The Magicians (U.S. TV series)

Not to be confused with The Magicians (UK TV series) or The Magician (U.S. TV series).

The Magicians
File:MagiciansTVseriesLogo.png
Genre	Fantasy
Created by	Sera Gamble John McNamara
Based on	The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Starring	Jason Ralph Stella Maeve Olivia Taylor Dudley Hale Appleman Arjun Gupta Summer Bishil
Composer(s)	Will Bates
Country of origin	United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	13 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Mike Cahill Michael London Janice Williams Scott Smith John McNamara Sera Gamble Henry Alonso Myers
Producer(s)	Mitch Engel
Production location(s)	New Orleans, Louisiana (pilot) Vancouver, British Columbia
Cinematography	Vanja Cernjul Elie Smokin
Editor(s)	Sue Blanely Jason Courson Mats Abbott Rita K. Sanders
Running time	41–52 minutes
Production company(s)	McNamara Moving Company Man Sewing Dinosaur Groundswell Productions Universal Cable Productions
Distributor	NBCUniversal Television Distribution
Release
Original network	Syfy
Original release	December 16, 2015 (2015-12-16) – present (present)
External links
Website

The Magicians is a fantasy television series that premiered on Syfy and Showcase on December 16, 2015, as a special preview. The rest of the series premiered on January 25, 2016. It is based on the novel of the same name by Lev Grossman. Michael London, Janice Williams, John McNamara, and Sera Gamble serve as executive producers. A 13-episode series order was placed in May 2015. On February 8, 2016, the series was renewed for a second season consisting of 13 episodes which is set to air in 2017.

Premise

Quentin Coldwater enrolls at Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy to be trained as a magician, where he discovers that the magical world from his favorite childhood books is real and poses a danger to humanity. Meanwhile, the life of his childhood friend Julia is derailed when she is denied entry, and she searches for magic elsewhere.

Cast and characters

Main

• Jason Ralph as Quentin Coldwater, a graduate student and the protagonist. He enrolls at Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy to be trained as a Magician. A lifelong fan of the Fillory and Further series, he discovers that they are in fact based in truth and pose a danger to his world.
• Stella Maeve as Julia Wicker, Quentin's childhood friend, an Ivy League student who is not admitted to Brakebills, and is recruited by a secret magical society.
• Olivia Taylor Dudley as Alice Quinn, a magician and Quentin's love interest whose parents are magicians and who comes from a neglected home life.
• Hale Appleman as Eliot Waugh, a student at Brakebills and senior to Quentin. He is a heavy drinker and frustrating ally to Quentin.
• Arjun Gupta as William 'Penny' Adiyodi, Quentin's roommate and peer, deliberately intimidating and edgy.
• Summer Bishil as Margo Hanson, equivalent to Janet from the novels, her name was changed to avoid confusion with other names beginning with "J".

Recurring

• Jade Tailor as Kady Orloff-Diaz, a tough, rebellious and sexy Brakebills student who attracts Penny’s attention in and out of the classroom. After she flees Brakebills, she joins a group of Magicians led by Richard and befriends Julia.
• Rick Worthy as Henry Fogg, the Dean of Brakebills.
• David Call as Pete, one of the confidants who welcome Julia into a clandestine underworld to develop her latent skills.
• Michael Cassidy as James, Julia's boyfriend.
• Esmé Bianco as Eliza, a paramedic who has a hand in initiating Quentin’s journey into real magic, who is revealed to be Jane Chatwin.
• Anne Dudek as Pearl Sunderland, a teacher at Brakebills and Penny's mentor.
• Kacey Rohl as Marina Andrieski, one of the confidants who welcome Julia into a clandestine underworld to develop her latent skills. Marina was expelled from Brakebills three months before graduation, and uses Julia to help her regain her memories of what she learned.
• Charles Mesure as The Beast, a master magician with six fingers who has taken over Fillory and breaks through to Earth. Originally called Martin Chatwin, the brother of Jane, he transformed himself to able to remain in Fillory following his molestation at the hands of Christopher Plover. His head is usually magically obscured by a swarm of moths.
• Mackenzie Astin as Richard, the leader of a group of magicians that Julia joins. He is a counsellor when Julia is in rehab, and teaches her more magic. He is eventually killed by the evil trickster god Reynard the Fox who then inhabits his body and uses it as a vessel.

Episodes

No.	Title	Directed by	Written by	Original air date	U.S. viewers (millions)
1	"Unauthorized Magic"	Mike Cahill	Sera Gamble & John McNamara	December 16, 2015 (2015-12-16)	0.92
Quentin and Julia are invited to a test of their magical skills. Quentin passes and is accepted to Brakebills University. Julia fails the test and is sent back to her normal life, but she manages to resist having her memory wiped. Refusing to accept that she cannot learn magic, she is later contacted by Pete, who offers to teach her. In his dreams, Quentin meets Jane Chatwin from the "Fillory and Further" novels, who warns him about the Beast and leaves him with a sigil burned into his hand. Recognising the sigil, Alice asks for his help with a spell. They try to contact her dead brother Charlie together with Penny and Kady. However, they accidentally summon the Beast instead, who appears in the school the next day, attacking a teacher and the dean.
2	"The Source of Magic"	Scott Smith	Sera Gamble	January 25, 2016 (2016-01-25)	1.11
Pearl investigates the incident at Brakebills and Quentin, Alice, Penny, and Kady face disciplinary action for their role in the Beast's attack, but Eliza, who is called in as specialist, lets them go on probation. Julia meets Marina when she has to pass a test to join the Hedge Witches. Kady is secretly working for Marina.
3	"Consequences of Advanced Spellcasting"	Scott Smith	Henry Alonso Myers	February 1, 2016 (2016-02-01)	0.90
Alice and Quentin find out that her brother, Charlie, was consumed by magic and turned into a niffin five years previously. When they find him, he acts maliciously and they bind him. Julia struggles to balance learning magic with maintaining her previous life. Eliot searches for the book that Kady stole for Marina, which leads Quentin and him to the hedge witches, where Quentin confronts Julia. Penny, after being incorrectly assigned a psychic discipline, discovers he is a "traveller," and could have the ability to travel between worlds.
4	"The World in the Walls"	James L. Conway	John McNamara	February 8, 2016 (2016-02-08)	0.75
Quentin wakes up in the mental hospital he admitted himself to in the first episode, where his memories of Brakebills and magic are treated as delusions. It is revealed that Julia and Marina have produced the elaborate hallucination, and the only way to get him out involves summoning of a demon bug. Dean Fogg lowers the Brakebills wards to do so, allowing Marina and Julia in, where they steal Marina's memories of her time at Brakebills before she was expelled. Quentin, with help from his visions of Jane Chatwin and Penny, is able to escape. Marina cuts Julia off after being reunited with her memories.
5	"Mendings, Major and Minor"	Bill Eagles	David Reed	February 15, 2016 (2016-02-15)	0.75
Quentin visits home after his father is diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer. He struggles with accepting that magic cannot save his father, and eventually opens up to him about magic. After being cut off by Marina, Julia tries to find other hedge witch safe houses in New York with the help of Pete, but nobody else has nearly as many spells. Marina erases James' memory of Julia to prevent her telling him about magic. Alice returns to Brakebills, and Eliot and Margo try to use her connections to get a mentor. Penny practices astral projection, and discovers a woman chained in a dungeon by the Beast. Based on the crest on the doors, Quentin surmises that Penny has travelled to Fillory.
6	"Impractical Applications"	John Stuart Scott	Leah Fong	February 22, 2016 (2016-02-22)	0.65
The first-years must pass a set of challenges called "the trials" set by the third years. During these, Quentin and Penny reconcile, Alice and Quentin share secrets, and Kady confesses the truth about her using Penny. Quentin turns into a goose at the end of the trials. Meanwhile, in an attempt to steal spells from Marina, Julia teams up with an older hedge witch who also has connections to Marina. The older Hedge witch turns out to be Kady's Mother and dies in the process of stealing the cabinet of spells from Marina's safe house. Kady had been working for Marina in payment of a debt related to her mother. Kady does not yet know that her mother has died and that Marina is responsible.
7	"The Mayakovsky Circumstance"	Guy Norman Bee	Story by: Mike Moore Teleplay by: John McNamara	February 29, 2016 (2016-02-29)	0.70
Quentin and his peers travel to Brakebills South in Antarctica to study with Professor Mayakovsky, who puts them through several challenges. Eliot and Margo prepare to travel to Ibiza, and with the help of newly-met Todd and Mike, summon a Djinn as a gift for the organisers of the party. When Eliot starts sleeping with Mike, he chooses to stay behind and Todd goes with Margo. Julia's sister picks Julia up from the police station following the death of Kady's mother, and insists on helping her to avoid their mother having Julia committed. Mayakovsky engineers Alice and Quentin into a relationship, and tells Kady that her mother has died and she is no longer welcome at Brakebills.
8	"The Strangled Heart"	Jan Eliasberg	David Reed	March 7, 2016 (2016-03-07)	0.67
Eliot and Mike grow closer while Quentin and Alice spend time apart, until Mike, while attacking Quentin, stabs Penny with a cursed blade. Recognising a similar event in the Fillory and Further books, Quentin and Alice are able to save him. Mike pretends to have blacked out and remember nothing until Eliza confronts him, at which point he recognises her as Jane Chatwin, and seems to kill her, before being killed by Eliot. In rehab, Julia meets a chaplain named Richard who was trained at Brakebills and who introduces her to religious magic.
9	"The Writing Room"	James L. Conway	Sera Gamble	March 14, 2016 (2016-03-14)	0.71
Quentin discovers that Penny stole and destroyed the manuscript he'd been given; Penny relates that it contained information from Jane Chatwin about finding a way into Fillory. Quentin, Penny, Alice, and Eliot travel to the Plover estate to search for the button from the manuscript, and find that the mansion is haunted by the ghosts of Plover's housekeeper's children, who Plover's sister had drugged and killed to prevent them from disturbing Plover's work. Quentin discovers that Plover was molesting Martin Chatwin and that he disappeared, rather than dying, leading Quentin to believe that Plover is the Beast. The four of them find the button. Meanwhile, Julia helps Richard by entering the mind of a paralyzed woman.
10	"Homecoming"	Joshua Butler	Henry Alonso Myers	March 21, 2016 (2016-03-21)	0.78
Penny has been trapped in the Neitherlands, the space between other worlds. He contacts Quentin to discover that while it's only been 6 hours for him, it's been 6 weeks back on Earth. While Quentin and Alice travel to her parents' house to get advice from a family friend, Penny meets a librarian who gives him information about Martin Chatwin's life. Quentin and Alice have to solve relationship issues to be able to cast a beacon spell to help Penny find his way back to Earth. Eliot and Margo discover that an ex-boyfriend of hers has constructed a Golem in her image. Julia hosts other magicians that she knows through Richard, including Kady. Julia and Kady finish learning some spells, and then Richard explains their project to them: they are trying to summon a god to provide them with more magical power.
11	"Remedial Battle Magic"	Amanda Tapping	Leah Fong	March 28, 2016 (2016-03-28)	0.72
When probability magic shows them that the only chance they have of not being killed by the Beast is to travel to Fillory, Quentin, Alice, Margot, Eliot, and Penny work on learning battle magic to prepare for a showdown. The Beast is driving travelers insane and leading them to kill themselves, including Penny's mentor Stanley, so Penny uses drugs to try and block out his voice, leading to an overdose. Professor Sunderland helps him shut the voices out. After a successful and then drunken night, Quentin sleeps with Margo and Eliot; Quentin wakes up to find Alice at the end of the bed. Kady and Julia search for clues to help them summon a god, and Julia is visited in her dreams.
12	"Thirty-Nine Graves"	Guy Norman Bee	Leah Fong & Henry Alonso Myers	April 4, 2016 (2016-04-04)	0.75
Alice and Quentin fight following his infidelity, and she sleeps with Penny as revenge. Quentin, Alice, Penny, Eliot, and Margo travel to the Neitherlands, where they are ambushed and Quentin falls back to Earth. The others hide in the library, until Eliot gets them kicked out, after which they find Josh Hoberman, a member of the missing class from Brakebills, who leads the rest to the fountain that leads to Fillory. Meanwhile on Earth, Quentin talks to Dean Fogg, who reveals to him that Eliza was Jane Chatwin and that she had been using an enchanted watch given to her by Ember to create a time loop and attempt different ways of killing the Beast. After 39 failures in which Quentin had died, this time she changed the starting circumstances by making Julia be rejected from Brakebills so that she would learn magic by herself. Quentin finds Julia, tells her this, and they find a way into Fillory, where they are 70 years early.
13	"Have You Brought Me Little Cakes"	Scott Smith	Sera Gamble & John McNamara & David Reed	April 11, 2016 (2016-04-11)	0.68
Having travelled to Fillory, Julia and Quentin discover they've been followed by Martin Chatwin, who they promise to help. They commission a blade to help them kill the Beast, and meet the Watcherwoman, a future Jane Chatwin, who takes them to when they need to be. They rejoin the group, collect the knife, and Eliot marries a local girl as he has been named future High King. Quentin and Julia meet Ember, who gives them power and unlocks Julia's memories, revealing that her friends had accidentally summoned Reynard the Fox, who killed her friends and raped Julia. Quentin and Julia rejoin the others, who had been rescuing Victoria and discover Christopher Plover, who reveals that the Beast is Martin Chatwin. Josh and Victoria escape, and the rest travel to the source of Fillory's magic to ambush the Beast. However, Julia has taken the knife from Alice, and while the rest of them are injured, with Penny's hands cut off, Julia holds a knife to the Beast's throat. Julia makes a deal with the Beast to kill Reynard, and they leave, with Quentin the only one left standing.

Production

Development

Michael London first optioned the books in 2011, intending to develop the show at Fox. X-Men: First Class co-writers Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz wrote the pilot, but did not get the green light. London then redeveloped the pilot with McNamara and Gamble taking over writing duties, and took the script to Syfy, which ordered a pilot. The pilot, directed by Mike Cahill, was filmed in New Orleans in late 2014 and wrapped in December. Syfy picked up the show for a 13-episode first season, to be aired in 2016. McNamara and Gamble became executive producers.

Series production began on August 4, 2015, in Vancouver, and it was announced that Olivia Taylor Dudley had replaced Sosie Bacon as Alice Quinn. It was also announced that Rick Worthy had been cast as Dean Fogg, Anne Dudek as Professor Sunderland, with Esmé Bianco also cast. Syfy aired an advanced commercial-free screening of the first episode on December 16, 2015 ahead of its January 25, 2016 premiere, when it was shown along with the second episode.

Reception

The show has met with mixed to positive critical response. On Metacritic, it holds a rating of 60/100, based on 24 reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 69% approval rating based on 26 reviews, with an average rating of 6.8/10. The site's critics' consensus reads: "The Magicians impressive special effects and creative storytelling help compensate for a derivative premise and occasionally sluggish pace."

Home media release

The first season of The Magicians is set to be released on DVD and Blu-Ray on July 19, 2016 in Region 1. The release will include all thirteen episodes, as well as multiple special features, including Deleted Scenes, Gag Reel, The World of The Magicians, and UltraViolet Digital Copies.

External links

• Official website
• The Magicians at IMDb