The Magicians - 'The World in the Walls'

"You're a nutter, Harry."

Ah, it's the "Oh, the whole fantastical turn your life took was just a psychotic break and you're in an asylum" episode.

Quentin wakes in an asylum and is told that there is no Brakebills, no magic; that he had a psychotic break, started calling his dad the Beast and then tried to kill him. All the people he thinks he knows from Brakebills are there, but altered: Eliot and Alice are both delusional fellow patients, the Dean is a doctor and Penny is a stereotypical Indian orderly. Julia comes to visit him, but acts suspiciously and denies any knowledge of magic. When he manages to pull off a small magical effect, she insists that she can't see it, but lets slip that she knows it was fireworks.

It turns out that Julia and the 'level 50' Hedge Witch Marina have cast a spell to trap Quentin in a nightmare. He is able to summon aid by filling his mind with Taylor Swift (in the form of a music therapy session that belongs in a particularly dark episode of Glee) to antagonise the real Penny into coming into his mind to slap him around. This turns out to be just as Marina planned, however, as the only way to undo the spell is for the Dean to summon a being from outside the grounds, thus requiring all the wards to be lowered. This means that Marina and Julia are able to sneak in and steal back the memories taken from Marina when she was expelled just before graduation.

Julia goes to the physical cabin to make sure that Quentin comes through, which also requires him to take on a character from Fillory and learn that sometimes the only winning move is not to play. Quentin gets a ticking off from the Dean for not telling him that Julia had retained her memories, while Marina decides that Julia doesn't have 'the stuff', and on regaining her memories cuts her off from magic.

'The World in the Walls' continues to develop the depth of The Magicians, in particular the characters of Julia, Quentin and Penny this week. Penny and Quentin get to be active agents really for the first time, we see the darker side of the Hedge Witches, and we get a musical number. The series has definitely landed.