The Spiderwick Chronicles (2024) – Episode 6 Recap & Review

1028 Teeth

Episode 6 of The Spiderwick Chronicles begins with Jared visiting Emiko in the hospital and trying to revive her sleep sickness by consulting one of the pages from the Field Guide. Simon arrives and they argue, yet again, because of their conflicting attempts at saving everyone.

Meanwhile, Valentina discloses that she’s half-human and half-fairy and that Lucinda wished her to kill Mulgarath, when she tried, she failed and now, she’s oath bound. She has been training warriors who can hold the vorpal sword to kill him ever since, but most of them perished including Bree’s mother. Since, Valentina is half-fairy, she cannot hold the vorpal sword, the only sword that can pierce the ogre’s heart and kill him.  

Mallory visits Jared with this information, that they need to find the vorpal sword. Jared has an altered vision where Lucinda tells him about Goblin Market being connected to a local convenience store.

Back at the Brauer residence, the dragons are dying as Dr. Brauer manipulates Simon into thinking that he’s the hero who is going to save the world. He also makes up a false story about the real Dr. Brauer helping Mulgarath and getting eaten by the troll. He presents himself as someone who wants to make the world survivable for the fae and Simon is convinced.

Meanwhile, Jared, Hatcher and Mallory meet Bree in the convenience store. They meet Hubert who is to take them to the Goblin Market. They leave through the back door and find themselves in woods. They make a trail of broken bread since the Goblin Market continuously keep moving. Jared receives Simon’s call and Simon warns him against Hurbert, who seems to be a hag, notorious for gambling, trapping innocent people and for having an incredible sense of hearing.

While Jared and the others are away, Simon and Calliope visit the house to find the pages. Calliope, however, soon leaves, since Jared had iron sprayed everywhere in his room. Simon tries to climb up to the attic but is stuck since Jared has super glue everywhere.

At the city council, a case is fought between Tanner and Dr. Brauer for the psychiatric hospital. Dr. Brauer sneakily add his fingernail into Tanner’s tea. While the two are in the bathroom, Tanner starts feeling upset and grows mushrooms onto himself. This makes him zombie-like, making him follow Mulgarath’s puppet. Dr. Brauer confesses that he killed Tanner’s wife in the same way and orders Tanner to take his case against the hospital back.

Jared and the team order the vorpal sword which cost them 1024 teeth and Hubert adds a pumpkin spice latte for 1028 teeth. Jared proposes a gamble to win that many teeth and Hubert agrees mischievously. The game is rock, paper, scissors, and every win is worth the double of the turns. Jared loses quite a lot and Bree takes over. She loses too and they now owe him 512 teeth for 9 turns lost. Jared suggests Mallory to change her hand at the last minute since Hubert is able to hear their muscles and predict their turn. She does exactly that and they win 1024 teeth, snatch the sword and escape. They change the bread trail, trapping Hubert in the Goblin Market.

The team go back to the Spiderwick house to find Simon stuck and Mallory helps him off against Jared’s mumblings of “traitor”.  Jared opens the box to find only the hilt without the sword and loses his mind. He becomes suspicious of everybody and ends up hitting Hatcher, breaking his helmet which he never takes off because of extreme body dysmorphia. Helen and Dr. Brauer enter the enter and get Jared admitted to the hospital.

Meanwhile, Valentina tells Mallory and Bree that the sword is real. Nothing happens when Mallory holds it but when Bree takes over, the sword lights up. At this time, Valentina sprouts mushrooms as well, and one of the dragons die at the Brauer’s. Jared sees a vision of Lucinda who tells him to “believe”.   

The Episode Review

The best scene which has some sort of a reminiscence with the magical is definitely the Goblin Market scene. Other than that, we are still mostly devoid of anything properly magical.

The episodes seem to have quite a few plot holes, for instance, though we know how Tanner become a mushroomed zombie, it’s not quite clear what happened with Valentina. In the previous few episodes, where Thimbletack mentions that he’s afraid to leave the house’s protection. But if the house is protected, how can Mulgarath and other evil fae enter it? When Helen looked through Jared’s stone, why couldn’t she see Mulgarath’s true form?

How could he have done that? We have no answers to these persistent mysteries…