Basic Superlatives: “This World Inverted”

This episode of Freeform’s Shadowhunters featured convenient-as-hell seelie magic sending us through the looking glass, Valentine as a kooky-but-cool boss, and Alec as a party planner. Check out some of our bite-size bests from episode 1×10.

 

1: Seelie Ex Machina:

Meliorn can do all the cool things.

Last episode’s cliffhanger had Meliorn telling Clary that he could help her find Valentine. It’s simple, really. It just involves the use of a little seelie magic to open a portal to an alternate universe. And Clary’s necklace – the one through which she can see Valentine, and vice versa – is actually from said alternate universe (you see, seelies sense these things). So, all you gotta do is go through the looking glass and boom, Bob’s your uncle…or Valentine’s your father, or whatever. Oh, and seelies can also pull swords out of the ground because, you know, the earth provides and stuff.

 

2: Best Fake-Out:

Luke kills Simon “Demonic Murderer” Lewis.

You’ve never seen a buddy cop team-up quite like this one. A vampire and a NYPD cop join together to absolve falsely accused suspects in open murder cases. Who else here would watch a whole series based off of that premise? With Detective Fisk from internal affairs accusing Luke of committing multiple demonic murders (why can’t suspicious mundanes just leave Luke alone?), Luke recruited Simon for an elaborate Fake-Out in which Simon played the part of a psychotic serial killer in order to throw Fisk off Luke’s scent. They were even able to convincingly fake Simon’s death thanks to his imperviousness to bullets (side note: does this mean Simon’s body will be riddled with bullets now until the end of time?). Also, guess Simon being in that body bag was just for us because Fisk didn’t even bother taking a peek!

 

3: Life of the Party:

AU!Valentine owns his madness.

“People said I was mad, so I owned it.” Only in this universe, Valentine’s actually a stand-up guy – one who employs the Lightwood siblings, holds poker nights with Simon, and is a good father and husband to Clary and Jocelyn, respectively. The irony of this version of him wearing the Mad Hatter hat is curiouser and curiouser! While he did not plan the Alice in Wonderland-themed party per se (that particular honor goes to AU!Alec), AU!Valentine was definitely the Life of the Party. That hat made quite the fashion statement and he exuded the perfect party-going charisma.

 

4: Cutest Meet Cute:

Malec meet for the first time…again.

The Magnus we know hates party crashers. But here, he was a bona fide doe-eyed pro at it – at least enough to have AU!Alec thoroughly intrigued. After a pretty blatant once-over, Alec swooped in to rescue (a very flustered) AU!Magnus. Parallels to the Shadow World version of Malec were in abundance as the two shared a fancy drink and some scorching hot chemistry. At least that’s what they started to do before Magnus had to run off to help Clary, but that only intrigued Alec further. “Playing hard to get. I love a challenge.”

 

5: Episode MVP:

AU!Magnus keeps Clary’s shit together.

Oh, Clary, how wrong you were in assuming AU!Jace would be your anchor to the real world. The barista hair model was so scared by the sight of a demon, we were afraid he was going to give himself a nosebleed. No, the real Episode MVP here was AU!Magnus. His dorky commercial managed to remind Clary about her own reality before they’d even met! And once they did meet, he gave himself a crash course on his long-dormant magic and found Clary her portal home. Thanks, Magnus Bane. You really do help people find their way!