Why You Should Be Watching The Magicians

If you haven’t been watching The Magicians, what are you waiting for? I urge you to set aside 10 hours and binge watch it. Call in sick for a day, stay up all night, or spend your Sunday in front of your computer/TV. You’ll thank me later because The Magicians (airing on Syfy) is one of the best new shows on television. Here are just a few reasons why The Magicians is so, well, magical.

• The world Syfy has created is so visually slick, real, and appealing. Breakbills, the magic school where a lot of the story takes place, is like a nod to grand English universities. The campus is surrounded by trees, has brightly green grounds, and a mixture of stately and modern buildings. The classrooms are classrooms that look so interesting (some with handsome wood paneling, some like meditation centers) that they make me want to take classes there (obviously, the subjects they learn do too). Additionally, the special effects for the magical elements are stellar. Despite the sometimes silly-looking hand movements required to do spells (the balls of energy, the poisoned wound, and the levitation seen in recent episodes), the magic they result in on screen helps create a convincing magical world.

• There is a variety of core characters and archetypes (wonderfully acted by the entire cast). There is the Alice the nerd (Olivia Taylor Dudley), Quentin the outcast (Jason Ralph), Julia the wannabe (Stella Maeve), Penny the cool kid (Arjun Gupta), Kady the tough girl (Jade Tailor), Margo the party girl (Summer Bishil), and Eliot the party boy (Hale Appleman). Part of the enjoyment of the show is watching how each of these characters is developed, their layers are explored, and how they each turn to and use magic for their own reasons.

• While the other relationships on the show are all intriguing and complex (Penny and Kady, Quentin and Alice, Quentin and Julia, Julia and magic, Quentin and Fillory, Jane and The Beast, Eliot and Margo, etc), the relationship between Penny and Quentin is one of my favorites. Penny’s facial expressions when Quentin talks are hilarious (and in conjunction with phrases like, “I’m literally becoming less cool with every word you speak” make his deadpan delivery even funnier). Penny’s aloof coolness always undercuts or belittles Quentin (“Hell is real, and it smells like Axe body spray”); however, when it comes down to it, he allies with Quentin and, in fact, would fight for him.

• The mystery and suspense of The Beast–who is he? Can he be defeated? Why is he targeting Quentin? Is he from Fillory? Will he destroy Breakbills?–drives the show.The sheer creepy factor of the bugs that precede the arrival of The Beast and that hide his face are enough to make my skin crawl. This has to be partly credited to the source material: The Magicians by Lev Grossman. His Magicians trilogy provides excellent material to build the television story upon.

• Who doesn’t love a little magic? The entire premise and world is a nod to things like The Chronicles of Narnia (I mean, Fillory is world that children discovered by walking through a closet door, and Fillory became a children’s book series in Quentin’s “real” world) and Harry Potter (the magical classes and different houses).

Throwing in a little magical fantasy into a solid drama television show with complex characters takes it to the next level. With only three more episodes to go in season 1, you have plenty of time to catch up–and get sucked into the fantastic world of Syfy’s The Magicians.

 

The Magicians airs on Syfy on Mondays at 9/8c.

Featured Photo Credit: Lorenzo Agius/Syfy
Photo 1 & 3-5 Credit: Carole Segal/Syfy
Photo 2 Credit: Eike Schroter/Syfy