“Magic doesn’t come from talent. It comes from pain.” This is one of the first things we learn about the world of The Magicians, Syfy’s fantasy drama about a group of students attending Brakebills, a university of magic that functions like a horny Hogwarts on acid. Coming from Eliot (Hale Appelman), a student who keeps his own pain well hidden behind laconic wit and party-boy confidence, the line doubles as a mission statement for the show, which over four years has snowballed from cult oddity into a buzzy, quietly pioneering gem with a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score. The idea that magic is not a cure for pain, but the direct result of it, is key to understanding what sets The Magicians apart. Though this central metaphor, the show unpacks dark subjects—mental illness, trauma, the fallout from sexual violence—with a depth that is rare on television, and almost unheard of in this genre.
As the show begins, our square-jawed Chosen One protagonist Quentin (Jason Ralph) is a psychiatric patient, thrilled to discover that there exists a hidden mythical world in which he has a purpose and a sense of belonging. But in contrast to the narrative you expect, magic isn’t an escape, and enrolling at Brakebills does not cure Quentin’s depression. The bonds he forms with his fellow students, in particular Eliot and one-time love interest Alice (Olivia Taylor Dudley) help, but his underlying illness remains, and recurs. “The simple idea that depression isn’t solved by getting a girlfriend, or by having a good day, is in itself pretty rare in entertainment,” Ralph tells ELLE.com on the show’s Vancouver set, midway through filming on the fourth season. “It’s not something you can just shake off. In some ways that’s what the whole show is about, or at least Quentin’s journey: You have this guy who ends up getting everything he could ever want, and becomes the king of his own world sitting up on that throne, and he’s still depressed.”
While the breakneck pace of The Magicians doesn’t allow much time for Quentin to spend days in bed or struggle to function, the show finds other ways to mirror the cruel patterns of depression. Last season, a cursed key conjured Quentin’s shadow self, a doppelgänger that follows him around and taunts him with reminders of his own failures and inadequacies, almost driving him to suicide. The current season finds him on an upswing, if only because he’s preoccupied by trying to save Eliot from the demon possessing his body. “In season 4, we’re in the lucky position of asking, ‘And then what?’” says showrunner Sera Gamble. “We’ve been through a couple of iterations of depression and suicidal thoughts with Quentin, and now we get to ask what comes next, and experience the cyclical nature of it.”
Running in parallel to Quentin’s journey is that of his childhood best friend Julia (Stella Maeve), whose rejection from Brakebills sets her on a treacherous alternative path in pursuit of magic. In the finale of the first season, she is violently raped by a trickster god in a disturbing scene that initially seemed to risk indulging some of television’s worst impulses. Sexual violence against women has historically been used often as a plot device or a motivating event for a male character, with little or no effort made to explore its psychological impact on the victim. But Julia’s rape propels her arc into season 2 and beyond, and it fundamentally changes her both for the worse and for the better, in ways that are all the more nuanced for being heightened and magical. In the aftermath of her rape Julia loses her “shade” (the show’s term for something like the soul, meaning a person’s ability to process emotions and feel compassion); a season later, after choosing to spare the life of the god that raped her, she herself becomes a goddess. As heightened as these moments are, they’re also powerful symbols for two kinds of survivor experience: feeling emotionally numbed by an attack, and finding previously untapped strength in the wake of it.
Syfy
For Maeve, the most important stage of Julia’s journey has come in the current season, in which her love life comes into play for the first time since the assault. “For so long, Julia’s been this asexual character,” she notes. “After the trauma that happened, we don’t get to explore her sexuality at all, she just doesn’t have any romantic interest, and that’s not reality. I’ve been through, and many people have been through, traumas, been victimized, and that doesn’t mean that we still can’t love, or be physical or intimate or sexual. You can’t strip that away from someone.” In her first intimate (though chaste) scene with Penny (Arjun Gupta), Julia gently chides him for being reluctant to touch her. “You know I’m not broken, right?” she tells him. “I’m not a flower or a delicate piece of glass. I’m a person. And people heal.”
When I bring this up with Gamble, her passion on the subject is clear. “So often, if you have a character who’s been assaulted, it’s like, ‘Well, we have to be very careful, because certainly no woman who’s ever been raped ever has sex again in her life and enjoys it! That never happens.’” She pauses. “This is dangerous territory to talk about, because I’m so furious this week.” And with good reason. Gamble and I are speaking in September of 2018, during the week of Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation hearing, as Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony sparked an outpouring of support from sexual assault victims, many of whom also shared their own stories. Gamble spent a lot of time that week reading the stories of survivors, and the shadow of that real-world event crystallized our conversation about Julia. “We now get to do something I don’t see very much on TV, which is look at how a person goes on to have an interesting, complicated life that includes the trauma, but isn’t defined by the trauma.” Julia’s journey, as fantastical as it is, depicts the idea that trauma can spark transformation.
SYFY
The show’s interest in psychology has never been clearer than in season 4’s most recent episode, which played out like a high-concept therapy session: Eliot, presumed dead by his friends after being possessed by The Monster, is alive but locked in his own head. His only hope of regaining control of his body is to find a secret door, which is (of course) hidden somewhere in his darkest, most traumatic and shameful memories. Though Eliot has no shortage of options—from the bully he accidentally killed to the homophobic father he left behind—his most painful memory turns out to be a previously unseen moment in which he rejected Quentin, who wanted to pursue a relationship with him. “I was afraid, and when I’m afraid, I run away,” he admits, apologizing to his memory of Quentin with a kiss—and with that, the door opens. In The Magicians, magic isn’t an escape, but human connection is.
“Our show is, at its core, about outcasts who feel fortunate to have even met each other and to have found their tribe,” Gamble says. “I feel a little bit of that vibe from the fandom that’s grown around the show.” Intense fandom has the potential to turn toxic, and while Gamble has experience of that from past projects, she’s seen the opposite as The Magicians’ devoted following has grown. “There’s a ton of respect and interest in each other, and there’s support for one another’s mental health. If you’re relating to a show like this, you might be coming in on the ground floor relating to the idea of being a black sheep, and I think that’s part of why.” An understanding of psychic pain is woven into the DNA of the series; author Lev Grossman has openly acknowledged that the original book series was inspired by his own depression. “I don’t know that it’s possible to get a room full of writers together who don’t have some personal experience with mental health troubles,” Gamble says. “That’s part of why we write fiction. It’s a safe way for us to talk about stuff that’s really emotional for us. That’s where the show lives.”
The Magicians screens Wednesdays at 9 P.M. on Syfy.
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