A week after the portal to Asgard was opened and Joanna was poisoned with argentium, Freya cooks up a memory potion that will be ingested by her family in hopes of remembering what exactly happened that fateful day. While Wendy is out in the woods chasing after a shadowy figure that she thinks came through the portal, Victor is up in Joanna’s room helping her make it through another rough patch in her treatment. He’s forced to tie her down to the bed and bleed her out with a blade, allowing leech-like creatures to make their way into the open wounds and eat away the argentium. The screaming, as painful as it might be to hear, is actually a good sign, says Freya, in that it means her mother is fighting for her life.
Ingrid walks back into the house after waking up in the front yard for the third time in a week, her sleepwalking the latest issue that she must deal with. Freya is upset at Killian not reaching out to her this far away from the wedding and as Wendy explains that the figure she’s seen is cloaked and has an evil, hungry aura, Dash tries to clean up the Gardiner attic and burn some mementos from his relationship with Freya. However, his conscience won’t let him forget what happened at the boatyard and sure enough, a vision of Killian pops up, taunting him about what happened and how he’s a murderer. When Dash’s anger at his brother sparks a fire in the fireplace, Killian leaves, with the doctor perplexed at what’s wrong with him and whether it’ll ever get better.
Joanna makes it out of bed and down to the kitchen with the intention of drinking the memory potion and helping the girls with their search. Though this potion is Freya’s strongest yet, allowing her family to see visions of the portal opening and the shadowy figure stepping through, none of them can make out any faces, meaning that they’ve not made any progress in protecting themselves. At the hospital, Dash encounters a man claiming that a shadow chased him into the woods, a man with the same symbol on his stomach that the shadowy figure Wendy encountered has on his chest. Meanwhile, Freya opens the music box that Killian gave her and sees her own vision, this time of a safe, healthy Killian in a wooded area. The two embrace, only for her to pull her hand back and note that he’s bleeding. Killian then collapses, laying dead before Freya and forcing her out of the trance she was in.
Over at the library, Ingrid, trying to be adventurous by wearing new earrings, tells Hudson about a career opportunity that she has – a local university is seeking someone to curate historic documents related to witchcraft. However, they’re only looking at people with a PhD, meaning that she and her unfinished dissertation are left out in the cold. Or they would’ve been, had she not told Dr. Foster that she had her PhD in history. Ingrid being Ingrid, she regrets the deception and plans on being honest, thinking that she could score points for initiative. Wendy shows up at the library later looking for a book and after calming Freya down regarding her strengthening powers of premonition, telling her niece that she’ll read her tarot later, she finds what she’s looking for, an herb guide that could help Joanna. The only problem is a strange man also wans the book, claiming that he has an herb garden. The two flirt until he tells her that there’s another copy on the shelf and that he wanted that particular copy because he wanted to win. Back at the Beauchamps, Joanna wakes up and confides in Victor just how scared she is and how helpless she feels being cooped up in bed while her family is in danger. He assures her, though, that he’s going to be there for as long as she needs him.
Before Dash gets into an MRI machine to scan his brain, fearful that something could be wrong with him physically, another vision of Killian pops up. This one tells him that what’s wrong isn’t scientific and again taunts him 
for what happened at the boatyard. During a backyard get together, Freya gets urged to relax and allow herself to have another vision, while Joanna has a seizure that Victor later tells Ingrid and Freya isn’t anything to worry about. When they leave, though, he admits to Wendy that the argentium in Joanna’s body is multiplying and that she might not have long left. However, there’s a plant in the Amazon that could hold the key to her treatment; the only problem is that it could take three days for him to go down there, track it down, and return, and those are three days that Joanna doesn’t have to spare. Ingrid makes it to her interview with Dr. Foster, although her tardiness earns her his scorn before the two can begin speaking about the position. Immediately, she’s honest about the fib on the phone and even though she rationalizes what she did, claiming that she just wanted a fair shot, he won’t hire her due to the lack of a doctoral degree.
That night, Ingrid heads to The Bent Elbow to talk to Freya, complaining that despite being a bad ass witch, everything’s still hard. But when Hudson suggests that they do a spell similar to the one that resulted in Barb’s pregnancy, Ingrid balks, only to acquiesce when Freya encourages her to use magic. Back at the hospital, Dash’s patient tells him that many more will die and claims to know what he is before flatlining; in lieu of any medical equipment, Dash puts his hands on his patient’s chest and shocks him back to life, only for the man to flatline again. Once Ingrid, Freya, and Hudson perform the spell, Ingrid receives a call from Dr. Foster saying that she got the job; however, her joy is short-lived as, already drunk, she falls off and injures her shoulder. The incident interrupts Wendy and Freya’s tarot session, where the latter learned that Killian is still alive and that his spirit animal is an owl, and the former uses magic to help with Ingrid’s shoulder, which the EMT (the guy from the library) claimed was dislocated.
After all that excitement, Dash and his dark, angry aura come into the bar. Before anything can happen with Freya, though, Dr. Carlisle calls regarding the MRI that he sent her to evaluate. Not knowing that it’s his MRI that she’s looking at, Carlisle notes the structural abnormalities in the patient and claims that there was only one other person she’s seen with similar brain structure. It was in 1994 when a little girl came into the emergency room after suffering a concussion on the playground. The little girl? Ingrid Beauchamp. Later, Freya goes up to Dash to try and apologize for everything that happened, only to express worry about Killian. He tells her to stay away from him or else she’d regret it, with a nearby table being flung across the room due to the lack of control over his powers.
At the Beauchamps, Joanna begins accepting the fact that she’s not long for the world and tells Wendy that maybe she wasn’t meant to live forever, maybe this would allow the curse on Ingrid and Freya to break so they can live full and happy lives. However, a knock on the door changes everything, as it turns out to be Frederick, who had his memory erased after he came through the portal. For the past week, he had been wandering around and while Joanna is overjoyed to see her boy again, Wendy doesn’t think they can trust him, not after he betrayed them the first time in Asgard. Frederick then absorbs the poison from Joanna’s system and takes it on himself, seeing as how he had developed an immunity to argentium due to the constant threats against his life; it serves as a way to draw Joanna in even more, causing Wendy to accuse her of letting her emotions cloud her judgment with regards to Frederick. While Dash receives a message that someone saw what happened with him and Killian, Killian continues his streak of cleaning out the casino on the island he’s been staying. His savior? Beautiful Eva, a woman with an owl tattoo on her back. When she suggests him going back home, he tells her he has nothing waiting for him there and kisses her.
Ingrid, still sleepwalking, ventures into the woods and faces a creature, asking whether it needs her to feed him. They then kiss.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-“And now we say the chant we got from Google.”
-“I’m googling sex spells.”
-So, hey, everybody and welcome to the KSite recaps of Witches of East End, one of my favorite shows on television right now. As much as I love it, though, I need you to click and share the premiere recap in order to give us the incentive to recap the rest of the season. I want to share the next nine episodes of magic, family ties, and love quadrangles with you, so please, show me that you’re out there.
-Let’s start with the most important thing: Bianca Lawson is television’s answer to Benjamin Button, because I’m convinced she ages in reverse. She’s always been beautiful, but she was especially lovely tonight, even when you just know that her and her tramp stamp are up to no good.
-The creature that Ingrid encountered in the forest – is that the other figure who crossed over from Asgard? Did we just watch her get sexually assaulted by roots? Is her sleepwalking a result of the hold this creature has on her and does that hold have to do with her being the key to Asgard? I’m so curious what this could be (it looks like some kind of Avatar/Mystique hybrid), but the most exciting thing is watching the show’s mythology/world expand without it collapsing in on itself.
-I hope the presence of the herbal EMT doesn’t mean that Freddie Prinze, Jr. is down for the count. Wendy might be a free spirit, but c’mon.
-Speaking of absences, I’m glad we got a mention of Barbie and the most Hudson we’ve had in a single episode. Tom Lenk brings such a lightness and a humor to the show that it can’t afford to let go; I was encouraged that the show managed to go darker without losing the charm it had in the first season and characters like Hudson are, at least to me, central in keeping Witches from getting overly serious.
-Ingrid getting the job from Dr. Foster – a result of the spell or something else entirely? When she offered condolences for his dog being euthanized, you kind of saw his pompousness fade away and the person behind the resumee peek his head out, so maybe the spell kind of nudged him in the direction he was already going? I think Ingrid getting access to that much information about witchcraft could open up the show even more and possibly fuel some interesting flashbacks, which the show was always strong at last season.
-Frederick didn’t come through the portal to make nice with his family, it seems, but what could his end goal be? Is it as simple as getting revenge on Joanna and company for leaving him behind to face the wrath of the kingdom? (It’d go along with the themes the show has explored thus far.) Or could he have crossed over with the intention of winning favor with the ruler of Asgard through his actions with the Beauchamps?
-It’s nice to see Christian Cooke back on television. He was good in a somewhat thankless role on Magic City and Frederick should give him a lot to sink his teeth into.
-I love that Ingrid’s idea of being adventurous is wearing ugly earrings. Another thing I loved: gaining powers alters the brain. That’s something that I don’t think any other witch-related media has covered before and I hope that’s how Dash discovers that Ingrid (and Freya) are witches, since that seems like The Big Secret that’ll be revealed later this season.
-Julia Ormond was especially good in the scene where she says goodbye to her things and to Wendy. For as much silliness as goes on in the world of Witches of East End, it’s moments like that that remind you what this show is all about – the bonds of family, the sense of obligation between parents and children, the burden that magic leaves on those it infects.
-Wouldn’t there be a spell for argentium poisoning? Also, wouldn’t there be a spell that’d prevent the need for long travel? I know witchcraft is a whole other beast vs. time travel, but one would assume that Victor could find a way to make it to the Amazon and back in under three days.
-Some fun stuff with Wendy’s jaunt in the woods and Frederick’s Terminator-like journey into civilization. I’m curious what impact the argentium will have on him, though, and whether that’ll bring out/heighten the evil that Wendy sensed when she spotted him.
–Here’s a look ahead at what to expect this season on Witches of East End. Use it well.
-Next week on Witches of East End: Wendy remains suspicious of Frederick, while Killian discovers that he has a lot in common with Eva and Dash reluctantly deals with his blackmailer.
