INSIDIOUS: I appreciate that the show doesn't even try to hide the fact that the mysterious and sinister green haired man and red haired woman are actually the green haired and red haired Monsters. They come in, dripping with malice, and later in the episode when the lady Monster is fighting the group we see her partner refer to her by her human alias, without even any fanfare.
Everyone seems to take Phil's return well, what with all the kingdom in mourning and the upheaval and the solid gold statue of Phil we saw in the last episode. But everyone's cool about it, they all just like Phil that much. Of course they still have to figure out who is behind this dastardly plot! It is a mystery!
But after the Monsters attack we are brought to a recurring plot element each season: Lina losing her magic. Back in season 1 it was due to some unfortunate connection to biology, but this time it's just a straight up curse. Though if Monsters can do this whenever they want then it's a wonder why it's not the first thing they try when they go up against someone like Lina. Not the best strategists, I guess!
JOURNEY: Oh hey this word actually appears in the real episode title, that's cool!
So upon being cursed Lina does the most logical thing and set off on her own to find an old sage she's only heard stories about. Look, I understand wanting to keep the heavy hitters around Phil to protect him, but like, send a few royal guards or something! Or else Lina will be forced to team up with the first idiots she trips over.
And then she runs into Martina and Xellos.
Martina's infatuation with Xellos is one of my favorite parts of her weird, weird character arc. The two of them are weirdly good together, in a dysfunctional way. Of course, it's not enough to keep her from messing with Lina, but this episode is more or less Martina's last hurrah as a directly antagonistic force and this is where she and Lina start to turn from enemies to frenemies.
And, ok, I need to go on a tangent. Way back early in Season 1 when I was trying the dub out I mentioned that side characters with brief appearances tend to get the worst dub performances, and I specifically mentioned there was a character in Season 2 that was just absolutely godawful. And here she is.
Runan. The sage. Technically Runan's granddaughter, but whatevs. I have absolutely no idea how this performance was accepted. I'm not even sure what her voice actor is trying to go for. Every line, every delivery, every word is atrocious. In the sub she does sound like a very young child, so maybe they were trying to make her sound childlike and naive, but they're using a voice that's like 10 years too old for the role and also the voice can't act. I came into this episode knowing this performance was bad and I was still dumbfounded by it. It's so bad as to be baffling.
The Monster of the week in this episode isn't a whole lot better, in fact if it wasn't appearing in the same episode as Runan it would be an easy contender for worst performance, but he's almost competent by comparison.
Anyway. Dub gripes aside, Runan tries to cure Lina, Martina effs it all up, they all get in way over their head, and Xellos actually has to do a thing. (oh god speaking of dubs, all of Xellos's english line deliveries here are also bad, but they also sound so much better next to Runan's. THAT PERFORMANCE IS SO BAD IT MAKES DUB XELLOS SEEM GOOD!) We get a pretty cool badass moment from Xellos as he saves the day, but rather than be concerned about why this Monster seemed to know Xellos or at how powerful he is, Lina just demands he sell her his +20 MAG PWR accessories to compensate for her curse debuff.
Oh and Martina pulls some book out of an old cauldron but that's not important.