History YMMV / TheMagicians2016

* EvilIsSexy:
** Marina is definitely this for people attracted to women.
** Pete serves as this for people attracted to men.
** With 3x11, Quentin 23 fell into this for a lot of people. As well as possessed Eliot in the s3 finale.
** Possessed Julia in season 4 was this for many as well.
** As does Niffin Alice, at least when she's not pretending she's dead.

** 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) [[CampGay Eliot's]] [[ReallyGetsAround sex]] [[AnythingThatMoves drive]] [[AmbiguouslyBi and]] [[IncompatibleOrientation orientation]] and B) that Fillorian marriages are magically binding. Eliot has to [[CureYourGays 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.

* {{Adorkable}}: Quentin can be endearingly awkward; for example, when he and Eliot set sail on the Muntjac, he pretends to swashbuckle like a pirate and immediately becomes sheepish after someone spots him.

** 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 afterwards. Even Quentin, whose face was grabbed by the Beast hard enough to bruise, doesn't seem to have any issues.

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: In addition to the musical episodes, some of the 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.

** 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 and 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 [[AssholeVictim Plover alive and torture him for several decades.]])

** 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.

** Depending on who 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. [[HarsherInHindsight Especially once it is revealed that Quentin's problems with depression are really bad]], and the Fillory books helped him a great deal.

** Among some of the 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 InUniverse, 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.

** 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 (... ItMakesSenseInContext).

* TheScrappy: While all of the characters have varying [[BrokenBase Broken Bases]], Quentin is probably the closest to one, especially after he yelled at Julia for not reciprocating his feelings for her.

** 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.
* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: The Monster, his Sister and Everett are all [[spoiler: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.

** 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 of 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 BrokenBird 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 fiance 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. 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.

** 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.

* UnfortunateImplications: [[spoiler: The HeroicSacrifice of Quentin, a depressed bisexual man whose suicidal tendencies have been shown throughout the show. After spending most of the season in a downward spiral and losing hope, outright admitting he doesn’t care if he dies and provoking the Monster to hurt him in episode 6, his death could be read as suicide, which Quentin himself acknowledges. The show-runners stated that they killed him off as a subversion of the archetype of a ‘white male hero’ and the fact that character is often the safest, despite the fact Quentin was in many ways a subversion of the typical white male lead, being mentally ill and bisexual. [[https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/magicians-season-4-finale-death-explained-jason-ralph-exits-1202736 This article]] doesn’t do much to lessen the unfortunate implications, with sentiments such as ‘he did far more good by sacrificing himself than not’ and ‘I'm not sure what we would have done with the character had he lived.’ Not only this, in episode 5 Quentin and Eliot’s relationship became textually romantic, rather than in subtext or in a alternate timeline, garnering the show praise and giving the fandom hope for a developed queer relationship between two leads, so the season 4 finale has also garnered accusations of BuryYourGays and queerbaiting. [[https://www.popsugar.com/entertainment/Why-Quentin-Death-Magicians-Wrong-46050057 This article]] sums up the problems many had with it:]]
--> [[spoiler: 'To suggest that a kind, gentle, and, yes, depressed man only realizes his life is worthwhile after he dies, or that his journey had nowhere left to go? It's irresponsible and downright chilling.']]\\
[[spoiler: 'To add insult to injury, the death in question is painted as a "white dude hero dies, isn't that innovative?" by many of the creators, but in fact, it falls into a trope that's decidedly not innovative at all: "bury your gays."']]

** With 3x11, Quentin 23 fell into this for a lot of people. As well as possessed!Eliot in the s3 finale.
** Possessed!Julia in season 4 was this for many as well.
** As does Niffin!Alice, at least when she's not pretending she's dead.

* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: In addition to the musical episodes, some of the 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.

---> [[spoiler: 'To suggest that a kind, gentle, and, yes, depressed man only realizes his life is worthwhile after he dies, or that his journey had nowhere left to go? It's irresponsible and downright chilling.']]\\

* UnfortunateImplications:
** The death of Kira, a black disabled lesbian, in the episode she’s introduced in, didn't sit well with many, especially considering the rate of BuryYourGays controversy at the time it aired in 2016.
** The fact that Martin Chatwin and Julia both become villains (or at least morally dubious, in Julia’s case) after being sexually abused. Furthermore, Julia becoming pregnant as the result of Reynard’s rape and struggling to find a way to abort it, constantly having her bodily autonomy denied and then losing her soul when she finally does manage to get rid of it, was upsetting to many viewers.
** [[spoiler: The HeroicSacrifice of Quentin, a depressed bisexual man whose suicidal tendencies have been shown throughout the show. After spending most of the season in a downward spiral and losing hope, outright admitting he doesn’t care if he dies and provoking the Monster to hurt him in episode 6, his death could be read as suicide, which Quentin himself acknowledges. The show-runners stated that they killed him off as a subversion of the archetype of a ‘white male hero’ and the fact that character is often the safest, despite the fact Quentin was in many ways a subversion of the typical white male lead, being mentally ill and bisexual. [[https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/magicians-season-4-finale-death-explained-jason-ralph-exits-1202736?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social This article]] doesn’t do much to lessen the unfortunate implications, with sentiments such as ‘he did far more good by sacrificing himself than not’ and ‘I'm not sure what we would have done with the character had he lived.’ Not only this, in episode 5 Quentin and Eliot’s relationship became textually romantic, rather than in subtext or in a alternate timeline, garnering the show praise and giving the fandom hope for a developed queer relationship between two leads, so the season 4 finale has also garnered accusations of BuryYourGays and queerbaiting. [[https://www.popsugar.com/entertainment/Why-Quentin-Death-Magicians-Wrong-46050057 This article]] sums up the problems many had with it:]]

* {{Adorkable}}: Quentin can be endearingly awkward; for example, when he and Eliot set sail on the Muntjac, he pretends to swashbuckle like a pirate and immediately becomes sheepish after someone spots him

* AngstWhatAngst: ** 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 afterwards. Even Quentin, whose face was grabbed by the Beast hard enough to bruise, doesn't seem to have any issues.

* CrossesTheLineTwice: 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.