a feeling into shape, and these translations are faillible on their own (if Jon&co hadn’t gone to The Unknowing, would it have stopped on its own…? Did Tim actually sacrifice himself stopping something that wouldn’t have worked anyway…?). Annabelle claimed to have a limited influence, and to not be aware of any greater plan from The Web. Elias (as much as we can trust what he wants to convey) is limited, erratic, and fallible – admitted that he had “overreacted” when he had killed Leitner, didn’t pay attention to the assistants’ plan to arrest him, claimed that he hadn’t seen that The Dark’s side had been too heavily damaged to even attempt a ritual. Martin got told that Peter in himself wasn’t such a big deal; that his promise to protect the Institute against unknown threats… had been mostly a smokescreen because he really wanted/needed Martin to work with him:

(MAG134) PETER: Martin, this is what we agreed. After The Flesh attacked, you came to me. MARTIN: [SIGH] PETER: And I’ve held up my end of the bargain, despite your continued hesitation. Your friends have been largely untroubled by the many – many – enemies that they have made. MARTIN: What about the delivery guy? Breekon. And the coffin?

(MAG151) MARTIN: How honest has he been with me? SIMON: About which part? MARTIN: Protecting the others. SIMON: I think he tried. I suspect he may have slightly exaggerated his abilities when you first made the deal, but he certainly expended a reasonable amount of influence and resources to follow through. MARTIN: But… [EXPLOSIVE SIGH] But that was never the endgame, was it? He just wanted me on side long enough to rope me into his… his plans for The Extinction. SIMON: Do you really need me to answer that one? […] I think… [INHALE] I think Peter is taking a rather large, but calculated gamble. Not just on you, but on a lot of things. If it works, he’ll be in a very strong position. And if he fails… it won’t be all that bad.

We had indeed never seen Peter actually doing anything regarding that “protection” bit: he found excuses for his inaction when Breekon breached in (Jon had been quicker), and blamed Jon’s decisions to get involved with spooks (back then, the coffin; and Martin had been unaware about the Svalbard trip until Daisy told him). Nothing about the spiders, either. And now: confirmation that Peter was actually useless but wanted to Sound Impressive to get Martin. It doesn’t mean that he can’t be damaging (Elias was absolutely awful on a one-on-one basis) but it paints him in a less threatening/all-controlling light, too.

(- Is Peter annoyed by analogies

(MAG151) SIMON: Alright. Let’s… try one of those analogies Peter finds so annoying.

… because they’re a way to connect and create links between what are essentially different ideas. That sounds like the nerdiest Lonely thing. (You want to kill a Lukas? Talk in *gasp* metaphors.))

- I loved how Martin wasn’t letting it go? Was pressing and cornering to get his answers? And was, at the same time, kinda poetic / very… sensible, in his approach?

(MAG151) MARTIN: It doesn’t scare you? SIMON: Martin. Taken on a cosmic scale, we’ve never even been alive…! Not in any way that might register, I mean, if this… dreadful little planet had a fractionally different orbit, and life had never even started here, then… ultimately, nothing of any real importance would have changed. [SILENCE] MARTIN: [POINTEDLY] I think our experience of the universe has value. Even if it disappears forever. SIMON: … What a Lonely way to look at things. Which makes sense, I suppose. […] MARTIN: And… and how did you get started with it all? Did you, did you, [SARCASTIC CHUCKLE] did you just look up at the sky one day, and fall head over heels in love?

1°) Of course, Martin would (even snarkily) describe the process of getting involved with a Fear as ~falling in love~.

2°) I… don’t have much to say about Simon and Martin’s opposition, but I like them both? I like how they’re both extremely valid, indeed, depending on the scale? (And it kind of resonates with Gertrude’s way of dealing with the Fears: she seemed to favour the “big picture” in her own way, sacrificing people if it means saving the world, multiple times; but every person she decided to sacrifice without their consent, or saw as a casualty to attain her goal… had value, too?)

- Interestingly, Martin still spontaneously identified the Distortion as “Michael” – not “Helen”?

(MAG151) MARTIN: Things like Mi– Hum, th– er, the Distortion. I thought they were part of the Entities themselves, ext– extensions. Surely, they know what’s going on? SIMON: Honestly, I think they have it a lot worse than we do. Imagine being a hand that can conceive of itself, having impulses shot through you, being moved and clenched by some unseen mind – but never knowing the reasoning behind your own actions, or even if you’re just some thoughtless reflex. Eww! Sounds horrid.

It sounds like Martin might have listened to the tape between Leitner and Jon, or that Jon kept them updated on that specific bit?

(MAG080) LEITNER: The books are, I think, their essences in a purer form. The other things that stalk us, from what I know of them, they have varying wills of their own. All in service of the thing they’re a part of, but not directly controlled by the mind beneath them. At least, inasmuch as these entities have something we could recognise as a mind. ARCHIVIST: Like a… a, a muscle, spasming on reflex? LEITNER: Yes, that’s actually rather good. ARCHIVIST: It would explain Michael’s identity issues. LEITNER: “Michael”? Oh… that, that’s what the Distortion calls itself these days, isn’t it?

(So… were Breekon&Hope in that category, too? And ;; it really doesn’t bode well regarding Helen’s looming presence around the Archives…)

- ………… I’m glad that Martin immediately thought about the Daedalus when it was about The Vast’s ritual attempt, and:

(MAG151) SIMON: … Do you know when the last ritual I attempted was? MARTIN: I… I don’t know, that space station? SIMON: Oh goodness no, that’s the future my boy! […] I’ve just not been doing much recently, it’s not a good time for perspective, you see. The world all feels too small, these days. I used to do a lot with religion, but it’s just not got the same conceptual scope that it used to. Honestly, I’m pinning most of my long-term hopes on space – but that’s at least a hundred years away.

Simon having Thoughts about the next one was mildly terrifying and atrociously funny: going “that’s the FUTURE” over your next planned apocalypse is…

- Updated list of rituals that aren’t a cause of concern (anymore):

* The Hunt: “The Everchase”, ongoing for at least the past two centuries, aggregating Hunters in America. Doesn’t have a culmination, revelling in the pursuit. (MAG133)

* The Vast: “The Awful Deep”, in 1853. Didn’t really work, and stopped by a Hunter. Simon Fairchild is banking on space for the next attempt. (MAG151)

* The Slaughter: “The Risen War”, should have happened centred around the Nemesis in late 1942, in the Pacific Ocean. It failed due to not meeting all the requirements – probably had a bomb planned that never came. Gertrude finally got confirmation in October 2014 that she didn’t need to worry about it; she threw out wild guesses that The Lonely or The Web could have been responsible for thwarting it. (MAG137)

* The Desolation: “The Scoured Earth”, relying on Agnes Montague, who was neutralised in the 70s when The Web tied her to Gertrude, and the chance got definitely destroyed in 2006 when Agnes began dating Jack Barnabas. Could take only a few decades before they get enough power again – or Agnes lied, and she successfully crashed their chance for this round herself. (MAG139, MAG145)

* The Buried: “The Sunken Sky”, 17th June 2008, in Bucoda, Washington (USA). Stopped by Gertrude by throwing pieces of Jan Kilbride’s Vast-touched body into the pit. (MAG097, MAG129)

* The Flesh: “The Last Feast”, October 2009, under an old Gnostic temple near Istanbul (Turkey). Stopped by Gertrude and Adelard Dekker thanks to a bunch of explosives. (MAG130)

* The Spiral: “The Great Twisting”, somewhere between October 2009 and 2011 (since Leitner told Jon that Gertrude has lost her last assistant “six years ago” in February 2017), in Sannikov Land, which does not exist somewhere in the Arctic. Stopped by Gertrude by sending Michael Shelley with a map inside of The Distortion, to fuse with it. (MAG101, MAG126)

* The Lonely: no name given, but a probable Story coming about that one. Gertrude took care of it, Peter is still cross about it. (MAG134, MAG151)

* The Dark: “The Extinguished Sun”, around the time a full solar eclipse was happening in Ny-Ålesund on 20th March 2015, three centuries after Edmond Halley was possessed by Dark water after Halley’s eclipse (which may have been a planned ritual attempt in itself). Didn’t work for unidentified reasons, might have been linked to Gertrude’s death or lack of faith, or not. (MAG025, MAG140, MAG143)

* The Stranger: “The Unknowing”, 7th August 2017, at the House of Wax in Great Yarmouth (UK). Gertrude had prepared the thwarting with Adelard’s help, stocking plastic explosives and understanding that it would take someone touched by Beholding in the middle of it, had thought of Gerry for that role though wasn’t sure he could pull it off (MAG137). The ritual was effectively stopped by Basira, Daisy, Tim and Jon using that plastic explosive (MAG118, MAG119): with a Beholding-touched person pulling the trigger in the middle of it – Tim. Previous attempt was in October 1787, at the Court Theatre of Buda, Hungary, and was interrupted by an agent of The Slaughter. (MAG116)

* The End: according to Peter, neither wants nor needs a ritual (MAG134: “it knows that it gets everything eventually, so why bother. The End manifesting would not be a new world of terror; it would be a lifeless world. Devoid of everything.”)

* The Web: according to Peter, has never tried to manifest or to get a ritual – though he didn’t sound absolutely sure about Her motives (MAG134: “The Web, I’ve never really been sure about: if I were to guess, I would say it actually prefers the world as is, playing everyone against each other, and so on.”)

We’re still lacking data about:

* ~The Corruption~, which is the Unloved Fear of this season. Gertrude’s laptop revealed that she had bought large amounts of pesticide (MAG066: “There’s also the matter of the products she was ordering. There were several online orders of petrol, lighter fluid, pesticides, and high-powered torches. They are sporadic, but notable, in that she did not drive, smoke or work in pest control.”) and there might have been something attempted during the Prentiss siege against the Magnus Institute on 29th July, 2016, with some of the worms forming a “ring” in the tunnels (MAG041: “Then I found the circle of worms. […] a few were still embedded in the wall providing the clear outline of a circle. The ceiling was higher here, and all told it must have been about… ten feet in diameter. Its size was not the most disconcerting thing though. Inside the circle, the stone was… wrong somehow.”)

* The Eye: “The Rite of the Watcher’s Crown”. According to Gerry Keay, it was the next one on Gertrude’s list together with “The Unknowing”, and she had already devised a plan to stop it (MAG111: “She didn’t tell me much about that one, just that she knew how to take care of it”), which might have involved reducing the Archives to ashes (MAG080: “I assume [Elias] discovered we were planning to destroy the Archives.”, “Planning a little light arson, are we Jurgen?” / MAG092: “So. For the avoidance of any doubt. I killed Gertrude Robinson because she intended to destroy the Archives.”). Robert Smirke feared that Jonah Magnus was trying to launch it in 1867 (MAG138). Might “have” to happen in 2018, as Jon noticed the two-hundred years anniversary of the Institute’s founding (MAG127) and is experiencing a feeling of urgency (MAG137: “I feel like I’m on a deadline, like I’m running out of time somehow”).

* + The Extinction’s own birth: incoming.

(… Now that I’m thinking again about it: if it turns out that Jonah had indeed tried to launch The Watcher’s Crown under the counter, and that Gertrude didn’t know about it, and that The Eye lost its chance 150 years ago…)

- With the casual reminder that Peter is originally a captain (MAG151, Simon: “The answer to the first is simple: I lost a bet, and this is how the good captain chooses to use that.”), a dimension which has been entirely absent throughout season 4 (Peter had made nautical puns in MAG120, though), and the mention that he was probably “home-schooled”, it feels like a Lukas statement could be (finally!) coming? We also got another confirmation that The Lonely has had its chance this round, and that it had been dealt with:

(MAG134) PETER: Martin… it’s going to be decades, if not centuries, before I get another chance to bring Forsaken into this world. Your last Archivist saw to that. Honestly, if Elias hadn’t killed that woman, I’d have been very tempted. I warned him she was a danger– MARTIN: Peter! PETER: –but he’s always– MARTIN: Peter. PETER: … Anyway. The point is that, yes, obviously, if I last that long, I’m going to try again. But I’m… rather keen for the world not to end, in the meantime?

So there is definitely a story behind this, and we might get lucky enough to get it directly from Peter’s mouth. Either with Peter telling Martin (on Martin’s request, as a guarantee?), either because Jon, starved and holding a Martin-shaped grudge, will jump at his throat and rip it out of him.

(- The “Great Twisting” happened after October 2009 and Peter had brought Gertrude and Michael Shelley there… so was that before or after Gertrude had crashed their ritual?

Probably before, but. Consider the following: Peter having lost a bet to Elias or to GERTRUDE HERSELF, and consequently being forced to escort Gertrude&Michael with the promise not to throw them overboard or to feed them to The Lonely. Would have been a lovely ride.)

- I’m specifically hysterical over the way Simon described how his last ritual attempt went:

(MAG151) SIMON: It’s all a matter of perspective, you see. My patron has gifted me with… quite frankly, an absurdly long life. An appropriate gift, and one that serves to provide a certain distance from things. Of course, a paltry few centuries is nothing, really, but it’s more than most get. And even in that brief time, I’ve seen all sorts of ebbs and flows to balance off things. … Do you know when the last ritual I attempted was? MARTIN: I… I don’t know, that space station? SIMON: Oh goodness no, that’s the future my boy! But no; it was 1853! The height of the aquarium mania! All over the Empire, people were starting to understand the depths of the terrible unknown below the ocean. And I thought that was a rich vein to be tapped. Even bothered old [Aullier?] into helping me design a special diving bell for the ritual. I called it “The Awful Deep” – and between you and me, I was rather proud of myself. MARTIN: … So why didn’t it work? SIMON: Because it… wasn’t a very good idea…? The Fear wasn’t out there, not like I hoped it was. It all sort of… fizzled. Also, a Hunter broke in and destroyed the mechanism, sent me and all my sacrifices plummeting to the bottom of the ocean.

(I still haven’t managed to catch the name of whoever helped him design the diving bell, but I discovered in the process of searching for it that Edmond Halley historically designed one, which, SCREAMS. But it didn’t sound like the way they have been pronouncing “Halley” until now so, relief.) (Welp no, apparently, it’s a possible pronunciation for “Halley”, so it was him. No wonder that the Fairchilds were invited to cough money for the space station, then, if they had already collaborated in the past.)

He sounds so excited over his failure, and just casually mentioned in passing how yeah, it still killed off a lot of people in the process. (… and it presumably ruined the chance of everyone feeling Vast-affiliated to get off their own ritual for a few centuries? And just because he got his fancy idea and ran with it? HE WAS SO PROUD OF “THE AWFUL DEEP” AND IT WAS SO UNINSPIRED, SIMON PLEASE……………)

- So, with the description of the failed ritual… What was “The Maria Fairchild”, wrecked off the coast of Nova Scotia?

(MAG051, Antonia Hayley) “The old man, Simon Fairchild, had come to us claiming that he had pinpointed the location he believed his great-grandfather’s sailing yacht had been sunk almost a hundred-and-twenty years ago, and he was keen to retrieve any heirlooms or curios he could from it. The only thing interesting or… unusual about his story, was the amount of money he was willing to throw around to back it up.”

1°) 120 years ago meant, at the time of the statement, around 1890s, which is not the aforementioned 1853.

2°) Simon hadn’t yet stolen the identity of “Simon Fairchild” in the 19th century, so the boat welcoming the ritual… couldn’t have been called “Fairchild” unless coincidence?

So, was it the boat from the ritual attempt but Jonny mixed up dates? Or, given that it’s Simon and, as far as I recall, no one else has mentioned the existence of “The Maria Fairchild” existence outside of him (no mention of whether the captain had corroborated Simon’s information, Jon hadn’t tried to fact-check because those events took place in Canada), did Simon just… bullshit that whole backstory in MAG051, just because he wanted new sacrifices and/or recruits and any boat would have done the trick? [Edit: the boat was named “Maria Fairchild” in MAG051, though, they read the plaque before diving.]

- Clock in the background during this episode, so… was it in Elias’s office? We had heard the clock in MAG067, MAG092, MAG102, MAG116, MAG120 (and for the last four, it was implied to indeed take place in Elias’s personal workplace); given how it was heard in MAG126 and MAG142, I had been assuming that Martin was in Elias’s old office, though it wasn’t the case in MAG134 and MAG144 (and MAG149… may have been the Archives’ other office?).

… so, if That Clock indeed means Elias’s office. Does it mean that I’m hearing everything right and have the correct assumptions for what these sounds mean:

(MAG151) [CLICK–] [CONSTANT CLOCK TICKING IN THE BACKGROUND] [FOOTSTEPS ECHOING IN THE BACKGROUND, COMING CLOSER] [CONSTANT STATIC BEGINS] SIMON: Ouuh! Hello? [CHAIR SCRAPING] Hmm~ [RUFFLING OF CLOTHES] Hm–mh! [CHAIR SCRAPING] [SELF-SATISFIED CHUCKLE] [DRAWERS OPENED?] [MORE CHUCKLING] MARTIN: [FAR] Ah! Uh, excuse me sir, you– [IN THE ROOM] Uh, sorry, you can’t actually be here… SIMON: Oh, not to worry! I seem to be doing alright so far. [PAPER SOUNDS] MARTIN: No, I– I mean, this area is actually off-limits to the public, so– SIMON: And quite~ right~ too~! Goodness! The things they could learn here…! Turn your hair white, eh? [CHUCKLE] Best to keep them out, I say! [TURNING A PAGE, HUMMING]

Was Simon just rummaging into Elias’s desk and looking through files like that, because sIMON AHAHAHAHAH.

- Aaaand we got a date for the statement: August 14th 2018!

Elias has been in prison for more than a year, YOUHOU!!!

… Which means precisely we’re past the one-year anniversary of The Unknowing (is it why Jon immediately thought about it in MAG150?), and precisely one year and one week since Tim’s death. SOB. (This season still feels so… strange to me, on the fact that: you don’t really feel like seasons 1 to 3 technically happened. There is virtually nothing left of Sasha (understandable: no certain memories of her) nor Tim, who has barely been mentioned. In the same way that this season has been physically more centred on the inside of the Institute compared to season 3 (the exceptions being four visits to Elias, a glimpse at Melanie’s therapist, MAG141 and MAG143 about the Svalbard trip, MAG147 at Hill Top Road), it’s like time… stopped a bit, too – there is barely any future except the prospect of The Extinction and the looming threat of The Watcher’s Crown, and the only relevant past has been about… spooks, rituals, Gertrude. Tim had worked in the Archives for almost two years, and yet, it doesn’t feel like… he ever existed there…? It’s as though, with Peter’s arrival, some of the relationship maps, present or past, have been broken, too. I still wonder if it’s just like that, if Tim&Sasha are just… not meant to be relevant ever again, or if feelings are meant to come out pouring, sticky and corrosive, at some point, when there would be an argument about self-sacrifice/dying/surviving. Same with Martin’s relationship to his mother.)

So, timeline time!

MAG121 (+MAG122?): February 15th 2018 MAG123: February 17th (“Two days out of a coma, and I’m already tired.”) MAG124: February 24th~ (“It’s been a week and… Melanie’s attitude towards me hasn’t softened.”) MAG125: ? MAG126: ? MAG127: ? MAG128: 3rd March [Jon extracting Breekon’s statement] MAG129: ? MAG130: 17th~ March (“It’s been two weeks since I heard from Basira”) [Gertrude recording] MAG131: 20th March [Jon taking Jared’s statement] MAG132: 24th March (given that Jon has been in the coffin for three days, either 21 to 24th, or 24 to 27th?) MAG133: ? MAG134: ? [Martin reading a statement] MAG135: ? MAG136: at the very least two weeks after MAG132 (since Jon hasn’t seen Daisy in his dreams “for the last couple of weeks”) MAG137: ? [Gertrude recording] MAG138: ? [Martin reading a statement] MAG139: ? MAG140: one day after MAG139; end of May 2018 (“Summer solstice is the 21st of June. So we leave in a fortnight, and should arrive about a week before.”) MAG141: June 11th 2018 (two days before arrival) MAG142: June 12th 2018 [Martin taking Jess Tyrell’s complaint] MAG143: June 16th 2018 [Jon taking Manuela’s statement] MAG144: ? (same day or shortly after MAG143, since Jon&Basira are “back”) [Martin reading a statement] MAG145: “just over a week” since Jon&Basira’s return [Gertrude recording] MAG146: (July 20th 2018 or the day prior?) MAG147: July 20th 2018 MAG148: ? MAG149: ? [Martin reading a statement] MAG150: ? MAG151: August 14th 2018 [Martin taking Simon’s statement]

* … I didn’t remember that gigantic gap between Jon’s return from Norway and the Hill Top Road expedition, wow.

* 2018 carries on. Jon is aware that it’s the 200th anniversary of the Institute, and the year… is not over yet, but only four months and a half remaining.

* Jon’s last live-statement was two months ago, and that’s when he also he destroyed the Dark Sun. (And he’s remained weak and hungry since then; we… still don’t know if the symptoms will fade with time, or if… they’ll just get worse.)

* When did Jon find Martin’s tapes?

(MAG151) BASIRA: I don’t think so. Three weeks I’ve been waiting to catch sight of you, and now I find you chatting with Simon Fairchild. No, you’re not pulling your little “vanishing act” on me. […] MARTIN: You–you know about that? BASIRA: Yeah. Jon found the tapes you made for him– MARTIN: SHH–SHH-SHH!! SHHHHH!!! BASIRA: [LOWER] Found a stash of them a while ago. I made sure he shared with the class. MARTIN: Oh, there you go, then!

Basira has been trying to get her hands on Martin for “three weeks”, which means since around July 25th, so… after the Annabelle expedition. So, looks like she followed the vein of paranoia and tried to check if something else was manipulating them / keeping an eye on them?

But it doesn’t mean that that was when Jon found the tapes: was it after Annabelle? Or after their return from Norway? Or even before the trip?

- Some tiny doubt regarding sound – was that static, or a ruffling of clothes?

(MAG151) MARTIN: [SIGH] BASIRA: Who was that? MARTIN: Basira, please, I don’t have time. BASIRA: Oh no, you don’t! [OUTBURST OF STATIC?] MARTIN: Basira, let. go. BASIRA: I don’t think so.

I thiiiiiiiiiink it was static given how it was “fading” when Martin spoke but I’m not sure about it (it lacked the faint distorted sounds that we could hear in MAG149, imitating Peter’s, but then, they were preceded with static at that time. Martin is just very faint compared to Jon or Peter). The way I understand it: Basira grabbed Martin before he could disappear like he had managed to do with Georgie? And Basira wasn’t surprised about it, so it maaaaybe indeed, when she had told Jon that Martin tended to “disappear”:

(MAG127) ARCHIVIST: Do they? … W–w–who else– Did Martin say something? BASIRA: … It was a few months back. After the attack. He’d started spending time with Lukas. At least, he said he was. And I wanted answers. He kept telling me to trust him, to hear the guy out even though he still wouldn’t actually show his face. I told him he could… drop me an email or vanish me. ARCHIVIST: … Right. BASIRA: Honestly, I kind of regret not just… grabbing Martin and shaking an explanation out of him. But I didn’t want to push it. He was in a… bad place, what with the attack and his mom and everything, so I didn’t press it. Now, I try and bring it up, he just… disappears. Nothing to be done.

… she meant that in a spooky way already? It was unclear to me whether she meant that he was just leaving and refusing to talk and hiding for a while every time she tried to talk to him, or whether he was disappearing in the Peter way.

(- So, it took Basira three weeks to get her hands on Martin, which means he’s (getting?) inaccessible. Yet, Daisy had managed to find him in MAG142 (in a room with a clock in the background) and in MAG144 (… without any clock). Which means he wasn’t in the same place that second time.

… Had Daisy been Hunting him back then, to be able to find him so easily…?)

- It was minor but at the same time… I got Feelings over the fact that Basira, who had pointed out to Jon that she hadn’t managed to get a lot from Martin’s mouth, who told Jon she hadn’t wanted to “push” Martin given his circumstances, snapped this time and didn’t let it go. Wanted to hear, from Martin himself, that he wasn’t betraying them; asked/ordered him to talk to her:

(MAG151) BASIRA: That makes me worried. Makes me suspicious. [SILENCE] Tell me I’m wrong. MARTIN: [INSTANTLY] You’re wrong. BASIRA: So what’s going on, then? [SILENCE] Talk to me. MARTIN: It’s complicated.

It’s… probably worrisome from Basira – she’s been way too suspicious of everyone, she even used the same vocabulary with Martin as the one Melanie had used to depict her (… so Melanie wasn’t exaggerating):

(MAG131) MELANIE: [LONG EXHALE] Basira is, hum… Basira deals in “intel” these days, in “usable data”; assets, not “feelings”, not… “people”. Crying, shaking, nightmares, that is “better”. It doesn’t feel like it, but as far as Basira sees it, I’m not compromised anymore, and… that is “better”.

(MAG151) BASIRA: Jon may be going through a whole “we have to trust Martin” thing, but I’m not. As far as I can see, you’re either compromised, or you’re being played. And I want to know which.

But at the same time, she let him go and her “Don’t make me regret this.” was saying that she would let him do his thing. So. She finally (kind of) shook an explanation out of him, in the end, and… she knows what he’s heading for. Was it the self-sacrificing bit which convinced her of his good faith – since she… should guess that, indeed, if Jon knew about it, Jon would probably try to prevent it?

- On the other hand: Basira’s paranoia spiral is very reminiscent of Jon’s in season 2, mixed with her background as a police officer – is that… a Beholding effect at work? She was also very quick at pinpointing that the guy Martin had spoken with was Simon:

We got a description of Simon in MAG051 (“He must have been pushing a hundred years old, just a tiny pink skeleton of a man”) so it could have been thanks to that… but randomly knowing stuff and claiming to have read it in a statement was also what happened with Jon:

(MAG102) ARCHIVIST: Is there anyone else who might know what it is, or– or where? Aside from Leitner, or Gerard. ELIAS: … Sorry? Gerard Keay? ARCHIVIST: Uh… yes…? ELIAS: How did you… Who, who told you he was working with Gertrude? ARCHIVIST: No-one, I–I–I just, I… I read it in one of the statements. ELIAS: I don’t think you did. ARCHIVIST: I… but… aaah… ELIAS: You just… knew it! ARCHIVIST: What, no, I, I… Th– that’s not a– ELIAS: No, no, no. No, Jon, this is good. It’s a promising development!

(Jon had already casually put Gerry in the list of people who had worked with Gertrude in MAG099; so he hadn’t noticed that he had Known about it… like that, for a while.)

So. Maybe Basira just guessed because “tiny pink skeleton of a man” + spook translates into Simon Fairchild (we listeners would also think about it), but… there is also the possibility that she’s going through a s2!Jon phase without realising, falling deeper into Beholding. ;;

- Though, AHAHAH, obviously, Basira would be extremely suspicious and cautious about the idea of “x is following a Spook’s leads (and it will end badly)”.

(MAG151) MARTIN: … It’s none of your business. BASIRA: No? ‘Cause it seems to me like you’re panning around two very dangerous people right around the time you’re cutting all of us out. […] MARTIN: Look, I don’t have time for this. I–I don’t like that I have to work with Peter any more than you do, and I didn’t know that Simon was involved until today. But I would hope that you and Jon understood the importance of preventing an apocalypse. BASIRA: [SIGH] I guess I’m just a bit burned out on the end of the world. MARTIN: Yeah, well… that’s your problem. […] BASIRA: You’re not expecting to come out of this, are you? MARTIN: … I’ll do what I have to. If I’m right… no one else needs to get hurt. [SILENCE] BASIRA: [SIGH] … Okay. You want to do whatever “grand sacrifice” you think is going to save everyone, go ahead. But you’d best be sure you’re not just playing their game. MARTIN: I know what I’m doing. BASIRA: We’ll see. [PAUSE] Don’t make me regret this.

From her perspective, Martin is… doing with Peter exactly what she had done with Elias: and when she planned to prevent an apocalypse by going to Norway with Jon, it only resulted in Jon attacking Floyd, and indeed neutralising the Dark Sun – but becoming weaker and hungry in the process. And even before that: The Unknowing had cost her Daisy a first time, and she had spent seven months trying to convince herself that, even though there was no body, Daisy was dead. I don’t think that Basira is trying to make amends of the fact that she had hidden that she was following Elias’s leads, however; it was a sore spot when Jon tried to reproach it in MAG148 and she had immediately bit back. She’s been grown quite dry and hypocritical since The Unknowing? Only able to trust herself, like she told Jon in MAG128? But, at the very least, she would know from experience that… no, following Peter/Elias’s leads only serves their plans.

- !! I had already squinted hard over Jon’s description of Martin’s situation last episode:

(MAG150) ARCHIVIST: And at least none of us is suffering alone. … Martin’s got it the worst, of course. But it still seems to be his choice. And I have to trust that he knows what he’s doing.

And INDEED, it makes a lot of sense that he had known for a while a bit More about Martin’s situation than we thought.

(MAG151) BASIRA: Yeah. Jon found the tapes you made for him– MARTIN: SHH–SHH-SHH!! SHHHHH!!! BASIRA: [LOWER] Found a stash of them a while ago. I made sure he shared with the class. MARTIN: Oh, there you go, then! BASIRA: Jon may be going through a whole “we have to trust Martin” thing, but I’m not.

So that’s why Jon knew that Martin had it bad with The Lonely, and how he knew that Martin had a plan and wasn’t just a victim or being held hostage by Peter! But that raises a few questions:

* How long has Jon known about it? Was it only recently (after Norway or after Hill Top Road) or for longer? In MAG139 already, Jon had wondered why they had been “chosen” and had asked the question about Martin specifically; he knew that Peter had plans, and was exceptionally worried about Martin, to the point of trying to use his powers to Know about Peter’s projects:

(MAG139) ARCHIVIST: Why were we chosen? Agnes was created – crafted with a specific purpose so finely tuned that even a grain of uncertainty threatened the entirety of her being. [CHORTLING] But I’m so full of doubt it feels like there’s no room for anything else, and… I’m sure Martin is the same…! […] [SIGH] I’m just worried about Martin. … Christ… Every other Avatar gets to have their feelings… burned right out of them, but me? I’ve… just got to sit in mine. … I know he said he had everything under control. I need… to trust him; whatever he’s doing with Peter, he’s… he knows what he’s doing. Probably. I just– … [VERY FAST] I need him to be okay. I just do. … If I… Knew… what his plan was; if I knew what Peter was doing; if I just– [WHISPERING] … Can I…?

… Had Jon already listened to one of the tapes, back then?

* … Which tapes has Jon listened to?

-> MAG149: Martin read a note from Gertrude (the statement-giver had been sent by Adelard, and Gertrude was aware that Adelard was calling what he suspected to be a new Fear “The Extinction”). Martin highlighted that Peter abandoning him was probably in order to increase his loneliness/Lonely-compatibity. … It………….. also contains Georgie and Martin’s exchange, and AOUCH AOUCH AOUCH if Jon heard that one……………………

-> MAG144: the other side of Martin pushing Daisy away – that he was fearing that Peter would go after her. The keyword “Extinction” mentioned multiple times, Martin exceptionally snappy at Peter and trying to get answers, Peter announcing that Martin would meet someone and get a few answers.

-> MAG142: Martin (?) had already got that one through to Basira&Melanie&Daisy by MAG146.

-> MAG138: was directly addressed to Jon at the end, though the statement mostly dealt with The Eye and Smirke’s Architecture (The Extinction was only namedropped by Martin once during the post-statement). Martin warned that Peter might be interested in the tunnels below the Institute. It also gave some information about Jonah Magnus / a potential Watcher’s Crown attempt, or project, and Jon, who had been exceptionally impatient on that subject in MAG137… just stopped mentioning it afterwards.

-> MAG134: was the one which talked in great length about The Extinction, with both Adelard’s and Peter’s inputs. It was also when Peter confirmed that The Lonely has already attempted its ritual during the current cycle, and that both The Web and The End were assumed to be uninterested in trying to pull one off. It… would make sense that Jon and the others listened to this one, given how Jon didn’t mention researching the rituals of the Web and the End (and, indeed, if he knew that they’re not a current concern… there’s no need to focus on them). Interestingly: it’s also during that post-statement that Peter and Martin discussed Jon’s journey in the coffin, and how Martin had put the tape recorders around it. So: Jon would know that Martin was still keen on protecting him.

Tl;dr Especially with MAG134 and MAG138, Jon would have had proof that, no, Martin was not abandoning them and was still… very much on their (Jon’s) side.

* And that’s also why the Team Archives seem to be on standby since Hill Top Road – they’re indeed waiting, because they’re aware that Martin is the one dealing with a current threat!

* Jon seems to be sticking to his decision from MAG117 to “trust” the assistants… but given how Tim died/sacrificed himself on him through that trust, I wonder if that’s his entire reason. Is Jon taking some comfort in the distance with Martin, because it means not having to face Martin after what Jon did to the five people he attacked in season 4…?

* Will Jon&co find another of Dekker’s statements (Peter had told Martin that he hadn’t found all of them as of MAG144) in the Archives? Or something about Dekker’s whereabouts? What happened to Dekker, why is he absolutely silent right now…

(My bets are on either “became one of the first Extinction avatars somehow”, either “got killed by Peter who ‘overreacted’ like Elias had done with Leitner”.)

* Heyheyheyhey, I was already wondering why Jon had read MAG150’s statement and if something had been influencing him – why reach the conclusion that he had to keep trusting Martin and not do anything, when the statement was demonstrating that affection and trying to reach could break through The Lonely?

1°) That’s because Jon doesn’t think, at the moment, that Martin needs to be “saved”, because he has proof (Martin’s tapes) that Martin is planning something – and not simply swallowed into something he doesn’t understand at all. (Though, yeah, we know, it will… likely backfire.)

2°) That’s also giving clues, as a safety net, to maybe manage to get Martin back in case everything goes to hell thanks to Peter.

3°) ……………………. DID JON

SPECIFICALLY

PICK

THAT STATEMENT

AS A SORT-OF-INDIRECT-MESSAGE TO MARTIN

BECAUSE IT WAS GIVING HIM AN OCCASION TO SAY “I LOVE YOU”……………

- We got Simon, absolutely chill and casually gleeful about sacrificing people and, Jon, at least in MAG146, wasn’t… fine with it (Helen’s “It would be better if you embraced it.” was telling: he currently isn’t).

That question has been at the back of my mind since we’ve begun to meet avatars: Jude quite easily butchered her first victim, Mike Crew explained that he had discovered he didn’t mind killing to reach his goal while on his quest to escape The Spiral, Simon said he “never looked back” since he embraced The Vast, Oliver said that he had understood what he had to do on the boat (meaning, shooting the captain and leading everyone to their deaths)… Did all of them rewrite their own history after the fact, presenting their pasts as more “coherent” with who they currently are, and was there a time they actually used to be more ashamed and desperate about their own actions and sacrifices; or were they already quite down with murder from the start? (Oliver is probably the most ambiguous case: he sounded absolutely hopeful and Trying His Best in MAG011, but present!Oliver talked of his past self as mostly naïve… and admitted that he had even lied through omission, back then.)

Jon mentioned a “bias of survivorship” in MAG129 regarding victims; is there one regarding avatars, too, because usually, the ones choosing these paths would already have been quite ruthless? Is that an ineluctable progression (through habit, desensitisation, repetition), or was Jon a bit of an… outlier, from the start, potentially by accident – although he had been giving the impression of being dry and cruel at the start of the series, we discovered that it… was mostly a façade, in his case, because he tends to Hide Himself quite efficiently?

- Simon’s and Arthur Nolan’s words about Rituals/Entities/their relationships to their patrons were… quite similar?

(MAG145) ARTHUR: You’ve never really had to bother with it, have you? You got him upstairs to point the way as often as not, and the rest of the time you’re just figuring out people – or things that used to be people. You never try to talk with that Eye of yours. You never had to second-guess a god. ‘Cause that’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? We feel Its joy and Its… anger; It warps us, and changes us, and feeds on us, though not in the ways we expect. The one thing It never does is just… tell us what to do. It seeds us with this… aching, impossible desire to change the world, to bring It to us. Then, It leaves us to guess and bicker and fight over how the hell you can actually do it. … If it’s possible. Sometimes, I think They understand us as… little as we understand Them. We don’t think like They do. GERTRUDE: I’m not actually convinced they “think” at all. ARTHUR: You might be right. But Agnes did. That’s the thing about an… “incarnation”, isn’t it? […] Find me one so-called “expert” on all of this who didn’t end up regretting all of it! … That’s the trouble with overthinking any of this: you ignore your gut. And to my mind, that’s the only part any of Them Beyond… actually care about. They don’t give a toss about your “rules”, or “systems”. They only care about what feels right, what freezes your belly with terror.

(MAG151) SIMON: The thing you have to remember is that no one actually knows how these things work. Not really. There’s always been plenty of theories, of course, and over a century or two you do start to get an intuitive feel for it, but… there’s really no hard and fast “rules”. The Powers, or Entities, or Fears, or whatever you want to call them, are bound up in… emotion. In feeling. How they exist, what they can do, how they interact with the world, it… it all makes about as much logical sense as a nightmare. Which is to say, there is a certain sort of emotional logic to it all. Things feel like they flow together in a way that makes sense, but if you try to stop and… do the maths, then it all comes apart. At least, in my experience. “When is a new Power born?” Well; when does it feel like its birth would be right? When enough creatures suffer a terror of it that feels distinct, that feels truly its own… then it would probably feel right for it to emerge into its own. Or perhaps there’s a ritual, if it feels right to enact some sort of birthing ceremony, some… apocalyptic midwifery. […] MARTIN: You make it sound like the… the Entities don’t even know that they’re doing. SIMON: I have no idea if they’re doing anything at all – if they’re even capable of “doing” things. I know that most of their servants are simply doing their best to interpret and serve something that is almost definitively inconceivable. MARTIN: You can’t be serious…! SIMON: Alright. Let’s… try one of those analogies Peter finds so annoying. Hum… imagine you are deaf. But every night, you hear the most beautiful music in yours dreams. And your every waking thought is consumed by trying to reproduce that music. Oh! You’re mute, as well, in this analogy, or at least you can’t sing. And you need to invent the idea of a musical instrument from scratch. Everyone else is also deaf, and mute, and, hum… MARTIN: Yes, yes, I think I get it. SIMON: Yes, well, the point is, most of us are trying so desperately to recreate our own dream symphony that… we bring an awful lot of our own baggage into the mix. […] And honestly, the idea that this is all some… “grand cosmic joke”, thousands of us running around spreading horror and sabotaging each other pointlessly while these impossible, unknowable things just lurk out there, feeding off the misery we cause… [INHALE] I find that interpretation quite appealing…! MARTIN: … “But”? SIMON: I still hear the music in my dreams.

………………. but it raises, more and more, the question: Jon, what music do you hear in your own dreams? (Jon was especially worrisome in MAG145’s post-statement…)

At least, Jon is currently accepting the cold turkey (or at least, as far as we know, he hasn’t wrestled Basira&Daisy&Melanie to try to get out to go hunt) but… how long can it even go on…

- Reassuring point: Team Archives has actually been communicating in the tapes’ backs, since Jon shared his discoveries with the others and they all know about The Extinction. When Jon was describing their less-than-ideal-but-we’re-trying-to-face-Peter’s-effects in MAG150, it had sounded absolutely cold but… there is a bit more substance to it, then (they’re indeed sharing, and hiding from the tapes).

Good: Martin still Very Aware that Peter is bad, because the fact that he was growing accustomed to his presence / was desperate to the point of almost-missing-Peter-as-he-was-the-last-person-he-could-interact-with had me a bit worried.

(MAG142) MARTIN: [SIGH] Th–the worst part is I don’t even want to talk to him about it. I’m just… [SIGH] I suppose I’m just getting comfortable with the distance. [SIGH] Cut off. [DRY CHUCKLE] “Lonely”. [INHALE] Mind you, Peter’s not wrong. It really is easier than actually just trying to communicate with people.

(MAG149) MARTIN: Sort of… surprised Peter hasn’t rocked up with some more… “insights”? Haven’t seen him around for a while, actually. I mean… eh, it’s not like I miss him [CHUCKLING] but, at least he was someone to– [PAUSE] … Ah. [HUFF] [PAPER RUSTLING] Yeah, that makes sense. [EXHALE] A’ight, fine. Just… me on my lonesome for a while, then. … Could be worse. … Peaceful, at least. … I don’t miss all the shouting. [CHUCKLE]

(MAG151) MARTIN: Look, I don’t have time for this. I–I don’t like that I have to work with Peter any more than you do, and I didn’t know that Simon was involved until today. But I would hope that you and Jon understood the importance of preventing an apocalypse. […] Peter’s the one with the plan, and… it needs me to be alone. BASIRA: And you don’t see anything suspicious about that? MARTIN: Of course I do! But it… might be the only way and… [INHALE] So far, at least, he’s been honest with me. Awful, but… honest. I need to do this. For everyone.

Bad: HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, super worried that Basira and Martin, although they (… naïvely?!) tried to keep quiet, explicitly discussed what Martin was doing behind Peter’s back……………….

(MAG151) MARTIN: It’s complicated. BASIRA: What? They’re just here out of the goodness of their hearts? Helping you save the world from Extinction? MARTIN: You–you know about that? BASIRA: Yeah. Jon found the tapes you made for him– MARTIN: SHH–SHH-SHH!! SHHHHH!!! BASIRA: [LOWER] Found a stash of them a while ago. I made sure he shared with the class. MARTIN: Oh, there you go, then!

mARTIN, BABE??? I don’t think that trying to keep your voices low helped in any way?! If Peter was there eavesdropping, then he’s still there and listening. If whatever-is-listening-through-the-tape-recorders didn’t already know already that Martin had a stash of tapes, and that Jon&co had listened to them already, then It knows now. If Elias was Watching you two and is planning to tell Peter… then he will be able to do it anyway.

And even: Elias called Martin out on being a manipulator back in MAG138; he… probably saw Martin stashing the tapes, Jon discovering them and sharing them with the others? So if he’s in this with Peter… he’ll probably tell him, or has told him already. Which. Shit. The fact that Martin is still trying to hide his double-agenda sounds more and more useless…?

I’m a bit afraid that Martin has been trying what worked with Elias with Peter: staying close, focusing on their shared goals (stopping The Unknowing / The Extinction), roughly following the path he’s assigned (reading statements, staying at the Institute while he “officially” wanted to go with the others / agreeing to cut ties with the others) while showing his discontentment for good measure… and planning to backstab when he’d find a weakness. But Peter is not Elias (and we’re not even sure that Elias wasn’t counting on the others to take him down and send him to prison, given how it had been “easy” for Melanie to find evidence against him…); Gerry had pointed out to Jon that the Lukases were “very good” at pushing people “in the right direction” amongst the family.

- Simon technically avoided to answer one of Martin’s Big Questions:

(MAG151) MARTIN: … Fine. So why me? What’s his plan? Why not get the others involved? SIMON: He is what he is, Martin. For a creature of The Lonely, the urge is always to isolate; never to communicate or connect. I suspect that’s why he’s so keen on wagers: it allows him a framework for cooperation that doesn’t risk any sort of intimacy. As for his plan… [INHALE] I don’t know the details. But I believe there’s something in the Institute that he thinks can help his cause. MARTIN: … And he needs me to use it. SIMON: Presumably – from what he said, it must be “powerfully aligned to The Watcher”. If he wishes to use it, it would need someone already touched by The Eye. And if he wants to control that someone… MARTIN: They need to serve The Lonely.

Why Martin? Peter had highlighted that Martin was already Lonely-compatible, and Elias acknowledged that he had basically given Martin to him:

(MAG134) MARTIN: Mm–okay. Okay, so, so let’s say, for now, that I believe you. Hypothetically. Wh–what does this have to do with me? PETER: [BREATHES] I’m still working out some of the kinks. But I believe I have a plan. However, it requires this place, and it requires someone touched by The Beholding. Elias was, perhaps unsurprisingly, unwilling to help. MARTIN: And you thought that since I’m so lonely already, I’d be ideal. PETER: Yes!

(MAG138) MARTIN: So why haven’t you helped him?! […] ELIAS: Anyway, I have helped him. I’ve given him control of the Institute, I’ve provided him with– MARTIN: Me? ELIAS: –any manpower he might require.

Which, indeed, we saw happening in MAG108:

(MAG108) MARTIN: Oh. You’re… one of them, aren’t you. A… a Lukas. PETER: Yes, that’s– Peter. Pleased to meet you. Now, how did you know that? MARTIN: I, I was just reading? Jon left some notes, and… PETER: Ah, I see. I’m sorry to have disturbed you. It’s one of Elias’s little jokes. MARTIN: I don– What? PETER: Did he suggest you record a statement today? One that mentioned me? MARTIN: … yeah? Sssort of? I mean… not you specifically, but… PETER: I have a meeting with him today. He suggested… I’m sure he’s watching from his office, grinning from ear to ear. MARTIN: I… don’t… PETER: I almost thought he genuinely wanted me to meet the team! Oh well. MARTIN: I’m really sorry, I… I don’t actually…

So, Elias had orchestrated Martin’s and Peter’s meeting, knew that Martin would catch Peter’s interest, Peter is indeed all set on Martin helping/being used for his plan against The Extinction – but why Martin specifically? There was a large pool of Beholding-trapped assistants at the time of MAG108: Basira was around (though she was together with Daisy so that was probably making her lose Lonely points); Melanie had already read two statements and Elias had just pointed out how her life was “indeed shockingly absent of any meaningful connections. That’s actually one of the reasons I chose you for this job” (MAG106; though Elias also pulverised her in that episode and Martin&Basira witnessed how she was having a bad time afterwards); Tim… had been shown to be particularly impacted by Sasha’s death, had just described how his brother had died a few years ago, had been dangerously antagonising towards Elias (MAG104), and had decided to turn his back on everyone in the Archives to go it solo. Martin indeed sounded like a logical choice, but there were still other options – so what was the tipping argument to throw Martin at Peter? Was it because Elias had never been fond of Martin in the first place (he tended to treat him with casual contempt in MAG060 and MAG084)? Was it because Martin’s ~hopeless crush~ and situation with his mother made him especially isolated/lonely? Was it because Martin was the most “actively” Beholding amongst the assistants in the statements-reading area? That was the reason why Elias had jumped on the idea of keeping him at the Institute when the others were planning the trip for The Unknowing:

(MAG116) MARTIN: No, no, I can help, I’ve been reading the statements! ELIAS: … Quite right, er, probably best he does stay behind. BASIRA: What, so you have a backup if Jon doesn’t make it? ELIAS: I’m sure that won’t be necessary.

(-> Elias didn’t confirm that he was planning to use Martin as a back-up Archivist, but the fact that he had read statements was a Super Effective argument, so it… mattered, in one way or another.)

(I think it’s very likely, in canon, that Martin’s lineage is absolutely unspooky, and that his family story is a “normal” family drama, as painful and tragic and heart-breaking as it is already? But I’m also very very very onboard with the Lukas!Martin theory and won’t give up on it as long as I don’t have Martin’s birth certificate and a dozen blood-testing results from different labs to prove that his father wasn’t a runaway Lukas, so:

(MAG151) MARTIN: …. Who are you? Did Peter send you? SIMON: Ah, you must be Martin? Goodness! He was not exaggerating. MARTIN: What’s that supposed to mean? SIMON: Oh, come now, don’t be like that.

… What was that “He was not exaggerating” referring to? Was it to Martin’s behaviour (the fact he was a bit nagging, or trying to keep people away from dangerous areas, or quickly understanding that this old man could be acquainted with Peter)? Or was it about Martin’s physical appearance – Martin, who is apparently the spitting image of his father…?)

(Other possibility: Simon went “He was not exaggerating” because Martin, who wasn’t canonically “the hot one” in MAG052 (that was Tim.), is actually the “ASTOUNDINGLY AND INCREDIBLY hot one” in the team.)

- I’m impressed at how Martin has learned to navigate amongst the Fears architecture on his own? Even in season 3, he had a lot of trouble with the powers and recurring figures:

(MAG098) MARTIN: [SIGH] I wish John kept better organised notes because I know he’s mentioned someone called Maxwell Rayner, but I cannot find much in the way of any info–

Back then, “Maxwell Rayner” shouldn’t have been such a vague name for Martin, given how he had participated in the researches around Hither Green in MAG025 and the Montauk case in MAG052. But here, Martin immediately identified “Simon Fairchild” as The One:

(MAG151) SIMON: Oh, come now, don’t be like that. [INHALE] Let’s start over. Simon – Simon Fairchild. Peter asked me to look in on you and… have a small chat. Well! A big chat, really. Answer all those… nagging questions. MARTIN: Simon Fairchild. [PAUSE] [NERVOUS CHUCKLE] Wait, “Simon Fairchild” as in… SIMON: As in “all those people who said I did horrible things to them and their loved ones”? Yes. They have been in, haven’t they? I’d hate to think I’m underrepresented in here, not when Peter tells me that that… “bone” fellow has at least half a dozen. MARTIN: N–no, no, [NERVOUS CHUCKLE], not… not at all. Y–you’ve sent plenty of people our way.

(It’s still… something, that avatars are both looking down at The Eye for being a “bottom feeder” or for robbing part of the fear, but at the same time, are preoccupied by the amount of statements mentioning them, as if they were competing about it. (… why are they all looking down on Jared.)) Martin was able to be exceptionally diplomatic (mix of honesty and not-pissing-off-something-that-could-wreck-you), to immediately ask good and relevant questions although he hadn’t been warned that he would encounter Simon right now, cautious enough to check that there wouldn’t be any “trick” in the fact he was allowed to ask questions:

(MAG151) MARTIN: And you do it? Why? SIMON: Is that your first question? MARTIN: … Is there a limit? SIMON: Only until I get bored. And that does tend to come more quickly, these days. MARTIN: O–okay, okay, then sure, sure. First question, then: “why are you helping Peter?” D–don’t you serve different… you know… Fears? […] How are new powers born? SIMON: Hm… don’t know! MARTIN: How soon could it attempt its ritual? SIMON: No clue! MARTIN: How do we stop it? SIMON: Can’t help you! MARTIN: [THROUGH GRITTED TEETH] Could you, at least, try? […] And how close is it, do you think? […] You don’t sound worried. […] And let me guess – you think he can’t see the “big picture”? […] … So why didn’t it work? […] Assuming The Extinction doesn’t derail everything…! SIMON: Which is why… I’m happy helping Peter. But! If it does: then I’ll either be dead, which will be fine, or… I’ll adjust. MARTIN: It doesn’t scare you? […] So what do you do, then, if, if the world is pointless and your god is so weak right now? […] I thought you said that the maths doesn’t work. SIMON: Oh, you are a quick one! […] MARTIN: … What about the monsters? […] So– [EXHALE] So if no one’s ever actually communicated with their patron, how do you know they even want rituals? H–h–how does anyone know if they could ever even work?! SIMON: We don’t. MARTIN: [INCREDULOUS SCOFF] SIMON: And honestly, the idea that this is all some… “grand cosmic joke”, thousands of us running around spreading horror and sabotaging each other pointlessly while these impossible, unknowable things just lurk out there, feeding off the misery we cause… [INHALE] I find that interpretation quite appealing…! MARTIN: … “But”? SIMON: I still hear the music in my dreams. MARTIN: Hm. [SILENCE] Who are you? No, no: who were you? […] You said you were here to answer my questions for Peter, but so far you’ve told me basically nothing of any use. SIMON: The big answers are rarely helpful. MARTIN: Then let’s try some smaller ones. Is Peter attempting a ritual? SIMON: Not in the sense that you’re used to. Him and his family made their play a few years ago and they failed. I’m sure he’d like me to explain it, but I think he can do that one himself. MARTIN: How honest has he been with me? SIMON: About which part? MARTIN: Protecting the others. […] … How do you feel about this? SIMON: You might need to be a tad more specific. MARTIN: All of it. Peter’s plan, The Extinction, me…

All of his questions were excellent ones: he was able to keep in mind the data Simon was providing, he was extending questions to his current situation (outside of The Extinction itself), he was able to use his snark and sass to squeeze more answers and knowledge out of Simon, he was able to ask for contextualisation and keep in mind how Powers tend to oppose each other. Simon was absolutely willing to talk but Martin honestly made the best use of it – I found the way he led the interview even more impressive than the way Jon had dealt with Gerry? And asking questions is supposed to be Jon’s thing as The Archivist. (Well. Getting answers, whatever his questions are, technically, but.)

When pressed, Martin was also able to find the best possible answer to Simon’s jovial threat:

(MAG151) SIMON: And I never looked back. I tried to share it with others, not just as sacrifices; but they often find it difficult to keep up with the, hum… velocity I tend to live at. They tend to get left behind, and I suppose it doesn’t help that I can’t… bring myself to see any of them as anything other than trivial. […] I’d say “anytime”, but honestly, if you see me again… I may just throw you off something for a joke. How do you feel about… rollercoasters? MARTIN: Uh… Neutral. SIMON: Oh… [CHAIR SCRAPING] You’re no fun.

That was the only safe possible answer: if Martin was positive about it, it would mean being a potential recruit; if he was showing discomfort, that would make him a sacrifice. And Martin was able to improvise the it, although he had been known as The Assistant Of Many Fears:

(MAG015) ARCHIVIST: I sent Tim to check the details – Martin declined to help with this investigation as he’s “a bit claustrophobic” […].

(MAG022) MARTIN: The light from the window behind me cast it pretty clearly on the floor, and looking at it I swear the edges seemed to move. It was like a… like a, like an undulation, like, like they were being shifted by something. I mean… look, I know you hate the word, but it was really… spooky. […] I think I might have… lost my mind a bit, then. It all… feels very… strange, blurry. I–I remember stamping and stamping as-as more made their way under my doorway. I-I remember grabbing every towel, sock, bit of fabric scrap that I could find, stuffing them under the door, into the cracks around the window.

(MAG039) TIM: Martin’s gone. ARCHIVIST: I’m getting to that. Martin has disappeared. Tim was right about there being fewer worms down here, but they are much faster. More aggressive. None of us have been hit yet but… during one of the more alarming encounters, Martin ran off. TIM: He thought we were behind him, I think. ARCHIVIST: He didn’t think at all.

(MAG040) MARTIN: Sorry. ARCHIVIST: Ah, it’s fine. I just… I only need from when you got separated. From when you got lost in the tunnels. MARTIN: No, I mean… I’m sorry I left you. ARCHIVIST: … Oh Martin. MARTIN: [TEARFUL] It was an accident. I thought you two were with me! I mean, the worms came at us, and they were so much faster, and then there was the gas, and the running, and I just… I, I thought you were right behind me. But when I turned round, you were gone. You were both gone. It was an accident.

(MAG072) ARCHIVIST: I’ve had Martin looking into the case of John Haan, though it’s slow going as whenever there’s a picture he ends up needing to take a breath of fresh air.

(MAG108) MARTIN: I’m really sorry, I… I don't actually… PETER: Do I scare you Martin? MARTIN: Yes…! PETER: Hm. Probably for the best.

(MAG117) MARTIN: I… I’m scared, I guess. No, wait– No! No, I mean– uh… Oh, I don’t want that to be my last message, the thing that defines me. “Martin Blackwood: he was always scared, then he died. The end.” I don’t want that. … But it’s true, isn’t it? I mean, if you’re right, if these things out there are eating our fears, then I’m a… a luxury smörgåsbord, I suppose. I’m just afraid all the time! I know, I know, I’m not gonna die, I’m not even going to be on the incredibly dangerous mission. Me and Melanie, well… Well, I don’t think “death” is really the worry, it’s just… [SIGH] It feels like an ending? Or… something. Like nothing can go back to normal after this. […] I need them to be safe. I need him to be okay. … So–sorry, hum. I–I’m not afraid for me, though. Isn’t that weird…? I mean, it’s not like I’m going to be safe, like, my plan’s not dangerous but it’s… it’s mine? These last couple of years, I’ve always been... running, always hiding, caught in someone else’s trap, but… but now it’s my trap. And, well. I think it will work.

From Martin who was regularly presented as incompetent back in season 1 (to the point of surprising Jon when demonstrating otherwise during the worms crisis) and who was too honest for his own good when he met Peter, to Martin who is able to swim through the Fears politics, to ask good questions, to snap and squirm and get out of Simon’s grasp… He has learned to deal with the spooks quite efficiently, huh?

- In Jon’s tracks, Martin has been slowly moving forwards when it came to the Archival work. Pushed by Elias, he was the first one of the assistants to read statements aloud and “ritually” starting season 3, and, although he was aware that they were hard on him, he was the only one who kept reading them – Tim tried once and immediately gave up in MAG086; Melanie read two statements but stopped after MAG106’s (and, given her declaration that she would stop feeding The Eye in MAG150, she’s not planning to go back to it); Basira read one in MAG112 and never tried again (and her distaste of the tape recorders and her unwillingness to stay in the room while Jon is recording in season 4 seem to point out that she doesn’t plan on doing it again either).

(MAG084) MARTIN: [RAGGED BREATHING AS HE REGAINS HIS COMPOSURE] Well, I, er… I think that was okay. Er, yeah. To anyone listening, sorry about the change of tone. Jon, the, uh, Head Archivist is… absent, so I’ll be trying to fill in as best as I can. Um. Maybe Tim as well, if he… if he feels like it. It, it doesn’t matter, I suppose. Just as long as it gets done.

(MAG095) MARTIN: S–s–statement… done. [HEAVY BREATHING & TREMBLING AS MARTIN STEADIES HIMSELF] I don’t like recording these. There. I–I said it. I’m sorry whoever’s listening to this, I know it’s unprofessional, but they f… I don’t like it. I guess we’re past professionalism now. Probably. I don’t even know why I’m still doing them, since Jon’s back now.

(MAG098) MARTIN: I, um, I think I might need to sit down. Oh. Yeah, I am. Right. I don’t, uh, I’m not really sure if these are actually getting easier or harder. I mean I don’t feel–

(MAG108) MARTIN: Statement end. [LOW VOICE] That wasn’t so bad? [BREATHES] Hum, not sure there is anything to say about this one.

(Starting MAG108, it became easier for him: was it because it was a Lonely one, then a Web one? Was it because Jon told him he was okay with Martin continuing to read them in MAG102?)

I’m still eyeing the ways Jon is completing his own set of Fears through live-statements/nightmares/scars/encounters with direct manifestations of the Powers, but Martin, in his own way, has also been completing his own set of Fears through his written&live-statements:

* The Corruption (MAG084, Adrian Weiss) * The Buried (MAG088, Enrique MacMillan) * The Flesh (MAG090, Ross Davenport) * The Slaughter (MAG095, Luca Moretti) * The Dark (MAG098, Doctor Algernon Moss) * The Desolation (MAG100, Lynne Hammond’s (messy) live-statement) * The Stranger (MAG104, Tim Stocker’s live-statement) * The Lonely (MAG108, Adonis Biros) * The Web (MAG110, Alexia Crawley) * The Extinction (MAG134, Adelard Dekker; MAG144, Gary Boylan; MAG149, Judith O’Neill) * The Eye (MAG138, Robert Smirke; MAG142, Jess Tyrell’s live-statement/complaint) * The Vast (MAG151, Simon Fairchild’s live-statement)

He’s missing The End, The Hunt and The Spiral at the moment (although he experienced the latter when Tim and him were trapped in Michael’s corridor in MAG079-MAG080) but… he has already covered almost all of them…?

The previous time we had seen Martin (MAG149) highlighted that he was progressing with The Lonely, given how he disappeared on Georgie. Although Simon pointed out that Martin was fitting with his own conception of The Lonely in MAG151, we also got… clear indication that Martin is still very much aligned to Beholding:

(MAG151) MARTIN: Hm. [SILENCE] Who are you? No, no: who were you? SIMON: Originally? No one you would have heard of; no… great historical figure or atrocity-monger. I’ve been “Simon Fairchild” about, um… eighty or ninety years, maybe? […] Hm! No wonder I’m so sympathetic to The Lonely. You know: this really is a place for self-discovery, isn’t it? [CHUCKLE] “Statement ends”, I suppose! MARTIN: Uh… I’m sorry? SIMON: Oh! Nothing, just my own hubris. I should have known. When I came here, I said to myself: “Simon,” I said, “you’re going to answer this young man’s questions, but you’re not going to give The Watcher a statement. You’re better than that.” But it’s a hard one to resist, isn’t it? You get in the flow of talking about yourself, and it all just… tumbles out. MARTIN: Mm, does seem like it. SIMON: [CHUCKLING] And this has been fun! [INHALE] Now. [CHAIR SCRAPING] If we’re about done– MARTIN: We’re not. Sit back down. SIMON: Boooold~ [CHUCKLE] [CHAIR SCRAPING] I like it. MARTIN: You said you were here to answer my questions for Peter, but so far you’ve told me basically nothing of any use.

Martin’s shortness and impatience reminded me of Jon’s when he was trying to get answers from Jude Perry (MAG089: “You don’t even know what this is about, do you?” “So tell me!” “An Archivist pleading for knowledge. That, oh that is satisfying to see.” “Look, if you’re just… You’re just about my only lead, and if you’re… Just kill me, alright? If it’s so easy? If you’re not going to tell me anything worth my time.” “Now you’re sounding like an Archivist.”), but more importantly, it seems like Martin was used as a channel for the Institute to get Simon’s live-statement?

It’s certainly not going in-depths like Jon’s, but Simon still identified it as something he hadn’t been planning on giving and as, specifically, a statement. And that’s the third time something like this happens with Martin: he got Tim to tell him his story in MAG104, he managed to get Jess Tyrell’s complaint in MAG142 (although it was explicitly less complete than with Jon: “… And I start to tell him… everything. About the job, about the collapse, ab–about the hand… And more than I told you, even”). I’m guessing that it’s mostly thanks to the Institute’s effect, and I doubt that Martin could manage to get a statement outside like Jon did starting MAG089, but it has still happened thrice.

So. The Lonely got Martin, but he’s still very much Beholding? Peter’s goal relied on Martin becoming able to use two powers (MAG126: “The sort of power you’re going to need relies on your–” “Obedience.” “Isolation. It needs to be you, Martin. You’re the only one who could possibly balance between the two.”), and Simon confirmed that it required The Eye and The Lonely, so… Martin is getting there. Or is already there.

(- Obligatory Honorary Web-sounding Reminder (BECAUSE YES, I WON’T GIVE UP ON THAT EITHER AS LONG AS WE DON’T HOLLOW MARTIN OUT AND CONFIRM THAT HE’S NOT FULL OF SPIDERS) (… wait no, that’s a bad idea, no, don’t hollow Martin out, Jonny–) that:

(MAG138) MARTIN: … What? [HUFF] That’s it? No, no monologue, no mindgames? You love manipulating people! ELIAS: That makes two of us. MARTIN: [HUFF]

Which Martin masterfully demonstrated when he made Elias want to keep him at the Institute during The Unknowing, when he made Elias use his powers on him and lower his attention while Melanie was stealing stuff in his office, when he threw Elias in jail, and which Martin is demonstrating again by… finding loopholes in his agreement with Peter to still send information to the others. And Basira’s suspicion:

(MAG151) MARTIN: … I didn’t know Jon had listened to them already! BASIRA: Well, he has. He seems to think you’ll come to him when you need him. I think you’re feeding him what he needs to hear so he doesn’t bother you. MARTIN: Look, I don’t have time for this.

… sounded very very Web-y to me? So, is that paranoia or is that well-founded.

Also, it’s Aza’s pet-theory so, updating the list:

(MAG104) MARTIN: Elias seems to think that he’s the best chance that we have to stop them. TIM: And what? I’m supposed to just trust Elias now? MARTIN: Please. TIM: [EXHALE] Fine. Fine. I’ll tell him in person, when he gets back from… wherever it is that he’s vanished to.

(MAG118) MARTIN: Melanie. Melanie, please. MELANIE: … Alright. Let’s get these somewhere safe.

(MAG129) MARTIN: Stop. Stop, please, I–I shouldn’t know any of this, I… [PACKING UP] I–I–I really need to go, I–I’m… ARCHIVIST: Right. … right. MARTIN: Please, stop finding me.

(MAG142) MARTIN: Just… just tell me what happened. Hum, please. I–I won’t judge. [SILENCE] WOMAN: Alright.

(MAG151) MARTIN: Yeah… [PAUSE] Don’t… tell Jon. [SILENCE] Please. BASIRA: Fine.

… people’s tendency to do exactly what Martin Asked after he has said “Please”, although they were initially reluctant.

(Counterexamples: “just everyone please, make it back home…?” in MAG117 didn’t work, and neither did all his desperate “Please” to Jon in the season 4 trailer, but.))

- HEY MARTIN??

DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH YOU’RE SOUNDING LIKE ELIAS

(MAG102) ELIAS: I should have thought preventing the horrific transformation of our world is not solely my concern!

(MAG135) ELIAS: I rather feel the real shame would be letting the entire world fall into Darkness because of a single person’s wounded pride. Detective. The stakes are far too high for that kind of… indulgence.

BECAUSE YOU ARE.

- This season, we saw Jon fumbling around, and only getting “victories” through personal accomplishments: saving Melanie from the bullet, saving Daisy from the coffin – and even then, those were tainted with the reveal that they had been followed by Jon attacking people from their statements right after, to feed/heal/feel good. Whenever Jon tried to meddle with bigger spooks, it resulted in disaster: trying to Know Peter’s plan hurt him in MAG139 (and that’s probably why he was so “ravenous” against Jess Tyrell?); going to Norway made him encounter Floyd and take his statement; the journey didn’t even serve the expected purpose – sure, he destroyed the Dark Sun, but it wasn’t an active threat and the act was probably the origin of his current “hunger” (as Jon has since then mentioned multiple times having not fully recovered from it). Given how Elias made sure that Basira would leave Jon alone with the coffin because he wanted Jon to develop his powers, and then sent them to Norway (and then claimed that it had been a “miscalculation”), it’s more than likely that they’ve just… been playing his game all through this season. That, or Elias indeed didn’t have any plan and constantly improvised and only pretended to be in control. The end result is still: Jon managed to save both Melanie and Daisy from the spooks, but hurt (and is still hurting) five more people in the process – and we heard Jess Tyrell, Jon didn’t “just” plague them with a few bad dreams, he directly and personally shattered them and their lives.

In parallel, Martin has been cutting his own (lonely) path, is getting more personally involved with spooks, and might be becoming our “protagonist” of the season: getting the “big” picture, receiving the input of other avatars (Peter, Simon) about the Fears architecture and the way they work, getting involved in active and current threats… So, what will be the downside to his actions – who will he hurt, outside of himself…? What is Peter expecting regarding his “progress” if, at this point already, his presence is enough to get an old avatar to give his statement, and if he is able to disappear on someone as he did with Georgie, what more could he need? Is it to simply grow more powerful in the Lonely area? … Because, as we saw with all the avatars, Jon included: using powers or simply staying alive comes hand in hand with sacrificing people. Martin told Basira that his current actions were motivated by the idea that “no one else needs to get hurt”, and I’m really afraid that he hasn’t factored in the idea that no, if some power is required, it will be from other innocents. And I don’t trust Peter to not put Martin in front of that fact at the last moment, when he would have no time to duly consider whether to sacrifice people or let The Extinction emerge completely…?

(…………… That, or Peter already has leverage to crush Martin last minute? Timeline-wise, Martin began to work with Peter two months after his mother’s death but. I’m still a bit afraid that The Lonely may have been involved in that one, to further cut Martin off from anything or anyone…………………)

- One of our current new mysteries is the thing Peter is planning to use:

(MAG151) MARTIN: Is Peter attempting a ritual? SIMON: Not in the sense that you’re used to. Him and his family made their play a few years ago and they failed. I’m sure he’d like me to explain it, but I think he can do that one himself. […] As for his plan… [INHALE] I don’t know the details. But I believe there’s something in the Institute that he thinks can help his cause. MARTIN: … And he needs me to use it. SIMON: Presumably – from what he said, it must be “powerfully aligned to The Watcher”. If he wishes to use it, it would need someone already touched by The Eye. And if he wants to control that someone… MARTIN: They need to serve The Lonely.

That’s technically only confirming what Peter had said in MAG134 (and Elias confirmed in MAG138, regarding the part where he hadn’t been willing to help):

(MAG134) PETER: [BREATHES] I’m still working out some of the kinks. But I believe I have a plan. However, it requires this place, and it requires someone touched by The Beholding. Elias was, perhaps unsurprisingly, unwilling to help. MARTIN: And you thought that since I’m so lonely already, I’d be ideal. PETER: Yes! MARTIN: You see, the thing is, Peter, I’m still not all that keen on being part of any ritual you set up. You know, in fact, if I were to be blunt, I’d say that would be suicidally stupid. PETER: Martin… it’s going to be decades, if not centuries, before I get another chance to bring Forsaken into this world. Your last Archivist saw to that.

… except for the part where it’s presented as a “ritual”: Peter denied that it was one, or changed the subject to mention that it wasn’t The Lonely’s; Simon… is less categoric – it’s not The Lonely’s ritual, but it’s kind-of-a-ritual still, and it requires… something.

* The Watcher’s Crown? The way Robert Smirke had worded it, it sounded like a physical, tangible item (MAG138: “I warn you again that if you have any remaining ambitions to use our work, to try and wear The Watcher’s Crown, you must abandon them! Not simply for the sake of your own soul, but for that of the world!”).

* Barnabas Bennett’s bones? They’re technically a link between Beholding and The Lonely, Elias pointed out that they were in his office (“[Jonah Magnus] retrieved those bones sadly enough when the time came. Bones that you can still find in my office, if you know where to look.”, MAG092), and we haven’t heard anything more about them since.

* Jon himself…? As he has proven with the Dark Sun (and potentially Breekon): he can be lethal towards other powers, and The Hive had been very angry towards the Institute because of how the Eye was… weakening? it through its study (MAG032, Jane Prentiss: “You can see it and log it and note its every detail but you can never understand it. You rob it of its fear even though your weak words have no right to do so.”). We’ve seen all through season 4 that Jon was affected by Martin’s absence – Martin has definitely grown to become a weak spot of his. But, aouch: if Martin was mostly meant to give Jon his Lonely scar, or to be used against Jon to stop The Extinction… it would be awfully nasty for Martin, who spent the last 8 months selling himself in the hope of protecting Basira&Melanie + now Jon (“… and Daisy I guess”). (Though: it would have required for Elias and/or Peter to know/guess that Jon’s weak spot would be Martin and… I have trouble picturing Elias going for it back in season 3 already? And from Peter, it would require taking into account the connections and affections of people; can he… even… do that…)

* The tunnels under the Institute? They’ve been thematically important since Jon&co discovered them at the end of season 1, they’re remnants of the Millbank prison (with the Panopticon sounding… very much like a Beholding project – maybe what powered the Institute in the first place? Was “the Fear/feeling of being watched” originally from the prisoners who couldn’t know when they were actually seen?), Robert Smirke was involved in their construction, even Jurgen Leitner (who had lived down there for years) wasn’t absolutely sure of the way they worked, Elias agreed to allow Jon to keep exploring them when he used… very Beholding-aligned arguments (“I need to know!”, MAG067); there is still the mystery of the “ring” of worms found by Tim and then Jon… and Martin was suspecting that Peter was mainly interested in them:

(MAG138) MARTIN: I don’t know what he’s talking about when he mentions Millbank. The old prison, I guess? Tim said the tunnels under the Institute were all that was left of it, but… Jon said he’d checked them pretty thoroughly. [SILENCE] [SIGH] I’m not the one who knows all about this stuff…! I wish– … No. No, it’s fine, I’m… fine, I… [EXHALE] I can do this. I don’t know what Peter’s planning, but my-my guess is that it might involve something below the Institute.

The tunnels have been… there, in season 4, too: it’s where Basira&Melanie took shelter, and Basira has been cautious about them (MAG125, Basira: “Got a camp bed at the other end, near the tunnels. I like to keep an eye on them.”); it’s where Jon and Basira operated on Melanie; judging from the sounds, it’s where Helen’s door has occasionally been (MAG131).

- Aaaaaaaaaand Martin is putting up his own death flags:

(MAG151) MARTIN: Look, I don’t have time for this. I–I don’t like that I have to work with Peter any more than you do, and I didn’t know that Simon was involved until today. But I would hope that you and Jon understood the importance of preventing an apocalypse. BASIRA: [SIGH] I guess I’m just a bit burned out on the end of the world. MARTIN: Yeah, well… that’s your problem. BASIRA: And if you really think this whole Extinction thing is it… why not come to us for help? MARTIN: I can’t. Peter’s the one with the plan, and… it needs me to be alone. […] I need to do this. For everyone. [SILENCE] BASIRA: You’re not expecting to come out of this, are you? MARTIN: … I’ll do what I have to. If I’m right… no one else needs to get hurt. [SILENCE] BASIRA: [SIGH] … Okay. You want to do whatever “grand sacrifice” you think is going to save everyone, go ahead. But you’d best be sure you’re not just playing their game. MARTIN: I know what I’m doing. BASIRA: We’ll see. [PAUSE] Don’t make me regret this. MARTIN: Yeah… [PAUSE] Don’t… tell Jon. [SILENCE] Please. BASIRA: Fine. I can’t promise you he won’t just know it, though.

… on the one hand: the fact that Martin is expecting it to happen, is getting ready to die… could mean that, precisely, it won’t happen, and he will come out of it somehow. On the other hand: Tim was spitting out his own death flags until the end (MAG116, MAG117, MAG118), was downright saying that he wasn’t expecting to come out of The Unknowing alive, even said that he wasn’t sure he wanted to survive it, and it didn’t prevent him from going out with a bang. On the third hand: it already happened with Tim, so rip Tim but Martin could be… different.

I have no idea. I think that for Martin, surviving while others die and/or surviving without having managed to achieve his goals is probably a worst outcome (meaning, more likely to happen) than sacrificing himself and reaching his objective in the process. He’s adopted the stance of sacrificing himself from a distance for a while: with his mother (she was refusing his visits), with Basira&Melanie (he accepted Peter’s deal to protect them and the Institute from external threats), plus now for Jon (he went to talk to Elias in MAG138, he has accepted to discuss with Daisy in MAG142, with Georgie in MAG149, now with Basira in MAG151… but Jon had been off-limits in MAG129). That, or… becoming something that would have hurt, or has to hurt innocents to survive.

(Does he even think that he matters for them? Basira had described to Jon that Martin had been in a very bad place after his mother’s death, and Elias had confronted him about the fact that she didn’t care about him two months prior. Begging Jon for help while he was in his coma in the trailer also didn’t result in anything; Martin had confirmation that he wouldn’t receive any help. But I… don’t think that Martin is aware of how much Jon has been impacted by his absence this season – would it make him reconsider/waver about the self-sacrificing bit…?)

- Basira agreed to not tell Jon but. She was the one staying behind with the tape at the end of the episode (Martin was the one to leave, while Basira was sighing).

The tape could disappear on its own but… so far… it means that it’s now in Basira’s possession. Would “giving the tape to Jon” count as “not telling him directly”.

- Currently: Jon is going cold turkey and still “hungry” and “weak”; Melanie is risking a slow death by Eye-deprivation, à la Tim in season 3 (his attempt to flee to Malaysia); Daisy has stopped Hunting as well (… although Jon’s “Daisy is… [PAUSE] [SIGH] Yeah. She’s managing.” from MAG148 makes me incredibly worried: was it to point out that their circumstances were different? Was it about a relapse that only Jon knows about? Was it about Daisy being actually slowly dying from the deprivation, like the people in MAG112?); Basira is deep into paranoia territory; and now, Martin… is going for a self-sacrifice.

That’s. Not a pretty picture right now, and the question goes back to “who will die first”.

(And I’m really not sure that Jon wouldn’t give up the “trusting Martin” trajectory and do something rash, if he learns about Martin’s plan to… not come back. Melanie already announced that she was ready to die: from Jon’s point of view, he’s been seeing the assistants disappear or going for their deaths. Sasha died because of the table that Jon wanted to keep. Screaming at Tim “I knew none of us might be coming back, and I’m not gonna let anyone get killed for nothing!” and “I am not losing you as well!!” (MAG118) still didn’t prevent Tim’s death. Martin is the last one of the original assistants and… so far, Martin’s plans had been based on the idea of everyone making it out alive at the end: imprisoning Elias was the way he had found to keep him away without risking to die with him. Right now, Jon&the others are apparently waiting for Martin to get on with his plan, but… probably on the assumption that Martin is planning to come back to them once he’s done. And it’s now officially not the case.)

MAG152’s title is a funny one considering that we’re bidding goodbye to the Kanto dex to head into the Johto region and it’s thus “the Chikorita episode” (the title is… quite fitting for Chikorita) /o/

I’d say End (nothing since Oliver; would Jon mention him in the post-statement…?), Corruption (so… unloved…) or Buried (… DIG/the tunnels?)? Or Lonely again?

#aaand that's long(er than usual)#long post/#return of the '/o/' smiley because i actually slept decently this week /o/#tma liveblog #mag151 #tma season 4 #the magnus archives #edit'd

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