The Golden Age Part 1: A play is rehearsed. Oscar Waters is introduced. Mark is here somehow.
The Golden Age Part 2:Things hit sour for the play as a ritual is performed by Mark. Oscar Waters gains a playbook.
Mark went to the cult for help to rescue his best friend Dan. The cult agrees to because it is in their interest to thwart LMG's goals by rescuing someone forced to work for them. In exchange for free will, the cult helps him go back in time to perform the radio drama "Wingbeats" which was a ritual that creates The City that Dan and the LMG members explore. "Wingbeats" is another reference to the coming of one of the Leviathans and is a ritual for them which entails that the Leviathans already exist before the ritual happened. It is set in the golden age of radio, the mid-1930s to 1940's. Hence, the title of the episode Golden Age. For the ritual to work, it needed an immense amount of listeners hence why this era. How he turned back in time exactly is left for interpretation by the listener.
Oscar Waters("The King"), the grandfather of Nicholas and Christine Waters, unknowingly performs the ritual along with Alice ("The Dancer"), and Patricia ("The Queen"). Alice and Oscar are voiced by the same actors as the Waters siblings. Mark, the foley artist, plays as "The Messenger".
Wingbeats is a radio play that consists of one rehearsal in which the story is constructed in the minds of the participants. The shop owner says that it is about many things - it is about narrative, about urban life, but most importantly it takes you to another world. It is noted that this is the first of its play in American soil and Oscar Watters had performed it in the Quicksilver Theatre on air through the central broadcasting system. The play was in 4 acts.
The end result of the ritual would make Mark powerful enough to interact in The City in order to help Dan. This had apotheosized him into Dromen, who talks to Dan at the end of season 2. Dromen later appears in season 3.