The Magnus Archives and why I love getting traumatized

As per usual, a massive spoiler warning for seasons 1 and 2 of the horror fiction podcast The Magnus Archives. If you have no prior exposure to the topic, but, are, at the same time, interested in it, you're welcome to read my reviews on the first two seasons (which I'll link up here and here for conveniance sake), or better yet, listen to this stroke of absolute writing and storytelling genious for yourselves. Believe me when I say that it's one of the best constructed and written stories I've heard in any medium and that listening to them was (and still is) one of the most enriching experiances of my lifetime.

(Art by: megzilla87 on Tumblr)

Ok, now that we got that outta the way, let's talk.

If I'm being honest, this season got to me the most. Don't get me wrong, seasons one and two were full of eeriness, dread and melancholy, but, for some reason, this one just managed to speak to my inner child the most, and by that I mean, I legitimately needed a reassuring hug after the intensity of some of the episodes in it. And that's exactly why I loved it as much as I didl, as it perfectly exemplifies as to why horror is best suited to non-visual mediums like books and podcasts. To give you an example of what I mean, I was casually listening to S3E3: Drawing a Blank whilst on a break at work when a wonderfully terrifying and almost hypnotizing description of it's supernatural threat came on and I geniunely, witout exaggeration, began shaking, so much so that I had to constantly look towards my coworkers to see wheater or not they've noticed and thought I was having some kind of seizure. You know a horror story is good when you get that intense of a a reaction from someone who isn't easily scared. The third season of TMA is everything a well rounded and beautifully written piece of horror should be and I have nothing by praises and accolades for the passion and effort the cast and crew had decided to put into it. Like I wrote in the fan letter I sent to one Stephen King when I was but a wee lad in elementary school: Thank you for the nightmares!

But what exactly makes this season especially intense? Well, to answer that, we must get on with the review, starting off with everyone's favorite part...

(1) The In-Universe Context

You know what time it is? Thaaaaat's riiiight. Context time!!! (I'll just picture all of you colectively saying Yayyy). So, what do we need to know about this season?

Well, our favorite archivist, Jonny Sims, is on the run, wanted for murder of a Jon Doe that doesn't seem to show up on any police records, and is now hiding away at the house of his one remaining friend, his ex-girlfriend (played vicariously by his real life wife, Sasha Sienna) Georgie Barker, the (literally) fearless host of the (sadly only in-universe) non-fiction podcast What the Ghost? (WTG for short).

So, what, did the supernatural stuff finally get to him? Did he snap and take his paranoia to the next level, becoming a god and choosing to retire some no-name homeless guy from living? Nope, not even in the slightest actually. Calm down your inner Tim Stoker for a minute.

The John Doe in question was none other than Jurgen Leitner (or, as the fandom knows him, stupid idiot motherfucking Jurgen Leitner), the man, the myth, the legend and the face behind the name that adorned many of the cursed and supernatural tomes in the first two seasons. The two of them met in on less than idyllic terms in S2E39: Hide and Seek, after Leitner saves Jon from one of the NotThem that replaced Sasha (a.k.a. NotSasha). In S2E40: The Librarian, Leitner exposits about his now non-existent library of cursed tomes, his connection to Getrude and, most importantly, the Fourteen Fears. Jon is, understandably, so shocked by this information that he goes outside for a bit to smoke, relapsing back into his old addiction, leaving Leitner alone with the tape recorder. Into the room, however, comes in Elias Bouchard and, upon seeing Leitner converses briefly with him, further affirms that he's a threat to his further plans, picks up a metal pipe (which Jon used as a weapon whilst hiding away from NotSasha down in the tunnels below the Institute) and bashes him in the head with it several times (the incident which will become known in the fandom as Extended sounds of brutal pipe murder). The body is then discovered by Tim and Martin, with the former (already sick of his boss' creepy and paranoid behaviour) reporting the crime to the police.

This leads us into season three, which picks up only a mere few days after the end of the first.

(Art by: spookybri on X)

(2) The Writing

So, again, like with the first two seasons, the writing is absolutely stellar and I don't think me saying that really even phases anyone anymore. It's mature, it's dark, it's complex and it's breathtakingly beautiful and touching. And, again, just like with the first two seasons, season 3 manages to build on the ground established in the seasons that came before, deepen the puzzle and, well, keep the show to be engaging and fun (wow, I just called something that mainly explores the concepts of fear, trauma and grief fun, plesse kill me).

So, let's talk a bit about the Fourteen Fears? Shall we?

So, what we knew beforehand (mostly according to Leitner) is that the Fears (also known as The Powers and The Entities) are a group of malicious beings living on the very edges of our reality, from whom all of our fear originates that cannot enter our world, so they influencs it through things like monsters and Leitners.

Well, in this season, we finally get to learn more about these beings.

First off, unsurprisingly, we find out that some people see them as gods (quote from S3E9: Twice as Bright: Then all at once, I saw the faintest tongues of smoke creeping around his body. In an instant it was burning, and I was surrounded by that smell of matches and incense… mixed with an oily smell like cooking pork. And as he burned, I felt my senses sharpen. My limbs were alive with searing energy, and my heart was aglow with love; the agonising, terrifying love of something that I knew must be a god. My god. The lightless inferno of desolation, of pain and destruction. My tears of joy were nothing but steam.). Not really a big shock as we knew about the existence of two cults (The People's Church of the Divine Host and The Cult of the Lightless Flame) and two families (the Lukases and the Fairchilds) who devote their very existence to these beings and serving them in any way they can.

However, we finally get to know more about the beings themselves.

So, like I mentioned, there's 14 of them, and they are as follows (I'll describe them in alphabetical order, just to make it easier for myself):

1) The Buried

Fear of enclosed spaces, being entrapped or buried and being at the center of a crushing force you can't control.

2) The Corruption

Fear of rot, decay, illness, insects and everything that causes disgust and revulsion.

3) The Dark

Fear of the dark, the things that lurk within it, the unseen and the obscure. Most likely the oldest of the fears.

4) The Desolation

The fear of pain, loss, fire, burning and senselesss destruction.

5) The End

The fear of death and ending.

6) The Eye

The fear of being watched, followed or having one's secrets exposed.

7) The Flesh

The fear of getting your body twisted, turned into food or the realisation that we are just mere meat and bones.

8) The Hunt (a personal favorite of mine)

Fear of being chased, of becoming prey, as well as the fear of monsters.

9) The Lonely

The fear of complete isolation.

10) The Slaughter

The fear of pure, unpredictable, unmotivated violence, as well as the fear of sudden pain.

11) The Spiral

The fear of deception, lying, madness and not being able to trust your senses.

12) The Stranger

The fear of the unknown, the uncanny and the unfamiliar.

13) The Vast

The fear of heights, falling, vast open spaces, insignificance, meaninglessness and losing oneself in too much space.

14) The Web

The fear of being controlled and trapped against your will, of being unaware of one's own entrapment, of being forced to commit an act against one's own will, as well as manipulation and spiders.

Ever since we first found out about them from Leitner in S2E40: The Librarian, I just assumed that they were manifestations of our fears, however, TMA completely shatters that in the episode which pretty much just servs as an info dump for the lore of the show's universe, that being S3E31: Family Business (which I'll come back to shortly after this), where Gerard Keay, a spirit of an associate of the Magnus Institute's former archivist, Gertrude Robinson (and an absolute icon to all goths everywhere, including myself and my equally as obssesed with TMA best friend) has the following conversation with Jon:

GK: How much do you know about these things, the Eye and that?

JS: I don’t – Uh… they’re, they’re malicious. Many consider them god-like and t-they have the power to affect the world in unnatural ways, but they cannot directly exist within it, so they rely on avatars or, or servants that they corrupt and… sometimes monsters that they create. They use their power in ways small enough to stay hidden, a-and I think… I think they feed on our fear.

GK: No, they don’t feed on it. They are it.

JS: What? W-what do you mean?

GK: I mean what I said. These things, these forces, they are our fear. Deep fears. Primordial. Always looking for ways to grow and spread.

JS: No… B-B-But that doesn’t – I m-mean, it doesn’t make –

GK: What? So you thought it was coincidence that unknowable alien consciousnesses from beyond our universe just so happen to basically be all the things we’re terrified of?

JS: I – How?!

GK: No idea. Smarter people than me have died trying to figure that one out. I mean, maybe they appeared out of nothing the first time something felt afraid. Maybe they’re older than that, and they just got inspired by all the things that we dread. Did they make themselves from our fears, or are they why we’re afraid? I really don’t know.

That whole convo is just one phenomenally philosophical conversation on nature and history of fear, so I won't go any further as I want less experianced individuals with a atleast a tiny hint of desire to listen to the thing because it is phenomenal.

We also find out something else about the eldritch bastards. They don't operate on an individual scale, oftentimes blending in and cooperating with one another. To continue with a few other quotes from the convo I mentioned earlier:

JS: Fears change. Fears are-are-are cultural.

GK: A lot of them, yeah, but others are deeper than that. And when our fears change, so do these things. But it’s not quick. Gertrude reckons they’ve basically been the same since the Industrial Revolution. She and my mum both liked to follow Smirke’s list of fourteen.

JS: Th– I mean, there are a lot more than fourteen things to be afraid of in the world. Where do you draw the line?

GK: Hmmm. I always think it helps to imagine them like colours. The edges bleed together, and you can talk about little differences: “oh, that’s indigo, that’s more lilac”, but they’re both purple. I mean, I guess there are technically infinite colours, but you group them together into a few big ones. A lot of it’s kind of arbitrary. I mean, why are navy blue and sky blue both called blue, when pink’s an entirely different colour from red? Y’know? I don’t know, that’s just how it works.

And like colours, some of these powers, they feed into or balance each other. Some really clash, and you just can’t put them together. I mean, you could see them all as just one thing, I guess, but it would be pretty much meaningless, y’know, like… like trying to describe a… shirt by talking about the concept of colour.

O-Of course, with these things it’s not a simple spectrum, y’know, it’s more like –

JS: An infinite amorphous blob of terror bleeding out in every direction at once.

GK: Now you’re getting it.

JS: Like colours, but if colours hated me. Got it. Christ, I need a cigarette.

So, yeah, now we know exactly what it is the characters are fighting against and the hows and the whys of how the seemingly unconnected stories read by Jon over the course of the first two seasons seem to fit together. You see what I mean when I call this absolute writing genious?

Alright, so, I also mentioned the concept of avatars, right?

I'm sure your brain is either flashing images of James Cameron's giant alien smurf movie or from Nickelodeon's animated show about people with element bending powers, however, the way this concept is presented to us in The Magnus Archives is a tad bit different than both of those.

You see, in the universe of TMA, some people (or groups of people, as was the case with cults like The People's Church of the Divine Host and The Cult of the Lightless Flame or small family dynasties like the Lukases or the Fairchilds) either worship or devote their existence to the Entities and, as a sort of token of gratitude from them, recieve a gift in the form of supernatural abbilities related to certain aspects of the being they're following. For example, the Institute's whole purpose since it's foundation, was research and inquiry, which made it a prime feeding ground The Eye, unwillingly making all of it's employees it's avatars, in particular this process can linked to those in position of head archivist or the head of the Institute, making both Jon and Elias obvious avatars of it, as well as all of the others. This easily explains why all of them (especially Jon) are able to immediately heal themselves both mentally and physically, just by reading a statement and why their health slowly deteriorates after leaving the Instiute

However, the one thing I really liked about avatars as a concept is how they aren't just simple monsters or people with superpowers, but, rather, surprisingly deep metaphors. In a lot of the instances where we hear about how these individuals became what they are now we can see echoes of themes such as drug addiction, chronic depression, mental ilness, body dismorphia, a deep ruited trauma linking way back to the events hidden within one's childhood or even simply being left behind and unloved by mainstream society. This gives characters who could have easily been seen as cookie-cutter throwaway comic book-esque supervillains surprising depth and complexity, which results in the final product being a lot more nuanced and high brow than most horror and fantasy are these days.

Also, let's talk a bit about the word of our Lord and Saviour, The Stranger. So, like I said, The Stranger (also known by the names such as L'Etranger (which is pretty much the same thing, but in French) and I Do Not Know You) is the fear of the unkown, uncanny and the unfamiliar, whose servants and creations oftentimes disguise themselves as a wax museum, a taxidermy shop or a travelling circus. It's that powerful sense of terror that grips you when you're looking at something (or someone) you're supposed to recognize and which seemingly recognizes you, but you just cannot remember who they are in the slightest. It's also the entity whose episodes messed both me and my best friend up the most, mostly due to our innate fear of all things clown and circus related.

The most sacred item to this entity is the oldest piece of taxidermy known to man; a taxidermied gorilla (reffered to in the show simply as Gorilla Skin) crafted way back in the Phoenitian capitol of Carthage in the 5th century. The skin is the main mcguffin of the season, as The Stranger's servants, acolytes and followers need it for The Dance, a ritual performed by an artificially created humanoid creature (known as, and you better sit down for this, The Dancer) which will bring forth The Unknowing, a cataclismic event that will result in The Stranger's full presence and reign within our reality. Needless to say, the whole world goes coocoo if this happens. The Dancer, however, fails at finding the skin, as it was destroyed by Getrude many years ago, so it does the reasonable thing all entities do and just skins the corpses of her and Leitner and wears them as it's own. A positively charming mental image I'm sure. You're welcome. What I like about The Unkowing is that, at the same time, it's very loud, bombastic (those who know what I'm talking about will probably roll on the floor laughing whilst reading this) and graphically violent (I think we're all properly shocked that a storyline that involves brutal skinnings of dead and living humans contains graphic violence), but it's also terrifying on a psychologycal level because, again, as this show managed to demonstrate time and time again, the fear of the unknown is far deeper, darker and more disturbing than any other kind of fear. So, imagine finding yourself in a world that feels exactly like the one you've been through yesterday, but, at the same time, feels just alien and unrecognizable enough that you can feel a shiver of unease creeping up and down your spine. Plus, there's always the threat of being knocked out, skinned and replaced, so, yeahhh, not exactly the ideal utopia one would hope comes with a cosmic overlord.

For a moment I'd also like to linger on an episode that stuck out to me the most. That being S3E31: Family Business. You know how the showrunners of the surprisingly awesome animated fantasy show RWBY (2013-...) had to make an entire separate series (World of Remenant) just to explain how the universe of their show works? Yeah, that's pretty much the case for this episode too, as we learn basically everything there is to know about the Fears, their followers, Getrude's exploits to stop the various rituals intended on summoning the Entities, as well as about the man, the myth, the legend: Gerard Keay! It's pretty much just S2E40: The Librarian, but with extra content. And just like with The Librarian, Sims proves that he can make a fully expository episode fit in perfectly naturally into the plot progression, dialoge and story of the show, without the end product feeling forced or contrived. Again, how many times do I have to say that this man is a writing genious? So, what made this one stand out in my eyes if it's simply a wiki page for the show? Well, because, whilst TMA does present itself as a mix of cosmic/urban horror, mystery, supernatural thriller and urban fantasy, at it's heart, it's a twisted tale of human tragedy and no episode has managed to showcase that better than this one. We see Gerard clearly harbours resentment towards both Getrude and his own mother, Mary Keay, as they had all merely used him as help in gaining more information and artifacts in regards to the supernatural. In Mary's case, it was because she desired knowledge and power greater than those harboured by the academics at the Institute (GK: Huh. Well, she was also, um, ‘goal-orientated’. Ruthless. But at least Gertrude tried to do something worthwhile with it. My mum only had her ambitions. She’d never have even admitted it, though. She was too proud for that. She saw herself as real working class, always said the occult was just a club for rich boys playing politics with things they didn’t understand. Reckoned her tradition was less the academic and more the, uh...

JS: V-Village witch?

GK: You sure you don’t know her?

Yeah. But deep down what she wanted wasn’t all that different from the ivory tower idiots she hated. Y’know, I think, secretly, she dreamed of starting a little mystic dynasty of her own. With me.). Both of them had planned on using him as a tool in enacting their deeds, wheater they'd be for selfish reasons or otherwise, and he ended up as nothing more than a puppet until his death, but, what hurts even more was that he didn't stay dead, with Gertrude trapping his soul in a Leitner (Dying isn’t so bad. It’s staying dead that sucks.). After Gerard finally finishes his statement and exposits everything about the Fears and the people, Jon dismisses him, stealing his page from the book and promising to burn it and set his soul free resulting in an incredibly touching goodbye that made me sob like a little kid, even though I was in the middle of the street whilst listening to it over my earphones. Then I ranted about how much I loved it to my best friend for about 10 minutes over the phone. It was the perfect combination of emotional, heartbreaking and powerful and I adore it to bits. There's a reason why it's the only episode that I was able to finda full animatic of on YouTube.

But enough about the monsters and the episodes, let's see how they develop the characters, shall we?

Well, we finally get to see some new light shine on old faces.

Remember how, in the finale of season one, Jon said I've always believed in the supernatural. Well this time we get to learn when this always first started, as, in S3E1, Jon recounts his earliest traumatic encounter with the otherworldy, which, in his case, was a Leitner titled A Guest For Mr. Spider and the eponymous supernatural being that was linked with it. We see how Jon's fear of the unkown gradually turned into studios curiosity, which, eventually, landed him with a job in the Institute. We see the roots of Jon's trauma and resentment he clearly shows towards Leitner before actually meeting the man, how the root of his skepticism and poshness is actually just a wonderfully crafted mask to hide oneself from the fear of the unkown powers and beings that seem to follow his every move (which is, in all honesty, a rather fitting metaphor, as the main antagonist of the season is literally the fear of the unknown). As much as the whole concept of character with supernatural-related trauma is rather cliche, the way Sims writes it feels organic, geniuene and, in the end, does make sense in terms of the lore and story layed out in the show so far. Oh, and he's apparently a 90s kid despite his hair slowly becoming grayer lol.

Similarly to Jon, Tim gets a lot more development too, with the audience getting to see just how much of a shattered shell of his former self he had become.

In the first two seasons, Tim was pretty much, for all intents and purposes, a goofball. The main joke surrounding him in the first season was that he flirted the answers out of various relevant to the case public service workers. He also has probably my favorite series of comedic moments in the whole podcast, as, throught season 2, his intent on shipping Jon and Basira leads to a few exceptionally funny scenes. That all changes, however, with season 3.

After becoming one of the many victims of Jon's relentless paranoia and finding out that his friend and coworker was killed by a monster, Tim becomes a shambling mess, constantly being angry at Jon and blaming him for the Institute's misfortunes (No. No. You listen, for once. I was fine in research. Happy. Then you asked me to be transferred here and suddenly it’s all monsters and killers and secret passages, oh my!And the worst thing – the actual worst thing – is that no one here has my back. With any of it! Elias doesn’t care, Martin just wants a tea party, and Sasha – ugh – and you! – you’re treating me like I’m somehow to blame for it all, like I didn’t suffer the worst right alongside you!) However, we do learn that there's an even deeper reason for this hatred, as well as his eventual employment at the Institute, as, many years ago, he lost his brother to what's pretty much confirmed to be a heavily corrupted spirit of history's most famous clown: Joseph Grimaldi. Henceforth, Tim harbours grudge and anger towards The Stranger (who often disguises itself and it's acolytes as a travelling circus, with most of the episodes focused on the entity having clowns, circus, the theatre or some other form of entertainment as a key plot element), resulting in his interactions with the rest of the cast being more spiteful and him throwing his all into becoming a force of unstoppable rage. Whilst most of the fandom is pretty split about Tim's treatment of other characters, I actually had no issues with it. Is it clearly shitty behaviour? Sure. But, these characters are supposed to be very flawed, rash and, most importantly human, which is exactly why I love them to bits and why I feel like more aspiring writers should learn from this podcast.

As per Martin, this season wasn't too focused on the lonely little bean, but, we do finally get a confirmation that he has a crush on Jon (probably the first time I gave two shits about a romantic storyline in anything ever), we learn that he has some (surprisingly non-supernatural) trauma of his own, plus he gets to be an absolute badass and isn't that just precious?

(Art by: Julia Bat on Pinterest)

(3) The Performances

Wow, that was... surprisingly longer than I expected. So, uhh, now let's talk performances.

As per usual, the main cast absolutely shines in every single aspect and I loved each and every one of them (honestly, Mike LeBau as Tim might give my personal favorite performance out of the bunch), however, as I did in my review of season two, I'd like to highlight some new faces (literally in this case), and, this time, that honor goes to Nikola Orsinov.

To borrow a joke from an extremely funny recap of the podcast I saw on YouTube:Have you ever seen a clown and thought to yourself What if that thing never got fucking tired? Yep. That's pretty much Nikola in a nutshell.

Despite only showing up in this season, she has persistantly remained as an iconic character in her own right. Even if you've never listened to the podcast, you've probably heard her most iconic quote (How could I sound anything, silly? I’m plastic. I don’t even have a voicebox. I had to borrow this one.) atleast somewhere. So, yeah, uhh, Nikola is The Dancer I mentioned way back at the start of the post and she's pretty much the scariest thing about the show. Don't believe me?

It's a tall, thin manequin covered in patches and patches of human skin, dressed as a circus ringmaster that's inhabited by the demonic, corrupted soul of a clown. Yes, positively charming, I agree. What greatly enhances the fear factor, however, is greatly increased by Jessica Law's phenomenal performance. The way this thing describes the pleasures of skinning people alive (always with a joyfoul and even sing-songy tone) is just incredibly unsettling and I'm not afraid to admit (pun fully intended) that it got under my skin on pretty much every occasion it poked it's ugly head (and don't even get me started on the way this thing asks Shall I?). And, if you know me, you know that the more something scares me, the more I love it and, all I can say is, congrats to everyone involved in creating such a wonderfully terrifying character that haunts my dreams to this day.

(Art by: mlconstantine on DeviantArt)

So, would I reccomend listening to the third season of The Magnus Archives? And why did I love it as much as I did?

Season three of The Magnus Archives exemplifies exactly why this podcast works on pretty much every level. It's tense, incredibly atmospheric, the character interactions are just as charming as they are realistic and pretty much every episode (be it a statement or not) made me geniuenely shake with fear and think twice before turning on the lights. Suffice to say, like all the others, it's quite brilliant in every aspect and will satisfy the hungries fans of the medium. I finished the fourth season yesterday and am about four episodes into the fifth/final one. And as much as I'm dreading the conclusion to this emotional rollercoaster, I still embrace every new adventure like a parent embraces a child.

(Art by: UstalavianAgent on Reddit)

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