The Magicians is definitely a show that’s not for everyone. I find three of its five seasons to be an absolute delight. Unfortunately, they’re the latter three: season one is rather lackluster and two … does not improve. But if you enjoy the idea of this R-rated, f@#$ed up, adult, Harry Potter meets The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, then it’s worth a watch. To that end, here’s hopefully-helpful-guide to get you to that point:
Season 1
Manage your expectations for poor pacing and a somewhat disjointed plot arc. However, Season 1’s biggest drawback is its unnecessarily graphic violence. But since it leads to some important plot points and character development later, let’s get through it via vague description and on to the good stuff. Since Season 1 establishes so many things about the characters and the universe, rather than skipping whole episodes this portion of the guide walks you through which scenes to skip. There are content warnings (CW) so you know what you’re getting into (Note: there aren’t warnings for every incident of violence – only the more graphic, bloody, or sexual ones. There are also trigger warnings (TW) for particularly disturbing content, followed by brief summaries so that you know the relevant parts of what happened without having to watch.
Episode 1: Unauthorized Magic
CW: implied sexual violence, violence against POC. While the scene is not one of sexual violence, the bit right after Julia goes into the bathroom and loses a button off her shirt might edge too close for comfort. Fast forward through about 30 seconds here, but be sure to listen to the conversation she subsequently has with Pete in the bathroom. At the end of the episode, you may also want to stop watching the episode when the Beast (the villain with moths circling his face) approaches Dean Fogg. He breaks the dean’s hand and rips his eyes out, but the salient part of this scene is that the Beast somehow knows Quentin on sight and by name.
Episode 2: The Source of Magic
CW: violence against POC. They kill … a dead guy? Brief and mild, but still gross.
Episode 3: Consequences of Advanced Spellcasting
Episode 4: The World in the Walls
CW: mental illness. This episode takes place in a not-very-accurate mental hospital.
Episode 5: Mendings, Major and Minor
Episode 6: Impractical Applications
Episode 7: The Mayakovsky Circumstance
Episode 8: The Strangled Heart
TW: violence against animals; violence against women. When Mike picks up the rabbit towards the beginning of the episode, just skip to the opening credits. He pulls a knife out of it – don’t think too much about how. Later in the episode, Eliza’s conversation with Mike doesn’t end well. Skip ahead from the moment he says, “I was waiting … for you,” to when he leaves the room (the subtext here is that he murders her). Note: there’s more violence after he leaves the room, but it’s not bloody and graphic, and it’s directly relevant to upcoming events.
Episode 9: The Writing Room
CW: violence against children, assisted suicide. The violence in this episode is particularly graphic, but best to know two children are killed. The assisted suicide is not overtly depicted, but it is discussed and shown indirectly.
TW: sexual assault of a child. The assault isn’t depicted, but you know what’s going to happen. Skip ahead from when Christopher Plover tells Martin, “Shall we do some work?”
Episode 10: Homecoming
Episode 11: Remedial Battle Magic
TW: suicide. Skip the scene in which Penny visits his mentor, Stanley. They discuss the fact that the Beast knows everything about them and is using that information to push them towards suicide the way he did with Joe. Stanley tells Penny he has a solution that takes away all the Beast’s leverage, then kills himself with a shotgun.
Episode 12: Thirty-Nine Graves
Episode 13; Have You Brought Me Little Cakes?
TW: violence, including against women and POC; sexual assault. This is the episode that ruins the show for a lot of people. I want to take this opportunity to say that depictions of sexual violence are NEVER appropriate in film or TV. If it’s absolutely necessary for the story (and it usually isn’t, but it happened in the books so it’s in this show), there are better ways to include it, not least of which is letting the female characters report it in their own words such that the audience accepts that without requiring further proof. It’s a story – we know from context they’re telling the truth.
After Julia takes Quentin aside to talk to him, we see Julia’s true memory – watch only up to the point when Renard introduces himself (from 39 minutes in; mild violence), or just skip the flashback entirely. Resume the second time you see Julia and Quentin talking in the shed (42 minutes in). Summary: When the Free Traders attempted to summon Our Lady Underground, a figure appeared instead who looked like Our Lady, but with animal-yellow eyes and a deeply sinister tone. The figure rips out Richard’s heart and eats it, taking over his (now dead) body. He introduces himself as Reynard the Fox, a trickster god who preys on the “faithful, the pure of heart, the very stupid.” He abruptly kills Bender, Silver, and Mennolee. Kady hides and tells Julia to run when Reynard finds her, but Julia stays, stepping between Reynard and Kady in an attempt to protect her. Reynard grabs Julia instead and sexually assaults her. Julia tells Kady to run as he grabs her and when she looks back, Kady is gone. We return momentarily to Julia telling Quentin about this, then we see a later part of the memory in which Julia, attempting to clean up the aftermath of Reynard, has called Marina for help. Marina is horrified by what’s happened and, somewhat surprisingly, eager to help, no strings attached. From the conversation we learn that she helped Julia clean up after the attack and replaced her memories of it.
At almost the end of the episode, after the Beast’s attack (see CW below), there’s then a brief flashback to Julia calling Marina after Reynard’s attack in which we discover she, too, is god-powered as a result of the assault – it’s only a few seconds long, but the visual is unpleasant.
CW: violence. After Alice realizes she no longer has the Leo Blade and the Beast turns from Quentin to her, he attacks the others and it gets a bit bloody.
It’s a rough finale, but congratulations, you made it through Season 1!
Season 2
Season 2 is the generally agreed nadir of The Magicians, with the messy pacing and plotting of Season 1 only getting worse, and no real progress in the character development, which doesn’t come through until Season 3. To get you through this season faster, we’re going to skip episodes outright, with summaries to keep you up to speed with what’s happening, and the option of fast-forwarding through chunks of other episodes.
Episode 1: Knight of Crowns
WATCH
Sets up a lot of what happens in Season 2. Also, the scene in which they’re crowned is funny and adorable – worth watching just for that. And yes, Fen, Eliot’s new wife, has been recast.
Episode 3: Hotel Spa Potions
SKIP
Julia’s deal with the Beast prevents the thugs in the Neitherlands from attacking the gang, so they now travel freely between worlds via the button-fountain combo, and we see a lot less of the Neitherlands from this point on.
With greater ease of travel, the gang goes back to Brakebills to track down a spell called the Reineman Ultra (many comments on how bad the name is and that is sounds like a beer) that might be able to defeat the Beast, and end up meeting with a pixie, who gives Alice the spell, and getting matching tattoos that each hold a demon who can be commanded to help in the fight with the Beast.
Julia continues working on a trap for Reynard. The Beast starts singing showtunes. It’s very annoying. The Beast wants to use Marina as bait, Julia’s refuses, but Marina eventually volunteers after realizing Reynard poses a threat to her, too, as he’s targeting hedgewitches.
Fillory can no longer grow food because of the magic shortage, forcing Elliot to relive his shitty farmland childhood in order to teach the Fillorians how to grow crops.
Episode 3: Divine Elimination
SKIP
The gang returns to Fillory armed with the Reineman Ultra and four demons to fight the Beast. There’s a pretty amusing scene in which the cursed thrones in Castle Whitespire make the newly minted royals try to kill each other, resulting in the loss of all but one of the demons. (CW: needles and drug use, sort of – be aware if you watch it.)
Julia, Marina, and the Beast attempt to trap Reynard (CW: violence against animals – the Beast kills Marina’s cat). The Beast unexpectedly transports Julia and himself away before Reynard arrives so that Reynard won’t sense Julia and figure out it’s a trap, leaving Marina alone with Reynard. Julia and the Beast catch up with them and trap Reynard, but Penny travels in, grabs the Beast, and travels out with him before Julia can kill Reynard. Julia grabs Penny and is transported to Fillory with them.
The gang sets up their attack on the Beast as Penny travels in with him, but Julia’s presence interferes. Quentin pulls Julia out of the way, but it causes Alice to miss, seriously injuring, but not killing the Beast. Penny travels Julia back to Earth intending to immediately return to Fillory, but his damaged hands keep him from getting there. The Beast goes to the Wellspring to try to heal himself, only to find that Ember defecated in it, rendering it useless. The gang catches up with him there and Alice tries to power up the Reineman Ultra. However, her god powers have faded too much. Knowing the Beast will kill them all if she doesn’t stop him, she powers up the spell anyway, causing her to ramp up too much and become a niffin. Niffin-Alice kills the Beast, but then turns on Eliot and Margo, leaving Quentin no choice but to release his demon to stop her.
The episode ends with Julie arriving at Marina’s apartment to find her dead and Reynard gone. In Fillory, Alice is dead and Quentin severely injured. Given the weird way Season 1 ended, this episode has always felt like the actual season finale to me.
Episode 4: The Flying Forest
WATCH
Episode 5: Cheat Day
SKIP
As far as I’m concerned the worst episode of the Magicians.
Fen is ecstatic to discover she’s pregnant, but Eliot is not coping well with that news, not helped by his discovery, via an assassination attempt, that a group of Fillorians are plotting rebellion against the Children of Earth. Margo wants to execute the would-be assassin, Baylor, who attacked Eliot (and turns out to be an old friend of Fen’s), but Eliot wants to find a peaceful resolution between native Fillorians and Children of Earth, furthering the growing rift between Margo and Eliot.
Penny’s hands have grown back but he’s no longer able to cast, so Dean Fogg sends him to work with Mayakovsky at Brakebills South, which goes about as well as you might expect. We also learn that Mayakovsky has evidence that a major disruption to magic is coming and he’s working on storing magic for that emergency.
Back in New York, Julia discovers she’s pregnant with Reynard’s demi-god baby and tries to have an abortion, but it turns out to be a lot more complicated, as magical forces around the fetus do anything to try to protect it (TW: violence against women; if you watch this episode, you may want to skip the scene when Julia’s in with the doctor).
In another part of town, Quentin has left magic behind and is working at the same company as Emily Greenstreet (whom Alice and Margo tracked down in Season 1 to find out what happened to Alice’s brother). They get drunk together one night and, despite having talked extensively about how magic always causes more problems, do a spell that temporarily makes each of them look like someone the other wants to see. Quentin, of course, sees Alice, and Emily sees … (drumroll) … Mayakovsky, who turns out to be the professor she was in love with. The experience only upsets Quentin more and, while Emily is eager to do the spell again, Quentin realizes what an unhealthy coping mechanism it is.The episode ends with Quentin seeing a ghostly Alice standing on a street corner, who vanishes a moment later.
Episode 6: The Cock Barrens
WATCH
There’s some good character development and a lot going on in this episode that’s important moving forward. You can, however, skip every scene with Quentin at Alice’s parents’ house after the scene when he first arrives. It’s a lot of nonsense (including suggesting Egyptian Arabic is somehow related to Ancient Egyptian … -eyeroll-) only to show how deep in denial the Quinn’s are, which we kind of already knew. The conclusion of that story line is that a niffin-Alice now resides in the demon-trap-tattoo on Quentin’s back, from whence she amuses herself by messing with Quentin.
Episode 7: Plan B
WATCH
Magical bank heist. I mean, c’mon!
Episode 8: Word as Bond
WATCH
A lot happens in the next couple episodes, some of which gets referenced a full season later, so for sure watch.
Episode 9: Lesser Evils
WATCH
The first “musical” episode (there’s only one song, but it’s fun)!
Episode 10: The Girl Who Told Time
WATCH
Several events that affect Season 3 occur in this episode. It also sets up that season’s primary conflict.
Episode 11: The Rattening
SKIP
Penny meets his new boss, as teenage girl named Sylvia who has a contract with the Library to protect her from enemies of her magical mob boss father. Sylvia is fabulously sassy and learns from spying on Penny that he’s trying to get into the Poison Room.
Sen. Gaines partners with Reynard as he tries to learn to use his powers, but is increasingly appalled that he can’t interact with people in a normal, human way anymore. He also discovers Reynard’s vicious nature and the fact that Reynard and Our Lady Underground (OLU) have some kind of contentious past relationship. Gaines goes to Kady and Julia to try to learn magic and stop Reynard.
In Fillory, people, abruptly and seemingly at random, transform into rats – including King Idri, during a pretty hot not-sex-but-still-yummy scene. Margo, believing her deal with the fairies is responsible for the Rattening (and under the influence of a truth serum), confesses to Eliot that she traded his and Fen’s child for the restoration of the Wellspring. Fearing her increasingly erratic behavior, Eliot has Margo locked in a dungeon. To try to save Fen and win Eliot’s trust back, Margo drinks a potion that takes her to the fairy realm. While trying to figure out what to do next, Eliot and Josh inadvertently invent democracy – and Eliot gets kicked out of Fillory for it.
Quentin and Julia meet an Old One – the Hudson River Dragon. In exchange for the magical travelling button, they get a 24-hour pass to the Underworld and meet up with Richard and Julia’s other friends who tried to summon OLU, who help them figure out where disconnected shades go. While attempting to track down her shade, Julia realizes that OLU is the goddess Persephone. She finds out Persephone has disappeared and so failed to protect those who call on her for help and are attacked by Reynard instead, and is furious with the goddess for abandoning people when she could help them. Julia and Quentin split up to search for Julia’s shade. Quentin finds her and returns to Julia to discover that, in his absence, Julia has found Alice’s shade. Talking to Shade Alice, Quentin discovers that her shade was the missing piece to the spell to she created to restore a niffin and that with it, he could bring Alice back. At the end of the episode, as Quentin and Julia flee security to reach the elevator out of the Underworld, Julia runs in with Alice’s shade instead of her own and, against Quentin’s objections, they leave with her. The parts in the Underworld are actually kinda fun, if you want to watch only those.
Episode 12: Ramifications
WATCH
Shit gets real.
Episode 13: We Have Brought You Little Cakes
SKIP
Yes, it’s the season finale, but an unsatisfying one – all it does is set up Season 3, which is 90% already done. All you really need to know is how they save Fillory while simultaneously killing all of magic, and that happens in about 5 minutes.
Penny has supercancer from going in the Poison Room, but must still work for the library.
Ember is bored with Fillory and plans to destroy it, but the gang still loves it and makes a plan to save it. Margo and Josh talk to the Fairy Queen, who suggests that instead of petitioning Ember, they offer him something: little cakes with a nice-smelling god-bait plant (which she gives them) baked in. She returns them to Fillory in exchange for one of Margo’s eyes.
Margo, Eliot, and Josh host a very boring orgy, with little cakes, to attract Ember. Meanwhile, Quentin visits the new world Umber is building. Julia takes this pocket world, conveniently stored in a snow globe, to Whitespire, releasing Quentin and Umber into the middle of the party. Ember is initially elated to find that Umber is still alive, but, when he finds out Umber betrayed him by faking his own death and leaving Ember to be exiled by the Beast, Ember kills him. Julia puts the energy released by Umber’s death into a sword that Quentin then uses to kill Ember.
Upon returning to Brakebills South, Quentin is feeling pretty pleased with himself (not least of all because at this point he and Alice, who’s starting to remember the fun parts of having a human body, just had sex), and he reveals that he killed Ember. Alice becomes furious and terrified, telling Quentin that, as a niffin, she could see magic from the inside and understand how the universe worked: that young gods like Ember and Umber have parents, the Old Gods, who mostly ignore humans. But if humans become a nuisance or hurt their children, they take revenge. This comes in the form of divine plumbers who come and literally turn off the flow of magic to the entire dimension (Earth, Fillory, the Library, the Neitherlands, all of it).
Once that scene plays out, the last few minutes are worth watching. Or just read this summary: Two months later, Quentin, Alice, Josh, and other students are still at Brakebills studying magical theory in the hope that magic will come back some day. One night Friar Joseph catches up with Alice on campus to warn her that the Lamprey is coming for her because of “what she did to its family” (not something we ever saw or even knew about until now). Margo and Eliot struggle with how to run Fillory now that magic is gone, still in conflict over democracy, which Eliot favors, vs brutal authoritarian rule (Margo, obvs). Fen suddenly returns from the fairy realm (having traded her toes for passage) to warn them that the Faeries are invading Fillory (which feels super pointless because an army of fairies arrive at the same time). In the final scene, Julia seeks Quentin out at Brakebills to show him that she mysteriously still has magic.
On to Season 3!
Season 3
So far THE BEST season of the show! At long last, character development has … developed! There’s a coherent, unified plot arc! With interconnected storylines among the various characters and relevant side plots! Watch them all! The violence and other disturbing content is very mild this season, but I’ve included a few content warnings so you’re prepared for what’s coming. Enjoy!
Episode 1: The Tale of the Seven Keys
Episode 2: Heroes and Morons
CW: discussion of suicide; violence against animals (sort of). Tracking down random acts of magic leads Quentin and Julia to a familiar face, who’s intending to kill herself, and nearly does. After that, a cat, well, explodes. You don’t see it, but there’s blood.
Episode 3: The Losses of Magic
CW: loss of a loved one. Two brief scenes late in the episode with some potentially upsetting depictions of deaths.
Episode 4: Be the Penny
CW: drug overdose. Approach the scene in which Julia enters Kady’s room with caution.
Episode 5: A Life in the Day
CW: violence. Bloody, but mostly not visible.
At this juncture I would also like you to know that this is my favorite Magicians episode of all time.
Episode 6: Do You Like Teeth?
CW: depression, suicide. Quentin’s solo op takes a rough turn after Poppy shows up; use caution if you watch the remaining scenes on the Muntjac.
Episode 7: Poached Eggs
Episode 8: Six Short Stories About Magic
Also one of my favorite episodes of all time!
Episode 9: All That Josh
Also also one of my favorite episodes of all time!
Episode 10: The Art of the Deal
CW: violence. The couple minutes after the fairies disappear get bloody.
Episode 11: Twenty-Three
Episode 12: The Fillorian Candidate
Episode 13: Will You Play With Me?
Bad news: The best season of Magicians so far is over. Good news: What a great season! On to #4 …