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bibliocratic · 3 years

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clear the area jonmartin, post-MAG200 content warnings in the tags

They earn their ending. A happy-ever-after beyond the gaze of any eyes.

Jon endures his abdication. This world has no Archivists, has need of none, the thankless crown of Knowing finally unburdened from his shoulders. The blood washes off Martin’s hands with soap and scrubbing and scalding water. They live.

The end. In conclusion. Fin.

Jon’s new scar, the packaging of his skin split ragged from collarbone to sternum, fades like sun-caught paint. A maw of red pursing to a gummy primrose pink, settling into a rough cartography of white.

The first few months are hard. Brimstone flare-up silences and ice-pick shouting, open-handed forgiveness and closed-fist weeping. They drain themselves to husks with anger and worry and grief until there is enough space for better things to grow there in their stead. Jon’s nightmares were a nightly stormfront to bear, sweated sheets and dawn fanfares of panic and dread, but he is learning now, with the space for his ribs to expand, that it is ok for them to breathe here.

Jon digs up the garden with a rusty trowel until it is a bumpy canvas of mulch and soil, dirt tucked under his fingernails and decorated with smudges up to his elbows. He hums while he irons their shirts in front of the television, thoughtless and senseless with tune.

Martin has tried to, but the sound goes down the wrong way.

Martin is happy.

It isn’t the sight as such, that might sit as a film over his vision to tinge his waking sepia. The reddest thing they own is a terracotta plant plot brimming with raggedy thyme that lives a precarious cliff-top existence on the kitchen windowsill. He observes Jon’s face in all its variations, even pained – when he snags splinters in his fingers, when he stubs his toe on the stone front step and swears damnation – and his response is sympathy tempered by admonishment.

It’s not the sensation, not really, that might tremble on his skin. Martin’s palms tend to dryness inside their homely bubble of creaky central heating, hemmed in by boisterous coastal winds. He handles bread knives and butter knives and steak knives and carving knives without the muscle memory of other blades, and he thinks he might be getting pretty handy with his oven experimentation.

It’s the sound. It wakes him, the noise lingering like the echo of a slap.

The slick punch of metal into muscle. A tooth-bared, tense-jawed gasp.

Resurfacing to shocked consciousness, he would be seized by a frenzy, to know, to check. His scattering hand scrabbling for the lamp with such force he hit it off the nightstand to roll in a giddy clatter, throwing off the covers to rapidly pollute both of them with the outside air. Jon would be rocked from sleep, groggy, panicked, and Martin’s words would not come, a train of thought trying to race full steam where no one had laid tracks, so it would be just the two of them, exhausted and upset and amping the other up in misery.

Now, upon his rousing, Martin knows not to turn on the light. He does not check. The aftermath of punch-gasp curls in his ear, and he inhale-exhale-inhales with the ferocity of mantra, and clamps the threatened tears in the clench of his teeth.

He does not wake Jon.

“How did you sleep?”

“Oh, you know me. Like a log.”

He is happy. He is. Why wouldn’t he be?

Jon rumbles like a rusty mechanism with snoring whenever he drops off on his back, and he mumbles accusatory when Martin coaxes him to his side. Martin finds black hairs on his pillowcase, in the shower plug. Jon is a vista of experience since the Eye left him, who gets hungry and tired and grumpy and drunk and silly and fed-up and giggly. Jon searches him out with the surety of magnets, and loves him, loves him, loves him. He seals kisses to Martin’s new landscape of extensive scars. Their disagreements, when they surface, are as meaningful and lasting as stones skipped on water.

Martin wanted this. He wants this. The rhythms of domesticity fading to foam on an untroubled shore.

He is out of practise with happiness, that’s all. It doesn’t come to him like breathing. He needs to till the earth of it, shelter its seeds from a thousand circling crows until it bears harvest.

He just has to try harder.

Night-time.

An episode or two of something simple, Jon nodding off like a capsizing ship before the credits. Encouraging him up in grousing, unwilling increments, rubbing out the nettle sting of pins and needles up his own arm. Check the locks, the light switches. Brush teeth. Pyjamas. Put his phone to charge, read until Jon succumbs to sleep. Click the light off, pushing Jon onto his side so his mouth doesn’t dry. Jon squirming around like a fastidious octopus until he has at least half his limbs hooked over Martin.

The dark creating shadow play. In the absence, Martin colouring in the gaps with lurid shades of disaster.

A creak – the rattle of a door downstairs, an intruder unfastening the back door, transferring their weight upon the staircase. A unfamiliar scent – the recollection of smoke-stench in his nostrils, the acrid promise of gas, the ferrous pungency of blood. The rain will flood their house to drown them. The wind will blow their roof in. Jon hooks his leg around Martin, the skin void of hair where Daisy’s mouth had almost torn it off, and all he can envision is the ways this could be destroyed as he watches.

Bundle Jon close. Ignore the rain, the itch at the bottom of his stomach, the queasy roil of his fear. Drift into unkind sleep populated with its garden of earthly terrors.

Martin is… not happy. Not exactly. And that’s fine. It’s fine.

Jon is happy.

Jon, rubbing at the compression lines around his hips, the accusatory splay of the top button refusing to budge closed:

“I can’t fit into my jeans.”

Martin enfolds him from behind, planting his palms over the slight paunch of Jon’s stomach, filled out through sensible eating and small indulgences and a hunger that will never be ravenous but has restored its human qualities.

“Hmm. It’s a good look on you. Healthier.”

“Or it’s middle age.”

“Or it’s eating things that aren’t tea and meal-deal sandwiches.”

“Or other people’s terror.”

“Oh yes, you’re right, I completely forgot about your subsistence diet of eldritch and unbidden horrors in a luscious wholegrain wrap, forgive me.”

Jon laughs at that. The sound has not yet lost its novelty for either of them.

He shifts, turns, his arms a buoy around Martin’s stomach.

“You’ve lost weight.”

“Must be all the clean air,” Martin quips. “All that healthy living.”

Punch. Gasp. Exhale.

Martin wakes up.

When his heart has wound down from the pace of its gallop, he extricates himself from Jon’s grip. It is a laborious task to find the places where they’ve joined in the night and pull them apart, like separating fabric snagged on rosebushes.

He gets some water from the cold tap in the kitchen. Sits heavily on the sofa, the room cossetted by the gloom.

Punch. Gasp. Exhale.

His hands shake.

He doesn’t go back to bed.

He isn’t happy, but he could grow to be. He could. He could. He just isn’t trying hard enough.

Some days, he feels like he’s waiting for the ice to give under them.

Check the passers-by as they walk. Anyone familiar, any teeth filed too sharp, anything animal or blood-shot, any eyes that glance too deep.

Check the oven. The gas knobs are angled to off but a leak is not impossible in a house this old, their alarm might malfunction, they might fall asleep and some spark from a plug socket could catch and incite a conflagration.

Check the window latches. The opening wide enough for a body to squirm through, the claws of a Hunter marring the sill. Wriggling infestations that invade through the letter box, the keyhole, the gap under the door where the wind can whistle through.

Check. Check. Check.

Jon is happy. Jon has a job, work friends, a hundred small luxuries that he has struggled to earn. Jon is happy, so why can’t he be? He went through so much less, the blood washed off easily with soap, what the fuck does he have to cry over –

Martin has always crafted his masks from scrap, tongue out in concentration, piecing things together in low light, a make-do-and-mend of his own devising. His early efforts, the paper mâché and glue easily cracked before he learned to shore up his constructions. He has a small collection garnered over years.

The quiet-voiced, muffled-stepped, muted-smiled creation of a Good Son.

The zipped-mouth, no-refusals-no-complaints-yes-of-course-how-high earnestness of the Good Employee, the desperation sanded off the edges so no one could see.

The I’ll-get-the-first-round friendliness, the open-handed, open-hearted, too-naïve Good Colleague.

This new mask forms in increments, in the same way a rising mound of dirt marks the extent of a grave being dug.

He doesn’t mean to. It’s just he’s better at not talking about things. He always has been. And it is an ugly, easy comfort, to slip back into bad habits.

And Jon is happy.

All the things Martin does not wish to permit the light to touch he compresses inside like shaken soda. The rot in him deepens structural, the places where he papers over moulds and fungal speckles with the distraction of their new life. His smile parades simple, contented, cheeky, teasing, and there is a meticulous artistry in each. He sketches interest, paints joy, manufactures irritation out of the clay of nothingness that he allows himself to feel instead of the overwhelming rush of everything else.

I love you, his mouth murmurs, laughs, sighs, groans, and that at least is always true.

The mask of a Good Partner slips on tailor-made.

They find their nine-to-fives. Jon’s job is uneventful, boring, and nowhere near an Archive. He works in a registry office for the council, filing and organising and he’s cheerfully lied on his CV in order to get it. He gets the bus and texts Martin grumpy faces and GIFs summarising his mood when he gets suck in the commute or some idiot parks in a bus lane, he has a couple of colleagues he likes and a greater number that he tolerates, he gets a hot chocolate from this universe’s overpriced multinational chain on his lunch hour. When he gets home, he complains with delight at the mundanity of his dissatisfactions, regales Martin with tales of meagre drama.

Martin gets a cleaning job at a school. It is monotonous, dull and safe. Martin loses track of the time easily, quagmired in his musings. The children are wary of him and his visible scarring but it doesn’t bother him as much as he thought it would. The teachers are friendly enough, as well as the other cleaning staff, but he does not make friends. They’ll have to move anyway, if anything finds them here, if the Fears emerge again.

Martin tries not to feel like he’s waiting.

He wants to have a good night’s sleep.

“I’ll have breakfast at the school, don’t worry.”

“There were some leftovers from the canteen, so I’m kind of full.”

“It was one of the teacher’s birthdays, you know, Denise? Heh, might have had a bit too much cake. I’ll pop this in the fridge for later though, it’ll keep till tomorrow.”

“I’m just not that hungry tonight, Jon.”

He feels sharper when he doesn’t eat. It is uncomfortable, a scratched-out, hollowing sensation, but things focus more. He can control nothing else but this, and it feels good, to have this mastery over himself when so much is beyond him.

He drops down notches on his belt and tells Jon it’s all the walking he’s doing.

The world continues to happen to them. He goes to the cinema with Jon and picks at popcorn and encourages Jon’s outraged opinion. He meets Jon’s mildly interesting work friends and plays nice and excels at small talk, and he drinks half a cider that he nurses over the evening because it’s making his head fuggy. His body communicates its sharpness to him and he gains grim satisfaction from ignoring it. He goes to work and goes home and doesn’t sleep and goes to work and goes home and doesn’t sleep.

Martin does his best at living, and his mask doesn’t slip.

“You seem tired,” Jon pries his words out carefully, picking them out of his teeth as one would scraps. “Is… is everything ok?”

“Yeah, sure it is. Why?”

“… you seem a bit down today. Recently. Is anything… is there anything you want to talk about?”

“I’ve just been working too hard. Been a while since I had to do double-shifts, heh, I’m not as young as I used to be.”

“If you’re sure?”

Jon shifts to a different position where he’s sat on the sofa, his legs tucking up under him. Martin endures his questioning gaze with practise.

“Yeah, I’m all good.”

Martin delivers a hand-crafted smile that’s gilded heavily with guilelessness and reassurance. He watches as Jon believes him and hates himself.

“You know… You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but you can – you know you can talk to me, Martin?”

Martin’s eyes focus on Jon’s chest at the point where a knife once sunk in, and doesn’t reply.

Punch. Gasp. Exhale.

Martin wakes up.

Jon has twisted over onto his back again, rattling like a chain-smoker’s cough with his snoring. They were quiet that evening, tangled up in their own thoughts, but there is none of that distance in sleep. During the night, Jon’s wormed himself out of the covers with a single-minded determination, his restless legs squashing the duvet to the bottom of the bed on his side, encouraging Martin’s to follow suit.

He’s shirtless, his top chucked off to pile unceremoniously on the floor. The temperature is ripe with a burgeoning summer heat, and Jon tosses and complains if he’s overwarm, and Martin didn’t think he’d get to feel the drudgery of another lived summer. He’s shirtless, and the room is palled in sweltering dark that softens the vague shapes of the wardrobe, the chest of drawers, the knickknacks of the life they’re building together. He’s shirtless, and Martin cannot see where the scar is, the only scar of Jon’s he has ever thought ugly, but he knows it is there. That he put it there. That he could just as easily be waking up alone.

His body pains him to live in it. His stomach tight and bottomed out empty.

He is so so tired.

Martin’s heartbeat does not slow down. His chest constricting, and he swallows, a sharp sound hiccupping in his throat. He stifles it with a forceful sniff but more come as a painful spasming wave, and he has to sit up if any air is to dribble into his lungs.

He should get up. He has to get up, do this in the bathroom, doubled-over the sink, stifling his weakness where it cannot be witnessed. He cannot do this here.

Punch. Gasp.

His burning face is soaked as he bunches up his sleeves against his reddening eyes. A calming exhale drains out shaky, moulds itself into another loud sob. He plants his hands over his mouth, screwing his eyes closed, and this will pass, he’s fine, this will pass…

“Martin?”

I’m sorry to wake you, he thinks to say. It’s nothing, go back to sleep, stop looking at me Jon, I’m fine, I’m fine, it’s nothing, it’s nothing…

His shoulders start to shake.

“Martin?” Jon repeats slowly. And the ice creaks and cracks and Martin gasps and then it breaks, and the force of his damned-up grief is tidal, catastrophic and he sobs into his hands.

“It’s… it’s alright – it’s… it was a nightmare, that’s all, ‘s alright…”

“It’s not!” Martin bubbles out, the words mashed to a wail in his hands. “It’s not, it’s not, it’ll ruin this…”

“Hey.” Jon brings his arm around Martin and he buries his head in the bony crook of his shoulder because he does not want to meet Jon’s eyes. “What do you mean? Martin?”

Jon rubs at his back. Martin’s body betrays him in a hundred ways as it collapses around him. His weeping wrings him out, dry-mouthed and headachy and trembling when he subsides into shivery breaths.

“Talk to me,” Jon says. “Please.”

“You’re so happy,” Martin sniffs out. “I-I want you to be happy, god, o-of course I do. Things are, they’re good, they’re good and we won, s-s-so why does it feel like I’m still holding my breath? I-I go to bed and I’m frightened of every noise, and I wake up and I’m terrified that someone somehow could take this all away, and I can’t sleep, and I-I’m tired, Jon, I’m tired of holding my breath, and it’s all – it’s all so much a-a-a-and I can’t – ”

“Oh, Martin – ”

His words fail him then. Jon holds him up and his arms do not loosen.

“We-we’re going to fix this,” Jon says after a long while. “I promise you, together, we’ll – we’ll talk to someone. You aren’t alone in this. Together, alright, we’ll do this together. We’ve survived – everything else, we can get through this too.”

“I don’t know if I can believe you,” Martin says, too drained to avoid honesty.

“…Maybe not yet,” Jon says after a pause. “That’s OK. I can wait.”

I’m sorry, Martin attempts to say but Jon presses a kiss to his forehead.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Jon says. He strokes Martin’s sweat-soaked hair.

“… Can we talk? Tomorrow? You don’t have to tell me everything, but… I’d like to be there for you, if you want me. If you’ll let me.”

Martin nods because he doesn’t trust his gummed-up throat. Jon takes that as an answer.

Dawn comes in slowly enough but they see it in together.

#tma #the magnus archives #cw racing thoughts #cw anxiety #tw eating disorder #tw ptsd #ask to tag #cw nightmares #martin blackwood #jonathan sims #jonmartin #tma spoilers

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soveryanon · 3 years

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Reviewing time for MAG199! ;_;

- That discussion was a lot, and raised a lot of interesting points, but wooftie did the beginning show characters going back to their bad reflexes out of habit and stress. Melanie and Jon were quick to get snappish at each other, and we know from MAG186 that Martin making tea is also his way of avoiding conflict:

(MAG186) ALSO MARTIN: We could. [SIGH] But we both know that loved ones make the worst therapists. They’re too wrapped up in trying to stop you hurting, to actually help. But hey: we know all about that, am I right? MARTIN: There’s nothing wrong with comforting people. ALSO MARTIN: A cup of tea isn’t a resolution. At best it’s a… a plaster; at worst… a muzzle.

So the fact that the sequence began with Martin asking about tea?

(MAG199) MELANIE: … So… ARCHIVIST: … Yeah. [UNCOMFORTABLE PAUSE] MARTIN: Anyone want another cup of tea? [SOMETHING WOODEN SCRAPES ACROSS TUNNEL FLOOR] Well, heh, I say “tea”, it’s har– GEORGIE: We can’t keep putting it off. We need to talk about this. About what we’re going to do.

Aouch. (I wonder where the tea came from: from the London supermarket? Or were those the bags he had packed before leaving the Scotland cabin?)

- Meanwhile, Basira was providing out-of-the-box ideas or possibilities and Georgie acted a bit like a debate mediator, laying options down and trying to keep things on track. I’m especially glad that she was the one to point out that there were actually three options, counting inaction (letting the world slowly die out) as one, since, as she pointed out, she had felt guilty for not having helped Jon back in season 4 – she had told him so, she had to reexplain to Melanie again this episode.

- Although he had begun the season correcting Martin about Elias actually being “Jonah”, Jon mainly used “Elias” to refer to him this season, until they reached London and he was oscillating between the two. But since Jon told Elias Bouchard (the real one)’s statement, it’s been “Jonah” without hesitation, to the point that he corrected Georgie about it:

(MAG193) ARCHIVIST: I could kill his body, sever the link, break The Eye’s power, and… Jonah Magnus would die.

(MAG194) ARCHIVIST: Look. Right, when I said that I would “replace” Jonah in there, that’s not… I m– … That place, the centre of The Eye, i–it’s… it wasn’t made for him.

(MAG197) ARCHIVIST: I see. Destroy the Panopticon, and you release its power. Kill Jonah, and you cut the connection between the Fears and the world.

(MAG198) ARCHIVIST: Had a blazing row? MARTIN: I, uh… eh… Yeah, that. BASIRA: What? ARCHIVIST: About what we should do with Jonah. With… the Panopticon. BASIRA: Oh, about whether you should, uh…?

(MAG199) GEORGIE: One. We follow Annabelle’s plan. We destroy the Panopticon, kill Elias– ARCHIVIST: Jonah– GEORGIE: Whatever– ARCHIVIST: –Magnus.

It feels like knowing about the real Elias helped Jon distinguish the two, since he could now put a story and a personality on “Elias”?

(I’m still laughing a bit that Jon had to be That Person and interrupt Georgie. Not the point, not the moment, Jon.)

- Overall, I like how we could clearly see what was prioritised by everyone amongst the options they explored and how they approached the problem. Basically, the unknown factors came to whether other worlds were already impacted by the Fears or not, and whether the Fears would contaminate all of them or just a portion, which led to a few scenarios showing what they feared and hoped for the most:

-> Keeping the Fears in their world and sacrificing it in the process: hoping that the Fears were intrinsically tied to this world in particular, that this option would mean their absolute annihilation, and fearing that other worlds getting contaminated by them would lead to these other worlds experiencing their own apocalypse, thus perpetuating a cycle they could have stopped.

-> Throwing the Fears into other worlds to save their own: hoping that the Fears already existed in other worlds, that it would only impact some amongst an infinity of worlds, and fearing that sacrificing their world would be a pointless sacrifice if the Fears happen to exist elsewhere anyway.

Jon was behind the first plan, with a few variations (offering to accelerate the death process if necessary… which, indeed, was chilling, and Basira’s firm opposition against actively contributing to people’s murder was very necessary, but made sense as an option if the scenario was to doom this world). The others federated for the second with various priorities: Basira sounded like she could have accepted the sacrifice of this world if it came with the certainty that it would eradicate the Fears everywhere (but they do not have that certainty), while Melanie insisted on people’s own responsibility when it came to bringing around an apocalypse and the fact that hypotheticals could go both ways, while Georgie seemed more receptive to what would happen to this world for sure vs. the unknown in other universes, while Martin was refusing Jon’s option to take Jonah’s place and was receptive to other ideas. From Georgie&Melanie, there was the additional fact that they had recently witnessed the survivors, who trusted them and were under their protection, getting snatched away without them being able to do anything; from an emotional point of view, it might have pushed them to… do something, anything, that could indeed save people, while they hadn’t been able to be active until now.

* I really like that Basira was the one to point out and reiterate how unfair it was of them to take this decision, that they ultimately were very privileged compared to the main victims, trying to find ways to get people involved in the process. It does feel like she’s learned during the journey…

* Jon’s voice (weary, miserable) when he explained that he already knew what people wanted, and that it was for their suffering “to stop”, broke my heart into pieces ;_;

* Martin’s main argument (“I’d rather live the rest of my life lying awake wondering if I made the right choice, over… lying awake listening to the screams of everyone on Earth being tortured!” really echoed what had happened with Annabelle on their journey to Hill Top Road: that he couldn’t help making additional stops to relieve people’s suffering for a bit, and that he briefly lamented Salesa’s death despite Annabelle pointing out that he had made victims, since Martin “didn’t know them”. Martin reacts more strongly to what’s in front of him, uh…

* Georgie felt very End-touched this episode? “until the end”, “towards the end”, just like Beholding avatars had occasionally been punning about their patron…

* Melanie, sayer of “fuck” /o/

(MAG131) MELANIE: Oooh, fuck off?!

(MAG199) MELANIE: But if you think that’s all I care about here, then frankly you can fuck off out my tunnels on your high horse.

Jon still in the lead with four over the course of the series, we’ll see if anyone else takes the lead with MAG200…

- Overall: what was the most striking was how, at this point, Jon was indeed too disillusioned to hope for any possible positive outcome. They all made good points, about what they knew and didn’t know, about the worst and best cases scenarios – but from Jon’s point of view, it feels like the guilt has been heavy enough already, and that he couldn’t stand to add to it anymore.

(And ;; It’s especially cruel that he stuck to his line of trusting the others, that he shared the information with the others and counted on them to make a collective decision… but that he was the only discordant voice in the end. That was the risk! And it just cruelly (for him) turned out this way.)

- Amongst the points that weren’t mentioned, I’m curious that the followings didn’t come up:

* They barely talked about The Web or Jonah as, well, being the main factors resulting in the current apocalypse – as the people who wanted it to happen and worked for it. They all were ready to take the blame but… the apocalypse wouldn’t have happened if The Web hadn’t wanted to control its escape by backing up Jonah to make it happen, and if Jonah hadn’t worked for it. Yeeting the Fears into other worlds also means yeeting The Web, who now knows for sure how an apocalypse can happen, which means it will search for a crack to widen as its next escape pod as soon as it arrives somewhere else, thus repeating the cycle probably much more faster…?

* They all seem confident that once the Fears leave, they’ll be gone forever. But Gerry had raised the point in front of Jon that nobody can tell really which came first, if the Fears originated from people or caused their fears. What if the problem in the TMA world is that the Fears are produced by people – what if they would be recreated as soon as they leave (especially now that people are left traumatised and hurt)?

* They weren’t sure whether the other worlds would be very similar to theirs (“Assuming time even works the same in different dimensions.”) but… the two examples of people crossing the Hill Top Road line had come from very familiar worlds: Anya’s was almost identical (except that there was no Magnus Institute in hers – maybe no Jonah Magnus at all?) and Eowa was killed by the same army he had tried to flee. The examples both Jon and Martin read about felt really similar to their world; those could be drops in the bucket, but still…

* There was absolutely no mention of the people they lost in the course of the series. It’s a strange feeling, because when it came to it, their conclusions seem pretty disconnected from everything that had happened to them, to the point that Melanie could blurt out “We all lived with monsters in the shadows, and we just got on with it.” without being countered by anyone – although it was the most obvious lie ever (and Melanie had to be aware of it, given how she blinded herself to escape The Eye). Melanie knows in detail how her father suffered because of The Corruption at Ivy Meadows before dying. Georgie lost Alex and her ability to feel fear. Basira had to hunt and kill Daisy after she got lost to The Hunt. Jon was traumatised as kid, witnessed Helen Richardson getting taken by Michael in front of him; Martin was preyed on and groomed for The Lonely for months by Peter; Jon&Martin both lost Tim and Sasha. They know how damaging the Fears can be even at the lurking stage. I wouldn’t have been surprised if, even taking this into account, they’d still have gone with the plan to yeet the Fears (since in the best case scenario, Fears would already be present in other worlds anyway, or whatever inhabits them would be insulated to them), I’m just surprised that the topic of the people they have lost didn’t come up as a potential counter-argument, especially since we’re at the end of this journey.

- Oh gods, Jon leaving for a smoke…

(MAG199) ARCHIVIST: Fine. I’m going for a cigarette. [DEPARTING FOOTSTEPS] [CLICK.]

… sounded like a very bad omen, given how las time he had left people alone to smoke, it had gone, uh, pipe-murderly:

(MAG080) ARCHIVIST: I’m going to have a cigarette. Don’t… [DOOR OPENS] Don’t. [DOOR CLOSES]

Surprised that nothing bad happened when he left; if it had been at the end of an episode, I would have panicked for a week about the Watchers coming back for the others while Jon was away.

- It was the first time we’ve heard Jon smoke on tape! We knew he did thanks to a few mentions (him announcing his cigarette break to Leitner in MAG080, the fact that Daisy had found Silk Cuts in his bag in MAG091, when he had tried to give a cigarette to Gerry in MAG111) but we hadn’t heard him taking a smoke.

* … How long has Jon carried these cigarettes? Did they come from before the Change, did Jon restock at Salesa’s, did he get some from Leitner’s stashes of stuff? Or does his own stock never truly deplete, The Web providing an infinite supply of cigarettes just like the recorders keep spawning?

* We could hear the whirring sounds and the drones, Georgie joked about an “indoor smoking ban”, Jon commented he could think better here, we heard Georgie climbing stairs to reach him, so I’m guessing he was at the bottom of the tower? I like how this scene managed to feel nostalgic despite of it, with Jon being somewhere between inside and outside and hiding for a smoke – we don’t know for sure where he used to go to smoke, but Gertrude had mentioned the Institute has a courtyard.

* And just the location highlighted Jon’s situation: not “human” enough anymore to be in the tunnels, but refusing to embrace what is at the top of the tower. So, alone in that in-between.

- Gods, the Georgie and Jon scene began so adorably?

(MAG199) ARCHIVIST: [LONG EXHALATION] GEORGIE: You do know there’s an indoor smoking ban, right? ARCHIVIST: They’ll make an exception for me…! GEORGIE: [FAINT CHUCKLE] ARCHIVIST: Besides, I can’t really think down there. [DRAG ON CIGARETTE] That’s not true, I can, it’s just… exhausting. Puts me in a foul mood. [INHALE] It’s better up here, close to The Eye. Thoughts come quicker. GEORGIE: … If it’s any consolation, you seemed pretty on the ball earlier. ARCHIVIST: It isn’t really but… thank you.

Friendly exes! It really took me back to the familiar bantering they shared in season 3 – except that, back then, Jon was trying to hide what was truly happening to him, and this time around, Jon was shown more open and direct about what was on his mind.

- Again, I love and hate what the scene said and showed, reminding us that… even if the plan they have chosen goes accordingly, Jon won’t be okay, as Jon had explained to Martin:

(MAG181) ARCHIVIST: Uh, these last few days I–I’ve been… getting weaker. Dizzy spells, vagueness, you’ve seen it. Being cut off from the Eye, i–it’s not good for me. MARTIN: Yeah, but if… [INHALE] If you’re that connected, that… dependent, what happens if we actually, y’know, do manage to– ARCHIVIST: We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, I just need us to be moving on.

(MAG191) MARTIN: … Jon. If… When we defeat The Eye, the Fears… What happens to you? [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: Nothing good. I think it depends on what actually happens. […] If, however, we… find a way to destroy or, uh… eliminate the Powers… I’m not going to be okay. There’s… too much of me that’s part of The Eye now. I don’t… know what would be left of me without it. Maybe I just… die. Maybe I survive, but I–I lose… something. My identity? My mind? My… memories? I don’t know.

(MAG197) ANNABELLE: Most would simply lose whatever power they have been gifted. Jon would lose much of himself, the parts of him that are The Eye. But he would survive. And perhaps, more importantly, he would remain who he believes himself to be. [TAPE SQUEALS]

His moment of rest consists of coming up under Beholding’s radar again; but if they succeed, there won’t be that anymore. At best, Jon would be like he was in the tunnels, at worse, he would wither away like he did at Salesa’s, losing grasp on his memory and unable to focus. It wasn’t mentioned as a factor in their discussion (Martin and Jon had already covered this privately earlier in the season, after all), but it’s likely not something Jon has forgotten.

- Oh GODS, Georgie, no!!

(MAG199) GEORGIE: … Can I have a cigarette? ARCHIVIST: [AMUSED SNORT] … Sure. [PASSING ONE OVER]

(MAG001) ARCHIVIST: “I picked myself up as best I could, checked I hadn’t seriously injured myself, no broken bones or anything, and decided to roll a cigarette to calm myself. That was when I heard it. [STATIC RISES] “Can I have a cigarette?” [STATIC FADES]”

Given Jon’s reaction, he had picked up on it. You either die an Archivist, or you live long enough to see yourself become the Anglerfish’s victim.

- Georgie used to smoke, and Jon knew that about her! They might have been smoking together as students, given Jon’s official chronology regarding smoking?

(MAG080) ARCHIVIST: I’m going to have a cigarette. Don’t… [DOOR OPENS] Don’t. […] Sorry, I’ve been quit for five years now, but th– [STUNNED SILENCE] … Oh. Oh god… I need to… Uh… I need to, um… [TRAILS OF ALMOST INCOHERENTLY]

MAG080 had taken place in February 2017, so five years ago was 2012, which is roughly when Jon joined the Institute (in MAG051, he had mentioned “One of [his] first cases as a researcher for the Institute in 2012”). Although, well. Jon saying that he had “been quit for five years” wasn’t super convincing when he apparently had cigarettes on him at that moment, but it’s a bit difficult to guess when Jon went back to smoking in the series (Elias’s “He’s not smoking again, is he?” in MAG039 could have been referring to him knowing that Jon used to smoke, or to Jon having started again as soon as he got the lighter; and Tim’s “I don’t mean like ‘sneaking a cigarette’ bad” in MAG079 could have been a random example, or referring to the fact that Jon was indeed having cigarette breaks in season 2 and not being super subtle about it).

- Aouch about the theme of shattering illusions and your heroes being people above all:

(MAG199) ARCHIVIST: I thought you quit? GEORGIE: I did! For my health. But… it’s already the apocalypse so… I’ll need a light too. ARCHIVIST: Yeah. [LIGHTER SNICKS OPEN] [GEORGIE LIGHTS UP] GEORGIE: I tried to avoid it in the tunnels, when we had our, uh… When the others were here. […] ARCHIVIST: You didn’t want to tarnish the image of the prophets? GEORGIE: Just didn’t think they wanted one of their “revered leaders” puffing away in the corner. ARCHIVIST: [MURMURS AN ASSENT] GEORGIE: Saw a bishop smoking once when I was a kid, full Easter regalia and all. Really weirded me out.

The comparison hurt a bit by likening the survivors in the tunnels to… children who can’t really tell decorum apart from reality, but there sure was an interesting theme of Georgie being aware of how she was seen, and trying to not hurt the survivors while at the same time indirectly feeding their perception of her as “holy”.

- Okay, so. Probably what felt the biggest, most important thing in this episode was… Georgie taking the lighter, how it happened, and whether or not it will be narratively relevant.

(MAG199) GEORGIE: … Can I have a cigarette? ARCHIVIST: [AMUSED SNORT] … Sure. [PASSING ONE OVER] I thought you quit? GEORGIE: I did! For my health. But… it’s already the apocalypse so… I’ll need a light too. ARCHIVIST: Yeah. [LIGHTER SNICKS OPEN] [GEORGIE LIGHTS UP] GEORGIE: I tried to avoid it in the tunnels, when we had our, uh… When the others were here. [LIGHT METALLIC SOUND] Nice lighter. [STATIC RISES] ARCHIVIST: Hmm? [STATIC FADES] […] I should probably quit myself, then. [LIGHT METALLIC SOUND] GEORGIE: Then, you won’t mind if I hang onto this? [STATIC RISES] ARCHIVIST: [DISTRACTED] Hmm. [STATIC FADES] GEORGIE: … I’m sorry. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] GEORGIE: I know you hate what we’re doing.

* Static when people mention the lighter and Jon not being able to focus on it is far from new:

(MAG111) GERARD: Nice lighter. You a spider freak, then? ARCHIVIST: What? Oh! Er, n–no. I–I, I never really, uh… I never really thought of it. I–I’m Jon. I’m with the Magnus Institute. … I–I’m the Archivist.

(MAG136) DAISY: [SCOFF] She’s… Web. Spider’s sneaky like that. [PAUSE] Like that lighter you’re always using. Where’d you get that? ARCHIVIST: Mm. [STATIC RISES] Good point. We should keep our eyes open. [STATIC FADES] Anyway, how’s Basira doing?

(MAG162) MARTIN: You said this place, the–the cabin was… [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] It, it’s feeding on us, right? ARCHIVIST: Yes… MARTIN: … So should we… destroy it, before we go? […] We’re not even gonna try? We, we’ve got your lighter, maybe we could just– ARCHIVIST: We can’t fight the world, Martin.

(MAG197) ANNABELLE: And it just so happens that the perfect tool was once delivered to you as a token of appreciation. Though you really do need to learn to keep better care of it. Somehow, it always seems to slip your mind, doesn’t it? ARCHIVIST: What…? BASIRA: Jon, it’s that stupid lighter of yours. ARCHIVIST: [INDIGNANT] My what? I… [STATIC RISES] [PULLS THE GOLD LIGHTER WITH EMBOSSED SPIDERWEB FROM POCKET AND FLICKS IT OPEN] Oh? … Oh. [STATIC FADES]

What is surprising is that it still happened even after Annabelle pointed out the purpose of the lighter. If Jon is supernaturally compelled to not pay attention to it (by The Web, to ensure it stays with Jon? By Beholding, out of self-preservation, like it tried to push Jon away from Eric’s tape that explained how to quit the Archives?), how the heck was Annabelle expecting him to use it in the tunnels to explode the Archives with the gas main?

* At the end of the episode, the others explained how they would proceed, and it’s presented as a given that Jon wouldn’t be in the tunnel team – but rather, that he would go with Martin, despite being unnecessary since Martin would take care of the Jonah murder. It’s rather strange that the others didn’t ask for the lighter directly, but that Georgie took it in the flow of the conversation and in a way Jon barely noticed… as if she wanted to take hold of it sneakily because it was necessary that Jon didn’t really notice. Plus, as was explained, Melanie is supposed to be the last person standing to ignite the gas main: Basira is supposed to be a planned distraction, and Georgie is a back-up distraction in case things go sour. If the point was to get the lighter for the gas main, then Melanie should have been the one to get hold of it.

(* It’s additionally rather strange that Georgie said she had “tried to avoid it in the tunnels” when the survivors were around, implying it was a conscious choice but she might have been smoking outside when patrolling with Melanie… yet had to ask Jon for a cigarette and for a light, as if she didn’t have these things on her.)

Overall, I see three options:

* Total coincidence, red herring, Georgie just didn’t take her own lighter along because she wasn’t planning on smoking.

* Since the beginning of the episode implied that Jon&Martin&Basira had given a complete recap of what had happened to Hill Top Road before the tape recorder clicked on, Georgie took the lighter on purpose to free Jon from The Web’s potential influence. She hasn’t gone back to smoking during the apocalypse; she lied about it to lower Jon’s guard by telling a convincing story, given that Jon knew she used to smoke. Likely meaning that Georgie&Melanie&Martin&Basira have another plan in Jon’s back, but couldn’t share with him due to both the tape recorders and Jon’s connection to Beholding – if Jon knows something, then Beholding might be knowing about it too.

* It’s… actually an End thing. There was a feeling of finality when Georgie took the lighter, as if she might be taking a step that would irrevocably lead to her own death? (“The moment that you die will feel exactly the same as this one.”) She said the exact same thing (“Nice lighter.”) as Gerry, who was dead when he said it; she took the lighter for a dangerous mission; she pointed out her own regrets due to her inaction, and was the one to mention that they had to pay the cost, whatever it was, for this plan to succeed. I don’t know, I got the impression that things might be slotting into place, that her own mechanism had set into motion – that things in the tunnels will go awry, and that she won’t make it out.

- Overall, I like the different approaches characters had about their own guilt and Jon’s in this episode:

(MAG199) GEORGIE: … I’m sorry. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] GEORGIE: I know you hate what we’re doing. ARCHIVIST: I hate all the options, I just… It’s all my fault, you know? GEORGIE: What, because you weren’t able to outsmart the literal embodiment of manipulation and scheming? ARCHIVIST: Mmm. GEORGIE: We all make bad choices, Jon. It’s not your fault some eldritch horror decided yours were going– ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] GEORGIE: –to affect the whole world…! ARCHIVIST: They were still my choices. GEORGIE: … Yeah. And you live with them. Or you don’t. That’s all there is, really. ARCHIVIST: Hmm.

For Jon: what was the most apparent is that he was adamant about presenting what happened as his choices. It could be a remnant of Elia’s gaslighting about it (MAG092: “You never wanted this, no. But I’m afraid you absolutely did choose it. In a hundred ways, at a hundred thresholds, you pressed on. You sought knowledge relentlessly, and you always chose to see. Our world is made of choices, Jon, and very rarely do we truly know what any of them mean. But we make them nonetheless.”), but also a sign that Jon had been struggling about (what he perceives to be) The Web’s hold on his life: if The Web had indeed manipulated him all his life, since he was eight, puppetting him like Francis or the kids at Ray’s house, then what is left of Jon? What is his, who is he? Jon clinging to his own guilt, his own responsibility, the idea that he made his own choices at every turn, might be his way to not fall into the other extreme, the idea that he has been nothing but the Web’s marionette all along and that he’s nothing without it.

It’s also striking that the others have told Jon that the apocalypse wasn’t truly his fault, that they knew Jon hadn’t wanted it, but that Jon redirected the blame on him every time anyway. Georgie tried two other approaches in quick succession: taking The Web into account, with the idea that Jon’s particularity was that he was preyed upon by it, that the consequences were only more dramatic than regular “bad choices” because something was planning to use them anyway; and then, something that resonated more strongly with Georgie’s own experience. As she told Jon, she had regrets about not helping him, felt like she had failed him and had contributed to the steps leading to this apocalypse: she knows what it is to carry that sort of guilt, although on a smaller scale. (And her last sentence felt… extremely End-touched, too.)

- The moment of Georgie introducing that Martin (“your next appointment”) was there and that it was her cue to leave was so sweet ;_; Jon’s ex to Jon’s current partner, and both Jon & Georgie being cool about each other’s new partner in their lives…

- And gooods, Jon&Martin’s conversation ;_;

(MAG199) GEORGIE: He’s all yours. MARTIN: Thanks. [GEORGIE’S FOOTSTEPS DESCEND AND FADE] … You all right? ARCHIVIST: Yeah. Sorry it got so heated in there. MARTIN: Don’t be. I’d have been more worried if you were super calm about it. ARCHIVIST: Yeah. MARTIN: … I’d understand if you hate me right now. ARCHIVIST: What? No! No, Martin, I love you. I always will, and I know you love me too, I mean… [SIGH] That’s it, isn’t it? That’s… the real core of it. You want to save me. MARTIN: I want you to save yourself.

* The fact that Martin was ready and understanding that Jon might hate him for the option Martin defended, that he was expecting Jon to hate him for it, and that he still stuck to it… Oh, Martin… (It’s not the first time a Magnus moment made me think of the When They Cry series but… this one was peak Federika’s poem: “Don’t be sad. The world may not forgive you, but I do. / Don’t be sad. You may not forgive the world, but I forgive you. / Tell me. What must I do to earn your forgiveness?”)

* So many “I love you” coming from Jon this season…

(MAG161) MARTIN: I’m sorry. ARCHIVIST: No, it’s– [SIGH] I love you, I just… I need more time.

(MAG162) ARCHIVIST: “The screams may linger on the distant breeze, and your eye may wander beyond the curtains from time to time, but you and the one you love are, it seems… safe. […] There within the thing that pretends to be a cabin is the one you love. […] The one you love is always near, so close that refuge sometimes feels a prison.”

(MAG183) MARTIN: … I’m sure I love you. [FOOTSTEPS] ARCHIVIST: I love you too. [FABRIC RUSTLES] Let’s go.

(MAG191) MARTIN: … I promise. I love you, Jon. ARCHIVIST: [FOND HUFF] I love you too.

(MAG199) MARTIN: … I’d understand if you hate me right now. ARCHIVIST: What? No! No, Martin, I love you. I always will, and I know you love me too, I mean…

I really wasn’t expecting it when season 4 ended, and yet!! Jon has been so soft and open about it with Martin this season…

* I really like the nuance Martin insisted on, that he mostly wished that Jon would want to save “himself” – it’s not necessarily that Martin is right about it but… from his point of view, he might still be suspecting that Jon is still pretty much self-destructive (although in indirect ways), as Daisy had pointed out in season 4, and that his way of engaging in dangerous missions is still tainted with guilt, with the idea that he has to compensate for something:

(MAG142) DAISY: Not like there’s… “normal” trauma, you know? But it’s pretty common. The most important thing becomes control, engaging on your own terms. Even when it’s stupid or dangerous. Anything to not feel helpless. MARTIN: Oh, god… DAISY: And of course, for Jon, there’s survivor’s guilt in there, too. He thinks he’s not human. Makes him very… self-destructive. MARTIN: Yeah, well. We’ve all had trauma. DAISY: And everyone’s changed.

(And gods. Maybe the problem this season for Jon is that Daisy wasn’t there anymore to at least point out these things. She hadn’t really managed to take Jon’s mind off of it (and he hadn’t opened up enough with her to confess that he had been attacking people) but she might have been able to lay it out, at least, if she had been there…)

- I’m really glad about the contrast between Jon and Martin when thinking about hypothetical scenarios!

(MAG199) ARCHIVIST: … Sometimes… I imagine if none of this had happened. If we had just… met. Been together, w–without… all of this. MARTIN: [SOFTLY] Me too. … But we wouldn’t have, would we? Been together, I mean. ARCHIVIST: Huh? W–what do you mean? MARTIN: Well…! We had that, didn’t we? Almost a year of just working a normal job together and… you hated me. ARCHIVIST: I didn’t “hate” you. MARTIN: No–no, no, no, I listened to those tapes. At one point, you explicitly said you’d be fine with me being chopped up by that old jigsaw lady. ARCHIVIST: Oh, god, Angela! Ha! She’s still about, you know? Lording it over a nasty little Flesh domain. Anyway, I didn’t explicitly say it, I… implied it. MARTIN: Face it, Jon, it took almost two years of crisis and trauma to even make us compatible.

* Jon truly is the romantic in that relationship.

* I’m very glad for Martin pointing out that he remembers how Jon used to treat him, and that he doesn’t really believe that they could have gotten together without the circumstances they experienced. I don’t think we’re meant to take Martin’s words exactly at face value (the circumstances allowed them to open up to each other and get closer, they didn’t necessarily turn them into whole other human beings), but it makes sense that, from his perspective… it’s hard to romanticise the past:

(MAG014) ARCHIVIST: I sent Martin to look into this “Angela” character, not that I want him to get chopped up, of course, but someone had to. Apparently he spent three days looking into every woman named Angela in Bexley over the age of 50. He could not find anyone that matches the admittedly vague description given here, though he informs me that he had some very pleasant chats about jigsaws. Useless ass.

Jon was absolutely awful to him back then, and ranting about him on tapes was textbook workplace bullying since he knew the tapes were semi-public (as in MAG032, Tim reported to him that researchers and students had been pointing out mistakes in his recordings). Off-tape, just from Martin’s point of view, we know that it was so pervasive that he remembered about it when left alone, tormented by his worst memories and feelings:

(MAG170) MARTIN: … Oh, I, I met someone! Did I tell you? He’s… [SHUFFLING] I, I don’t know. I like him. He doesn’t like me, though. Not really. I don’t blame him. I don’t like me sometimes, and I am me! Plus, he’s… he’s my, my boss? Is that right? [CREAKING] Ei–either way. It’s probably for the best? Wouldn’t really be appropriate, eh…!

(MAG186) ALSO MARTIN: Or… does it just keep paralysing us, make us shrink back and wait, hoping things work out? Like with Jon when we thought the worms had got him. MARTIN: Hey, to be fair, he still kind of hated me back then. I’m really not sure it would have been the best time to take my shot. ALSO MARTIN: … Fair. He was projecting hard.

Season 1 is not a time Martin would be eager to go back to, because it’s when Jon was at his worst against him (and Martin lived in fear of his fake CV being discovered), while for Jon… it was before Prentiss attacking the Institute, before his scars and before losing Sasha. It makes sense that Martin would want to defend what they got, to defend this world over others, given that from his point of view, it might be the only configuration possible that made his relationship with Jon possible – which, once again: might not be necessarily the truth, but makes sense from Martin’s point of view.

* Though, Martin, sweetie, the “normal job” included you getting besieged by Prentiss for two weeks and having to eat canned peaches. It’s never really been a “normal” job.

- Jon lightening up at the mention of Angela and immediately infodumping about how she was doing was so bittersweet to me, since it emphasised (once again) how deep Jon is in the Fears’ society by now. Those are familiar names, familiar figures, doing terrible things, but it still feels like his own universe when he mentions them, when he explains what he knows about them. Once again, it makes me wonder what will be left of him once all those things are just… gone.

- Martin listened to so many tapes, uh?

(MAG142) MARTIN: I listened to your old statement. Wasn’t your partner down there? DAISY: Yeah. Didn’t find him.

(MAG188) MARTIN: Plus, I… I was a little bit jealous as, well. ARCHIVIST: Of what? MARTIN: Of Helen. Well, the, the real Helen. I found the tape when you were on the run and… I don’t know. Something about the way you two seemed to connect when she came in. ARCHIVIST: [HUFF] Before she was eaten by a door. MARTIN: Well, yeah. It certainly seemed to have a pretty deep impact on you.

(MAG199) MARTIN: No–no, no, no, I listened to those tapes. At one point, you explicitly said you’d be fine with me being chopped up by that old jigsaw lady.

He listened to the one involving Angela (MAG014), to Helen’s statement (MAG047), to the events that got Daisy section’d (MAG061) – that last one being even more interesting since it explicitly mentioned that Basira&Daisy were giving Jon the tapes, which means it was from the stash Jon was recording secretly. I’m back to fearing a bit about Martin as a back-up Archivist: he used to read statements and to take a few live ones, Annabelle made him read her statement in MAG197, he’s been listening to tapes… just like Jon.

- Martin has been good at finding loopholes in mutual promises:

(MAG199) ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] That’s very sweet of you, Martin. Sort of. … Thank you. MARTIN: Wherever you go, I go. That’s it. ARCHIVIST: You promised to let me go, if I had to. MARTIN: And you promised not to go if there was any other choice. And there is. So that’s the deal. ARCHIVIST: … That’s the deal.

Martin said that he wouldn’t “doom the world” over Jon: he’s still respecting that in a way by prioritising Jon and this peculiar world (and as the others had pointed out earlier, they weren’t sure whether their actions would doom others or not).

I’m super afraid about that “Wherever you go, I go” which sounds like something that could suddenly come to a stop. Martin had pointed out multiple times that he was “following” Jon (MAG170: “I was following, al–always following, never leading; never leading.”), but recent episodes have operated a bit differently – Jon didn’t follow Martin to his domain, respecting Martin’s wish to confront it alone, and Jon followed him to Hill Top Road. At this point, Jon has been following Martin, too…

- I got a first impression of Martin’s words before understanding that it could actually be referring to multiple things:

(MAG199) MARTIN: I guess that’s why it really bothers me, you know? [SAD CHUCKLING] I try, but I can’t actually imagine… ever making a decision that I knew meant losing you. And it… It hurts to know you can.

At first, I thought Martin was saying that he felt like Jon would be ready to sacrifice Martin or his relationship with him for a greater good, while Martin definitely couldn’t (as he pointed out to Also Martin, his limit would probably be to sacrifice Jon), but… it could also be a reference to Jon’s self-hatred, the fact that Jon would sacrifice himself so easily. In that case, it’s a bit hypocritical of Martin indeed (since he had told Also Martin that he was ready to sacrifice himself too), but I still feel like there might be a difference between the two – Martin would do it to save the world or Jon (or to not live on the pain of his domain’s victims), while Jon… would likely do it out of self-hatred and because he feels like it’s his responsibility to make up for the apocalypse.

- The contrast between Georgie’s scene and this, when Jon finally broke ;_;

(MAG199) ARCHIVIST: I hate all the options, I just… It’s all my fault, you know? GEORGIE: What, because you weren’t able to outsmart the literal embodiment of manipulation and scheming? ARCHIVIST: Mmm. GEORGIE: We all make bad choices, Jon. It’s not your fault some eldritch horror decided yours were going– ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] GEORGIE: –to affect the whole world…! ARCHIVIST: They were still my choices. GEORGIE: … Yeah. And you live with them. Or you don’t. That’s all there is, really. ARCHIVIST: Hmm. […] You didn’t damn the world, Martin. MARTIN: [SIGH] We all– ARCHIVIST: [HARSH] No! “We all” nothing! I… I’m the one who caused all of this, that’s just the truth of it! I’m the one whose whole life has been nothing but one – long – setup – to this. MARTIN: Jon… ARCHIVIST: [WITH SADNESS] You didn’t speak the words! You didn’t feel them move through you, vomiting out of you like…! [SHAKY BREATHING] … I did this. It’s my fault. And I don’t want… I can’t let anyone else feel that, that… helpless, enormous guilt. Ever.

Both Georgie and Martin beginning by “We all”, but Jon’s reaction being so hugely different when he heard it for the second time.

* I wanted Jon to have a breakdown, I got the breakdown, I’m still sad about it ;_;

* Jon had been very susceptible to the rhetoric of being “chosen”: he had wondered about it in season 3 and 4, until Jonah had concluded that if Jon had been “chosen” in any way, it was by him when he decided that Jon’s Web mark made him prime for his plan and that it was mostly just due to Jon’s “own rotten luck”. It might have been easier to swallow for a while, technically, until Annabelle reactivated all those fears about being “chosen” but from even longer – since childhood, since he was eight, since he was just a kid who just survived a Fear encounter. I do feel like there was a lot of bullshit in what Annabelle told him, in the way she framed it; she had also told Martin that a web couldn’t be “precious about a single strand” and I feel like it was more likely that there were multiple potential Jons, or that The Web had already tried to get someone (Gertrude? Her assistants, with Emma pushing them into danger?) marked and prime for the final ritual. But Jon has been very vulnerable to the idea that there could be something wrong inherent to him, that things he had no power over had to be his fault somehow, such as not being able to rescue his bully, or Sasha getting killed by the Not!Them, or the apocalypse (while he had more trouble accepting his own blame for things he was directly responsible for).

* I was wondering recently if Jon might have finally accepted that he wasn’t responsible for the apocalypse, that it was Jonah’s fault (since he hadn’t mentioned it for a long while at this point) but… nop. He didn’t really change his mind about it since the start of the season, just got better at hiding it:

(MAG161) MARTIN: Jon, it’s not your fault… ARCHIVIST: Martin, can we not do this again. MARTIN: Sorry. ARCHIVIST: I’m just… I’m mourning a world I killed…! MARTIN: I know… ARCHIVIST: And we’re all trapped in its rotting corpse…!

* ;_; My heart broke when Jon recalled the experience of reading Jonah’s letter, and how traumatising the mere action was. We could hear him struggle and try to stop speaking in MAG160, and yet the letter was following its course…

* Just like with The Web’s clutch on him yet Jon still defending that he made those “bad choices”, it’s heartbreaking how Jon seems to be stuck on the paradox of being conscious that he couldn’t stop reading the letter, that something awful was done to him, yet still defends that it’s his fault and his responsibility. Jonah was barely mentioned this episode (and not as the man who chose to unleash that apocalypse), but he was still… very present in the multiple ways he fucked Jon over.

* It’s extremely sad that their current plan requires to trample on precisely the thing Jon didn’t and doesn’t want (to inflict what he experienced over someone else)… and yet, as sad it is, it also needs to be seen in the whole situation. Is guilt the worst thing that someone can experience? What about the people currently being tortured in their domains? (Or is there something coming up, such as Jon’s guilt being one aspect of his “domain” all along?)

* But still. Sobbing over the fact that Jon didn’t even blurt out out that he couldn’t allow anyone else to be hurt and fucked over by another Jonah like he was, but that the worst thing, for him, still was this “helpless, enormous guilt”. Not the pain, not the constant anguish, not the people he lost, but the guilt of having been used to end the world.

- There have been a few mentions revolving around Jon’s voice lately:

(MAG197) ARCHIVIST: As far as I can tell. I–it’s hard to s–… If I look too closely at them, my own voice, things get… recursive. Hard to follow. […] ANNABELLE: [CHUCKLING] I am sorry you find them irritating! They’re a side effect of the very specific way this web has been spun. I thought you liked his voice? MARTIN: I do when it’s his voice. I’ve never liked the statements. It always felt… Yeah. ANNABELLE: Well… you can trust me when I say you’ll be hearing his real voice very soon. […] We found the one we believed most likely to bring about their manifestation. We marked him young, guided his path as best we could. And then, we took his voice. ARCHIVIST: No… ANNABELLE: His, and those he walked with. We inscribed them on shining strands of word and meaning, and used them to weave a web which cast itself out through the gate and beyond our universe. So that when the Fears heard that voice, and came in their terrible glory, they might then travel out along it. [TAPE SQUEALS] Or be dragged.

(MAG199) ARCHIVIST: [WITH SADNESS] You didn’t speak the words! You didn’t feel them move through you, vomiting out of you like…! [SHAKY BREATHING] … I did this.

And once again, there was the “For the silence” coin Albrecht discovered in the tomb of what was likely to be an old Archivist. Whatever happens in MAG200, I wonder if Jon won’t lose his voice in the process? Wouldn’t be the worst thing and, anyway, he will lose his voice symbolically with the end of the podcast (even in the case where he wouldn’t be straight up dying) but… I don’t know. The end of the episode had Jon exceptionally withdrawn and silent while the others discussed, so it already felt like he was falling “silent” in a way, and I wonder if he’ll lose his voice in a more literal way during the crisis, especially if the Fears are following “his voice”…

- Martin was so soft… and the Fabric Rustled again.

(MAG158) MARTIN: I see… [INHALE] I see you, Jon. [BREATHLESS CHUCKLE] [PRESENT, ECHO FADES] I see you…! ARCHIVIST: Oh, Martin… [FABRIC RUSTLES] MARTIN: I w–I was on my own…! I was all on my own…

(Season 5 trailer) MARTIN: You know I’m here for you. ARCHIVIST: [LONG SIGH] … Yes. Yes I do. [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] MARTIN: All right. All right. ARCHIVIST: Thank you.

(MAG170) ARCHIVIST: [CLOSER] Oh! Martin, hold on, I–I–I’m coming, I just… [STATIC REACHING A PEAK] [FOOTSTEPS] Oh, Martin! Thank god, I, I was… I–I thought you were behind me. [FABRIC RUSTLES] MARTIN: I thought you’d left me behind…! Gone on without me.

(MAG177) ARCHIVIST: … I’m sorry. [SILENCE] MARTIN: [SIGH] It’s okay. I understand. [BAG JOSTLING] [FABRIC RUSTLES]

(MAG183) MARTIN: … I’m sure I love you. [FOOTSTEPS] ARCHIVIST: I love you too. [FABRIC RUSTLES] Let’s go.

(MAG187) ARCHIVIST: [GROGGY] Oh. Martin, good! [BAG JOSTLING] [FABRIC RUSTLES] MARTIN: Wh–, wh–wh–what happened? Th–th–there was the hotel and then…

(MAG191) MARTIN: No, I, I know, I know. I’m sorry, it’s okay. [SIGH] [FABRIC RUSTLES] ARCHIVIST: … Bad dream? […] Maybe I just… die. Maybe I survive, but I–I lose… something. My identity? My mind? My… memories? I don’t know. [FABRIC RUSTLES AS THEY EMBRACE] MARTIN: [LONG EXHALE]

(MAG197) ARCHIVIST: Martin! [FABRIC RUSTLES] MARTIN: … Oh god, I’m sorry, I– ARCHIVIST: It’s fine.

(MAG199) MARTIN: Hey. ARCHIVIST: [SNIFFS AS IF TEARING UP] MARTIN: Hey, hey, hey, hey, come here, come here. [FABRIC RUSTLES] ARCHIVIST: [SNIFFS] MARTIN: We’re going to fix it. ARCHIVIST: No…! [HUFF] … We’re just going to pass it on…! MARTIN: You don’t know that.

It might have for the last time ever…

- What was that sigh, Martin.

(MAG199) [SILENCE, AS THEY BOTH COMPOSE THEMSELVES] ARCHIVIST: [INHALE] Come on. The others will be waiting. [SHUFFLING] [FOOTSTEPS DESCEND] MARTIN: [HEAVY SIGH] [CLICK.]

Was it “just” the sigh of knowing the current plan is making Jon miserable, or is it the sigh of someone who knows that something could comfort Jon, yet can’t share it with him yet…?

- Logistic of things in the next scene was that Jon&Martin came back to Georgie, who explained to them that Basira&Melanie had gone scouting, and the tape recorder clicked on when Basira&Melanie arrived:

(MAG199) [CLICK–] GEORGIE: I’m not sure, they said they were out– Oh, hey. [DOOR CREAKS, FOOTSTEPS ENTER] ARCHIVIST: There you are. I was getting worried. MELANIE: We were scouting. I was showing Basira where we think the gas mainline is. MARTIN: And? BASIRA: Not good. You know those Eye things? ARCHIVIST: The old Archivists? BASIRA: Yeah. I think they know something’s up. The place is crawling with them, it’s like they’re looking for something. MELANIE: Or patrolling. MARTIN: Hmm. GEORGIE: That’s why the stairs were unguarded? BASIRA: It looks that way.

* I’m still not sure what the point of the lighter is in relation to the tape recorders and The Web. Annabelle implied that the lighter had acted as a tracker or would act as a tracker (MAG197: “A little anchor of our power, so that we, and our tapes, may follow wherever you go.”) but we’ve had various examples showing that it wasn’t exclusively the case: the tape recorders had turned on and off in the Archives and in Elias’s office while Jon was away in season 3, they turned up around Martin and in Elias’s cell in season 4, one popped up to record Melanie&Georgie at the end of MAG191 while they were walking in London. What it might be able to do, however, is allow the tape recorders to reach places that should be insulated from other powers (such as within the Coffin, or when Jon was Nikola’s prisoner, or at Upton House)? I’m not sure. Anyway, Georgie took the lighter, has the lighter, and the next scene included Georgie, so I wonder if something will change in the POV of the action next episode, or if the team wasn’t suspecting that The Web still had another use for Jon.

* Why are the Archivists acting up? Is it because Beholding is getting impatient and wants Jon as its pupil? Is it because Beholding is sensing that something is threatening its position? Is it because Jon knows about the plan and the potentiality of Beholding losing its hold over this world, therefore allowing Beholding to know about it and making it react in self-defence? Are Jon’s own feelings about the plan influencing Beholding? Jon said that he didn’t feel like it could think but, if The Eye was indeed behind Jon’s difficulty to listen to Eric’s tape, that showed that it still has instincts and a capacity to try and protect itself.

- As mentioned above, I’m surprised that the last person standing to ignite the tunnels is supposed to be Melanie:

(MAG199) ARCHIVIST: So what’s the plan? MELANIE: I reckon me and Georgie go for the mainline, and hopefully they won’t notice us. GEORGIE: I’ll need a torch. They might notice that. BASIRA: I’ll give a diversion. I’ll try and draw them off. MELANIE: And if they see Georgie’s torch, we just go to Plan B. She becomes another distraction, and I go solo. GEORGIE: I don’t like the thought of you going on your own. MELANIE: And I don’t like the thought of you being chased by manky old archivists, but there it is. MARTIN: Okay. [EXHALE] So what are you going to do when you find it? GEORGIE: We’ve got some old tools. I guess we just… mess with it until we smell gas, and then… back off, set something burning and leg it. It can’t be that hard to break a valve.

… since Georgie had been the one to take the lighter, and didn’t present it as an element she would require in their plan. It’s possible that she’s going to give it over to Melanie and just retrieved the lighter for that goal but mmm, I’m still having doubts about it.

* I love Melanie’s “manky old Archivists”, I’m going to miss her so much ;_;

* … screaming a bit because GEORGIE, if you smell gas, it’s TOO LATE to ignite something without getting caught in the middle of an explosion…………. It’s gonna go very wrong, isn’t it.

* Sob, Melanie&Georgie had been resolute about doing something in MAG191, and Georgie still wanted to be careful about the old Archivists at the beginning of MAG192… but now, they’re really ready to risk everything, uh…

- Melanie was way more careful (and less confrontational) with Jon now that they had to establish the plan, and I wonder if Georgie asked her to tone it down or if Melanie made a conscious effort since they needed to pool their resources and collaborate? I’m really curious about Jon’s wording here:

(MAG199) MELANIE: … Jon, you’re sure about this whole gas main thing? It just seems… I don’t know, really mundane. ARCHIVIST: It’s what Annabelle said. And she wasn’t lying – at least, she didn’t think she was. BASIRA: Well, it’s a bit late for second-guessing.

Because what Annabelle thinks and the reality of things could be very different things. I’m still having some doubts about Oliver and her explaining how their patrons work and presenting them as Fears-that-can-think – it’s fitting in a way but… we also had examples of older avatars (Simon, Arthur) pointing out that they couldn’t guess what their patrons wanted except for some cravings. Something I could see is about the relation between avatars and their Fears (between humans and fears): the idea that the Fears might be… whatever people project on them, and them modelling themselves in turn. Could The End kill people in this world if Oliver wasn’t convinced that it could do it? Could The Web feel so omnipresent and powerful if Annabelle and Jon weren’t projecting their own fears on it?

- Georgie gave me so many red flags this episode…

(MAG199) GEORGIE: Well, we’ll do what we can but… this is it. Whatever it takes, right? If there’s a price, we pay it. No hesitations.

And that one was especially bad by itself, but it also echoed Gertrude’s last instructions to her potential successor:

(MAG161) GERTRUDE: You are entering a new world, a place I’ve lived for most of my life. A place… [SIGH] A place that will often demand a high price from you. Pay it without hesitation, because one way or another, the world is now on your shoulders.

Basically paraphrasing what Gertrude said? Bad sign. Baaad sign.

- There might have been a small misunderstanding between Melanie and Jon there ;;

(MAG199) MELANIE: Sure he can! Just magic-laser-eye zap him or whatever, same as with all the others. MARTIN: [SIGH] MELANIE: Like he did to Helen. ARCHIVIST: Listen, Melanie, I– MELANIE: It’s fine. If we all get out of this, we can talk it through, and, if not, well, it doesn’t really matter, does it? ARCHIVIST: I suppose not.

Since Jon had been unaware that Martin had broken the news to her already, and that Melanie already knew that Helen was bad news… but had learned from Basira that Melanie used to be close to her:

(MAG190) MELANIE: Oh! Oh, I nearly forgot! Careful of Helen, if you see her. MARTIN: Mm? MELANIE: Uh, she turned up a while back and tried to eat Celia. MARTIN: She was here? MELANIE: Yes… A few times. [INHALE] Looking back, I was so stupid! MARTIN: Because you kind of liked her? MELANIE: Yes. Yes… Honestly, I had started to think she was on our side. MARTIN: Yeah. MELANIE: [SIGH] MARTIN: Jon killed her. MELANIE: [SPLUTTERING] Uh, sorry, what?! MARTIN: Yeah, she tried to– I wasn’t there, but they got into a standoff and he… he destroyed her. MELANIE: He can do that? MARTIN: Mm! MELANIE: Well! I mean that’s… that’s interesting to know.

(MAG195) ARCHIVIST: … I also killed Helen? BASIRA: Oh! Right. ARCHIVIST: Yeah… [CONSIDERED ROWING] BASIRA: Didn’t expect that. ARCHIVIST: She was dangerous. And not like the others out there. It was only going to be a matter of time before– BASIRA: No, no, I get it. Honestly, it’s kind of a relief. How did Melanie take it? ARCHIVIST: Melanie? BASIRA: Yeah, she and… she and Helen were pretty tight back when, uh… Oh… ARCHIVIST: What? BASIRA: Back when you were in your coma. ARCHIVIST: I see…! Well, I haven’t told her yet, so… I suppose I have that to look forward to when we get back.

So: from Melanie’s point of view, she used to be close to Helen but learned independently that Helen wasn’t her friend and was actually dangerous for them. From Jon’s point of view, Melanie used to be close with Helen and might have just learned that he had killed her (and might be sad about it). But Melanie was dry about it and it came as an accusation, which immediately made Jon defensive about it. They can’t really manage to interact without making a conscious effort to not rub the other the wrong way, uh…?

Cries, still, because they’ll never talk it through, uh. ;;

- I am REALLY concerned about Martin being adamant that Jon couldn’t be the one to kill Jonah because of the potential consequences…

(MAG199) MELANIE: And it’s hardly going to be a picnic for you either. You’re going up that tower to kill Elias, and if we muck up the timing, you’ll be up there when it blows. MARTIN: … Jon can’t do it. ARCHIVIST: What? […] MARTIN: You’re not listening. I mean, if he kills Jonah, then knowing our luck he’s just gonna end up taking his place in the Panopticon, isn’t he? GEORGIE: [SIGH] Good point. MARTIN: He can come up with me, but when it actually comes to Jonah… BASIRA: You’ll have to be the one to do it. MARTIN: Yeah. ARCHIVIST: Martin… I don’t– BASIRA: Have you got this? We can trade if you don’t think you can do it. MARTIN: No. No, I can do it.

… because it’s not what Jon had said:

(MAG193) MARTIN: So not that then, but… wh–what about something, like… physical? ARCHIVIST: I… What? MARTIN: Look, I know it’s all about… dream logic and metaphor and all that… stuff, but, you know, what if we just… what if we just grabbed him and, you know, pulled him down? Or, or just threw something heavy at him? ARCHIVIST: Uh… […] You were right. MARTIN: About what? ARCHIVIST: His body is vulnerable. A–at least to me. MARTIN: … What’s the catch? ARCHIVIST: I could kill his body, sever the link, break The Eye’s power, and… Jonah Magnus would die. MARTIN: Okay, that sounds good but…? ARCHIVIST: But… that wouldn’t actually harm The Eye itself. And with him gone it would… it would choose a suitable replacement. MARTIN: Oh. ARCHIVIST: If we kill Jonah Magnus… I take his place. MARTIN: Oh, god… ARCHIVIST: And I think… that’s exactly what it wants…!

Jon said that killing Jonah would lead to Beholding taking a replacement, not necessarily the person who’d kill Jonah… and regarding “suitable replacement”, Martin was emphasised as Eye-aligned this season (and Lonely):

(MAG183) ARCHIVIST: Well, you’re a watcher, Martin. You worked for the Institute, you read statements, The Eye is… fond of you. You’re not getting thrown into your own personal hell, which means… MARTIN: [QUIETLY] That one of them belongs to me. But that’s… Ho–how can I be a “Watcher”? I, I didn’t even know it existed! ARCHIVIST: But you’ve suspected for a while now, haven’t you? MARTIN: Maybe? But that’s not “watching”! ARCHIVIST: Do you want me to tell you about it? MARTIN: No. … Yes. N–no, no, I don’t know, I don’t know. [SIGH] [STATIC RISES] ARCHIVIST: It’s a small domain. A swirling mix of The Eye and The Lonely.

And was supposed to take Jonah’s place at the end of season 4 precisely thanks to his connection to Beholding:

(MAG158) PETER: I want to use the powers of this place to learn about The Extinction: what it’s doing, where it’s manifesting. Then we can stop it. MARTIN: And you need me for this? PETER: Correct! Without a connection to The Eye, any attempt to use it would likely end… very messily indeed! But thankfully, it just so happens that you hold such a connection. MARTIN: So that’s it… Both “lonely” and “watching”. PETER: You must admit you’re the perfect candidate. […] You’ll have to dispose of the current occupant. MARTIN: Curren–… [QUICK FOOTSTEPS] [SHARP BREATHING] … Who is that? PETER: Jonah Magnus! His… body, at least. Sitting here; watching; binding it all together; growing ever older. If you want to take his place, well… MARTIN: … I’ll need to kill him. PETER: Yes. Don’t worry, though. I brought a knife. […] Martin. What are you doing? MARTIN: I’m… saying no. I refuse! Game over. [KNIFE CLATTERING ON THE GROUND]

Jon hadn’t mentioned whether Martin would be able to hurt Elias (just that he could), but we’ve seen that dream-logic could be a factor to hurt each other: Basira could kill Daisy, Daisy could hurt Jon through their connection. Given that Martin was once expected to kill Jonah (did Jonah fear that Martin would choose this?), and that Martin has felt guilty all season about the fact that he feels like he could have stopped things if he had just knifed Jonah:

(MAG174) MARTIN: All those lies you told me… You helped to do this, you turned the world into your… your playground! SIMON: Hum… Not to be a pedant, but if you recall, I was actually doing a favour for Peter. And if Peter had won, none of this would have happened.

(MAG186) MARTIN: [HEAVY SIGH] If we’re glad, why do I feel so… ALSO MARTIN: Guilty? Because you feel guilty about everything. MARTIN: That’s… That’s not– ALSO MARTIN: […] The end of the entire world? MARTIN: If I’d done what Peter had asked… If, if I’d not chickened out, and just killed Elias when I had the chance…! ALSO MARTIN: Really? Really, that’s how you’re choosing to remember it? “Chickening out”? MARTIN: I remember it was the wrong choice…! ALSO MARTIN: You choose to remember it that way, and so the guilt– MARTIN: [SIGH] I–I get it, all right? But I need it, I, I choose the guilt, because… ALSO MARTIN: [LEADING] “Because”? MARTIN: Because it motivates me to do better!

I could see Martin managing to hurt him thanks to this. But regarding what could come afterwards:

I’m concerned about the fact Jon tried to object during the discussion and that nobody listened to him… as if Jon was already anticipating something to go very badly because he knows something the others don’t. Overall: what if Martin can’t kill Jonah? What if Martin kills Jonah and Beholding takes Jon anyway? What if Martin kills Jonah and Beholding picks Martin as a replacement?

(Mental picture of Jon screaming “Take me, not him!”, since we’ve been in the season 1 nostalgia this episode… ;_;)

- Aouch for Melanie falling back into old habits…

(MAG199) MELANIE: Make sure it hurts. MARTIN: Oh, I will. MELANIE: … Good enough for me.

(MAG117) MELANIE: I have my own stuff to take care of, they think they’re giving me a chance to “face my demons”, by helping to take down Elias. They don’t get that the only way to deal with something like him is to watch his eyes go dead with your hands around his throat. [SHAKY INHALE] I’ll… play it their way, for now. But when it comes down to it… I want – to see him – dead. […] [INHALE] So… yes. That’s it. That’s all you’re getting, because it hurt like hell to live through, and I didn’t do it so you could stroke your chin and call it fascinating. … Good luck, Jon. I do hope you win. [INHALE] But I also hope it hurts…!

- So, resting time:

(MAG199) GEORGIE: Okay. Sounds like we’ve got… something like a plan. MARTIN: [SOUND OF ASSENT] BASIRA: Makes a nice change. [VARIOUS SOUNDS OF ASSENT] MELANIE: [BRIGHTLY] It does, doesn’t it? Eh! Uh… so. When do we actually do it? GEORGIE: First thing tomorrow. That’ll give us time to prep and rest.

Georgie had already explained how they evaluated “tomorrow” in the tunnels and without any clock:

(MAG190) GEORGIE: Look. We’re all tired, and you still seem a little… disoriented by the tunnels. Let’s get some rest. We can talk about next moves tomorrow. ARCHIVIST: And how do you know when tomorrow is? GEORGIE: We generally err on the side of caution and sleep in…! ARCHIVIST: Sounds good.

So they’ll probably do the same ;;

- Basira thanking Jon for helping her with Daisy (and for helping her personally) made my heart break a bit and really made it sink in that it was likely the last time some (most? all?) of them would talk to each other, or that they won’t be in any state to discuss things like this afterwards. It was also fitting that Jon got his private moments with Georgie, with Martin, with Basira… but not with Melanie. That bridge burned, uh.

- Overall, although with interesting points and heart-wrenching and bittersweet and tender and intimate moments, it was… quite a depressing episode in the whole scale of things?

* The episode gave the impression that it was validating everything about The Web: that Jon had indeed been “Chosen” as the bringer of the apocalypse and had been a right pick for it; that Annabelle had been right when she told Martin that she just needed to tell them the truth for them to do what she wanted; that The Web scheming for centuries to open the crack and prepare its escape, and bringing the apocalypse about just to escape and infest other dimensions… worked. That everyone, regardless of their motivations and feelings, has indeed come to the conclusion that arranged The Web and served its plans, that The Web… is very casually winning just as planned.

* The episode didn’t talk about what would come after, for the characters. Jon briefly explained to Martin what was likely to happen to him, Annabelle confirmed it, but… the episode gave the impression that characters weren’t truly expecting to come out of this alive in the first place.

* Jon’s silences in the last sequences were so sad? He barely managed to sneak in a few words. He couldn’t contribute to the plan. Martin presented him as optional while others are taking care of the action. Yes, it used to be all on Jon but the fact that he couldn’t even contribute and that others ignored him when he tried to object about Martin being the one to kill Jonah was just so heartbreaking, as if he was already silenced and once again not in control of things that would happen…?

- I want to err on the side of caution but, despite it, I can’t help but wonder if some of the Team Archive interactions weren’t… staged a bit for the tape recorders. It’s very suspicious that they apparently got updated on the Hill Top Road situation, but that nobody commented about the tape recorders turning on (although they now know that it means The Web is spying on them and/or that their tapes will be heard by other people in other worlds and associated with the Fears). Melanie and Georgie had taken notice of them when Jon&Martin had arrived in the tunnels for the first time, Melanie was good at hearing the tape recorder turning on… but nothing this time around. Is it possible that they’re planning something else, too, and that it required The Web and The Eye (the tapes and Jon) to not know about it, a bit like how the assistants had put on a show in front of Elias in season 3?

(MAG116) ELIAS: Now! If you’ll excuse me. [DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES] BASIRA: Do you think he bought it? MARTIN: We’ll talk about it later. ARCHIVIST: I doubt we’ll get time, we need to go. MARTIN: It’s fine. We’ve got this, okay. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … Okay.

Is it why Georgie took the lighter?

I don’t want to bank on it but the fact that nobody has commented about the tape recorders since Annabelle revealed what they were and their purpose has been any nagging at me, so, mmmm…

If MAG200 actually shows the action as it happens, I’m wondering about a few things:

* How are they planning to time up the explosion and the Jonah murder? Jon couldn’t know about the tunnels when he was outside of them, and according to what we’ve heard in MAG192, climbing the tower was a very long process. It’s possible that Jon actually has some awareness of the tunnels as long as he’s in the tower (since both are connected), or that they’ll go for the murder once they hear the explosion coming to them, but how would Georgie&Melanie coordinate to not do anything before Jon&Martin are the top? (When I’m wondering about it, I can think of a few options: Jon&Martin dropping something once they’re at the top, to convey they’ve arrived, or maybe relying on whether a tape recorder clicks on, as a signal that Nothing Interesting Is Happening Up There And It’s Your Turn To Do Something, etc.)

* Will we hear Rosie again? Jon&Martin might have to pass in front of her again to reach Elias. Will they evacuate her, will she stay with them?

* … Surprisingly and yet fittingly: we might hear Jonah/Elias in the last episode. (And funnily enough: it would be the 4th episode where he would talk this season, which means this wouldn’t even be the season with the least amount of Elias appearances! He was in 3 episodes in season 1 (MAG017, MAG039, MAG040) and in 4 episodes in season 2 (MAG048, MAG060, MAG067, MAG080). Season 3 was an outlier that really got us used to hearing him a lot.)

* I’m still squinting about the fact that Annabelle told them to “destroy the Archives” and that they translated it into “destroy the Panopticon” while both Jonah and Oliver designated Jon as the “Archive(s)”…

* If they succeed, and if it all goes accordingly, I am really wondering about the state of the world post-Fears – and it might not be something we’ll get to witness. But mostly, I’m curious/concerned about the complicated cases: if people do remember what happened to them and who were the rulers, wouldn’t it be likely that things turn into chaos as people get back at the people who hurt them? What about the cases Basira mentioned of rulers who hated being in that position? What about, for example, Callum? (Who is currently doing horrible things and… is also a traumatised kid.)

* I wonder if the episode will have an actual date as the case number, and if it would correspond to another world’s timeline or this one. “0181810–B”, as things pick up from the point Jon had read Jonah’s letter (MAG160’s was “0181810”)? “0212503” to play with the release date, since it’s the same release date for everyone for once (no early access for Patreon)? “0111507” to play with the date of Jacob’s statement, heard in the very first trailer? Something beginning with “015” as, in another world, someone (Jon or Sasha or someone else) becomes a new Head Archivist after Gertrude’s death?

* If The Web succeeds and leaves with the tapes, will they be like the Fear Books used to be perceived in this world? Will Jon’s voice be perceived as a bringer of disaster and tragedies? What will happen to Jon’s voice is an interesting question given that this episode ended with… Jon being withdrawn, barely being part of the conversation, trying to object and not being heard, as if his voice was already partially silenced by the others.

* Technically, since the tapes are supposed to leave with The Web, the series might cut off with the tapes leaving, but… other configurations are possible. We could finally hear something without the mediation of the tapes. We could get a new point of view from another world, inheriting the fears. We could be deprived of the action, since the plan was laid out, and have someone (Martin?) recalling what happened, much later, etc.

In previous seasons, the 40th episode was more about the aftermath of the action and posing elements that would be fundamental during the next one: MAG040 explained how Prentiss had died, what had happened to Jon&Tim, but also confirmed (to the audience) that something had replaced Sasha without the others noticing, and revealed that Gertrude’s obviously-murdered-body had been found in the tunnels, leading to Jon’s secret investigations in season 2; MAG080 showed Leitner explaining to Jon who was likely to be Gertrude’s murderer, what the Institute was about, that Jon was now a servant of Beholding and that a Fear ritual was incoming, leading to Jon’s quest to stop the Unknowing; MAG120 confirmed who had come out of the Unknowing alive, revealed what Jon’s dreams were about, had Peter replacing Elias as Head of the Institute and confirmed Peter’s interest in Martin; MAG160 had Jon&Martin running away, Jon receiving Jonah’s letter hidden amongst the statements (and a few tapes likely sent by The Web) and being forced to read his incantation, provoking the current apocalypse.

MAG200’s title has been made public on twitter, so – “Last Words” it is. It sure feels like the series is ending ;; It’s fitting for both the characters and the podcast itself, and I’m screaming that it had appeared in the first episode of this season:

(MAG161) ARCHIVIST: Hang on, have you been recording this? [RUSTLING OF CLOTHES] TIM: Oh, yeah! I… just thought it might be nice, you know, something to look back on when we’re all old and sick of each other…! […] Now, all right, all right; fine! Look: I’m turning it off. Any last words for your future selves?

… in the specific context of leaving a message for the future.

#yaayyyy i posted it more than 17h before the ep release! (shhhh that it would be Late if we had gotten an EA release)#i have absolutely no idea how i'll manage to get 200's done given how i had finished the last episodes pre-hiatus #at the end of every hiatus every time. i'll try but. deadlines are my worst enemies and my best friends.#mag199 #tma liveblog #tma season 5 #long post/#the magnus archives #overall: CRIES CRIES CRIES i'm gonna miss these nerds.............#and WorriedTM.........

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