The Magnus Protocol Reviews: “Epilogue”

“Epilogue” Is A Nice And Quick Narrative Inclusion

I’m simply calling this episode “Epilogue” for the sack of clarity—and this isn’t going to be a long review. All told the actual episode’s content is around six minutes. And, in those six minutes, it feels like we didn’t get an epilogue at all.

We got a prologue. We got setup. Two different scenes occur at around the same time, showing what problems our characters have to deal with in the aftermath of “Dead End Job.” And, as I have many times before—just this time in miniature—I’m going to review the sections separately.

The first to talk about, the shorter one, is what happened to Sam. I had expected him to end up in a modern city, or something familiar. Maybe even meeting up with characters from The Magnus Archives right away. But now, with this short scene, there are three broad possibilities I see. One is that this is just some other, unknown dimension. Which would be kind of disappointing. It could also be a domain, and he’s trapped somewhere before the fears left the Earth. Or, thirdly, this is somewhere more expected, but, like, underneath it or something. The scene is so short that I can’t really extrapolate much else from context, but I do like that we know he’s alive for certain. That would’ve been an annoying cliffhanger to let sit for months.

Not the same can be said for Colin. I have said before that Colin was playing out his own little statement-style horror in the background. And it appears to have ended the same way it tends to. We don’t get a description yet, but I’m betting his fate is very body horror in nature. It’s actually quite interesting that Gwen, who keeps hoping that she can get control, freaks out, while Alice reacts sadly to seeing her friend dead. It also now leaves Gwen with her first act as boss being hiding a dead body. So, that’s potent storytelling all by itself.

It does feel odd to give any more of a conclusion to this review than that, though. Potent storytelling can carry six minutes without issue, and that’s all that was needed. Yes, “Epilogue” is well-written and well-paced and well-acted and manages to include a solid horror moment—don’t get me wrong. But I can’t say much else about it. I am looking forward to February when new The Magnus Protocol episodes return, because I think that’s when the story will really get going.      

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