Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell Recap: Arabella

But we’ll get there, for Arabella’s predicament is just one of several simmering power struggles near to boiling over as we approach the end of this miniseries. The line, “He has poisoned your mind,” is uttered twice, but it can be applied to any number of character pairings: Arabella and The Gentleman, Stephen and The Gentleman, Norrell and Lascelles, Sir Pole and Norrell, Strange and The Raven King.
First, however, Napoleon. Last week, Strange was  reenlisted into the war effort against the French after Napoleon’s renewed encroachments. This week, he finds himself at Waterloo, and truly living up to his “Merlin” nickname. He makes it rain—literally—and douses a fire with a nifty well-water spiral. He plucks French soldiers off a wall by weaponizing some vines. Then he crushes the life out of a dude with a giant fist made of mud. M-A-G-I-C.
Don’t listen to treatises on the Battle of Waterloo that talk about fortifications and flanking; it was our nervous little wizard who won the day, and the war. Having done so, he returns home to the woman who is his wife (for now), and the book he plans to write all about English magic. He’s ready to put his feet up by the fire and become a theoretical magician…save for the uptick in twitchiness and moody long-distance staring. Resurrecting hell-zombies and mud-crushing ax-wielders may have irrevocably darkened Strange’s outlook on life.
Meanwhile, post-breakup, Norrell is doing what he does best: fretting. You’ll recall that Strange wrote a withering review of Norrell and Lascelles’s literary effort, ultimately tanking the book. Now Norrell would like to do the same to Strange—because feelings—and he’s being spurred forward by his weaselly hanger-on, despite the pleadings of poor, downtrodden Childermass.
“Whatever wrong did I do him?” Norrell asks to no one in particular. (Strange tries to pull the same question about Norrell to Childermass later.) Magic may be back in England, but self-awareness is not.
None of this is particularly irksome to Strange, as he gets in a little canoodling with Arabella. They talk making babies, and then start practicing. Meanwhile, a new episode of The Gentleman’s Wife Swamp is about to begin. The oaken chrysalis he had Stephen yank from the muck last week is hatched and ready to go, unleashing Arabella’s doppelgänger to roam the countryside, barefoot and dazed.
Stephen, now willingly following The Gentleman’s orders, tricks Arabella into traveling to Lost Hope by preying on her sympathies for Lady Pole. Strange awakens to find the Mrs. missing after a night of procreatin’.
Just as the search party gives up hope, the Creature from the Faerie Lagoon stumbles up to the homestead. With the appearance of a clammy, dazed Arabella, she peppers Strange with questions: Do you take me as your wife? Do you renounce all other wives? Does this peat residue make me look fat? Strange, thinking he’s very much already done this, soothes the imposter and proclaims her his only wife.
Little does he know he just sealed his real mate’s fate. As she arrives at Lost Hope, Arabella is told by The Gentleman that she’s been bargained away by her husband for a piece of wood. Well, it sure sounds bad when you put it like that. As is his way, the pompadoured fiend commences the ball and hypnotizes her into gaiety.
This is a nadir for Lady Pole, who has now watched her last friend get seduced into the life of a dancing queen. It is also an opportunity: Mssrs. Segundus and Honeyfoot, non-magicians as they may be, have stumbled upon a pattern to the “nonsense” Lady Pole spews—all her stories are fairy tales, and they may contain clues to the message she’s trying to deliver. As they hit on an epiphany, there’s a knock on the door, which opens to reveal crazy uncle Vinculus, the street magician and traveling hemp salesman, cackling about the return of The Raven King. Because it had been too long without that sort of thing.
Meanwhile, Strange is busy trying to bring Bogbella back to life, because there have certainly been no red flags about this procedure in the preceding four episodes. He throws every trick in his arsenal at the task, and even stoops to ask Norrell for guidance, only to receive radio silence. Strange does manage to summon The Gentleman, though he never reveals himself.
It turns out that Strange could sense his presence, however. After Childermass reveals to Strange that Norrell plans to silence his forthcoming book, Strange short circuits. He rage-enters a mirror and tumbles into Norrell’s study, where he startles all of HQ by railing against Norrell for his censorship and, mostly, for his failure to help bring back the alleged Arabella. Kicked out onto the street, Strange maturely pelts the house with rocks, only to be tackled and loaded into the paddy wagon.
Arrested for throwing rocks? That seems harsh. But no, Strange has been arrested for something far greater. Someone has been spreading (or at least fanning) rumors that Strange murdered Arabella by witchcraft.
In his cell, Strange unleashes a manic babble, realizing that he was able to summon a faerie; the son of a gun just stayed invisible. He decides the only way to see the faerie is to drive himself mad—it seems to work for Lady Pole and Vinculus. With that in mind, he hops through a puddle and triggers the alarm for a prison break.
And we are left to pick up the pieces, presumably alongside Childermass, who has to be 1,000-percent-done with magicians at this point. Though, for now, he says he’s not yet finished with Norrell, which is either a cry for help or the start of something devious. Either way, we’ll see you back here next week for more dispatches from the madhouse.