"'Til The World Falls Down"

(Image from Wakelet)

Right. Now we’re talking. Now, things are kicking off.

(Spoilers for all five seasons of The Magnus Archives below.)

I said in my essay on “The Eye Opens” that, while there’s a lot to be said about how well-constructed that episode is, I wasn’t clear on how it’s taken a slot in the show’s top 2%. No such confusion exists for “Panopticon”. It has its share of revelations of its own (which I assume is what’s powering the success of “The Eye Opens, along with its ending). But it’s also better paced, more technically impressive, and makes better use of the show’s characters. It’s also making some extremely good and important points about what makes us human, and what makes us fight.

On top of all of that, “Panopticon” both celebrates how far the show has come in four years, and demonstrates that progress to full effect. While it’s true every season of The Magnus Archives wraps up with either a direct attack on the institute, or at least a direct threat to it, the complexity of “Panopticon” is such that we should treat this as something essentially new.

We can talk about this complexity in terms of the Fears; every previous finale dealt with the Eye’s interaction with one other power, whereas here there are three – the Lonely, the Stranger, and the Hunt, each of which with at least one guest star attached. We can talk about this in terms of talent; as far as I can determine, this is the first episode of the show with a cast list which enters double figures [1]. We can talk about it in terms of structure; the need to jump between multiple locations (including the past) and juggle so many characters while building tension between every revelation and every gunshot must have been one of the creative team’s biggest challenges for the entire show. The show could never offer us a true panopticon of its own, but this is the most of this fictional universe we ever “see” at the same time.

We can even talk about how the show has shifted the scales of its crises. Note how Not!Sasha, who represented first an ongoing lingering threat and then an imminent and extreme danger to our protagonist in Season Two, now functions as merely a distraction. Like Jared Hopworth’s assault against the Institute – something on scale that makes the infiltrations of the Corruption and the Stranger seem like momentary annoyances, but which the show doesn’t even feel the need to play out for us – Not!Sasha just isn’t a major part of what’s going on anymore. In that, both the Great Replacement Beastie and Hopworth’s malevolent meatpiles remind me of the trope in video games where a major boss from earlier in the game reappears later as a minor speedbump. Whatever is going on between Lukas and Martin, and Lukas and “Elias”, is the true threat now.

The true threat to come, naturally, is Jonah Magnus himself. Which is something else learned (or at least confirmed) here. It’s a nice bit of footwork, reminding us of how far the show has come in terms of what constitutes a threat, while upping the stakes going forward at the same time.

This feeling of moving upward from previous focusses is underlined by us finally learning the full specifics of Gertrude Robinson’s death. It's nice to see Gertrude was as defiantly bad-ass about her own death as she was about everything else. I also think I was wrong when I complained that it was something of a coincidence that Jonah Magnus got confirmation of what to do with a new archivist at the same time that Gertrude's actions resulted in a new archivist being needed. On reflection, Magnus was going to kill her that night anyway, and there wasn't any earlier an opportunity for Gertrude to strike. In fact, what I should have realised at the time, and love now, is that Gertrude seals her own death warrant because she desn't realise how much faith "Elias'" has in her. She expects him to be scrabbling in panic over her apparent failure to work at stopping the Darkness' ritual, when instead he takes that inaction as confirmation he doesn't need to worry about it, and can focus on her instead [2]. After decades of successfully causing everyone to think she was less than she was, she underestimates how much Elias underestimates her, and it gets her killed.

As fun as all this is, though, we've moved on. The specifics of why "Elias" killed Gertrude are tied up because the nature of his plan for Jon is finally moving centre-stage. “Why was this person killed” just can’t hold a candle to “Why does an immortal body-hopping avatar of fear want his chief minion to repeatedly risk his life” as the most pressing question under consideration.

It’s also a nice touch that, even before we get the answer to that question, the Web is both helping Magnus reach his endgame, and planning the seeds which they hope will bring about his eventual defeat. In this way, the tape they leave Jon [3] isn't just reinforcing the broader idea of the show levelling up, it's using Gertrude's trajectory as archivist to lock in a similar one for Jon. For an episode with as many twists in it as this one, there’s also a remarkable amount of parallels.

While a strong structure is all very well, there's only so far that can take you if the characters aren't there. The pairings of Daisy and Basira and of Jonah and Elias both get a few moments to shine among the swirl of action, but what I really want to talk about is Jon and Martin. The Martivist. The Simswood Brotherhood. Our Gays Under the Gaze. 

We'll start with the incontrovertible. Martin is wonderful here, saving his friends by being completely true to his own character, while helping make a broader point as well. We’ve known since “The Masquerade” at the latest that Martin is both smarter and braver than anyone – himself included – is willing to credit, but even so, committing to a months’ long bluffing game against The Lonely which he fully expects will get himself killed shows just how far he undervalues his own character.

This failure to recognise his own worth makes him vulnerable to the Lonely, but it also makes him utterly unlike Peter Lukas. Lukas serves the Lonely out of ego, a conviction that he alone is enough. “No man can be an island? Bitch, I only need a boat.”. It’s a case of egomania so strong he truly believes he can single-handedly doom the entire world (and there’s a message in how easily Gertrude torpedoes his ritual). It makes sense he’d be frenemies with Jonah Magnus, then, but it leaves him completely unable to comprehend Martin’s brand of loneliness.

Martin doesn’t seek isolation because he sees no-one else worth being worth his time. He seeks it because there are only so many times you can be rejected before you think placing yourself beyond rejection’s reach will be the closest to acceptance you can get. Lukas identifies with The Lonely because it allows him to centre himself. Martin identifies with The Lonely because he’s spent so long being pushed to the margins, avoiding the centre has become an end in itself. Lukas loves the isolation he’s chosen. Martin has been a hostage to isolation so long he’s grown to love it. We might call this Nuuk Syndrome – like Stockholm Syndrome, but far further away from anyone else.

(This, by the way, is why it’s possible for Lukas to have some limited affection for Martin – in the way, say, you can be fond of a dog you’ve volunteered to look after for a day while its owners are briefly away – while Martin can loathe Lukas, even though on paper they both should be similarly uneasy in each other’s company.) 

As a result of this, Lukas is completely correct about Martin being likely to be predisposed to self-sacrifice, and entirely wrong about the circumstances required to persuade Martin to go through with it. Martin would gladly (probably too gladly) throw his life away for something important to him personally. But the idea of the sacrifice being objectively important? That would make Martin important as well, and that’s just not an idea Martin will entertain. Simply put, Martin feels the tug of The Lonely precisely because he considers himself essentially worthless. Telling him that serving The Lonely would make him important was never going to fly. Agreeing to the former precludes believing the latter, and in trying to make Martin do both, Lukas forces him into thinking through what must actually be going on instead.

And while it’s sad that after all this time Martin still can’t escape his barrel-bottom-low opinion of himself, he’s clearly right more broadly. It won’t be a single person who saves the world. There are no Chosen Ones. There are no Great Men. There are just ordinary people who choose to do more than they believed capable of, when circumstances demand it. And while that has meaning in and of itself, obviously – ultimately, what could possibly matter more about what we do with our short lives than what we chose to fight for – no hero carries the day alone. Martin has taken a deeply unhealthy path to reaching an entirely healthy conclusion. We do what we can, and we try to help others to do what they can. And that’s how we save the world.

Except then Jon steps into frame.

Look. I feel for the Archivist, I really do. By this episode, dude has very much been having A Time. The gradual eroding of both his humanity and his (already desperately shaky) support network must have been taking a hell of a toll, even before considering the toll thirteen separate hells have taken from him as well. The problem is, he’s decided all the shit he’s been subjected to has to mean something, beyond the machinations of deluded terror-cults.

Ever since “Elias” told him point-blank he chose this route for himself, he’s been desperate to prove that the choice has meaning. If he can stop The Unknowing, there was meaning. If he can save Martin, there was meaning. There has to be something that makes sense of the fact he woke up one day and realised he’d become a monster. Some fate the universe has in store for him, beyond becoming one more cyclopean spectre haunting one more rotting library. Why else would he have lost his humanity? Why else would he have more or less literally returned from the dead?

As much as we might understand what has led Jon to this conclusion, though, his fixation is ultimately just one more example of someone concluding that the suffering we all experience – to whatever degree, in whatever form – was qualitatively different to everybody else’s, and therefore must have some meaning absent from the tribulations of everybody else. It’s just Great Man Theory again. Like Martin, Jon is being encouraged to believe that all the crap he’s had to drag himself through during his life in general, and since arriving at the Institute in particular, must have prepared him for something truly extraordinary.

Unlike Martin, he chooses to believe it, and in so doing, damns the world.

There are complications here, admittedly. Unsurprisingly, Peter Lukas proves rather less effective a manipulator of people than Jonah Magnus clearly is, which is likely part of why Jon falls into the trap set for him, while Martin sidesteps his own. Consider Magnus insisting on telling Jon it will be almost impossible for him to return from The Lonely’s domain. On the face of it, this seems unwise – Magnus absolutely needs Jon to take the plunge, so why is he banging on about the water being shark-infested? The answer seems obvious when it comes. It’s because diving into unknown waters is more impressive if you know there’s sharks down there. Your sacrifice is greater, the fact of your success (because Jon is sure he’ll succeed, because why would he have come all this way just to be trapped by The Lonely) all the more impressive.

Still, cheered on or not, it's hard to not to see it as arrogance – and mistaking his success in rescuing Daisy for fate rather than fortune [4] - that leads Jon to believe following Lukas to save Martin is something he is meant to do. The result of believing that is the collapse of reality as we know it. Because entropy is an absolute dickhead, and while you can’t save the world single-handed, you can damn well damn it alone.

Except... It's not just arrogance, is it? Jon's love for Martin is shot through every level of this too. Admittedly, even those aren’t fully separable – note how Jon never stops to consider the possibility Martin might have his own opinion on whether leaping into The Lonely's domain after him is good or desirable, or what damage Jon unilaterally declaring himself Martin's saviour might do to whatever he had planned. This is a common enough move in fiction, though – Person X tells Person Y “don’t try to come after me”, only for Person Y to totally ignore their wishes because heroism means you give you all to save the person you love, and damn the consequences. A form of arrogance, then, but one with essentially the full force of storytelling convention behind it.

That's no excuse, of course. What “Panopticon” and the following two episodes do is craft a scenario in which that choice leads to absolute catastrophe. In doing so, it raises a question fiction rarely plays with, or even wants to glance at: what if love doesn't conquer everything, and in assuming otherwise, the damage you were risking actually comes to pass?

This is an important question to explore, despite it likely being impossible to ever answer. Certainly, when I posed my hypothetical above about what could be more important to who we are than what we fight for, the only possible response I could imagine having any weight was “what we love”. When those two things clash? Glad I’ve never had to make that kind of decision.

The mere posing of the question fits into one of the broader themes of the show, though. This is, simply put, that our emotional connections and interactions are vitally important despite – or even because of – them almost certainly not being enough in themselves to push back the darkness. What we love matters, and what that love makes us strive for matters too. We still own our foolishness, and we still own our failures, but we don't have to believe love will help us win to know that without it, we are lost.

This is how you write about the power of love. Not as some pure cosmic force that evil cannot touch. Not as some ethereal power irreducible to cold equations that will somehow make a computer explode. A roiling ocean of beautiful, irrepressible stupidity that feeds, erodes, sinks, and keeps afloat, sometimes, impossibly, all at the same time. Even with the Lonely, the fear for which it would be most tempting to suggest love as an antithesis, love isn’t the weapon. It’s the reason to fight. And that’s all it needs to be. Love doesn’t conquer all. It makes us all that little bit harder to conquer.

“Panopticon” isn’t just a particularly impressive technical accomplishment, and a smart and involving deployment of the show’s characters, then. It’s a rumination on the nature of glory, sacrifice and love, and one which doesn’t just avoid cliché, but works to demolish them. The closest I can come to a criticism here is that it’s one of the least horrifying episodes the show has ever done. That’s entirely deliberate, though; this is The Magnus Archives in action mode, a cathartic release of a season’s worth of build-up before we get back to the slowly unfurling nightmares in worlds adjacent to our own. The storm before the calm.

I wouldn’t put “Panopticon” in my own top four episodes of the show. I’m not even sure if it’s my favourite among the semi-finalists (“Do Not Open” might just pip it, but it’s a tough comparison to sensibly make). Out of the four left to us, though, this is the episode I can most understand having made it to the semi-finals, and the one I expect to take what I so, so obviously have called The Listener’s Crown.

[1] “I Guess You Had To Be There” is the first episode to feature nine characters who aren’t The Archivist, which makes it additionally amusing that it’s the only episode in the show’s run to not feature Jon at all.

[2] It did bother me a little that the suggested back-up plan Gertrude had set up was never explored further. If indeed she did have some idea of how to to reverse a successful ritual, that seems like a pretty important thread for the show to follow. Instead, the idea is shot down in "A Cosy Cabin", and the incongruity between two almost sequential episodes is never addressed.

[3] Was it ever confirmed that it was Annabelle Cane who left the tape for Jon to find? Whatever. It was clearly her. We learn here that Magnus can call Jon from within the tunnels, and even if he can’t do that at longer range, he had Martin’s descent with Peter to use as bait. He didn’t need to reveal his true self to do that, and the lesson Jon learns about how to blow up the Institute obviously serve the Web more than they do the Beholding. This further links to the similar trajectories of Jon and Gertrude as the Web sees it, it's just that Gertrude gets her revenge after leaving this world, whereas Jon will get his revenge after damning it.

[4] It's worth noting here that Jon doesn't consider for a moment that being the first person ever to save someone from the "cramped casket" might in itself be the reason for what's happened to him. That isn't impressive enough. Note also how quickly he forecloses the possibility of further rescue missions, despite the horrifying eternal torture those remaining in the box are suffering. Gods forbid people Jon hasn't actually met are saved from an endless nightmare. How could that feel worthwhile?