Willow | Chapter 4: “The Whispers of Nockmaar” Episode Guide

The group arrives at Nockmaar Castle. Inside, Graydon continues to succumb to the dark magic within him, and is chained down as a precaution. He explains that what happened to Ballantine will happen to him, and that Ballantine had been ordered to bring Elora to Nockmaar so that the “Ritual of the 13th Night” could be performed, banishing Elora’s soul “to a realm of perpetual suffering.”

Willow predicts Graydon will lose his fight with the dark magic sometime in the night. Kit reluctantly suggests that they may have to kill him. “Killing someone who isn’t trying to kill you back?” Boorman asks. “It’s not an easy thing to do.”

Bavmorda’s dark spirit looms in the shadows of her throne room. “Bavmorda was bright, curious, full of promise,” Willow explains. “She was abducted by members of a secret long-forgotten sect: The Order of the Wyrm. The Crone radicalized her, converting her with their warped beliefs and gifting her with unnatural powers.”

Hoping to cast the dark magic from Graydon, Willow seeks out one of Bavmorda’s books of spells. He admits he’s not back to his full strength, and looks to Elora. “I can’t even say the seeds spell,” she says. Kit is silent. Willow suggests they will make a salve for the wound, and warns that no one must go into the castle’s high tower, “a portal to the netherworld.”

The salve will require many ingredients, including essence of nightshade, which they don’t have. As a cook, Elora knows that nightshade can be extracted from the bladder of a possum. Kit, somewhat reluctantly, goes in search of one.

Willow cuts open Graydon’s shirt, revealing deep scars in his torso. Graydon explains that he got them while sick as a kid, and that it’s shameful. “No it isn’t,” says Elora. “It just means you’re resilient, is all.”

Graydon is startled by a vision of his father. “You’re such a failure!” says the apparition. “Give Galladoorn an heir with a claim to Tir Asleen. Redeem yourself for what you stole from me!” Graydon’s brother also appears, assuring him that he will catch him if he falls.

Finding the possum in a jar, Kit makes her way back to the others. In a hallway she finds a tapestry with a likeness of Bavmorda, who appears to be partaking in some kind of dark ritual. Kit hears the voice of her grandmother renouncing her name and family to pledge herself “to the light of the eternal one.” “The blood of the sixth runs in your veins,” a voice tells Bavmorda. The tapestry bursts into flames, startling Kit.

Elsewhere, Jade keeps watch outside. Joined by Boorman, he can see she is still upset about her ordeal with Ballantine. “Don’t look back,” he tells her. “I think Ballantine would have said the same.” In a rare moment of vulnerability, Jade tearfully embraces Boorman, who tells her “everyone deserves one good cry per quest.”

After Elora successfully extracts the nightshade from the possum, Willow adds it to the salve and applies it to Graydon’s wound. This provokes the Lich in Graydon, who speaks to Willow and Elora through the voices of Madmartigan, Airk, and Mims, attempting to sow fear and doubt. Willow tells Elora that the Lich is merely trying to break her concentration in the purgation ritual, and stuffs a cloth in Graydon’s mouth before he can reveal the true secret of Bavmorda’s demise.

Kit and Elora find themselves alone in a dark passage. Feeling a mix of guilt and doubt, Elora confesses that she can’t save anybody. Kit begins to tell her about the sprouted plant, but Elora is drawn away by voices down the hall. Kit attempts to follow, but Elora is gone.

In another part of the castle, Jade walks alone. In a hallway filled with whispers, she finds her mother’s body lying in the darkness. Down the hall she sees the terrifying form of General Kael emerge from the shadows, and charges after him. After a brief but intense duel, Jade appears outmatched and barricades herself behind a heavy door.

Alone, Elora hears her mother’s cries in a replay of the scene of her birth from the original Willow movie. She finds her mother moments before death in a prison cell, and to Elora’s amazement, her mother can see her. “She’s grown up, fierce and resilient,” her mother says, looking right at Elora. “She’s the beacon of light in a time of dread!” With her mother’s death, Elora’s vision ends.

Elora makes her way back to Graydon. He is freed from his chains and the poison, but says that Willow has been infected with the Lich. They go to the high tower to find him.

In the tower, Graydon reveals himself as the Lich, having lured Elora there to complete the ritual. When Willow arrives, Graydon taunts him with the truth of Bavmorda’s downfall. As he magically replays the moment of the queen’s demise for Elora, it is revealed that Willow didn’t defeat Bavmorda with sorcery, but that “she was thwarted by her own carelessness.”

As Graydon begins the second Ritual of the 13th Night, he asks Willow how he will defeat them. “Same as last time,” he answers. “With my friends.” Kit, Jade and Boorman burst through the same door that Fin Raziel and Sorsha had entered during Willow’s first encounter in the tower, with Kit tossing him his staff. With it, he sends a blast toward Graydon, knocking him down.

Boorman pins down Graydon. Jade begins to draw her sword. Kit tells Elora that she can save him, but Elora is doubtful. “You grew the eckleberry bush!” Kit tells her. “It worked. I saw it in the woods. It was beautiful.”

Elora leans over Graydon and magically draws the evil from him, which dissipates into the storm above. As the evil passes through her, Elora has a vision of Graydon’s past, when he was possessed as a young boy and killed his brother. She tells no one, but the vision will haunt her.

The group leaves the castle under the watch of the Gales. Kit asks about the “blood of the sixth,” which she’d learned from her tapestry vision. “Bavmorda, she was the blood of the sixth,” she says. “Which means so am I. And so is Airk.” This is why, Willow suggests, they must reach the Immemorial City before Airk can be corrupted.

In the Immemorial City, Airk emerges from an open cell to find himself among the ruins of an ancient city, alone.

The tome that begins this episode is a forbidden text of dark magic called the Malatrium. It was Queen Bavmorda’s accursed grimoire first described in the Willow Sourcebook, also an obscure tome, published in the distant year of 1988.

When Elora notes that Graydon looks like a “vermathrax at a vestal faire,” she’s making a nod to the 1981 fantasy movie, Dragonslayer, which featured the dragon Vermithrax Pejorative.

This episode features careful recreations of sets from the original 1988 Willow movie, including Bavmorda’s throne room (Willow is actually sitting on Bavmorda’s throne!), the high tower where baby Elora was nearly sacrificed, and the dungeons.

The purgation of Namshub borrows its name from Akkadian mythology, where he was an ancient Sumerian exorcist.

The immense bronze symbol on the vault door was previously seen as a sigil of Nockmaar in the 1988 Willow movie, and is in truth an insignia of the Order of the Wyrm.

The first unnatural voice that comes from Graydon during the exorcism is that of Madmartigan when he first met Willow.

King Hastur’s name, unsaid in the episode, is Zivian.

The tapestry that Kit spots outside the atheneum is filled with mysterious imagery (What is that city? Who is that goddess?) but definitely shows a young Bavmorda kneeling in supplication. One of the depictions of Bavmorda — riding a manticore no less — has more than a passing resemblance to Kit.