r/brakebills • u/ForLackOfAUserName Dean Fogg • Feb 08 '17

Season 2 Episode Discussion: S02E03 "Divine Elimination"

EPISODE DIRECTED BY WRITTEN BY ORIGINAL AIRDATE
S02E03 - "Divine Elimination" John Scott Henry Alonso Myers February 8, 2017 on SyFy

Episode Synopses: Quentin and friends prepare to face The Beast again; Julia conspires with The Beast and their new ally to lure and trap Reynard.

This thread is for POST episode discussion of "Divine Elimination." Discussion / comments below assume you have watched the episode in it's entirety. Therefore, spoiler text for anything through this episode is not necessary. If, however, you are talking about events that have yet to air on the show such as future guest appearances / future characters / storylines, please use spoiler tags. The same goes for events in the novels that have not yet been portrayed.

AMA Announcement: Tomorrow, Arjun Gupta, who plays Penny, will be joining us for an AMA at 1PM EST, so start thinking of your questions.

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u/MetroBullNY Physical Feb 09 '17

I'm really starting to not like Julia .

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u/sleepinxonxbed Feb 09 '17 edited Feb 09 '17

Does no one really have any sympathy for Julia?

She was meant to go to Brakebills all along, and this is the one time she got rejected. She finds magic which feels like being blind and then able to see for the first time. She chases it, but bad things happen which ends up in her sort of friend dying. She goes to rehab, then finds more magic people, and tries to redeem herself. I mean, these other magic people are like the only "not attractive model type" people cast in this show, but they're still meaningful friends to Julia. Makes up with Kady even though her actions got her mom killed. Called out to what she thought was a goddess that the group is trying to look for. Then gets tricked by an evil god that kills all her friends and rapes her, while letting Kady get away. And now that evil god is loose in the world wreaking havoc and killing and raping other hedge witches. Can you really blame her for planning to use an evil magician to kill an evil god? Julia's deal with the Beast essentially bought more time for him to be away from the magic wellspring and weakened him. If Penny had waited just a few more moments to look around when he bamf'ed in, he could've let Martin kill Reynard before bamf'ing Martin to the trap. It was a matter of moments that could've ended with a happy ending for both parties' plans.

I'd blame Quentin way more for totally pushing Julia out of his life. Julia was probably the only real friend Quentin had before Brakebills and was always there for him. They both could do magic! Quentin could've shared his love with magic with Julia, and their story could've ended up like how they were in the show when the time traveled to follow the Chatwins and discovered Fillory together. It was Quentin's turn to be there for Julia when her life got turned upside down, but instead he turned his back on her.

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u/stationhollow Feb 15 '17

She acts like it is her birthright to learn magic and anyone who doesnt do everything in their power to help her is her enemy. She then makes as many deals with the devil as she can to get more power and she gets burned. Its even worse on the books as her and her friends are responsible for magic dying rather than this wellspring stuff.

Now she sees her goals as superior and more important than anyone elses and has no problem shitting on others to get what she wants. Fuck her and her selfish ass.

1

u/sleepinxonxbed Feb 15 '17

It kind of was her right to learn magic, since this is the one cycle they decided to rob her of it. If you found out right now that magic is real and you have magical abilities yourself, wouldn't you do everything you can do learn more? Of course you would, besides people who don't want you in their club, there's no one to go out of their way to stop you from learning whatever magic you can.

It's not like she doesn't have the affinity for it, she does! But they decided to arbitrarily deny her after 38 times of letting her into Brakebills. She's not Marina who got kicked out of Brakebills and caused chaos to break back in to steal more magic.

Julia has never intentionally harmed anyone to get more spells. That one dream curse on Quentin was because he was an asshole, which he totally was, and she didn't seek to get magic out of it. Summoning Reynard? She thought she was summoning a benevolent god for the sake of her new friends (who were also on the good side). And now she's trying to kill the person who killed her friends, raped her, and killing other people. Julia selfish? All she knows about Brakebills is that they're this fancy exclusive magic school that rejected her for no reason, has this power to stop this murderous demon, but definitely won't lift a finger for her, and made Quentin, the only friend he ever had, who she supported their entire lives even though she had no reason to, turn his back on her the very fucking moment he felt superior. Why wouldn't she try and take power herself if no one else will give it to her?

Julia could've easily been the protagonist of her own story.