Daniel Spellbound follows the titular teenage tracker of magical items as he tries to save the magical world while navigating perilous missions with his friends.
Plot Summary
Daniel Spellbound is a teenage tracker, skilled in the art of tracking down magical items and selling them to make a living. He’s accumulated some debt over the years though, and the lender — a diabolical pie maker — is getting impatient.
She sends her henchmen and gets Spellbound abducted. Putting a seal on his hand, she gives him a chance to settle his debt when he offers to give her the legendary and impossible-to-find Fugu Rose.
Daniel sets off to do so, causing a little mayhem at Pie Maker’s place and freeing her talking pig in the process as well. He asks the talking pig, named Hoagie, to tag along and help him find the rose.
They do find it, but the Bureau of Magic Enforcement catches him, escorting him to the building where Daniel and Hoagie meet the bureau’s Primus.
She offers to help Daniel with his pie maker problem if he works for the Bureau to hunt down Gryphon’s Egg. She also gives him his father’s journal full of Information about magical artefacts, legends, and more.
However, he can only have that when he agrees to the terms and get the egg, which Primus claims is in danger of getting in the wrong hands.
Left with no other option, Spellbound eventually has to agree and work for the bureau. He starts off his egg hunt by collecting the right tools for it.
To grab a new set of gear and a Boatman Token, he heads off to an arcade called “The Cheat Code”. A place where the greatest Trackers from all over the world frequently visit, it’s also the right destination for Spellbound to get what he seeks.
However, to get his hands on the Boatman Token and the gear, he has to get into a lot of scuffles and fights. He and Hoagie also meet the legendary tracker named Burden and later Viktor Albright, the infamous alchemist who everyone thinks is the Dark Mage.
Before Viktor can offer Daniel Spellbound to join him, Lucy arrives and escapes with him in her Bureau-given ice cream truck cum teleporter.
Lucy tells Spellbound that she’s been tasked with helping his clumsy and meandering-prone self in this quest and getting the egg to the Primus.
Together, the three embark on the hunt while Viktor Albright enlists Burden’s help as a Tracker. Spellbound, Hoagie, and Lucy head off to Shanghai in the search of a royal gem that’ll help them find Gryphon’s Egg.
To get that gem, however, Spellbound has to first bring the Mermaid queen’s stolen heart back to her. The three head off to an illegal trading port and retrieve the heart, with Spellbound giving it back to the queen and taking the gem in return.
Meanwhile, Burden abducts Hoagie and snatches the gem away too. Spellbound and Lucy go to the Insect King’s hive and spot Burden’s camp near the portal to the Mirage where Gryphon’s Egg is.
They eventually strike a deal — Spellbound will help Burden get the egg in exchange for his and his friend’s freedom. They end up retrieving the egg too, with the trio outsmarting Burden.
Soon enough, the Dark Mage arrives and Viktor Albright fights them off while Lucy is saved by Spellbound, following which she heads off to the bureau to hand over the egg to the Primus.
However, Spellbound learns that Albright isn’t the Dark Mage and that the reality is quite the opposite. Meanwhile, Lucy adds two and two together soon enough as well.
The trio reunites and faces the big bad at the end, emerging victorious and with the world of magic saved. However, Daniel Spellbound’s future is left on a cliffhanger as season 1 comes to a close.
Daniel Spellbound ending explained in detail:
Who is the real Dark Mage?
It’s the Primus of the Bureau of Magic Enforcement who is the real Dark Mage all along. Throughout the episodes, Daniel Spellbound, along with the rest of the world, believes that the wealthy and secretive alchemist Viktor Albright is the Dark Mage.
However, it’s later revealed that the alchemist has been simply operating from the shadows, to counter the Primus in her nefarious plans.
Being the Primus comes with a heck of a lot of powers and influence. One of these powers is to be able to influence public perception regarding any individual or group, which in this case is Viktor Albright.
To add to that, Albright’s whole “working from the shadows” spiel doesn’t help his case either. It’s too much of an archetypal template for a villain that Spellbound and others can’t help but believe in the rumours.
However, after getting rid of Burden and retrieving Gryphon’s Egg, Spellbound and his friends and instantly confronted by the Dark Mage. On the other side, they’re ensnared by Viktor Albright’s men.
They get shocked and confused when Albright’s men start attacking the Dark Mage since they believe Albright and the Dark Mage to be one and the same person.
It’s when Lucy has already gone off to the Primus that Daniel Spellbound and Hoagie learn of the truth about the Dark Mage.
Why does the Primus want Gryphon’s Egg?
As Viktor Albright explains to Spellbound, Primus Camilla Thomas is an authoritarian who wants to trample on others’ rights to wield magic. She deems everyone else as unworthy and filthy and doesn’t want them to be able to use magic.
However, instead of her claims about only a certain few elites being able to use magic, she actually only wants it all for herself, as she believes only she is worthy of it.
To realize her plans and steal magic from all the users, she needs two powerful tools — a Fugu Rose and Gryphon’s Egg.
With the Fugu Rose, she would be able to cast the spell that steals magic from all the magic wielders in the world. The Gryphon’s Egg is the other part of the plan since it’s a never-ending source of sheer energy.
To cast such an enormous spell that affects all of the world, she needs an all-powerful source of energy to realise it, which is exactly what the egg is.
Why is Daniel Spellbound not in the Tracker’s Guild anymore?
Daniel Spellbound ends with the titular teenage tracker getting a shocker when several other trackers ambush him and Hoagie, beginning to attack them right off the bat.
A confounded Spellbound asks what’s going on and to his utter disbelief and terror, he learns that the Tracker’s Guild has booted him out.
Throughout the ten episodes that season 1 of Daniel Spellbound runs for, it’s clear that Daniel really doesn’t abide by the Tracker’s codes as religiously as others might.
Additionally, he constantly tip-toes along the lines and quite often crosses it when it comes to not doing things that the Guild is touchy about.
Furthermore, he allied with the Bureau in his quest to hunt down the egg, being buddies with Lucy. The trackers famously don’t blend well with the Bureau, which sours Spellbound’s image with others even more.
Spellbound teleports to an unknown place at the end of episode 10, but he doesn’t know where to go or where he can go, since finding things that don’t want to be found is exactly what trackers are good at.
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