Recap Notes: MAGP 7 “Give and Take”
Spoiler Warning: this is a purely selfish exercise in remembering what the hell happened last season (from someone caught up thru MAGP31, 2/27/2025 & all of The Magnus Archives). No promises I’ll keep up with it.
Summary: Hill Top Road [cough] sorry, Hilltop Centre, is the least interesting thing about this case.
Casement: CAT2RC3338-03022016-12022024
Sometime in 2015, an under-prepared Jonathan Sims is appointed head Archivist of The Magnus Institute after the death of his predecessor. Under the mostly absent watch of his superior, Elias Bouchard, he proceeds to be buried under the odd and uncanny statements brought in for him to sort. It’s a job that needs at least 6 archival assistants, but things quickly spin out of his control. In the end? The waking hell is only able to be stopped by a spark of ignition.
Sorry, no. Let me try that again.
Sometime in 2015, an under-prepared Dianne Margolis is appointed head Manager of the Hilltop Centre after the death of her predecessor. Under the mostly absent watch of her superior, Mr. C Clayton, she proceeds to be buried under the odd and uncanny items brought in for her to sort. It’s a job that needs at least 6 volunteers, but things quickly spin out of her control. In the end? The waking hell is only able to be stopped by a spark of ignition.
Now I don’t give the TMA timeline too much credence when it comes to interpreting or predicting TMP events (time’s gonna get weird, folks, we’ve been warned), but every now and again I glance at it to see if something resonant was happening around the same time, and this one was too good to pass up. And yes, Dianne ends up with far more than 6 uncanny helpers but at the start she says “I was somewhat dubious as to how helpful an associate of this young man would be but given that the site still needed at least 5 more staff members…” (5 + the man she’s hiring) = 6. Could be a random number, but it’s more fun if it’s a nod to how many archival assistants Jon had during his tenure: Tim, Sasha, Martin, Melanie, Basira & Daisy.
Now, what do I think it means?
No, I don’t think Jon was saved last-minute be some gun-toting security firm. I think he’s pretty well doomed in that .jmj error. But I think the narrative could be trying to tell us that we may see almost-but-not-quite versions of events in addition to almost-but-not-quite versions of our favourite players. Like the theory of convergent evolution, but spread across universes instead of miles. It’d be too big brained for me (clearly, as I’m already losing coherency), but I think it’d be cool if they were playing around with their own take on a fear-driven mirror universe this series, not just a parallel one. The reflection muddied because things are slipping thru in both directions. Disrupting the balance, etc. Something about the infected nature of the wound causing an unnatural number of these twisted doubles.
As for the volunteers as spooks, there’s definitely something a little spidery in their description. Dianne is unable to remember their names, or anything identifiable about them. Could mean they’re The Web’s agents, sent thru the crack. Spreading terror into this world with the types of objects Salesa used to peddle, but it’s also worth noting that the same could be said of Ink5oul (outside of their distinctive tattoo) and I’m pretty sure Ink5oul is native to the OAIR world. Then again, if the fears came thru the rift and were seeded into this world earlier in the timeline, it’d be understandable that anybody infected has a little bit of Web and Eye in the driver seat (in addition to the rest of the medley).
I’m getting rambly.
I’ll leave it with: I’ve still no idea what to do with the volunteers’ eerie “it’s all for a good cause!” other than to mention it sounds an awful lot like “for the continuation and preservation of good science”.
Oh, and who the eff is Gwen’s source for “they believe this man to be quite dead”?
She’s one I can’t wait to see more of outside the office.