[Best attempt at] A summary of The Magnus Archives. Contains major spoilers up through the most recent episode (168: Roots).
A kind soul wrote this out for me and put it in my submissions box to help me understand the Magnus Archives.Ā THANK YOU SO MUCH and SORRY it took me so long to publish this DxĀ
Major spoilers ahead for anyone else who wants to read!!Ā But this helped me a lot and I feel like I could keep listening now!Ā Thanks again!!!
Basic worldbuilding details: There are 14 extra-dimensional Entities that feed on fear (Eye, Web, Corruption, Stranger, Spiral, Hunt, Slaughter, End, Vast, Buried, Desolation, Lonely, Dark, Flesh). Various people serve them, and are trying to bring about apocalypses by bringing them into our dimension.
A Victorian guy named Jonah Magnus thought serving the Eye and bringing about its apocalypse would make him immortal. Through trial and error he learned that an Entity cannot be brought through alone, and he needs to bring through all 14 at once. To accomplish this, he needs to take someone (The Archivist) and have them experience EVERY entity - āexperienceā in this case means ābe afraid itās about to kill them.ā
Until he manages that, heās been possessing various people over the years by means of sticking his own eyeballs in their heads. When the show starts heās possessing Elias Bouchard, Head of the Magnus Institute.
SEASON ONE: Jonathan Sims becomes the Head Archivist after Gertrude Robinson dies. Heās set out to make audio copies of all the statements in the Archives, and he uses a tape recorder for the ones we hear because they wonāt record digitally. He has three assistants, Tim, Sasha, and Martin. He trusts Tim and Sasha but thinks Martin is incompetent.
Martin gets attacked by Jane Prentiss, who is infested by parasitic worms. Jon lets him live in the Archives because itās safer than going home. The worms start showing up around the Institute, but donāt attack anyone (yet).
Sasha meets a man(?) named Michael and learns that the worms can be killed with CO2 gas. They start stocking up on fire extinguishers.
Two deliverymen named Breekon and Hope deliver a spooky table and a cigarette lighter with a spiderweb design on it to the Archives.
Jon smashes a hole in the wall of his office trying to kill a spider, and finds a network of tunnels under the Institute. The tunnels are filled with worms, which attack. Over the course of the attack, Jon and Martin bond a bit, Jon and Tim get partially eaten by worms (mark 1: Corruption), Martin finds Gertrude Robinsonās corpse in the tunnels (she was murdered), Sasha gets killed and replaced by a monster that was bound to the spooky table (Not!Sasha), and Elias triggers the Instituteās CO2 fire represent system, killing Prentiss. Jon swears to find out who murdered Gertrude if it kills him.
SEASON TWO: Paranoia time. The whole season is basically one long āwho killed Gertrudeā murder mystery, in which Jon suspects literally all of his coworkers. He works with Basira and Daisy, the two police officers assigned to solve the case, and starts to realize that Gertrude was deeply embedded in the supernatural world (and had access to explosives).
Major events include: Jon investigates the tunnels and doesnāt find much. Martin frets a LOT, Jon thinks itās suspicious, but itās pretty clear that he just cares about Jon. Itās also revealed that he lied on his CV, and isnāt actually qualified for this job, hence his incompetence. Tim becomes very bitter about Jon suspecting him of murder and basically stalking him. Michael shows up again, traps a woman named Helen in a maze of unending corridors, and stabs Jon (mark 2: Spiral). Basira quits the police near the end of the season.
In the season finale, Jon realizes Sasha has been replaced and smashes the spooky table with an axe. This does not kill the monster, instead setting it free to try and kill HIM (mark 3: Stranger). Michael appears and offers him a door into his corridor maze to escape the Not!Sasha, and drops him in the tunnels to fend for himself. Martin and Tim try to find out what Jonās doing, and end up trapped in Michaelās corridors themselves.
Jon is saved from the Not!Sasha by a man named Jurgen Leitner, who has a book that can move the walls of the tunnels around (he basically traps it in a wall Cask of Amontillado style). Leitner collected tons of these supernatural books, which are now called Leitners, and has been living in the tunnels for decades. Jon is convinced heās evil, but he reveals that he was working with Gertrude before she died and that Elias killed her. He begins to explain about the Entities, and the fact that Jon works for one (mark 4: Eye), but Jon leaves the room because he needs a cigarette. Elias appears and murders Leitner. Jon returns, finds the body, and flees.
Tim and Martin find their way out of the corridors, find the body, and call the police.
SEASON THREE: Jon is on the run from the police because they think he killed Leitner. He gives a statement about why he always hated Leitner. When he was a child, he found one of Leitnerās books, which nearly got him eaten by a giant spider (mark 5: Web). His childhood bully got eaten in his place. Jon is living with his ex-girlfriend, Georgie, while heās in hiding.
Back at the Archives, Daisy (police detective) is convinced Jon is guilty of killing Leitner and Sasha. Sheās not looking for evidence, she just wants to catch him. Tim is also pretty sure he did it. Martin thinks heās innocent. Elias shows his first hint of supernatural powers by giving a statement about Daisyās first murder, which he just knows without her telling him.
Melanie takes a job at the Archives. She previously appeared to give a few statements. Sheās the former star of a ghost hunting YouTube show, and now has lost everything due to the circumstances of a few genuine encounters. She recently came back from a trip to India, where (as is revealed later) she was shot by a ghost soldier. She is friends with Georgie.
Basira visits the Archives to try to find Daisy, and runs off again looking for her when she realizes Daisy wants to kill Jon. Martin starts recording statements to āpick up the slackā while Jonās away.
Elias sends Jon statements while heās staying with Georgie, and in a bid to learn more about the supernatural he seeks out various servants of the Entities. Jude Perry nearly burns his hand off (mark 6: Desolation), Mike Crew nearly suffocates him by simulating the feeling of falling off a building (mark 7: Vast), and then Daisy catches him. Daisy kills Crew, and threatens to kill Jon (mark 8: Hunt), but Basira shows up and stops her. They drag Jon back to the Archives.
Everyone confronts Elias. We get confirmation that Jon can ācompelā people (force them to answer his questions) but it doesnāt work on Elias. Elias confesses to killing both Gertrude and Leitner. Everyone finds out Sasha was replaced during the Prentiss attack. Elias blackmails Basira into joining the Archives under threat of getting Daisy arrested; then turns around and blackmails Daisy into doing his dirty work in exchange for Basiraās safety. He reveals that if he dies, or if the Archives are destroyed, anyone who works for the Institute dies too. Elias tells Jon he needs to stop the āUnknowing,ā which is a ritual the Strangerās servants are trying to complete to bring about the apocalypse.
Jon goes back to Georgieās; we find out she had an encounter with the supernatural when she was in university and now she literally cannot feel fear. Jon is confronted by Orsinov, a living mannequin that works for the Stranger. Orsinov tells him to find a taxidermied gorilla skin she needs for the Unknowing otherwise sheāll kill him. He decides to go back to the Archives to get help, but on the way is kidnapped by Orsinovās goons. Orsinov says sheās decided to use HIS skin in place of the gorilla one.
Heās trapped for a month, and is eventually rescued by Michael, who reveals that he was one of Gertrudesās assistants before she sacrificed him to stop the Spiralās ritual. He wants to kill Jon, but as they are going into his corridors he is replaced by Helen (the woman he trapped in season two) who decides to drop Jon at the Archives instead.
Jon decides to follow in Gertrudesās footsteps to try and find the gorilla skin (to destroy it). He visits an Archive in China, and several locations in America. He is kidnapped by Julia and Trevor (Hunters) and gets on their good side. They let him talk to Gerry Keay (goth ghost that the fandom goes wild over). Gerry gives Jon the rundown on all of the fears, and explains a bit more about Gertrude. Jon agrees to release him from this world by burning a page of the book heās trapped in (this angers Julia and Trevor, which is important later). Jon goes back to England.
They find the gorilla skin in Gertrudesās old storage unit (and explosives), but it has been destroyed. Orsinov exhumes the bodies of Gertrude and Leitner to use their skin instead. Thereās a stretch of waiting where not much happens.
Jon, Tim, Basira, and Daisy go to a wax museum with Gertrudesās explosives to blow it up in the middle of the Unknowing. Martin and Melanie stay in the Archives to steal the tape with Eliasās confession on it and get him arrested for murder.
At the Unknowing, Basira makes it out alive. Daisy kills Hope (one of the deliverymen from season one) but Breekon traps her in The Coffin (this has shown up in several statements before; itās an artifact of the Buried and traps people underground forever). Tim sets off the explosives and dies, while Jon ALMOST does in the same explosion. He ends up in a coma instead.
At the Institute, Martin distracts Elias while Melanie steals the tape. Elias taunts him about his feelings for Jon, then forces knowledge on him about how much his mother hates him (his motherās in a nursing home: caring for her is why he couldnāt go to university and had to lie on his CV). Melanie succeeds in stealing the tapes and Martin barely restrains her from killing Elias.
Elias reveals that Jon is trapped in a nightmare realm where he constantly relives the statements of the people who have told them to him directly (not the ones that are written down). He is arrested, and Peter Lukas (servant of the Lonely) becomes the Interim Head of the Institute.
SEASON BREAK: Six months pass. Three major events occur: Martinās mother dies, Jared Hopworth (servant of the Flesh) attacks the Institute and is trapped in Helenās (Michealās replacement) corridors, and Peter tells Martin that heāll protect the Institute from further threats if Martin works for him and isolates himself from everyone else. Martin, more than a little suicidal due to his motherās death and the man he loves being in a coma, agrees.
SEASON FOUR: Martinās plotline is revealed in drips and drabs throughout the season, and is easier to tell all at once. Basically, Peter convinces him that thereās a 15th Entity, Extinction, that is about to emerge into the world and kill everything. This is based on research done by Adelard Dekker, one of Gertrudesās allies. Peter says that Martin is the only one who can stop it, because he has been marked by the Beholding and he is getting closer and closer to the Lonely as he isolates himself. This is enough of a threat that Martin sticks with his plan despite several opportunities to leave.
Jonās plot starts with Oliver Banks giving a statement in his hospital room and telling him heās too human to live, too much of a monster to die (mark 9: End). If Jon decides to stay human he will die; if he gives into the Beholding he will live. Oliver leaves; Jon wakes up. Georgie is disappointed that he gave into the Beholding, and walks away. Basira is cold and practical, following in Gertrudesās āends justify the meansā logic. She is watching Jon closely, and prepared to kill him if he becomes dangerous. Melanie is boiling with anger and tries to attack Jon whenever theyāre in a room together.
Jon reads a Slaughter statement and knows (by supernatural means) that Melanie is becoming a servant of the Slaughter because the bullet that the ghost shot her with is still in her leg. He and Basira perform amateur surgery to get it out. Melanie stabs him in the shoulder (mark 10: Slaughter). She is, understandably, furious, but she becomes calmer as she heals and she starts going to therapy.
Breekon (the surviving deliveryman) drops off the coffin. Jon displays a new power by extracting a statement from him. He learns that Daisy is still alive, but trapped in the coffin. Basira leaves the Archives based on information from a āsourceā (Elias, though Jon does not know this yet). Jon learns that he can go into the coffin and get out again if he has an anchor to the real world. He tries to cut off his own finger, fails, and under Melanieās advisement finds Jared Hopworth (Flesh servant who attacked when he was in a coma) in Helenās corridors. Jared removes two of Jonās ribs (one to keep and one for Jon) and gives a statement (mark 11: Flesh).
Jon goes into the coffin (mark 12: Buried) and finds Daisy. She is much more clear-headed than before, because she has been separated from the Hunt for so long. Jon cannot feel his anchor (rib) at first, but the signal is amplified when Martin places a bunch of tape recorders on top of the coffin. Jon leads Daisy out, and both are extremely confused by all the tape recorders.
Jon and Basira find out that the servants of the Dark might be trying a ritual in Norway, and head off to stop them. On the way, Jon forces a sailor on the boat theyāre on to give a statement. Basira is disturbed, but doesnāt try to stop him. (Back in the Archives, Martin hears from another person who Jon took a statement from, and is rightfully horrified.) In Norway, Jon and Basira learn that the Darkās ritual failed the same week Gertrude died, though thereās still an artifact - the Dark Star - left from it. Jon destroys the Dark Star by literally just looking at it, though it nearly kills him (mark 13: Dark). Helen gives them a shortcut home through her corridors.
Martin leaves a tape of his conversation with the person Jon took a statement from on Basiraās desk. Jon confesses that heās done this to five people. He promises not to do it again (from this point on, both he and Daisy grow weaker as they try to resist the Beholding and Hunt, respectively).
Jon, Basira, Daisy, and Melanie visit Hill Top Road (I cannot even begin to explain Hill Top Road, thereās so much going on and thereās no answers yet. Best I can say is itās been strongly affected by both the Web and the Desolation, and there seems to be some warping of reality in the basement.) They find a statement from Annabelle Cain (main servant of the Web) thatās basically one long taunt to Jon about how the Web may or may not be orchestrating everything. Main takeaway from this is that once he starts reading a statement, he cannot stop.
Jon finds out how to quit the Institute, via an old tape from Gertrude. Her assistant, Eric Delano (Gerry Keayās father) escaped the Institute by gouging out his own eyes. Jon runs to Martin with this information and begs him to run away together, but Martin refuses. Jon tells Melanie, Daisy, and Basira. Melanie decides to act on this information, and puts her eyes out with an awl. She goes to live with Georgie, who she is dating by this point. Daisy and Basira stay in the Archives.
Season finale, Peter launches his plan. He and Martin head into the tunnels under the Institute. While down there, Peter frees the Not!Sasha and sends it to attack the Institute. He brings Martin to the Panopticon of Milbank Prison, and explains that Jonah Magnusās original body is still in the center of the Panopticon watching EVERYTHING. Elias shows up (he escaped from jail) and reveals that he IS Jonah Magnus. Peter says that Martin needs to kill Jonahās original body and take his place. From the Panopticon, he will be able to learn how to stop the Extinction (it will also trap him there forever). Martin realizes heās been manipulated and refuses, because even though the Extinction is a threat he doesnāt want to sacrifice himself just so Peter can win against Elias. It is revealed that Peter and Elias formed a bet: if Peter could get one of the Institute staff to willingly join the Lonely, he would be allowed to kill Elias and take over the Institute forever. Since he failed (Martin is close to the Lonely but doesnāt entirely serve it) he instead traps Martin in the Lonely, and then goes in himself.
Meanwhile, Jon finds out that the Extinction isnāt as immediate a threat as he thought, and that Martin has gone with Peter to complete his plan. Jon tries to get help from Georgie, Melanie, and Helen, but all refuse. Basira and Daisy inform him that Elias escaped from prison, and they find a tape revealing that he is Jonah Magnus. All hell breaks loose at this point. Julia and Trevor (the Hunters from season three who he stole Gerryās page from) show up to try to kill Jon, and they run into Not!Sasha, which has escaped from the tunnels. Basira and Daisy tell Jon to run and help Martin. He does. Daisy makes the decision to lean into the Hunt again, and makes Basira promise to find her and kill her once itās all over. Basira agrees (unwillingly) and runs. Daisy attacks the Hunters and Not!Sasha.
Jon finds Elias at the Panopticon. Elias explains where Martin has gone, and Jon dives into the Lonely after him (mark 14: Lonely). Jon meets Peter in the Lonely, takes his statement, and kills him. He finds Martin and manages to save him.
Jon and Martin flee to one of Daisyās old safehouses in Scotland. Twenty-two days after they arrive, they receive a package that they think is from Basira containing a bunch of statements and tapes for Jon. Martin leaves to take a walk, and Jon reads a statement. It turns out to be from Elias (Jonah) explaining his whole plan with marking Jon with the Entities and various ways he manipulated events so that that would happen. Jon is unable to stop reading, and at the end of the statement is an invocation that brings all fourteen Entities through into the world. Martin makes it back to the safehouse, and they watch the world end together.
SEASON FIVE: Jon and Martin are still in the safehouse. Martin wants to leave and kill Elias, Jon wants to stay at least a bit longer to grieve the world. They could stay forever: they no longer need food, water, or sleep to survive. Jonās been constantly relistening to the tapes from the package that was delivered, and thereās some backstory revealed in them: Gertrude had planned on Sasha being her replacement once she died, and had made a tape with all the information she would have needed to stay alive. She suspected that if the Entities came through into the world, they would be here to stay, and that things like space, time, and the laws of physics would stop working. Thereās also some nostalgic stuff with Tim and Sasha.
Jon gets hit with the knowledge that the safehouse is not actually safe, and is feeding on Jon and Martinās fear of losing each other. He and Martin agree to leave, setting out on a quest to kill Elias and try to save the world.
The structure of this new world is revealed: each fear has taken up a domain in which it is the primary source of fear for the people trapped in it, and Jon and Martin need to pass through all of them before they can get to the Panopticon and Elias. So far theyāve been through the Slaughter, the Corruption, the Stranger, the Buried, and the End. People are only dying in the End; in the others, there is no escape from the horror. Any time Jon gets too close to one of these domains he is overwhelmed by the fear and needs to give a statement about it. The first time, Martin just stuck his fingers in his ears, but since then heās been going on walks so he doesnāt have to hear.
Annabelle Cain (Web) tries to call Martin via a payphone; he doesnāt pick up.
Jon realizes he can know basically anything he wants to, and Martin asks him a series of questions, learning that: Daisy is Hunting between the domains; Basira is chasing her, planning to kill her but starting to doubt that; Melanie and Georgie are in London but he canāt see them clearly; Elias is in the Panopticon; Jon and Martin are safe, traveling like they are; Jon canāt see Annabelle AT ALL; and the world can be turned back if the fears are removed, but the fears canāt be destroyed as long as there are people left to fear them.
Helen shows up to ācheck up on the happy coupleā and try to make friends. Martin asks if her corridors can give them a shortcut to London, but Jonās powerful enough that he would hurt her if he tried to do that. She leaves.
They run into the Not!Sasha in the Strangerās domain. It threatens them, but cannot actually hurt them. It taunts them about Sasha, and Jon kills it. Martin is very impressed.
Helen shows up again, and explains that there are two roles people can take in this new world: afraid or feared. Jon has the ability to make something that is feared afraid, and doing so destroys the feared things utterly (this is how he killed Not!Sasha). Martin wants to go on a murder spree killing any monsters they come across; Jon does not. Helen leaves again.
While Jon is giving a statement Annabelle calls Martin on a cellphone. He answers, and she offers him help. He refuses and hangs up.
Jon reads Martinās mind and learns about the conversation with Annabelle. Martin is annoyed, and Jon promises not to do it again. They stop for a rest. Martin starts wondering about Gertrudesās past, and Jon launches into a statement about it: one of her assistants fell to the Web and killed a bunch of her other assistants, and Gertrude never trusted anyone after that. It is also revealed that if an Archivist dies, their assistants are free to leave the Institute without gouging out their eyes.
Jon and Martin are both disturbed by the statement and by the fact that neither of them could stop it. Jon explains that Gertrude would have lost purpose in the apocalypse without anyone to trust, and that Martin is giving HIM purpose. He also explains that all servants of the Entities have a domain in this new world. His is the Panopticon, and Martin DOES NOT want to know what his own is.
The most recent episode was the Endās domain, run by Oliver Banks (the guy who woke Jon from his coma). This statement explained that the End is still killing people permanently, and there is no new life coming into this world; therefore, the End will eventually start stealing victims from other fears. This will ultimately deplete all human and animal life which will kill the Entities themselves and leave an empty universe.
What do the Spiders want? Itās surprisingly easy to leave out any traces of the Webās influence from this summary, but Jon is still carrying the cigarette lighter with the web design from season one and he doesnāt seem to notice it, several important tapes heās found have been covered in cobwebs, and Annabelle is clearly targeting Martin.
Random plots that have less impact on the main story! This completely skips over characters like Mikale Salesa and Maxwell Rayner, and other oft-appearing but easily missed background people. If there are any in particular youāre curious about let me know, but I donāt THINK any of them are going to show up again.
Random plots that I donāt know if theyāre going to have an impact on the main story! Agnes Montague, Gertrudesās assistants, everything with Hill Top Road - I have no idea what about their stories is going to be important from this point forward. Maybe everything, maybe nothing.
My askbox is always open if youāve got any questions (@cirrus-grey). This is a broad summary that misses out a LOT of details!
