#Give me a chance (is unclear whether I mean Gerry or Gertrude)

[thessstrangeskeleton]

[soveryanon]

Reviewing time for MAG137!

- What a delight, we casually got so many confirmations!

* Gerry indeed had a connection to Beholding, finally confirmed:

(MAG137) GERTRUDE: […] Gerard may have a connection to The Eye, but I’m not convinced it will be enough.

It seemed obvious, and not even (only) because of the eye tattoos covering his entire body or the eye painting decorating the Keays’ bookstore when Dominic Swain followed Mary Keay inside in MAG004. There have been a few occasions when Gerry apparently “knew” or “saw” things he shouldn’t have been able to:

(MAG012, Lesere Saraki) “Finally he nodded, as though dismissing me, and limped past into the corridor, towards the supply cupboard. I followed him, asked what he was doing. I got no answer, but he seemed to know the code to the door immediately and strode right in, scanning the shelves for something.”

(MAG048, Andrea Nunis) “He was staring at me in a way I found quite uncomfortable […] with an air of concentration, like he was trying to read something written very small on my forehead. […] He apologised grudgingly and said that, as he was here, he felt he should at least let me know that I was marked. He didn’t know what by, but… that it was close.”

… The fact that he was officially Beholding-aligned also sheds another light on his comment to Lesere Saraki (MAG012: “I stepped aside. He nodded in appreciation and said something that I remember very clearly, even though it still makes no sense. He said, “Yes. For you, better Beholding than the Lightless Flame”.), though; all the Fears are bad, point, but saying that yours would be better than another for someone else is a bit… (Gerry, I have no doubt that you weren’t exactly best pals with Beholding despite being a literal Posterboy for it, but you sounded a bit like a Recruiter there.) I wonder if we’ll know what happened to his Zippo lighter, one day? He had one with an Eye design on it, in MAG012 (the events took place in December 2011) and it seems like it would make a nice set with Jon’s Web-design one, mm? (… Will MARTIN get a hold on it.)

* Gertrude didn’t mention his last name so I probably shouldn’t assume that “Eric” means “Eric Delano” (after all, what if “Eric”s Are The New “Michael”s.) but I’m going to assume that it was “Eric Delano” anyway.

(MAG137) GERTRUDE: […] And I will admit I’ve grown… fond of the boy. I wonder, if I told him about Eric – whether he’d follow in his father’s footsteps. Still, that’s not like it kept Eric safe in The End.

(I’m arbitrarily giving those last words the capital letters because THAT PUN, GERTRUDE, COULD YOU PLEASE NOT…) Eric’s (first) name had been mentioned twice until now, if I’m not mistaken:

(MAG062) MARY: The End, of course. I could never truly serve it; I just don’t find death that interesting. I’ve always found a singular devotion far too restrictive. Just ask Eric… or what’s left of him.

(MAG085) ARCHIVIST: Date of original statement unclear, though paper quality likely puts it at between twenty and thirty years ago. […] There are some… short pieces of correspondence in the file, addressed to Gertrude, from someone called, er, Eric Delano, confirming that while he typed out this statement, he has no memory of doing so, and requesting some sick leave to address… persistent migraines he has developed.

And we had Gerry’s mention of his own father, without naming him:

(MAG111) GERARD: I never knew my dad. Not really. He worked in the Archives like you, but quit once I was born. I think he wanted to help raise me. But mum didn’t need the help, and after me she wasn’t able to have kids again, so she killed him in his sleep to practice her bookbinding. I guess she failed. I always thought he was in here, but when I eventually got hold of it, there wasn’t a page in there.

So mMMMMMmmm.

1°) Nothing new in that regard, but we’ve heard about Michael Shelley, we’ve heard about Eric Delano… and allegedly, there was a third assistant somewhere:

(MAG080) LEITNER: I think she was lonely. I didn’t meet her until about six years ago, after she’d lost the last of her own assistants. She would mention them sometimes. I believe she missed having someone to talk to on occasion. ARCHIVIST: I… I didn’t know Gertrude had assistants. LEITNER: Of course. Three of them, each meeting an unpleasant end.

I wonder if we will hear about them at some point…

2°) According to Gerry’s story, his dad… had managed to quit a job at the Archives. On the one hand, it’s possible that Gerry misinterpreted something (maybe his father hadn’t actually quit), or his father was still serving Beholding in a way and thus didn’t suffer Hell Like Tim Did When He Tried To Flee To Malaysia as a result. On the other hand… Gerry was presumably born in the late eighties, so I still wonder if perhaps the “Archival Assistant can’t quit” binding was something first implemented by Elias (since he became Head of the Institute in 1996)…

3°) So, on the one hand, Gerry was adamant that Fears don’t care about your blood, but about your choices. On the other hand, Gertrude confirmed that ~he had a connection to The Eye~… while Gerry’s family was full of it already: the von Closen line, Mary’s mother who worked as a researcher at the Institute when she was a kid herself, Eric who was apparently an archival assistant. Considering how aware Gerry was of everything, it still feels… very suspicious that he fell into Beholding’s domain himself of his own volition?

* I’m going to CRY, why would you punch my heart about Tim without even NAMING HIM:

(MAG137) GERTRUDE: […] Doesn’t help with The Unknowing, though. [HEAVY SIGH] We still have Dekker’s back-up plan, of course, but… it’s very risky. To be sure, I–I think the detonation would need to happen from within The Unknowing, while it was going on. Gerard may have a connection to The Eye, but I’m not convinced it will be enough.

… because Gertrude just laid out all the elements she had gathered to stop The Unknowing, here: a Beholding-touched person pulling the trigger when the ritual has begun, exploding it from the inside. Which Tim ultimately did in MAG119.

* We also got confirmation that The Slaughter is not an immediate threat and… apparently tried to pull off its ritual waaay before the others, which have been concentrated in the 2000s so far? (Unless the sinking of the Maria Fairchild towards the end of the 19th century had been the Vast’s? In which case The Vast would be more than halfway through its wait for the next attempt.)

* JON DOES REMEMBER ABOUT WHAT HE HAD BEEN TOLD ABOUT THE WATCHER’S CROWN, AND THAT IT’S INCOMING…

- Okay, that one deserved its own bullet points.

(MAG137) ARCHIVIST: […] Ever since I crawled out of that damn coffin, I feel like I’ve been… adrift. Filling in blanks and diving into History, but only…! [EXASPERATED SIGH] The breadcrumbs I’m finding are… stale. Old. … What the hell is The Watcher’s Crown? So far the only mention of it I’ve had is from Gerry, and he didn’t seem to know much about what it actually meant. [PAUSE] And he’s gone now. But if it is the grand ritual of Beholding, then I– … I mean… I need to know about it. Right…? I feel like I’m on a deadline, like I’m running out of time somehow – and I don’t even know where to go! What to look for, o–or… [EXHALE] Just casting around blindly for more clues to just… drop into my lap.

Worrying bits: the fact that Jon presented information (about The Watcher’s Crown) with a food-related (/fairytale-related) metaphor, which, yee-oops, Jon? Jon? Please, don’t; and more importantly… that Jon never mentions at any point that his goal is to prevent it (and not to ensure that it would happen or something).

I freaked out a lot about this – I was already worried about the way he had… not bothered mentioning that he was planning to make sure that this one wouldn’t happen either, when Basira informed him of the other Fears targeting them because they Still Have Their Chance in MAG123, and Jon’s suspicions about the Institute in MAG127. However, re-listening again, it… sounds more like… an attempt at bargaining / showing diplomacy? I’m not excluding the possibility that Jon’s choice might have involved not going against Beholding’s ritual, but so far, I would lean more towards the idea that either Jon can’t verbally mention that he’d like to oppose it (like Tim wasn’t able to “say the words” about quitting despite wanting to, in MAG065), or that… Jon is aware that it would be a dreadful idea to mention, in Beholding’s own temple, that he’s planning to fight against its ritual. He sounded a whole lot like he was… almost bargaining, trying to find a middle ground without compromising himself – and being awful at it? But it confirms that his researches into rituals weren’t only to pass time – that it was indeed to try and figure out which ones were still current concerns and which ones had already been dealt with, and that it wasn’t absolutely innocent and Jon still had The Eye in mind:

(MAG127) ARCHIVIST: […] Whatever is happening now… has its origins two hundred years ago. In the work of an evil man. … Exactly two hundred years, in fact. Don’t think that little detail has evaded me. I don’t know the precise date the Institute was founded, but I do know that it was in 1818. … Something’s coming. I know it is. … But I just don’t know what I need to do.

… Ggggiiiiven how Elias apparently knew that Breekon was on its way to the Institute at that moment / that, overall, Jon complaining about his lack of direction in MAG127 meant Breekon delivering the coffin the following episode, which gave Jon a purpose until MAG132 and Daisy’s successful rescue… I wouldn’ be surprised if “something” were to happen again now, throwing him a bone (ha.) to toy with. Going back to The Dark? Elias had also mentioned that Jon is in a ~very delicate stage~ hence his arrangement to have Jon forbidden from seeing him, so there is still the question of… what is Elias is waiting for, exactly, and what is Jon’s “delicate stage” supposed to be and what is supposed to make him come out of it. I doubt that it’d be as simple as waiting for Jon to finally admit that he wants/needs/craves to know about “The Watcher’s Crown” (and maybe not… solely out of concern because it’d be another Disaster, but because he just plainly craves the information) but, at least, the fact that Jon has finally outright admitted that he’s angsty about it specifically… feels like it could change something. I don’t know!

- At the same time:

(MAG137) ARCHIVIST: [HEAVY SIGH] So. Funny story. Turns out when Daisy broke the lock to get into Elias’s old office, well, she did a good enough job that it’s not… obviously broken. So it hasn’t been replaced yet. So I had a look around. [SIGH] M–mostly as I remember, but… There’s a box of tapes and statements in the corner. Obviously those Elias either didn’t feel he could trust me with yet, or maybe just the ones he was checking himself. Ideally, I’d like to avoid… tipping Peter off for as long as possible that I have access. And it turns out I don’t… Know… Elias’s safe combination. Not yet, anyway. So I just took the first one that called to me, and it’s… [DRY NASAL EXHALE] It’s good.

… “funny story” – JON, HE BLATANTLY LEFT THEM THERE IN THE OPEN FOR YOU, OH MY GODS………. There Are Many Layers of Secrecy In Elias’s Office: the safe mentioned above, his drawers, his overall ~safekeeping~:

(MAG116) ELIAS: During the… “difficulties”… ARCHIVIST: [AGGRAVATED SIGH] ELIAS: … with your initial absence, Jon, I took Gertrude’s tapes into my safekeeping. ARCHIVIST: Yes, I thought as much.

(MAG118) MARTIN: … Did you find anything? MELANIE: Ah, yes, I fi– Jesus. Are you okay? MARTIN: Do we have what we need? MELANIE: I… I think so, yes. He didn’t even have a safe, just a few locked drawers. It was… it was easy.

That’s various levels of keeping things in the open for you to get them at some point, and Jon hadn’t noticed them in his office in MAG116, and Elias was aaaaall but waiting for the police officer in MAG120… so yep, unless someone/something (many-legged, spying with its eight little eyes) moved them, he absolutely left them there for Jon when he would wake up. Maybe Elias just wasn’t expecting it to take more than six months. (Is MAG120’s tape amongst these ones?) … and hum, implicit confirmation that Elias actually HAD a safe and only bothered to put Leitner’s murder in his drawers, he really made it easier for the assistants to plot his arrest?! … Or is it the other way round, and he had to face that he had been an Utter Dumbass by just putting away the recording of him MURDERING SOMEONE in his vaguely locked drawers, and he bought a safe for when he would be gone?

(Also laughing forever that: Jon apparently hadn’t tried to sneak into Elias’s office before, nooo, he waited for Daisy to break into it because she’s a casual Brute but he’s still a polite boy – I got the same feeling as when in MAG092, Elias dismissed everyone-besides-Jon and they just… agreed to leave, quietly. Sulkily, but calmly. Y’all way too civilised/British.

Also laughing a lot that Jon presented what he did as… kind of sneaky? When what probably happened was: Jon, making Elias’s door creak so loudly that the entire institute heard it, accidentally spilling a stack of paperwork, crashing into the desk, breaking a vase or something. Peter, invisible in the room, staring at the ceiling like in The Office. Elias, shrugging in answer from his prison cell.)

- Important questions are also: what is in Elias’s safe (Barnabas’s bones? A tape of a discussion with Gertrude? An item for The Watcher’s Crown? … Manuela’s Black Sun because he already knew that this one isn’t a threat anymore? A Leitner? Mr. Spider’s book?) and what is the code (if it’s “E109GHT8″, Peter is suing).

(I’ve been laughing a lot over Jon’s stance towards the safe: “And it turns out I don’t… Know… Elias’s safe combination. Not yet, anyway.” => that “not yet”… Jon, what is your life.)

- Mmmmm, does that mean I was been wrong to assume the exchange between Martin and Peter from MAG126 took place in Elias’s office because of the clock in the background (… + Martin taking care of the Scheduling), after all? Or maybe Martin has a key, and stopped going there after Daisy broke into it?

- On the list of things that worry me a bit re:Jon, there is the mention of his tiredness + his audible restlessness. Is it because of a lack of statements, too many statements, a random lack of sleep? Is it because the absence of Daisy in his dreams encourages him to sleep less since he won’t see her anymore? Or is it deeper, because time is passing and the clock is ticking and bringing him towards… something, and he will feel worse and worse as long as The Watcher’s Crown isn’t launched, because it’s supposed to be his purpose as The Archivist…?

I’m curious, though, about the distinctions he made between people around him:

(MAG137) ARCHIVIST: […] Everyone else is… running towards something, or running away, and I… [SIGH] I don’t know what I’m doing. [PAUSE] [SIGH] I’m just tired. Think I might go lie down for a while. Get a cup of tea. [HUFF] … Daisy’s got me listening to The Archers. I hate it. … But it feels nice, to hate something that can’t hurt me. [CHUCKLE] I don’t know. That’s it, I–I guess. End recording. [EXHALE]

… who is “running away”? Melanie is clearly moving forwards; Daisy doesn’t give me that impression either (though she could be avoiding a few of her problems with Basira but… well, she just came back and is healing, that’s hardly running away?!); does he mean Basira and Martin here, from his point of view…?

- Meanwhile, obligatory screaming about the fact Jon wants SOME TEA, and Tea is something… he had been shown to share both with Georgie and Martin. Who both left him behind to follow their own choices. Aouch. (Also, Jon. Jon. Tea is not supposed to help you sleep, you need an infusion, not TEA.)

(- ;; Sometimes, I remember that Georgie is still in Jon’s dreams, and aaah… I want them to talk again so badly…? I’m realising more and more… how much Georgie had given to Jon, back in season 3, and again by watching over him during his coma. And now that Jon escaped death and has experienced trouble readapting to the world, felt a few changes in himself while still feeling the same… I think it could likely make him think about Georgie’s experience, about her own End experience, about what she had suffered herself, what she went through, why she decided to lead her life the way she did afterwards? I don’t know, these days, I feel like I really want Georgie and Jon to talk again, and for Jon to give something back to her in return, in some way, even if it’s only validation…)

-I’m SO GLAD that Daisy gets to Do What She Loves again:

(MAG106) MELANIE: I literally cannot picture Daisy listening to the radio. BASIRA: The Archers. MELANIE: No?! BASIRA: Hand of God. MELANIE: I, I actually do not believe you. BASIRA: She never missed an episode. MELANIE: [LOUD EXHALE]

AND I’M EXTRA-GLAD THAT SHE’S DRAGGING JON ALONG… well. Sharing what she Loves. Congratulations, Jon, you made a friend.

I wonder if Jon’s strong opinion about it is a hate-hate thing or a hate-but-he’ll-get-used-to-it-thing. Worst thing that could happen, Beholding will become addicted and Jon will have to listen to EVERY episode EVER to fulfil the junk-food craving.

I’m so glad for Daisy, meanwhile… you listen to what you love, honey, you deserve it… so many months to catch up on…

- That’s two statements in a row where I’m hit by a sense of nostalgia because of the background music! The main one in MAG136 reminds me strongly of season 1 for some reason (I think it’s because of the season finale credits?! And I think it was used in MAG041 too); the one in MAG137 was the one I associate with Mr. Spider. As usual, I’m always engrossed by the sense of quietness, in Slaughter statements: how everything feels ordered somehow, with the butchery violently breaking through at some point; here even more than before, since people were regulated by music and dance, with everyone in their place and who they needed to be, slaughtering before getting slaughtered in turn.

I found that Gertrude was putting a bit more emotions into her reading than usual…? Was it because it was towards the end of her life…?

- And then, big mood whiplash when she gave her Final Comments and it was just Typical Gertrude. Though:

(MAG137) GERTRUDE: […] Still the anti-climax is fascinating: I can only assume they were supposed to be… bombed at the height of the ritual. Maybe by Japanese aircraft, maybe Allied, maybe… both. […] We still have Dekker’s back-up plan, of course, but… it’s very risky. To be sure, I–I think the detonation would need to happen from within The Unknowing, while it was going on.

… could you please maybe CALM DOWN with your fixation on big explosions, Gertrude PLEASE.

- Gertrude, also, please:

(MAG137) GERTRUDE: […] And all this time, the answer was just sitting in the Archives at the Songling Centre. [INHALE] Funny how that works, sometimes…

You’re not in any place to complain about other Archives’ organisation, pSSSHHH…

And interesting to note: Gertrude did say “archives” here. Not “library”. Jon had introduced the Pu Songling Research Centre in Beijing as “something of a sister organisation to the Institute” (MAG105), Xiaoling as the “librarian”, and indeed, she was referring to him differently. Multiple Archives and only one Archivist, or are there local Archivists at the Usher Foundation and the Pu Songling Research Centre as well…?

- The episode indeed answered one of the Questions about the statements Gertrude had consulted back in 2014:

(MAG105) XIAOLING: Yes. There were two accounts that Gertrude took out in 2014. ARCHIVIST: A–and can I read them? XIAOLING: According to our records, we don’t have them anymore. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Well, Wh–what happened to them? Where are they? XIAOLING: Apparently, they were sent on at the request of the Magnus Institute. ARCHIVIST: Gertrude asked for them t–to, to be sent to her? XIAOLING: I believe so. ARCHIVIST: To the Institute or…? XIAOLING: No, we have other channels of delivery for that. ARCHIVIST: Then where? XIAOLING: I believe it was an American destination.

(MAG107) ARCHIVIST: Anything that came was to be sent on to the Usher Foundation in Washington DC, who I assume would send it on to the Magnus Institute. […] I’m, er, planning to make the journey down to Washington in the hopes that Gertrude might have visited the Usher Foundation. According to our earlier emails, they don’t have any record of it on file, but…

Jon hadn’t managed to find them in the end (he had been ~intercepted~ by Julia in MAG107 on his way to the Usher Foundation). Two statements, though, so there is still another one roaming free in the wild – Stranger-related? Or a Beholding one?

- Given the date of this recording (9th October 2014), was Gertrude travelling with Gerry at that moment? (Was he IN THE ROOM NEXT TO HERS.) Gerry had mentioned that he hadn’t seen any tape recorder with Gertrude when they were traveling, though, so maybe not. At least, confirmation that Gerry was still alive at this point ><

- Mmmmm…

(MAG137) GERTRUDE: […] Anyway. Point is, you can probably discount The Slaughter. It had its chance. [CLICK.]

… Is this a rhetorical “you”, or was Gertrude actually addressing her tapes to SOMEONE in particular? (Leitner had done a bit of the same in MAG080, when Jon had left for a cigarette, though it sounded like an old person thing back then: talking one-sidedly to Gertrude’s memory because he was in what used to be her office. But here, it really sounds like Gertrude is delivering a message to someone, and it’s not Adelard nor Gerry, since she mentioned them in third person… Or was it meant to be heard by Leitner? Mmmm…)

- Gertrude seemed to imply that at least Eric knew what was up with the Institute (“I wonder, if I told him about Eric – whether he’d follow in his father’s footsteps. Still, that’s not like it kept Eric safe in The End.”)? Which is… unlike Michael, whom she kept in the Dark the entire time (Michael-the-Distortion had commented on it in MAG101). I… got the impression that Gertrude sounded a bit fond of Eric, or at least had some sympathy for him? The fact that she called him “Eric” while… Adelard is “Dekker” when she mentions him, is a bit striking. (Gertrude, please, he had sex with MARY KEAY, you can’t do worse than this!!)

We’re still not sure what she did of the page, since Jon… hadn’t found it either:

(MAG062) GERTRUDE: And do you have any proof of this? Your… “magic book”. MARY: Yeah. [PAPER RUSTLING] You can keep this page. I made sure it was in English. GERTRUDE: Go– Who… who is it? MARY: A surprise, dear. Just make sure you’re alone when you read it. [CHAIR SCRAPPING] Goodbye, Gertrude. Wish me luck. [DOOR OPENING] [DOOR CLOSING] GERTRUDE: Well. I–I don’t… really know what to add to that. If what she says is true, I should think carefully before reading this page aloud. I should probably destroy it. [GRUNT] I do rather hate the smell of burning skin. Anyway… that’s a decision for another day.

(MAG062) ARCHIVIST: […] what sticks out to me more than anything else in that tape… is the very distinctive floorboard, at the end. […] Because it had Gertrude’s hidden compartment beneath it. Hmm. No… strange skin page. But there is a laptop. And a key. I wonder what it opens.

Jon confirmed here that he indeed destroyed Gerry’s page in MAG117, but what about Eric’s…? (And there is also the question of WHY Gertrude had book-bound Gerry in the end; he certainly hadn’t been able to tell. If she had kept Eric’s page, was she planning to make them meet or something? Or was it only because she needed to keep Gerry behind, somewhere, in case something would happen to her and someone would try to retrace her quest to stop The Unknowing…?)

(- Guh, the DIFFERENCE between Gertrude calling Gerry “Gerard” and Jon, who has very faithfully called him “Gerry” since MAG111 because he had requested it from ~a friend~… Jon, you’re still such a sweet bean ;;)

- It looks like Gertrude had initially planned for Gerry to fulfil the role of sacrifice during The Unknowing, though she was dubious about his chances of success and possibly didn’t want that fate for him anymore even before he died? So, after his death, what was her plan? Who was she planning to use, if she was already aware of these requirements in October 2014? Was she planning to do it herself, sacrificing herself while timing for the Archives to get blown up at the same time? Had she set her ~eyes~ on another Beholding-touched person to throw them in there whether they wanted it or not? (… was she planning to trap Elias.)

………………………………… and now, I’m. Wondering. About Elias. Because it’s likely that he had listened to that tape: it was in his office, along with others, and he had been suspiciously very open to the idea of Jon’s team using explosives when they discovered that Gertrude had made preparations for that:

(MAG116) ELIAS: Yes. And I believe your plan… simplistic, as it may be, does have a reasonable chance of working.

aaaaaand he didn’t sound absolutely certain that Gertrude and Gerry had travelled together, though he had suspicions

(MAG102) ELIAS: … Sorry? Gerard Keay? ARCHIVIST: Uh… yes…? ELIAS: How did you… Who, who told you he was working with Gertrude? ARCHIVIST: No-one, I–I–I just, I… I read it in one of the statements. ELIAS: I don’t think you did. ARCHIVIST: I… but… aaah… ELIAS: You just… knew it! […] ARCHIVIST: Look, I don’t– Look… Haaa… Gerard’s not really a lead. He… he’s dead, isn’t he? ELIAS: Yes, but I believe he and Gertrude travelled together, shortly before he passed away. Perhaps if we could retrace their steps, we might find something.

Though that “I believe” could be a figure of attenuation. But there is a possibility that he suspected they had travelled together BECAUSE of Gertrude’s comments from MAG137’s tape, that would make sense and would be a reasonable assumption, actually! … So if he already knew about this, and about Gertrude and Dekker’s “back-up plan”: did he just want Jon to discover it on his own, to be able to handle it during the crisis? Was he hoping that Jon would discover a more reliable plan (whether Gertrude had one in the end or not)? … and if Elias knew that a Beholding-touched person was necessary: was it because Jon was supposed to pull the trigger himself (hence him telling Basira that Jon’s performance during The Unknowing had been ~disappointing~ in MAG135)? Or. *squints* I’m not banking on it, right? But: did he make Basira sign a contract because SHE was supposed to be cannon-fodder, hence his extra reluctance to let Tim come along, and hence his currently having his kicks toying with Basira?!

- I’m curious about Gertrude’s two hypotheses regarding who could have thwarted the ritual:

(MAG137) GERTRUDE: […] Still the anti-climax is fascinating: I can only assume they were supposed to be… bombed at the height of the ritual. Maybe by Japanese aircraft, maybe Allied, maybe… both. I wondered what stopped it: a Japanese radar filled with… spiderwebs; a US destroyer, finding itself suddenly alone in the open ocean? [HUFF] We’ll probably never know.

That would have been super-straightforward from The Web (though it makes sense that it was monitoring that no ritual could succeed). As for The Lonely: Peter Lukas had transported Michael Shelley and her to stop The Great Twisting; do the Lukases also have a tradition of meddling with others…? (It seems that, however, that wasn’t the habit of previous Archivists from the Magnus Institute? Gertrude hasn’t even raised the possibility that one of her predecessors could have found a way to prevent the ritual.)

- One confirmation about Gertrude’s life:

(MAG137) GERTRUDE: Final comments. Well, that’s quite a relief. Nearly forty years I’ve been wondering about The Slaughter’s ritual, keeping an eye out for anything that might be stirring. And it turns out I needn’t to have been worried at all! The Risen War failed a few years before I was even born. 

-> She had understood pretty fast into the job what the rituals were about. Jon had mentioned that she had been Head Archivist for “over fifty years” (MAG004), which indeed put her age at at least 70 when she died, and it does work with what she confirmed here (she was born after 1944). Curiously though: forty years was about when James Wright became Head of the Institute… and I’m now realising that Gertrude’s first tapes where right after Elias had succeeded him. Mmmm…

- I’m intrigued by the fact that in so many of the rituals so far… there was often One Witness who wasn’t taken like the others around them, and who found their way to the Magnus Institute (or another Beholding-affiliated Institute) to tell their story. Is it ~the bias of survivorship~ which Jon had mentioned in MAG129 – we only know about the insides of the rituals when there was a survivor? Or… something else entirely, like The Eye itself sneaking in and using someone, making them mostly a passive viewer, to leech on the events?

Abraham Janssen had survived the previous Unknowing in 1787 (MAG116) – interestingly, he was… in more than one way in the position of a spectator (the ritual attempt was taking place in a theatre). Percy Fawcett saw his son get seized by The Hunt when initially searching for the city of “Z”, though he kept his own mind during the never-ending ritual (MAG133). Wallis Turner strongly opposed the concept of killing or hurting others, and wasn’t taken by the frenzy during The Slaughter’s attempt at the Risen War (MAG137). Jackson Ellis was able to see the gigantic pit in the town of Bucoda and didn’t get attracted by it, unlike the other inhabitants (MAG097). Lucia Wright, who was fascinated by Gnostic churches, remained lucid when serving as an unwilling participant in The Flesh’s attempt in October 2009 (MAG130). Implicitly, Gertrude witnessed the failing of The Buried’s and The Spiral’s rituals, in the same way Jon was there when Tim pulled the trigger that stopped The Unknowing. Though regarding that last point… Jon apparently didn’t remember how things had ended, when he woke up in MAG122…

Anyway: the fact that the witnesses apparently found their way to Beholding-related facilities, and weren’t… tracked? by Gertrude, who would have been trying to get their story, makes me wonder if they’re not drawn to Beholding’s temples specifically because they watched….

- Back when MAG133 aired, I had made a list of what we currently knew about the rituals – I am delighted to see that I can now add or rectify so many things to the list, hhh. Shameless copy-pasting-editing:

Rituals that Gertrude stopped or contributed in stopping (in chronological order):

* The Buried: “The Sunken Sky”, 17th June 2008, in Bucoda, Washington (USA). Stopped by Gertrude by throwing pieces of Jan Kilbride’s Vast-touched body into the pit (MAG097, MAG129).

* The Flesh: “The Last Feast”, October 2009, under an old Gnostic temple near Istanbul (Turkey). Stopped by Gertrude and Adelard Dekker thanks to a bunch of explosives (MAG130).

* The Spiral: “The Great Twisting”, somewhere between October 2009 and 2011 (since Leitner told Jon that Gertrude has lost her last assistant “six years ago” in February 2017), in Sannikov Land, which does not exist, somewhere in the Arctic. Stopped by Gertrude by sending Michael Shelley with a map inside of The Distortion, to fuse with it (MAG101, MAG126).

* The Lonely: we’re still lacking details about when/where/how it was called, but Gertrude apparently ensured that they lost their chance in the current roster (MAG134, Peter: “it’s going to be decades, if not centuries, before I get another chance to bring Forsaken into this world. Your last Archivist saw to that.”). Probably happened after The Spiral, since Peter didn’t ditch Gertrude into the sea on the way back from Sannikov Land as far as we know?

* The Stranger: “The Unknowing”, 7th August 2017, at the House of Wax in Great Yarmouth (UK). Gertrude had prepared the thwarting with Adelard’s help, stocking plastic explosives and understanding that it would take someone touched by Beholding in the middle of it, had thought of Gerry for that role though wasn’t sure he could pull it off (MAG137). The ritual was effectively stopped by Basira, Daisy, Tim and Jon using that plastic explosive (MAG118, MAG119): with a Beholding-touched person pulling the trigger in the middle of it – Tim. Previous attempt was in October 1787, at the Court Theatre of Buda, Hungary, and was interrupted by an agent of The Slaughter (MAG116).

Rituals that are currently not a Cause Of Concerns:

* The Hunt: “The Everchase”, ongoing for at least the past two centuries, aggregating Hunters in America. Doesn’t have a culmination (MAG133).

* The Slaughter: “The Risen War”, should have happened centred around the Nemesis in late 1942, in the Pacific Ocean. It failed due to not meeting all the requirements – probably needed a bomb. Gertrude finally got confirmation in October 2014 that she didn’t need to worry about it; she wild-mass-guessed that The Lonely or The Web could have been responsible for thwarting it. (MAG137)

* The End: according to Peter, neither wants nor needs a ritual (MAG134: “it knows that it gets everything eventually, so why bother. The End manifesting would not be a new world of terror; it would be a lifeless world. Devoid of everything.”)

* The Web: according to Peter, has never tried to manifest or to get a ritual – though he didn’t sound absolutely sure about Her motives (MAG134: “The Web, I’ve never really been sure about: if I were to guess, I would say it actually prefers the world as is, playing everyone against each other, and so on.”)

Rituals that are Status Absolutely Unknown at the moment, as far as I can tell:

* The Vast (come on, that’s mean, Jonny.)

Some that Gertrude referenced, or was cautious about, or was preparing to stop, or might have stopped already:

* The Desolation: apparently stopped shortly before October 2014 (MAG087, Gertrude: “It interests me that Jude Perry would be involved. I was unaware that The Lightless Flame had had any contact with the Stranger’s ilk, but I suppose it makes sense that it would be a possible ally to the Devastation, especially since their own plans have so recently, erm, gone up in flames.”). Plus, the fact that Jude really had no love lost for Gertrude in MAG089 also implied that Gertrude might have indeed actively messed with them. Their ritual attempt might have had to do with the site with the bottles containing Gertrude’s pictures in Scotland, near Loch Glass (MAG037)?

* The Corruption: Gertrude’s laptop revealed that she had bought pesticide (MAG066: “There’s also the matter of the products she was ordering. There were several online orders of petrol, lighter fluid, pesticides, and high-powered torches. They are sporadic, but notable, in that she did not drive, smoke or work in pest control.”) and there might have been something attempted during the Prentiss siege against the Magnus Institute on 29th July, 2016, with some of the worms forming a “ring” in the tunnels (MAG041: “Then I found the circle of worms. […] a few were still embedded in the wall providing the clear outline of a circle. The ceiling was higher here, and all told it must have been about… ten feet in diameter. Its size was not the most disconcerting thing though. Inside the circle, the stone was… wrong somehow.”)

* The Dark: “The Extinguished Sun”, MIGHT BE A CURRENT CAUSE OF CONCERN, though could also be Elias misleading Basira-and-then-Jon into panicking about it while it’s actually already been dealt with. The attempt(s), if any, happened after July 14th, 2014, when Manuela Dominguez gave her statement to the Institute, claiming that they were ready (MAG135). Gertrude’s laptop revealed that she had bought many, many torches (MAG066: “The torches would make sense, if it wasn’t for the quantities in which she ordered them.”), which inspired Jon to tell Basira to take a lot along when the police went after Maxwell Rayner (MAG072: “Bring torches. […] As many as you can get your hands on.”). Unclear as of now whether the People’s Church of the Divine Host attempted their ritual in Hither Green Chapel on May 15th, 2015, the night Gertrude officially died (MAG025) and roughly when a full solar eclipse was happening in Ny-Ålesund (MAG108), or on February 10th, 2017 in the industrial complex up in Harringay, with the kidnapping of Callum Brodie (MAG072, MAG073), when Elias tipped off the police to take care of them, resulting in the (apparently definitive?) death of Maxwell Rayner. Jon has spotted people sporting the symbol of the cult recently (MAG125: “I’ve seen two different people wearing symbols for the People’s Church of the Divine Host”); Elias claims that there has been suspicious activity in Ny-Ålesund lately and that remnants of the cult might be planning to try and pull off their ritual. (In real life, a partial solar eclipse happened there on August 11th, 2018, which is a few months away in-series.)

* The Eye: “The Rite of the Watcher’s Crown”. According to Gerry Keay, it was the next one on Gertrude’s list together with “The Unknowing”, and she had already devised a plan to stop it (MAG111: “She didn’t tell me much about that one, just that she knew how to take care of it”), which might have involved reducing the Archives to ashes (MAG080: “I assume [Elias] discovered we were planning to destroy the Archives.”, “Planning a little light arson, are we Jurgen?” / MAG092: “So. For the avoidance of any doubt. I killed Gertrude Robinson because she intended to destroy the Archives.”). Might “have” to happen in 2018, as Jon noticed the two-hundred years anniversary of the Institute’s founding (MAG127) and is experiencing a feeling of urgency (MAG137: “I feel like I’m on a deadline, like I’m running out of time somehow”).

MAG138’s title is HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. What a nice title. Apparently, it’s the title of an anthology? But anyway: it screams ROBERT SMIRKE and I have no idea about the Fears that could get involved besides “all of them” (though: maybe we could get something about the tunnels, and maybe about the Corruption / what the heck was up with the ring of worms during the Jane Prentiss invasion? Corruption and Desolation still haven’t got any statement in season 4, babies, everyone is so mean to you.) Of course, thinking about “Smirke” means “thinking about Tim” means “crying a river in which he’d be able to go kayaking”. (I wonder if we’ll find a few traces of his existence, something he left behind, at some point? ;_; Notes on a statement he had been working on before the worst of season 2, or a recording, or something… I still have a Tim-shaped hole in my heart, uuurrrg…)