I've been meaning to get into this for a long time. I found a playlist called Magnus Archives Complete Collection with 137 videos. Is this the entire series thus far?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdiUHYa … ixG_A5gBKJ

Ooh, a playlist. That's even better.

Okay
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For those of you who know the series, this won't matter, and I might even be wrong. Also note that I'm staying way the hell away from the wiki or other spoilers, so while I don't mind vague ideas or hints or whatnot, I absolutely don't want any spoiler bombs dropped.

Anyway, here's my theory.

Every episode so far has to do with some sort of fear, and every episode has to do with something weird related to that fear. First is fear of being snatched, or perhaps of something beyond your comprehension. Then fear of being compelled, also fear of dead things and the unknown. Fear of compulsion again, plus the weird hypnotic table. Fear of vertigo, wide-open spaces, our relative smallness in the world, and possibly of lightning? Then fear of flesh, perhaps religious fear. Then fear of corruption, pestilence, microscopic living things. Then of slaughter, mindless violence. Attached to every one is at least some sort of otherworldly activity. My bet is, there are multiple entities in play here, and each is somehow associated with a fear or group of fears.
That's all I've got right now, but bear in mind, I'm something of a horror buff, and I look for patterns.

Little hints and clues and warnings and whatever, I'm fine with. I don't need to exist in a complete vacuum, or I'd never have posted here or read any part of the thread. I just wouldn't want any big reveals dropped on me, especially without any warning.

So I've definitely been devouring this series and just finished episode 80, which is the end of season 2. Shit just got real in a pretty big way.

Most of my theories that I started with earlier were either right or at least partially right. Beyond
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Favourite entities are The Buried, The Spiral and The Stranger. Not a huge fan of Slaughter, honestly, and Flesh gets kind of old.
Some of my favourite episodes, in no particular order:
- an episode with a coffin that sings when it rains, I've mentioned this before
- an episode with a book that summons ozone and vertigo (also mentioned before, I believe)
- an episode where a man gets trapped in a box for days
- an episode that takes place in a deep cave, and has a really creepy voice clip near the end
- an episode on a subway train
- an episode that takes place on a space station
- an episode in a nursing home with John Amhurst
- an episode with a book that predicts death
- an episode involving a shipwreck
- an episode involving taxidermy (hello, Mr. Angler Fish, sir, please don't eat me)

Really, the only episodes I straight-up dislike so far are the one about wartime and the two involving Trevor Herbert. I'm just...I'm sorry, vampires suck.

@Jayde:

Spoilers
Up until
Episode 80
Did you look up the names for the Entities or are you just really good at guessing?

Personally my favourites are probably Stranger, Spiral and Eye. Episode 47, A New Door, when we meet Michael for the first time has always been a favourite of mine, not to mention the writing in episode 74, Fatigue.

And yes, shit definitely got real. That's one thing I like about the finales. Everything just gets worse.

Flesh is a weird fear, but you'll learn more about that one later on.

I personally didn't care much for the Buried for a very long time, but there's an episode or two in the fourth season that changed my view quite a lot. Maybe it's because I've always kind of liked small spaces, though being trapped without nough room to breathe definitely does not sound like a good time.

Have you given episode 35, Old Passages, a relisten yet? I like that one for the subtle lore dump.

Also, do you have a favourite/least favourite character? Anyone you're looking forward to learning more about?

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Ah, that makes sense. Even in your first post you managed to use a lot of words that are used for their names, which I found kind of interesting. Not sure if you had looked them up at that point or if you were just lucky Though I guess slaughter, flesh and corruption aren't particularly unusual words.

I remember having a lot of fun trying to piece together the different fears around halfway through season 2. Old Passages was pretty helpful in that regard since we get to hear about a lot of them through their respective hallways.
The Distortion has an absolutely fantastic voice actor, and that laugh. I love it.
I Elias is a slimy bastard, but I really like his character. Depending on where you are in the podcast by now, you'll know a bit more about him.
And you'll definitely learn more about the rest of them as well. Many characters from the early episodes will be mentioned later on, like the Anglerfish victim Sarah Baldwin showing up in episode 28 or Michael Crew showing up like four times in the first two seasons. That guy always fascinated me, probably because Ex Altiora was the spooky Vast book that got me hooked, even if he was only briefly mentioned in that fourth episode.
Also fun fact, if you didn't listen to the credits, but Leitner and Gertrude are voiced by Jonny's parents which is pretty cool if you ask me.

Another fun fact. There was a contest on the Magnus subreddit where people voted for the best episodes amongst the first 100. First place was 81, A Guest for Mr Spider, second place was episode 2, Do Not Open, and third place was episode 85, Upon the Stair.81 was extremely creepy to me based on the descriptions in it, and has inspired a whole lot of fan art, though most episodes have by this point.

Do you have any predictions for the future plot/character arcs?

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All good theories/thoughts. And yeah, after the end of S2, the first one seems pretty likely.

That coffin is a weird one. When we learnt it had a staircase inside I was extremely confused. Notbecause it makes no physical sense, which, well, it doesn't, obviously, but more because I had a hard time figuring out which entity it belonged to. Coffin suggest The End, but it's also made of yellow wood and is warm to the touch like the doors of The Distortion.

That's one thing I really enjoy about the show. You get a lot of tiny pieces that you can then start to put together over time when you get the blanks filled in better. Although the balance between horror and mystery is a difficult one, and some of the horror definitely goes away later in the show when you know more of what's happening. At least the sort of horror that makes you wonder what's happening and how things work/fit together. I guess it's still full of potential horror from you knowing some of the answers though. You hear a story about a weird book that reeks of ozone and gives you vertigo and a man with a lightning scar throwing himself off a tower. Well, that's odd. YOu learn a bit more and suddenly he shows up years later, watching someone from across the street. And then things just go down hill, or should I say ladder, from there, and you know good old mister Crew probably caused it, but you don't know why. You just know that him showing up is probably going to be bad for someone's general health. I like that evolution, even if the way the stories unsettle me has changed.

I know a lot of the episodes by this point are on their YouTube channel, in playlists arranged by season. Perhaps you could download those?