Loveday Writing

The start of the episode takes us back to the final moments of the previous one, where Inara drank from the Unity Bowl and the sisters lost their powers. The final moments of last week’s episode ended with the sisters walking towards Inara and being bathed in a white light from Inara smashing the Unity Bowl. This moment is replayed again as Harry is watching this moment play out on a VHS tape in Infinite Home Video.

We see Harry watching this moment played out on multiple VHS tapes, with the pile of discarded tapes and candy boxes behind him getting bigger, showing he’s been doing this for a while. He eventually comes across one tape of Jordan playing and singing What a Wonderful World at Dev’s memorial service ending in static, something he hasn’t seen before with the other tapes. Harry tells Diana that the tape ending static means that there is hope for the world.

We then see Maggie, Mel and Kaela starting their day, seemingly happy, wearing colourful clothing and going to SafeSpace where magic is out in the open. Interestingly, Jordan and Maggie don’t seem to know each other, and it’s revealed that Inara has created and is ruling a magical utopia from SafeSpace with Jordan as her assistant, Mel working as the janitor, Kaela working as the mail clerk, and Maggie travelling the world as a “magical DoorDasher”.

As Inara is starting her day and greeting everyone, she seems to have a vision of the teapot that Dev gave Kaela. Jordan asks her about it, making it clear she’s had these visions before, but Inara dismisses it. When we see Kaela go back to the Manor, she finds Dev’s teapot on the stove, boiling which leads to Dev’s singing voice playing out. This brings back her memories of Dev and battling Inara, and she breaks down over the fact that they lost. Harry then appears, telling her that they haven’t lost, not yet.

Harry tells her that he put the teapot to boil on the stove to bring back her memories as grief is the only thing strong enough to free the memories that Inara’s spell locked away, due to the fact that negative or painful thoughts light up more parts of the brain than happy ones. When Kaela asks how long the world has been like this, he tells her it’s been almost a year. She then asks him why he took so long to fix the world, he tells her that he had to know the world could be fixed before “waking her, Mel and Maggie up”. He tells her he has been in a realm where Inara’s spell couldn’t affect him but every second he’s there in the utopia, Inara can sense him, so he’s putting himself at risk. He can’t help her so waking up Mel and Maggie is up to her.

Kaela gives Mel and Maggie the photo of them with Macy to look at, to remember their grief over losing her. When they question why they’re working entry level jobs at SafeSpace, they realise that Inara is using the jobs to keep tabs on them. They also realise that they only have GemCasts instead of phones and their powers don’t work in the utopian world. Maggie then asks them if they’ve seen any humans around as she’s travelled around the world and she can’t recall seeing any. Mel and Maggie go to Ray’s house to check if he’s there, and Kaela uses the portal marble to look for Brynn and her adopted parents. She comes to Ray’s house to tell them that she could only find her mother’s rings, which she never takes off. They notice that Ray’s wallet and keys are still on his dining table. When Maggie feels overwhelmed and goes outside for air, she finds his favourite mug broken on the ground, as he likes to drink his coffee in the backyard. When Maggie finds his glasses on a tree branch, they realise that Inara has turned the humans into flowers and trees, which is why there are so many of them around.

Mel, Maggie and Kaela form a plan to get their powers back to stop Inara by drinking the black amber from the Sacred Tree. As Inara has put a blood hex on the switchboard room door, they need to get a drop of her blood for the skeleton key spell to gain access to the Command Centre. Maggie suggests that they get Jordan to get the blood, but they need to wake him up too. Maggie manages to do so offscreen, and he gets her blood, but she grows suspicious, mentioning his boxing days, which makes her realises he’s regained his memories, as he shouldn’t be able to remember his boxing days at all. She takes him to the Command Centre and tortures him, meanwhile Mel and Kaela manage to make a potion by using regular pots and pans, and scraping together ingredients, as Inara has stripped the Manor of their magical supplies.

The skeleton key spell doesn’t work the first time, which leads to Mel and Maggie having a fight that Kaela has to stop. One of the potion’s ingredients is desire and Mel realises that they’ve been desiring the wrong thing. They can’t go back to the way things were in the magical world with the Unseen and the Tallyman wreaking havoc, they need to make the world better. This makes the spell work the second time. As Mel, Maggie and Kaela try to leave the Manor to go to SafeSpace, Harry arrives and tells them that Inara is on them and on her way to the Manor.

Harry takes them to Infinite Home Video to tell them that their plan won’t work, as the TV he has been watching the VHS tapes on can help him see the present, as well as the past. On the TV, they see Inara torturing Jordan. Harry says that they need to get their powers back and fast. Kaela suggests time travel, but Mel and Maggie shut it down due to Mel’s power being unreliable, with Mel saying that they need to know exactly where and when to go. Harry then shows them the tape of Dev’s memorial, which ends in static. Harry tells them that he believes the static is a pivot point in time that can be rewritten. Kaela and Maggie suggests going back further to save Dev and Macy, but Harry says he’s seen them try to save Dev and Macy many times without success.

Meanwhile, Jordan manages to convince Inara that he regained his memories due to a mistake she made when creating utopia. This leads to Inara putting her torture of Jordan on hold and having a discussion with him of what the problem could be. Inara asks Jordan why anyone would want to remember what it was like before as she’s created a world where magical creatures are safe and free, but Jordan points out that she’s only managed to do this by wiping everyone’s memories without their consent, and by getting rid of humans. Inara counters that he’s seen what humans do to those who are different, but he says that she never gave humans a chance, just like her sisters never gave her one. She tells him not to judge her as she’s not like them, he says he isn’t but points out that the grief of what her sisters did to her has consumed her. He also tells her that she knows this is wrong and with her power she can fix it. Inara tells him that the nine tribes and the Unity Bowl was only a one-time deal and she can’t reverse the situation, even if she wanted to. When Jordan says it can’t be, she asks him what he’s hiding, and she realises the sisters are on to her.

Mel, Maggie and Kaela go back to SafeSpace, where they use the sound of the Tallyman’s nursery rhyme off one of the tapes to trigger the collective grief of the magical beings. Once Inara hears everyone’s screams, she goes to them and casts a memory wiping spell on them, one by one. Whilst she’s doing this, Mel, Maggie and Kaela sneak into the Command Centre and drink the black amber to get their powers back.

When they come back up from the Sacred Tree, they find Inara waiting and she attacks them. She throws them across the Command Centre, but Mel is stabbed in the chest in the process. Jordan manages to get Maggie to cast a containment spell on Inara, but Jordan is trapped with her. Inara kills Jordan, and Mel tells Maggie to take her time travelling powers before she dies to stop Inara. Harry arrives and tells them to go, opening the portal for them to leave. Inara breaks free from the containment spell and kills Harry after he destroys the map and portal.

Maggie and Kaela land back in the Manor. As Maggie doesn’t know how to use Mel’s time travel powers, as she started with a sandwich. Kaela then draws a message to send back into the past instead of themselves, drawing and projecting a VHS tape. While Maggie struggles, she manages to send the VHS tape back to the past. Moments later, Inara arrives and kills them both.

The final moments of the episode show a GemCast of Jordan playing and singing What a Wonderful World at Dev’s memorial service as Josefina is at the Manor looking for the Blue Camelia matches. She then hears magical whirring as the VHS tape appears on the backyard table, with the label “how to save the world” on it. Josefina looks around, wondering where it came from.

As I mentioned in the beginning of this review, I stated that this was the strongest episode of the season and delivered on being a springboard for next week’s season (and series) finale. I believe this is the strongest episode due to the twists and turns from the reveal of Inara creating a utopian world (only utopian if it’s run her way), turning humans into trees, and Inara killing everyone. The episode was thrilling and had me on the edge of my seat and I certainly didn’t see the ending coming. Yes, Inara was clearly going to go on a rampage and after the sisters in the end, but I didn’t expect she’d actually kill all the main characters.

I also felt it was a strong episode due to all the callbacks to previous episodes. From Dev’s memorial service being used as crucial pivot point in time, to Maggie and Jordan using Abigael’s magical purses to get Inara’s blood for the skeleton key potion, to the reveal of the VHS tape going back to the Manor on the day of Dev’s memorial service where Josefina finds it, which also explains why she never attended the memorial service, which Mel and Maggie noted in that episode, assuming that she was running late. I especially appreciated those final moments with Josefina as I questioned in my review of that episode why the dialogue between Mel and Maggie talking about Josefina’s absence was inserted in the first place. I loved that it was not throwaway dialogue, but crucial lines that had a crucial payoff in this episode. I also appreciated that the flower motif used in the utopian world wasn’t just there for the hell of it, that there was an actual reason for it, with the reveal of humans being turned into trees and flowers.

I’m looking forward (but also a little sad) to reviewing the season (and series) finale next week. It will be interesting to see how it kicks off with everyone being dead, however if the promo is anything to go by, it looks like things will be kicking off with Josefina showing the sisters the tape at Dev’s memorial.

Stray Observations:

-At one point, Harry ate a lot of snack food on his first return to the Manor due to only being able to eat stereotypical movie snack food at Infinite Home Video.

-Kaela admits to loving Mel and Maggie as sisters.

-The episode mostly being set in a dysfunctional magical utopia reminded me of the original series’ sixth season finale, It’s a Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad World.

-Considering the importance of the VHS tapes and the episode’s ending, the title for this episode is very apt.

Best one liners and interactions:

• “Loss has a way of making you forget who you are.” (Kaela to Mel and Maggie)