History Series / TheMagicians2016

* BiTheWay:
** Quentin's had hookups with women and a serious relationship with Alice, has had a three-way with Eliot and Margo, and kissed Eliot in an alternate timeline. In 4x05, it's revealed [[spoiler: that he and Eliot have feelings for one another in the main timeline]].
** Margo's never shown to sleep with other women, but wasn't above flirting with the female Pirate King.

* FromBadToWorse: “I’ve lived 40 timelines, 39 of which range from the comically horrendous, to the apocalyptically absurd.” [[spoiler: Commentary from Dean Fogg]]. Order of big bad / bad situation tropes...

** The entire main cast in the season finale. In the book, this event was a marathon battle featuring Alice matching the Beast almost move for move with every spell in her repertoire, the rest of the group teaming up to pelt the Beast with magic, and Quentin - though badly wounded - managing to slow the Beast down by summoning a cacodemon into the fight; the whole thing ends [[spoiler: with the Beast being slain, at the cost of Alice being transformed into a Niffin and vanishing into the ether]]. In the show, [[spoiler: the entire party is taken out in the space of about thirty seconds, and the Beast survives - in part due to a character ''who wasn't even there in the books'']].

* EyeSpy: In later seasons, the Faerie Queen [[spoiler: replaces the eye she took from Margo, which Margo destroyed, with a faerie eye. This eye gives Margo several visual capabilities] including the ability to see through the detached eye.

** Against vampires, dryads, etc.
** Fillorians apparently look down on the land's {{Talking Animals}}, despite vastly being vastly outnumbered by them.

* GroupedForYourConvenience: Disciplines are academic groupings based on areas of aptitude within Brakebills College. The known disciplines are Physical, Natural Magic, Illusion, Knowledge, Healing, Psychic.

''The Magicians'' is a fast-and-loose televised adaptation of [[Literature/TheMagicians the book trilogy]] by Lev Grossman, airing on the Creator/SyFy channel.

The series concluded in 2020 after five seasons; the first four can be found on Netflix while the fifth will presumably be added in early 2021.

Main character Quentin Coldwater (Jason Ralph) has been a fan of ''Fillory and Further'', a series of fantasy books set in a magical parallel world called Fillory, since childhood. Quentin realizes that he possesses magic of his own, and finds himself entering a {{Wizarding|School}} grad school called Brakebills University. The school offers much excitement and adventure, as well as a colorful host of schoolmates, including the bookish genius Alice Quinn (Olivia Taylor Dudley), Quentin's unfriendly telepathic roommate Penny Adiyodi (Arjun Gupta), the aloof and rebellious Kady Orloff-Diaz (Jade Tailor), and the charismatic and adventurous upperclassmen Eliot Waugh (Hale Appleman) and Margo Hanson (Summer Bishil). Meanwhile, Quentin's best friend since childhood, Julia Wicker (Stella Maeve), fails the entrance exam. She gradually grows obsessed with her newly discovered magic, and endangers herself as she immerses further into New York's magical underground.

The first three seasons are available on Creator/{{Netflix}} (Amazon Prime in the UK). The fourth season began airing on January 23rd of 2019.

* NoBudget: {{Invoked}} with The Castle That Isn't There.

** Dean Fogg in the novels is a fairly realistic portrayal of an academic administrator. Namely, in the books he is a stuffy ObstructiveBureaucrat who sees himself as a gateekeeper whose duty is to prevent students he deems unworthy from achieving their professional or academic goals. In the series, he is more of a clever TricksterMentor for whom AuthorityEqualsAsskicking.

* RippleEffectProofMemory: Sufficiently powerful magicians can sense when the timeline has been altered. Dean Fogg, Amber, and the Beast are all aware of the time loops.

* AdaptationDiversity:
** Fogg, Penny, and Margo (Janet in the books) are described as white in the novels but are played by actors of color.
** Quentin goes from AmbiguouslyBi to explicitly bisexual.

* TheCastShowoff: Hale Appleman, Jade Tailor, Brittany Curran, Olivia Taylor Dudley, Trevor Einhorn, and Rick Worthy are all talented singers. With so much musical ability, it's no wonder the writers keep finding reasons for musical episodes.
** Bonus for Jade Tailor, who is also a trained dancer who used to perform burlesque earlier in her career. So of course they found a way for her to do a burlesque number.
** They also found an excuse to have her speak Hebrew because Jade Tailor is half-Israeli and at least somewhat fluent.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: After Julia is tricked into [[spoiler: summoning Reynard the Fox, who rapes her after violently murdering her friends and possessing Richard’s body,]] she calls Marina for help. Marina, who normally wouldn’t swat a fly if it didn’t somehow benefit her personally, is horrified when she arrives at Julia’s apartment and is surprisingly sincere when she tells Julia she just wants to help, no payment or favors needed. [[spoiler: Apparently, sexual assault and mass murder is too far even for her]].

** Pete uses magic to strip Julia’s shirt off and uses it to tie her to a radiator, but afterward when Julia (reasonably) assumes he was planning to rape her he’s taken aback and claims he would never actually do such a thing and was just testing her to see her powers in action.

** One of the powers of the second Golden Key is that anyone holding is compelled to tell the truth -- while holding it, [[spoiler:Rupert's boyfriend]] was compelled to confess his love.

* RaceLift: Dean Fogg, described in the books as white, is black here. Penny, also described as white, is Indian American. Margo (formerly) Janet) was also white in the books. Summer Bishil is of white and Indian descent.

* GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion: When Julia gets pregnant due to Renard's rape, she decides to have an abortion right away, and this is treated as perfectly acceptable. Kady confides in her that she had an abortion as well (although she's not portrayed as "good" exactly). Julia then gets one from two Korean magicians. Poppy later tells Quentin she was going to have an abortion, but got distracted by attending a ritual and then decided it was a good opportunity to create a dragon-human hybrid.

** Eliot and Margo are terrible as rulers of Fillory due to their tendency to continually make impulsive decisions without collecting all the facts first, such as [[spoiler:declaring war out of spite]], agreeing to a duel without knowing the opponent's capabilities, and [[spoiler:seeking to strike a bargain with fairies]] in spite of being warned against it.

* TheMagicComesBack: The primary plot arc of Season 3 is to get magic back. [[spoiler: The Season 3 sees the group reactivating the flow of magic in the universe, at a cost. Alice destroyed the original Seven Keys but Julia was able to recreate them by giving up her divinity. As magic begins flowing into the universe again, Fogg, who has teamed up with Irene and the Library, turns up and magic is siphoned off to be controlled by the Library who decides who gets to possess magic and who doesn't and how much.]]

* MeaningfulFuneral: Played straight with [[spoiler: Quentin's]] death. The gang magically sings A-ha's "Take On Me" while throwing mementos of his life into a fire. Most are openly weeping or trying to hold back tears.
--> '''Penny''': Appreciate the level of sincere grief, dude.

--> '''Penny''': I seem to remember when I kicked it, you ''laughing''.

The first three seasons are available on Creator/{{Netflix}}. The fourth season began airing on January 23rd of 2019.

* BloodlessCarnage: [[spoiler:Penny’s mentor]] kills himself with a sawed-off shotgun, which in real life would’ve made his head explode.

** In "The World in the Walls," Alice thinks she's trapped in a situation like the original ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' pilot "The Cage." She refers to it as "a cage, a menagerie"; "The Menagerie" was a two-part episode that reworked the pilot footage. Fogg thinks she's talking about a ''Series/LostInSpace'' episode and Quentin corrects him.

** In "The World in the Walls," Alice thinks she's trapped in a situation like the original ''Series/StarTrek'' pilot "The Cage." She refers to it as "a cage, a menagerie"; "The Menagerie" was a two-part episode that reworked the pilot footage. Fogg thinks she's talking about a ''Series/LostInSpace'' episode and Quentin corrects him.

Main character Quentin Coldwater (Jason Ralph) has been a fan of ''Fillory and Further'', a series of fantasy books set in a magical parallel world called Fillory, since childhood. Quentin realizes that he possesses magic of his own, and finds himself entering a {{Wizarding|School}} grad school called Brakebills University. The school offers much excitement and adventure and a colorful host of schoolmates, including the bookish genius Alice Quinn (Olivia Taylor Dudley), his unfriendly telepathic roommate Penny Adiyodi (Arjun Gupta), the aloof and rebellious Kady Orloff-Diaz (Jade Tailor), and the charismatic and adventurous upperclassmen Eliot Waugh (Hale Appleman) and Margo Hanson (Summer Bishil). Meanwhile, Quentin's best friend since childhood, Julia Wicker (Stella Maeve), fails the entrance exam. She gradually grows obsessed with her newly discovered magic, and endangers herself as she immerses further into New York's magical underground.

* AbortedArc: About 10 minutes is spent trying to determine Quentin's house before it's given up on and he's listed as "unclear". What house he may belong to is never brought up again.
** Q's discipline is revealed to be [[spoiler: Minor Mending]] at the end of season 4.

** The protagonists are speculative fiction fans, most are fans of the Fillory series (a HighFantasy ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia'' analogue) and outright reference everything from ''Series/BattlestarGalactica'' to ''Literature/ThePrincessBride'' when discussing tropes or lampshading events. However, despite being in a GenreDeconstruction of the fantasy they're familiar with, they're cynical enough to ''not'' be WrongGenreSavvy.

** Quentin's had hookups with women and a serious relationship with Alice, has had a three-way with Eliot and Margo, and kissed Eliot in an alternate timeline. In 4x05, it's revealed [[spoiler: that he wants to pursue a relationship with Eliot in the main timeline]].

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Season 4. The Monsters are gone, the villian is dead, magic is free in the world once more. Julia is just a magician again, Alice is the new Head Librarian, Eliot and Margo are reunited and Josh finally got his long awaited "I love you". But Quentin is dead, and his sendoff was both very sweet and very sad all at the same time.]]

* LaserGuidedKarma: Marina spent most of season one terrorizing Quentin, Julia and her friends, controlling others with her power, and getting away with killing Kady's mother. In season two, [[spoiler: she goes on the run from the fox god Reynard and teams up with Julia, only to be tortured and killed by Reynard while Julia is busy with the Beast.]]

* LiteralMetaphor: The test to get one of the keys involves a set of colored tiles and a large frame the object of which is to create a mural which "reflects the beauty of all life". [[spoiler: Quentin and Eliot spend decades working on it during which time Q gets married, becomes a father, loses his wife, raises his son with Eliot, sends his son on to his own future, grows old and buries his friend. In other words, they build a rich and beautiful life atop the mural frame, thus solving the mural.]]