Tear Jerker / The Magicians (2016)

• Learning Charlie's fate. From a sweet caring older brother and friend to a twisted and inhuman niffin who enjoys watching his once beloved sister in pain all because its amusing to him.
• The casual references to Quentin's suicidal tendencies (both past and present) fall into this, along with Julia's slow mental breakdown after her rape by Reynard. Fen and Eliot finding out that their daughter was stillborn and they've been lied to also qualifies.
• In "The World In The Walls", how much Quentin ends up believing that the dream is reality and he hallucinated all of it is hard. When Penny shows up, Quentin immediately starts pleading for it to stop and insisting it's not real, thinking Penny's another hallucination. The relief on his face when he realizes that he is dreaming is also painful.
• Eliot finding out that Mike was possessed the entire time they were together, that he wasn't actually aware for any of it, and that the entire thing was a plot to get close enough to kill Quentin was bad enough. Then Eliot kills him to save the Dean and subsequently has a breakdown that he self-medicates with alcohol and drugs to the point where he almost dies in the Neitherlands because he can't deal with it sober.
• The degradation of Margo and Eliot's friendship after Mike's death and Eliot's downward spiral applies, especially Margo's heartbroken, "You don't care about me anymore."
• While what follows it has a negative effect on many of the relationships, Margo and Quentin's conversation while they're high on emotion magic is incredibly sad, with Margo admitting that she's extremely worried about Eliot and Quentin comforting her.
• When Ember removes the patch Marina placed on Julia's memories that kept her from remembering being raped, Julia breaks down sobbing and yells at Quentin to get away from her and not touch her. When he asks if he can help, she starts pleading for him to erase her memories, to take them away so she doesn't have to deal with it. Even Quentin sounds devastated when he says he doesn't know how and wishes he could.
• Alice's apparent death is heart-wrenching, especially the aftermath with an badly injured Quentin trying to reach her body and Eliot desperately trying to get him to stop while comforting him.
• Eliot was willing to give up any leverage they had over the Fairy Queen to protect Fray, only for him and Fen to be told that she wasn't theirs and theirs had been still-born. Fen's breakdown later about how she feels like a terrible mother for not knowing her real daughter was still-born and how much she tried to push it because she wanted Fray to be theirs is incredibly painful. Fen's so heart-broken that she leaves Fillory and goes back to Earth.
• Penny 23 sees Julia 40, thinking she's "his" Julia who was killed by the Beast. Then he realizes "the love of his life" barely knows him at all. Repeat almost beat-for-beat when Kady sees Penny 23.
• After months of not wanting to admit how she feels, Kady picks up the unity key and finally says she's in love with Penny, almost breaking down while she says it, only to find out that the key replaced her Penny with Penny 23. Kady doesn't take it very well.
• The look on Margo's face when Monster!Eliot gently touches her cheek and offers to become her new best friend while possessing her actual best friend, whose fate she still doesn't know is heartwrenching. She looks like she's about two seconds from a total breakdown before she internally armors up.
• "Escape from the Happy Place" is one giant tearjerker. First, there is everyone dealing with Eliot's apparent death, from Margo fearing that she won't stop crying if she starts, to Fen's breakdown, to Quentin spending the entire episode dealing with the fact that he has to destroy Eliot's body to kill the Monster. Then, there is Eliot's flashbacks, which include him killing someone with magic and betraying his only friend at the time. Also, Alice having to deal with Quentin's anger toward her for her betrayal. The final minutes are really gut-wrenching: Eliot's biggest regret is that he rejected Quentin, and he finally finds the door to contact the others. The look on Quentin's face when he realizes that Eliot's still in there and saves him at the last minute is heart-breaking. Finally, the way Quentin sends Alice away is enough to induce sobs.
• When Zelda goes looking for Harriet in the mirror world, she at first thinks she's found her, but then she realizes the "Harriet" signing back at her is just a mirror image who can only mimic what she's saying and quickly fades away. Bad enough, and for the final touch, she doesn't say aloud, "You're not Harriet", she signs it, almost like a last desperate wish for this to somehow really be her daughter.
• In "All That Hard, Glossy Armor", Margo finally lets out some of her grief for Eliot and herself after licking her birthright lizard causes her to hallucinate him. Words cannot properly describe how well Summer Bishil sells Margo's breakdown.
  "The only thing I ever did right was to be your best friend...and I can't even do that."
• Throughout season 4, watching Quentin waver between fierce determination to save Eliot and hopeless exhaustion is heartbreaking. The physicality between the Monster and Quentin is especially painful, with the Monster being affectionate in a similar way to how we've seen Eliot be in past seasons (which is made worse considering Quentin has romantic feelings for Eliot and was intimate with him in the mosaic timeline) and Quentin being visibly uncomfortable, at times flinching away but for the most part seeming resigned to it.
  • Quentin is clearly in a bad place emotionally all season, but this is most obvious in a scene in episode 6 where Quentin tries to stop the Monster from damaging Eliot's body and, when the Monster lashes out at him, says,“break my bones, strangle me, I’m too tired to care." While his mental state is never directly addressed, Julia's horrified reaction says it all.
• In "The 4-1-1", Quentin does a timeshare spell that transfers his mind into his past self to talk to his teacher. While there, he runs into past Alice who figures out just who he really is and heartbroken over the pain she sees on his face whenever he looks at her. The saddest part comes when she admits to him that he is the best thing to happen to her. The look on Quentin's face when he hears that is heartbreaking, especially since he knows what their future holds.
  • Watching Alice with Past!Quentin is also painful. As he flirts with her the whole time, she's clearly tempted to take advantage of the fact that he doesn't know what's in store for them. However, she also knows it would (a) be completely unethical to treat Q that way and (b) mess with her head more to give in. She finally loses her resolve for one kiss, which is the exact moment Present!Q comes back.
• Quentin's death and memorial. Made even more heartbreaking by the fact that, after a whole season of fighting to get him back, Quentin never reunites with Eliot and Eliot never gets to admits his feelings like he had planned to in "Escape From The Happy Place".
  • As heartbreaking as it is that Eliot and Q never get closure, Julia alone by the fire is a gut-punch. In that moment, she's lost her life-long best friend and magic. Of course, magic does come from pain so she gets it back at that moment.
  • Also painful is Quentin asking if he did something brave or just found a way to kill himself, later admitting that he's attempted suicide, which, while Quentin's depression has been explicit through the series, has only been hinted at before now.
  • At his memorial, Eliot and Alice sit together and hold hands.