YMMV / The Magicians (2016)

• Adorkable: Quentin can be endearingly awkward; for example, when he and Eliot set sail on the Muntjac, he pretends to swash buckle like a pirate and immediately becomes sheepish after someone spots him.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Julia's reaction to being rejected by Brakebills stems from a feeling of entitlement and never being told she wasn't good enough for something. Seeing as how she went to war with Marina, who also rejected her in the end, there may be something to it. Also, she resents that Quentin got in instead of her, possibly due to her belief that she is better than he in general. It may be the real reason she went along with Marina's attack. It's worth noting that this is actually an interpretation Quentin believes In-Universe, with him telling her as much.
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • After the Beast attacks their class in the pilot, aside from being worried about being found out for casting the spell, none of them seem to react any afterward. Even Quentin, whose face was grabbed by the Beast hard enough to bruise, doesn't seem to have any issues.
  • Also for Quentin: aside from further straining his relationship with Julia, Quentin also has no apparent reaction to what happens to him in "The World In The Walls", despite being trapped in a literal nightmare world that had affected him enough inside the dream that he was more or less catatonic until Penny showed up.
  • In season 4, the fact that the Monster is inhabiting the body of the man Quentin spent 50 years with in another lifetime, has/had romantic feelings for and was rejected by, is not discussed at all except in episode 5.
• Awesome Music: In addition to the musical episodes, some insert songs are genuine earworms, such as Chelsea Wolfe's "Carrion Flowers". Great Northern's "Home" is also used well as a song that conveys the bittersweet nature of the ending in season 5.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Sir Effingham's appearances, while amusing, ultimately do little more than provide comic relief, both due to his comically pronounced chauvinism and other characters' irritation with it.
• Broken Base:
  • Julia's actions in season two has split the audience. Some are rooting for her to take down Reynard and stop him, while others are horrified at just how far she will go for revenge. That she keeps betraying and ruining things for Quentin and his friends isn't helping, especially since her continued interference led to Alice turning into a niffin to kill the Beast, and Quentin killing her as a result; and, once she lost her Shade, her casually murdering a group of talking trees is going to make things even worse for Fillory. There's also the fact that while Julia's main motivation is revenge, there is no question that Reynard is also going around murdering lots of innocent people, and Julia fully planned to try to take out the Beast afterward anyway. Both Julia and Quentin's group just thought "their" big bad was the priority.
  • The Beast turning out to be Martin Chatwin, a survivor of sexual assault, has also split the base somewhat, with plenty of people upset how it vilifies a survivor of child rape and plenty of others who think it manages to make him a more sympathetic and three-dimensional villain. (The only part of the reveal that's more or less universally accepted is the fact that Martin used age suspension magic to keep Plover alive and torture him for several decades.)
  • One of the most controversial aspects is that Quentin is meta-textually written off as a sufferer of "white male protagonism", in spite of being LGBT and neuro-atypical. Season 4 ends on a note suggesting that his departure is helpful for letting other characters besides white men tell their stories, but not a few fans saw this as erasure of Quentin's own diversity and the way the story represented his unique experiences due to those differences.
• Complete Monster: Reynard The Fox is a sadistic trickster god who was imprisoned by his mother, Persephone, for his atrocities. Tricking the Hedge Witches into releasing him, he then proceeds to massacre them, before possessing one after eating his heart, and rapes Julia Wicker before leaving her to die. He then goes on to murder all of Persephone's followers, with only Julia and Kady surviving. When Reynard learns that he sired a son from one of his rape victims, he tries to coerce him into giving Reynard his powers by killing his wife and grinding her into pieces and threatening to do the same to him; this causes his son to commit suicide. After being captured and stripped of his powers by Persephone, he's forced to comply with Julia's demands, where he proceeds to make Julia relive the time he raped her before attempting to kill her.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Cancer Puppy, a dog enchanted to remain a puppy forever. This doesn't stop the poor thing from being infected with just about every disease known to afflict dogs. It's apparently been going to the same "very confused" vet for some time. Quentin, looking for a cure for his father's cancer, tests the spell on Cancer Puppy ... and kills it.
  • In "Plan B", the book Penny's looking for was written by a Polish Jew, so the eugenics books ate it. The librarian "helpfully" informs Penny that the books are now locked up in the restricted section "with the rest of the anti-Semitic texts."
• Delusion Conclusion: Since the series begins with Quentin leaving a mental hospital, some commentators wondered if Quentin's adventures at Brakebills would end with him awakening to find himself still there - especially after he ends up getting plunged into a Lotus-Eater Machine-like dream of the asylum in one episode.
• Fanfic Fuel: The reveal that the first season's plot happened 39 times before due to time loops provided a lot of fuel. Then the episode in season 3 where Quentin and Eliot live out a timeline for the quest where they're in Fillory for decades is mostly played out in montage form and leaves a lot of gaps.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Quentin and Eliot, after season three. Also, Kady and Penny.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Julia's troubles in the first season gets this treatment once it's revealed that she was rejected from Brakebills due to Jane Chatwin's schemes. If it weren't for that, Julia wouldn't have gone through so much trauma. And it gets worse: Julia becomes pregnant as a result of Reynard's rape and struggles to find a way to get rid of it.
  • Eliot and Mike's relationship becomes disturbing after it's revealed that Mike was possessed by the Beast for their entire relationship.
  • Quentin cheating on Alice with Eliot and Margo becomes worse since he ends up having to kill her while she is in niffin form to save them. Even worse, he just told her minutes before that he is going to win her back.
  • The lines about Quentin not needing his medication and him checking himself into the hospital were already bad, especially Julia's apparent attitude about how he just needs to grow up, but the episode where Quentin's stuck in a mental hospital (even if it's in a dream) and how easily he believes he hallucinated it puts all of it into a much worse light. Especially after "Impractical Applications", where he admits to Alice he's been institutionalized multiple times for his depression and how bad it is for him.
  • After the events of "A Life in a Day", Quentin and Eliot don't spend much time together until the third season finale, where Eliot tries to kill the Monster to save Quentin and ends up possessed instead. "Escape from the Happy Place" puts this into heartbreaking perspective, as Eliot reveals that his biggest regret is rejecting Quentin when he suggests that they actually give it a try and be together.
  • Everything involving Quentin over the course of the series, but especially his Ship Tease with both Eliot and Alice, now that he's dead.
• He Really Can Act:
  • Special mention goes to Stella Maeve's performance as shadeless Julia and, however brief, Jason Ralph as Beast-Quentin from the 23rd timeline.
  • Summer Bishil gives an absolutely phenomenal performance in 'All That Hard, Glossy Armor.'
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • The Beast crosses this in the first minutes of his appearance on the show, removing the hands and eyes of the Dean. It becomes worse when we discover he's been manipulating Penny for decades by pretending to be his friend and teaching him magic solely so he could use him as an entry point into Brakebills to get at the Physicals. We also discover he's killed almost the entirety of a class of students and is keeping one of them prisoner in a dungeon in Fillory.
  • Marina crosses it when she murders Kady's mother with a spell that causes her to bleed out on the floor from every orifice. We also discover that episode that Kady is her literal slave, having been traded to her by her mother for past services and that she has used her/intends to continue to use her to sexually seduce professors at Brakebills so she can find things to steal.
  • Depending on whom you ask, Julia crosses it when she follows Marina's plan and put Quentin into a dream world where he is in a mental hospital. While she had no clue at all that it would be deadly, that she wanted to hurt him in such a way is beyond cruel. Especially once it is revealed that Quentin's problems with depression are really bad, and the Fillory books helped him a great deal.
  • Julia really crosses it in the Season 1 finale, when she sabotages the groups' plan to kill the Beast that almost gets them all killed and decides to side with the Beast to get revenge for what Reynard did to her and wants to use his knowledge on how to kill a god.
  • Among some things Julia did without her shade, her throwing Quentin to Reynard in an attempt to force him to release Niffin Alice to kill Reynard crosses it, especially when Reynard says he'll "make do" with Quentin as a substitute for Julia. It's even considered as such In-Universe, being the event that causes Kady to stop attempting to sympathize with or excuse Julia's actions and has her locked in the Clean Room as a result.
  • Alice crossed it as a Niffin. She hunted down magical creatures and tortures them to death just to see what kind of lights they made.
• Nightmare Fuel: The ghosts of Eliot and Margo from "Twenty-Three", with the flash of Eliot covered in blood and grinning maniacally, while Margo appears with half of her face missing, showing the inside of her head.
  • Reynard torturing Marina, eating some of her fingers and turning her cat inside out.
• Special Effect Failure: Most of the show's well done, but the prosthetic fingers used for Martin Chatwin and Quentin 23 as the Beast look really fake.
• Strangled by the Red String:
  • By the end of S4, we're supposed to believe Margo and Josh are in love, to the point where Margo would leave it up to other people to save Eliot, the most important person in her life, despite being able to keep her fairy eye there to stop Fish!Josh from dying (… It Makes Sense in Context).
  • To some, Julia and Penny 23 fall into this as well.
• Squick:
  • Ember gives Quentin and Julia a bottle of his semen to power the god-killing knife, which Alice has to drink later.
  • After Julia is raped by Reynard, the semen is shown coming down her leg when she gets up.
• The Scrappy: While all the characters have varying Broken Bases, Quentin is probably the closest to one, especially after he yelled at Julia for not reciprocating his feelings for her.
  • The end of the season has him going in and out of it: on the one hand, he did become more proactive in going after the Beast, and basically fought to get back to his friends when he was separated from them. On the other hand, he had a magically drunken three-way with Eliot and Margo behind Alice's back, only to blame them and the spell for his actions and gets angry at Alice for using Penny for revenge sex.
    • Arguably Rescued from the Scrappy Heap season 2 and onwards, where he is nowhere near as polarizing as he was in season 1.
  • Poppy Kline in season three. She forces the depression key on Quentin (resulting in him nearly attempting suicide), is directly responsible for the fact that it ended up in the Underworld by then stealing it from him, and then ditches him in the Library when he won't abandon his friends.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The Monster, his Sister, and Everett are all defeated quickly and easily in the season 4 finale, despite being built up (especially the Monster). The Monster and his Sister barely seemed to do anything that made them worthy of being feared by the gods so much, and Everett was barely developed as a character or villain.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Between seasons 4 and 5, it seemed like they were setting up the McCallisters as secondary villains, given that Irene was presumably still out to murder the Physical Kids. But they weren't even mentioned, instead replaced with "The Couple" as the secondary antagonists of the season.
  • It seemed as though Zelda and Harriet had reconciled at the end of season 4 and would share some quality mother+daughter time together, but Harriet didn't appear in season 5 and Zelda was killed off by the end of it. Given that she was contracted to the Library, however, there is a chance she could have continued to appear. Pity about the cancellation.
• The Woobie: In short: Everyone. Magic comes from pain, after all.
  • Quentin Coldwater was considered somewhat obnoxious by the fanbase in season 1, especially after the 'gatekeeping' speech he gave to Julia in Episode 3. All of this antipathy went out the window by Episode 4 where we saw just how deep his self-loathing and depression went. In season 2, he loses Alice right after telling her he's going to try to fix their relationship, and spends a lot of the season emotionally abused by Niffin Alice before letting her go. Made worse in season three, where it turns out that he blames himself for what happened to Julia because he wasn't there for her, as well as Alice's death. Then, in season 4, the Monster torments him while he desperately tries to get Eliot (who in episode 5 he's revealed to have romantic feelings for outside the alternate timeline and was rejected by) back. He's clearly in a bad place and, when attacked by the Monster, admits he doesn't care anymore and provokes the Monster to hurt him more.
  • Julia is similar by Episode 5, as she loses her fiancé due to his having his memories wiped of her. Even before then, she is a Broken Bird due to the fact she's dreamed her entire life of magic the same way Quentin has, but covered it up better. Discovering magic is real makes everything else look trivial, but Brakebills doesn't want her, and she's driven to increasing extremes to try to find the truth. Then even the hedge witches drop her after she proves more loyal to her friend than them. In the process, she loses her fiancé in the worst way (he has his memories of her wiped). Even worse, she watches Kady's mother get murdered by Marina, and has to go to rehab, where she makes some new friends who want to meet a god to help them with their issues. She helps them meet the god, but it turns out to be a trap and all of her friends are killed. Kady is only spared because Julia got her out before she herself was raped. She becomes pregnant with Reynard's child, goes through hell to get it aborted and, when she finally manages to get rid of it, ends up without a soul.
  • Kady turns out to be the daughter of a hedge witch who traded her to Marina in exchange for covering up one of her messes. She's literally Marina's slave and has been forced to do all manner of despicable things to serve her will. She witnesses Julia's rape and ends up a junkie. Furthermore, she loses the love of her life Penny and then, upon the arrival of Penny 23, has to deal with seeing an alternate version of him that doesn't love her.
  • Eliot discovered his powers by accidentally killing one of his bullies with them, and is clearly still shaken recounting the tale; the second time he has to kill someone in self-defense with magic, it's his boyfriend. He gets crowned The High King of Fillory and as such, ended up marrying a blacksmith's daughter in exchange for the knife the main characters needed; doesn't sound bad at first, until you remember A) Eliot's sex drive and orientation and B) that Fillorian marriages are magically binding. Eliot has to stay with her and can never be with anyone else or do anything to break off the union. Poor guy is going to be stuck in the ultimate loveless marriage for the rest of his natural life. Fortunately for him, he gets out of the contract when Ember kicks him out of Fillory for being boring, and Ember's death later on completely nullifies the rules.
  • Alice, after coming back from being a Niffin, remembers all the awful things she's done and struggles to adjust to being a human again. In season 4, everyone hates her for betraying the team by trying to get rid of magic, and it's clear she hates herself just as much, which can be seen in the conversations between her two Mirror selves.
  • Penny 23, who comes from a timeline where most of the cast, including his 'soulmate' Julia, are dead.
• Unpopular Popular Character: Todd.
• Vanilla Protagonist: Quentin. While he's got his own quirks and flaws, he can come across as relatively generic considering he's surrounded by troubled genius Alice, jerkish traveler Penny, rebellious, tough-talking Kady, larger-than-life partier Margo, campy Eliot, and Julia, who anchors her own storyline throughout season 1.

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