Magnus Archives Part 3:

Let’s get the rating out of the way so we can get into spoilers, overall I still absolutely love this podcast I highly recommend it to anyone who’s a fan of horror, it’s available on Spotify and YouTube. Plz check it out, so I’ll give The Magnus Archives a solid 10/10

I should point out now, that ur love of this podcast might be determined by whether u like the tonal shift season 3 to 5 shift to, either u like it or hate it.

Warning spoilers ahead y’all been warned.

Jonathan Sims wakes up from a coma, and instead of being welcomed back to work, he gets schooled by Melanie.

Why’s Melanie mad at Jonathan Sims? Well because he’s the only one who survived the explosion of the circus. While Daisy got stuck in a void in a coffin, Sims survived so Melanie thinks he is no longer human and that he might have become something else…

Ur darn right that’s for sure.

Melanie also had a rough time, while he was in the coma. The institute came under attack from Jared Hopworth–yes that Jared Hopworth who appeared the first time in the Bone Turner’s Tale…..why did Jared Hopworth attack the institute? This requires some background context so sit tight.

No really do sit tight, like maybe get a drink and some popcorn while at it.

In 2016, Jared started to get anonymous letters with details of name, place, and time. Each letter led him to another source of “high-quality bones”–victims he could terrorize.

Since these letters proved useful, he trusted the sender and followed the instructions in the last note he received from the unknown sender: to invade the Magnus Institute and kill Jonathan Sims.

Jared and his fellow followers of The Flesh entered through the pipes on the floor and attacked Jon’s coworkers while he was still in the hospital.

Melanie went into a rage and fought them off. She managed to stab Jared multiple times and though it didn’t seem to hurt him, he fled. Helen, the spiral lady with the door, placed her door in front of him and trapped him in the corridors.

So yes that’s why he attacks the Magnus Institute. Now Jonathan Sims has a plan to go save Daisy from the coffin.

Meanwhile, Peter Lukas, the new head of the institute while Elias is in jail…he lost a bet with Elias…

Has cut Martin off from everyone. He especially doesn’t want Martin to talk to Jonathan Sims because he says he’s preparing Martin for something where he’s gonna have to save Jonathan, and this is the way to do so…..ok there’s something sus about Peter Lukas…

So with Melanie not trusting Sims anymore, Martin has not been seen in a while, and with no one to talk to except for Barisa.

She doesn’t fully trust Jonathan, but what choice does she have? She works with him, but behind her back, John and Basira come to the conclusion that there’s a bullet lodged in Melanie’s leg. It’s a ghost bullet that doesn’t show up on hospital detectors and that is probably why she’s been so angry.

So during the night while she’s asleep they go in and remove the bullet. Safe to say she’s not happy to wake up with the guy she hates cutting her leg open.

If I was her I’d say the F**k are u doing Jonathan? Get off my leg!

Fast forward and John is attempting and failing to cut off his finger because he’s not human enough to be hurt anymore. Melanie enters and asks John what he is doing and he claims to be trying to save Daisy.

Melanie is unimpressed with John and bitterly angry with him and Basira after they perform surgery to remove the bullet from her leg without her consent.

She’s specifically mad about it because she feels like that bullet was the only thing giving her any feeling or purpose…her anger helped her cope with the situation she was in with the Archives.

Anyways, Jonathan Sims decides to enter Helen’s corridors to find Jared, offering his freedom in exchange for the removal of one rib.

Jared agreed but John wanted a statement too. He gives this statement in exchange for his freedom from Helen’s corridors and a second rib, which he describes as “a weird one”. The process seems to hurt John a lot more than his attempts at cutting his finger off.

Jared leaves through another door, which Helen opened for him…right above a river.

Jonathan uses the rib that Jared took out as an anchor so he can go into the coffin and save Daisy. They both got trapped in the coffin for a long time but John eventually finds their way out and is greeted by a room full of tapes running statements that Martin set up to lure John back out.

BTW I found Jared Hopworth to be hard to understand in this episode, he really sounds like he’s gurgling his sentences, anyways.

Here’s a bit more about Peter Lukas, and here’s why he’s separating Martin from the rest of the team. Peter Lukas is an avatar of The Lonely and can enter it at will, which is an empty and foggy dimension. He can also banish people there or disappear into it himself.

As Peter spends time with Martin, Martin develops the same ability to disappear. He has Martin reading old statements related to a new fear–The Extinction. Martin always asks for more information but Peter refuses to give it.

So back to Jonathon Sims–he saves Daisy, so things go back to normal right? Ehhhh sadly no….for you see Jonathan Sims has this new ability where he can just sternly say to someone “Tell me your story” and the person he says that too end up spilling out their entire story…he has the same powers that Gertrude had. What has Jonathan Sims become?

So he’s going around asking random people to tell them his story so he can feed the power…this isn’t good, especially since this leads to some woman coming to the Magnus Archives to report Jonathan to his higher-ups.

This woman locates Martin, she tells him “I have one of your members to report….they are harassing me.” He pulls out a note to write this down and says ok what’s going on…who’s harassing you?

She says it’s a guy…..which Martin says oh it’s a guy….wait a minute did the guy just so happen to look like he’s not slept in days? The woman replies with a yes, so now Martin figured out who was harassing this woman…it was Jonathan Sims all along…sorry had to do that meme, it was too fitting. She leaves before even giving her name, she just leaves….all right then.

So Martin sends out Melanie to go get Jonathan and Daisy because they’re away on their own mission to stop another ritual and for Jonathan Sims to get more people to admit their stories to him because he needs to feed on that….he’s becoming an avatar

Yeah things are really getting serious

So things are about to get weirder….while Martin is doing a recording…guess who comes in? It’s Daisy…she comes in to tell Martin about Basira and Jon… Martin screams “Get out, get out….we’re not friends we’re just working together in this godforsaken place”….jeepers, so Daisy leaves and this static sound comes from the dark and Peter comes out saying a good job…he appears in the room using his powers.

Martin says “You would have disappeared here” to which Peter says “I would because I don’t like conflict….but now that you did it I don’t have to”…..God what a scumbag he is…

He tells Martin he deserves to know some info on his plans but he’s not gonna tell him…he’s got a friend who owes him a favor who he’s gonna bring over to tell him…why doesn’t Peter just tell Martin? It’s because in his words….” I don’t feel comfortable doing so”.

Seriously I miss Elias can we bring him back plz? Like how much of my soul do I need to give up for him to come back?

So anyways Jonathan Sims decides to read this specific story about Marcus Mckenzie….this guy kept seeing this ominous white door around trying to lure him in…..his parents got him medically checked….turns out nothing even wrong with him…

Later on in his life, his dad tried to lure him back home by saying he started seeing the same white door…..which he believes his dad is gaslighting him to convince him to come back and live with him…John read his dad’s statement earlier in the series.

John is frustrated that when he first read Marcus’s dad’s statement he searched for Marcus’s statement unsuccessfully. But now he was able to find it by being drawn to the filing cabinet it was in. He misses the old days when he could write statements off as mental illness or drugs…then realizes who was behind that white door.

He confronts Helen about Marcus and his father. She says she was hunting them for a long time before she was even Michael…and that she wishes she had eaten his dad before he died naturally. She reveals that she ate Marcus months prior…John is shocked because Helen always insisted she was different than Michael…turns out not.

Helen tells John that Hill Top Road is a “strange scar on reality” and it’s key to the Web’s unknown plan. Helen wanted to lure Marcus there as an experiment but couldn’t manipulate him the way the Web can.

John anxiously asks Helen if the Web could manipulate another avatar to feed on people against their will…clearly John is conflicted about his new “eating” habits. Helen laughs at him and asks if he’s really sure he doesn’t want to feed, then returns to her door and leaves John alone. Later, John is confronted by Daisy, Melanie, and Basira after Martin looped them in on the complaint from earlier.

Basira pushes John until he admits that he’s fed on five people including the woman who talked to Martin and a ship worker on his and Basira’s mission.

This is also where we learn that John no longer turns the tape recorders on himself but lets them choose what’s important enough to record. Basira tells him he’s a monster while John continues to blame the Web’s manipulation. Basira decides if the Web is to blame, it’s time for a trip to Hill Top Road.

Anyways Sims comes to the realization that his hunger to feed off of giving people nightmares basically is all his free will….he’s not being controlled…..he realizes that when he listens to a recording of someone who basically says all that….

Oh and next up….

Remember that mission Basira and John went on earlier? Yeah turns out that was a trick from Elias. Basira visits him in jail and beats him up for giving her bad intel and not telling her that John is feeding on innocent people.

Later she gives John an ultimatum: stop feeding on people’s trauma or she’ll kill him. He tries listening to old statements to feed his hunger but finds them stale.

Elsewhere in the Archives Martin meets Simon Fairchild who is there to answer Martin’s questions. Simon is an avatar of The Vast (Simon calls it “the Falling Titan”)  and has been a recurring character in many past statements.

He proves not to be very helpful and can’t give much information about the Extinction and the birth of new powers, but explains Peter’s point of view. Peter believes that Extinction will emerge very soon and its ritual could spell the end for all of the Powers.

Here’s where we get more information about the Fears. Simon tells Martin that the fears can’t do anything on their own and their servants are basically making educated guesses on what they want them to do.

He believes the rituals can never actually work. Simon closes their conversation by telling Martin that Peter may not be trustworthy, but he is telling Martin what he believes is true and that the Institute itself may be key to Peter’s shadowy plans.

John is busy reading a statement about a failed ritual by The Corruption but is interrupted by Julia Montauk and Trevor Herbert–two monster hunters–breaking in and holding him hostage. They want to know where Gerard Keay is.

But John already burned the page of the Book of the Dead that Gerard was being kept in. Fun fact, Gerard Keay’s character died in Pittsburgh

Anyways these two hunters are about to kill John when Daisy bursts in and threatens to kill them both. The hunters back down and vow to return when Daisy’s guard is down and disappear into the archives…for now.

Join me as we continue to discuss about The Magnus Archives in my part 4 review, hope to see y’all there. Anyways hope y’all enjoyed this review and here’s a link to the full podcast.