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estelofimladris · 5 years

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Queerness and Death in The Magicians by SE Fleenor (The Removed Syfy Article)

[ NOTE: This article is being reposted in its entirety because it was removed by the Syfy website where it was originally posted. I (estelofimladris) did not write it, but still had it open after its removal. Please read and enjoy - send the writer, S.E. Fleenor, some love if you can. ]

by S.E. Fleenor

SPOILERS FOR THE MAGICIANS SEASON 4 FINALE!

By now you already know that The Magicians’ Quentin Coldwater died in the Season 4 finale. Yes, D-E-D, dead. There’s no resurrection in the works and no trick of astral projection or Niffin state of higher being can bring sweet, depressed, narcissistic Quentin back.

The decision to kill off a major character — the major character, if the Lev Grossman novels still mean anything (they don’t) — is almost always controversial. But we live in the day and age of Game of Thronesand The Walking Dead and Thanos snapping half of the Avengers (and the universe) into nothingness. Any character could die at any moment (and sometimes all of the characters could die at any moment) and that’s the brave, new, kill-happy world our media is made in.

So, why does it matter that Quentin is dead?

Well, my friends, let’s revisit a little trope we like to call Bury Your Gays. Throughout media representations of queer folks, reaching back to 19th-century Victorian novels, the formula has been about the same: An LGBTQ+ character is introduced, they reveal their sexuality or an attraction to a specific person, and then they die, die, die, often horrifically. This trope is also called Dead Lesbian Syndrome due to the overwhelming number of queer women who have been slaughtered onscreen — not exactly the representation queer women have been begging for.

Back when archaic censorship laws ruled the page and the screen, writing about queer characters was taboo and the only way queer writers, or folks who wanted to create queer characters, could include LGBTQ+ characters was by portraying them unfavorably. Queer characters could exist, but only as a warning of what a “perverted” life would bring you. So, in order to get some kind of representation, LGBTQ+ characters had to suffer.

Sounds a little rough, huh? Like who would really bury their gays? Oh, just Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood, The 100, The Walking Dead, The Expanse, Jessica Jones, Xena, Smallville, Battlestar Galactica, Hex, Torchwood, Hemlock Grove, Teen Wolf, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Dracula, The Vampire Diaries, Arrow, Salem, American Horror Story, Ascension, Lost Girl, Scream, The Shannara Chronicles, The Exorcist, Van Helsing, Doctor Who, Gotham, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Purge, and last but not least (and not for the first time): The Magicians.

Let it be noted that I have only included science fiction, fantasy, and horror TV shows on this list and only those that I know about. The list is much, much longer when you include non-genre TV shows and film. (Autostraddle has a very complete list of queer women on TV who have been killed off, for those of you who feel like being sad.)

Oh, did you recognize a bunch of queer-friendly shows in that list? Does that somehow feel like a violation of the promise made when a series goes out of its damn way to present itself as queer and feminist?

EXACTLY. And, that, my sweet babies, is why people are pissed about the death of Quentin Coldwater, generally speaking. We’re sick of seeing queer characters die over and over again. But, what specifically about the death of Quentin is so frustrating? I’m so glad you asked.

Full disclosure: I'm not going to get into the creators' rationale for killing off Quentin. I've read all the interviews with the creators and with Jason Ralph, who plays Quentin, and they all read like a whole lot of familiar BS. (At least Hale Appelman, who plays Eliot, gets it.)

In the first season of The Magicians, Quentin, Eliot, and Margot have a threesome. It’s the first time Quentin has sex with a man, as far as we know, and it’s the first time we see him start to confront his queerness. In Season 3’s “A Life in the Day,” Quentin and Eliot end up in a different Fillory, from before they were born, where they must solve an unsolvable puzzle. As they spend a lifetime working on the mosaic, they fall in love, raise a child, and make their queer family work. Upon returning to the main timeline, barely a word is spoken about their encounter, and queer folks everywhere braced ourselves for that experience to be treated as an anomaly from another timeline. (Another weird queer trope where characters get to be LGBTQ+, but only elsewhere or else when or, or, or…)

Season 4 brought unexpected twists and turns, such as Eliot being trapped inside his own mind by the Monster. With that, many a fan prepared to let Queliot rest. And, then “Escape from the Happy Place,” took us into Eliot’s mind and — after exploring a lot of deep trauma that has a particularly queer flavor to it — back to the day Eliot and Quentin came back from their lifetime in Fillory. As they sit on the steps of the throne room, Memory Quentin and Memory Eliot talk about what happened between them. Memory Quentin asks Memory Eliot why they shouldn’t try to be together, saying “Who gets proof of concept like that?”

Eliot kisses Memory Quentin hard on the mouth and then walks through the door that will allow him to take control of his body for a moment. In the real world, face to face with Quentin, Eliot gets a signal out that he’s still alive. He looks at Quentin and repeats the question Quentin had asked him, following it with, “Peaches and plums, motherf*cker.” When he realizes who he’s looking at, Quentin hesitates, a look of surprise and longing washing over his face.

This deeply emotional and compelling storyline appeared at the same time that Quentin finally officially rebuffed Alice’s advances, telling her he no longer wanted to be together, that he could never see her the same way again.

Then, after all that work, after all the maturation the characters undergo, the series undoes everything, shoehorning in a last-minute declaration of love between Quentin and Alice and killing off Quentin when he uses magic in the Mirror Realm, without ever seeing Eliot again. Quentin then goes to the Underworld branch of the library and meets with Penny 40 while reminiscing over his life and pondering over whether or not he died by suicide. (The treatment of suicide in the episode is problematic and deeply offensive.)

There are probably as many critiques of this ending as there are people who watched it, but I’m going to focus on the main issues that stood out to me.

The series has gone out of its way to confirm Quentin as queer and tease the possibility of a queer love story.

Queer viewers are used to surviving off subtext and tend to be fairly generous in what we’ll accept. Seriously, many a queer considers Thor: Ragnarok to be part of the queer canon when it’s not even implied onscreen that anyone is queer, and have you seen people shipping Carol and Maria in Captain Marvel? Maybe it’s because we’re used to being served scraps that the Bury Your Gays trope feels so pointed. Oh, you’re not happy with the almosts and the could-haves and the alternate timelines of queerness? Well, then we’ll make your characters queer and just murder ‘em right up.

After Season 3, The Magicians could have never acknowledged the relationship between Quentin and Eliot that takes place in another timeline or they could have shrugged and been like, “Must have been the opium in the air!” They’d already done as much with the threesome in Season 1 and all but ignoring Quentin's queerness in the episodes that follow. The series didn’t have to confirm that Quentin wanted to follow his attraction to Eliot and give being together a try. But, The Magiciansdid. The series took the time onscreen to show Eliot and Quentin kissing again, to show Eliot declaring his love for Quentin in their own code, and to show Quentin dedicate his time to helping Eliot get free.

Furthermore, how messed up is it that the series spends a significant amount of time dredging up the trauma of Eliot’s queer youth only to make him realize his biggest regret is how he treated Quentin, just for Quentin to be forced back into the closet? An episode that was deeply evocative and affirming of queerness smacks of voyeurism when taken in the context of the finale.

At the last minute, after confirming his queerness, the series forces a relationship between Quentin and Alice.

It’s hard not to see the last ditch shoving of Quentin and Alice together as an attempt to shove Quentin himself back in the closet. Season 4 shows Quentin rejecting and wanting to be apart from Alice, only for him to decide that he loves her and wants to give their relationship another try because? Honestly, I’m not sure what rationale he uses because it MAKES NO SENSE. And, what the hell does he think of imprisoned-in-his-own-body Eliot while making this decision? To judge from the series, not a whole hell of a lot.

It’s totally cool if queer or bisexual characters date people of different genders — that’s not the issue. The issue is that without a moment of hesitation, Quentin whiplashes from his lover who he knows is trapped by the Monster and cannot see, hear, or reach him to his ex-girlfriend who he has distanced himself from due to her selfish behavior.

In the context of his death, I like to call this particularly messed up turn of events “Bury Your Gays and Stomp On Their Graves” because all the work that had been done to show Quentin’s coming to terms with his own sexuality is undone shortly before he dies.

There are other ways to write a character off a series.

A lot of people fall back on bad faith arguments like: what is a show supposed to do when an actor no longer wishes to appear in the series?

The answer, of course, is: ANYTHING ELSE. They could have done literally anything else to write Quentin out of the show and release Jason Ralph from his commitment. The Magicians takes place in a world WHERE MAGIC EXISTS, where characters leave the main story to go on their own adventures, and where average human beings can become gods. There’s no excuse for falling into lazy storytelling and reifying a trope that has been well-documented and mourned for a long time.

In the novels, Quentin gets kicked out of Fillory and decides to use his discipline, minor mendings, to build a new world for himself and Alice. He essentially walks through a door and never comes back. THAT WOULD HAVE WORKED and it wouldn’t do the work of retraumatizing queer audiences.

It comes down to this: To ignore the wider implications of making a character specifically queer, having him return to his prior unhealthy relationship with a woman, and then killing him off is a disservice to queer people everywhere. It is, at once, a declaration of the meaninglessness of the queer experience and an unforgivable reminder of the expendability of queer lives.

Series like The Magicians (and before it, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) trade on their reputations as queer and feminist shows. We watch them for their powerful women and their kickass queer characters and their storylines that affirm the power of survival. And what do they give us in return? They bury their gays.

Does that mean that all LGBTQ+ characters should be immortal? The rational response would be: of course not. Up until today I may have agreed with that argument, but right now I’m feeling a little less generous. It’s 20-f*cking-19 and there is no excuse for Bury Your Gays to pop up in a progressive TV show. Maybe until series and creators who make their money off queer characters and queer fandom take responsibility for how they use the lives and bodies of queer people, maybe until then, all LGBTQ+ characters should be immortal.

I’m pretty damn sick of watching every character who loves like me, who looks like me, who explores the bounds of their sexuality like me, die. I’m sick of watching characters bust down the doors of the closets that held them back only to have their queerness erased or elided through their deaths. I’m sick of watching relationships between men and women blossom onscreen only to see queer relationships torn apart by death.

Queer people deserve happy endings. We deserve them in real life and we deserve to see them onscreen and we deserve them now.

Until that’s the norm, you better damn well consider any queer character you create immortal. Because if you don’t, we queers will f*cking haunt your basic ass.

#quentin coldwater #the magicians #the magicians spoilers #peoplelikeme #quentin coldwater deserved better #syfy #se fleenor #i own nothing

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divapride2011-blog · 6 years

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I am a proud Mexican & Filipino-American, out gay cis male, and citizen of the U.S. Many young people who share my heritage have had their parents ripped away from them and were thrown in cages like animals by this administration. They mask their bigotry and call it "patriotism". July 4th, I will not be celebrating. Enjoy your fireworks, your barbeque, and your beer. #EqualRights #Resist #MAGA #landofthefreehomeofthebrave #makeamericawhiteagain #happybirthdayamerica #murica #respectablepoliticsisbullshit #whenyousupport #someonewhocalls #peoplelikeme #lessthan #amerikkka #fdt #impeach45

#amerikkka #lessthan #fdt #respectablepoliticsisbullshit #impeach45 #peoplelikeme #resist #makeamericawhiteagain #murica #happybirthdayamerica #whenyousupport #someonewhocalls #landofthefreehomeofthebrave #maga #equalrights

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juliettalewis-blog · 4 years

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Well, my #therapyappointments are being #cancelled for awhile #stuckhere at #theclinic for the next #hour till #stupid #comtrans comes to #takemehome I’m #surrounded by #schitzophrenic people who are #talkingtothemselves #hearingvoices and trying to #bumciggarettes #likeusual #thisisscary #imveryuncomfortable there is #noprotection for #peoplelikeme the #mentallyill are #discarded and #irrelevant in this #society #noonecaresaboutus #anditwillbe #ourdoom #covid_19 https://www.instagram.com/p/B9zZT5nHfB_/?igshid=7sz28frsovn

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counteyokir · 7 years

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So apparently I’m on the STC-wikipedia page

Seems people have been adding stuff from my S.T.C series to the official STC wikipedia page http://stc.wikia.com/wiki/Doctor_Ivo_Robotnik http://stc.wikia.com/wiki/Super_Sonic I’m kinda flattered I’ve fans enough to think my stuff is worthy of note like that alongside STC-Online like that.

#peoplelikeme #doesnotcompute

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ask-reed-detroit · 4 years

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are you 100% cat person, or are you one of those people (peoplelikeme) that likes both cats and dogs? whats your favorite breed of each?

100% cat person. I don’t like big dogs, small dogs are just annoying. My favourite cat breed would probably be maine coon, even though Felicity’s a bitch.

#its because theyre fluffy and look pretty #but he wont say that because his masculinity will be threatened #gavin reed #reply #anon #felicity the cat

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plm-campaign · 5 years

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The #PeopleLikeMe Campaign is an ongoing letter (and postcard, and email) writing campaign to let @syfy know what Quentin Coldwater means to us, how much we value his story, and that we support stories about queer, mentally ill people that do not end in carelessly written tragedy.

We deserve better. Quentin deserves better.

Make your voice heard.

#peoplelikeme #quentin coldwater #the magicians #the magicians syfy #people like me

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wanderingwomanwondering · 5 years

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So I wrote a long ass letter to SYFY/NBC re The Magicians. Here it is...

Greetings!

I am writing to share my concerns in the wake of season four of The Magicians on SYFY. I watched seasons one and two on Netflix two years ago and became an avid fan at that time. Naturally, I dove into season three live when it aired and season four as well. From my perspective as a Black queer person living with mental illness, the show has had a host of common problems with its plotting and character development as it relates to marginalized and underrepresented identities from the very beginning. However, in my mind, those problems were mitigated by the humorous storytelling and the seemingly sincere attempt to represent real people who often do not see themselves reflected in popular TV characters.

Evidently, my trust in the The Magicians showrunners - Sera Gamble, John McNamara and Henry Alonso Myers - was misplaced. All of my hopes for a dynamic and honest portrayal of the lives and challenges faced by queer people and people living with mental illness were shattered on April 17, 2019 when the thirteenth episode of season four, entitled The Seam/No Better to Be Safe Than Sorry, aired on SYFY. In this letter, I hope to communicate a meaningful measure of my despair and explain exactly why I was so profoundly impacted but the heinous and imprudent end that Quentin Coldwater met in that controversial episode.

In this television adaptation of Lev Grossman’s The Magicians trilogy, viewers are introduced to Quentin Coldwater, an awkward, queer, anxious and “depressed super nerd” who is struggling to find happiness and meaning in his life. As a fan of the fictional Fillory and Further novels, Quentin finds wonder and escape as a child that carries into his adulthood. In addition, he finds the will to keep living through his connection to the fantastical land of Fillory, which helps him navigate his suicidal depression. These aspects of Quentin’s lived experience are canon, clearly stated and/or demonstrated by the on-screen narrative.

Quentin is immediately and deeply relatable to the very group of people that flock to The Magicians and television programs like it. We are Quentin Coldwater in real life! His story is our story. Honestly, it feels odd to say that as a queer person of color in America with a mental illness, but it is true. Even when I was at odds with aspects of Quentin’s behavior, thoughts, or feelings, there were others that I felt reflected important parts of who I am. Just as Quentin is not “just some White guy”, I am not “just some Black person”. Quentin and I are both queer and we are both mentally ill. Those shared identities mean just as much as the ones that we do not have in common.

This is the crux of intersectionality. What it means for Quentin to be White is influenced and shaped by his identity as a man, both being shaped and influenced by his identities as a queer person and as a person living with mental illness. Quentin must be constructed and understood as a complex and nuanced concert of identities shaping and informing one another. The privileges that he possesses as a White man are mitigated by the marginalization and oppression that he is subjected to as a queer person living with anxiety and suicidal depression. Gins (greywash) does a wonderful job of examining Quentin’s intersecting identities in her article on Medium which you may access here.

The marginalization and oppression of queer communities and people living with mental illness cannot be disrespected, minimized, or erased from the real life socio-cultural and political context in which the fictional world of The Magicians is situated, nor can that larger context be extricated from Quentin’s characterization and narrative without said vulnerable communities noticing and speaking out against it. Simply put, if SYFY channel and the showrunners of The Magicians wish to include marginalized and vulnerable communities in the stories that you tell, then you must be careful and conscientious in how you depict those characters and their associated real life communities, because, as the refrain of the decade goes: “Representation Matters”.

The plotting and character development in The Magicians has real consequences for how queer people and people living with mental illness feel about ourselves and whether or not we feel seen and heard by the larger society of which we are a part. When The Magicians identified Quentin on screen with real life queer people and with real life people living with suicidal depression, that creative choice came with ethical responsibilities that the showrunners violated rapidly and unapologetically. What happened throughout season 4 - culminating in episode 13 - endangered, invalidated, and not so subtly erased identities that Quentin possesses, identities that were incredibly salient to many real life people who relied on The Magicians through Quentin to portray their story respectfully and faithfully. The ethical considerations in this situation do not evaporate with flowery statements about creative vision, good intentions, and entertainment value.

The Magicians showrunners plotted Quentin’s death by suicide under the guise of so-called heroism in the finale. In order to accomplish this, they spent the entirety of the season bludgeoning his mental health to create “ambiguity” (Hollywood Reporter interview) around the suicidal aspect of Quentin’s death. In a nutshell, writers killed his father, isolated him from his friends, traumatized him through the Monster’s killing sprees and through Alice’s unwanted (until episode 12) romantic advances, and maniacally exploded the protected and protective fantasy of Fillory. On top of all of this, in the fifth episode of the season, the showrunners elevated from subtext and canonically confirmed Quentin’s queer identity and introduced a real chance for him and Eliot to explore their complex and nuanced relationship within a romantic context. The showrunners then immediately returned Quentin and Eliot’s relationship to the realm of subtext and denied Quentin permission to achieve catharsis around this plot point, instead disrespectfully and irresponsibly using it and the aforementioned problems as fodder for the canon suicide plot.

If you wish to understand a fuller measure of the devastating effect that this has had on real life people who identify with Quentin as a queer character fighting suicidal depression, spend a few hours searching #QuentinDeservedBetter #PeopleLikeMe and #Queliot on Tumblr and Twitter. The finale did shock queer fans and those living with mental illness, but it did not do so in a constructive way that affirmed our experiences or our right to exist beyond entertainment for people who see us as “other”.

Ironically, in their attempt to down cast Quentin’s privileged identities as a White man (Hollywood Reporter interview), the showrunners accomplished the exact opposite; they trampled over his marginalized identities, seeking “beautiful tragedy” in the finale. Many people have no problem extracting their Wednesday night entertainment from the blood and tears of marginalized and vulnerable queer and mentally ill “others”. This is evident in the social media posts hailing season 4 as a triumph. Privileged fans have this in common with the showrunners whose own privilege is embarrassingly obvious to marginalized people, but sadly flies below the radar of the showrunners’ own awareness.

It is 2019. Our culture and society can no longer afford to have television programming that is ignorant of the larger social and cultural context in which it exists. We cannot afford to have networks, showrunners, and writers who do not understand the complexity and nuance of intersectionality, power and privilege. We cannot abide television shows that naively miss or maliciously ignore their ethical responsibility when telling the stories of marginalized and vulnerable people; please do not attempt to tell our stories if you cannot or will not tell those stories ethically and responsibly. However, I really do believe that with professional consultation, fan focus groups, and thoughtful determination in plot and character development, SyFy channel and The Magicians can continue Quentin Coldwater’s story respectfully and ethically.

As network executives, showrunners, and writers, you are aware of the power of story. In many ways, television is the contemporary campfire around which humans huddle to transmit the stories that establish and reinforce collectively who we are and who we hope to become. The stories that we tell on television and in other media have had and always will have power for this reason. The beauty of the stories that emerge in the science fiction and fantasy genres in particular is that we not only endeavor to see ourselves as we truly are, but we then endeavor to “imagine greater” as the SYFY slogan aptly phrases it. The Magicians, in the beginning, implied that it was ready and willing to do this and to center at least two marginalized and vulnerable communities in the process: queer people and people living with mental illness. It is my sincere hope that The Magicians showrunners and others involved in the creative process will examine themselves honestly and critically using feedback from fans and others with a stake in the stories being told and imagine greater.

All of the above considered, the way forward from my perspective would include the following:

Please issue a thoughtful apology that considers those of us living on the margins of society.

Please continue Quentin Coldwater’s story, with or without Jason Ralph. If, in fact, Mr. Ralph does not wish to return to The Magicians, there are other talented actors capable of breathing life into Quentin Coldwater. The characters live in a magical world where literally any explanation could account for a new actor portraying this much beloved and sorely needed character.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

*i tried to fix the formatting issues here in Tumblr to no avail. The email was cleaner than this format-wise.

#people like me #quentin deserved better #the magicians #the magicians finale #queliot #bury your gays #queerbaiting #representation matters #mishandling mental health issues in media

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goodnightsweetme · 5 years

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Some thoughts about The Magicians S4 finale

I want to write a bit (recreational activity for me) and I have thoughts about The Magicians, especially about what went down in S4, so there we go. It will probably turn out long and rambly, so buckle up. But first, a few disclaimers.

As I will discuss The Magicians plotlines & the writers' creative choices there will be spoilers. If you haven't seen S1-S4 and you don't want to be spoiled, don't read past this point.

I won't be discussing the writers actions after the finale, neither the silence nor the interviews. It's garbage fire and I don't have time for this. (It's rather baffling that in this day and age tv business professionals still handle the communication with the fanbase this badly.)

Now, I would not call myself a fan of The Magicians, but I got engaged in the story. I'm a fan of very few shows these days and usually I steer clear from the fandoms' open waters. I don't have the time or the energy, so I stick to the friends I've made back in the day.

As such, I haven't watched The Magicians until after the S4 finale. Recently I've been thinking about the treatment of the queer characters in the ongoing tv shows, so the Q's death controversy was right up my alley. I also had some time for a binge and some personal issues to be distracted from (no worries, I'm dealing with them, I just couldn't allow them to cause me obsessing over them).

I've tried to read Grossman's books when they first came out and I decided they weren't for me. I still think that. If you want some quality fantasy recs, hit me up.

When the show first came out I watched first few eps and then noped out of it. I thought it was pretty bad and full of issues and, and upon rewatch, that's still my opinion about the first half of the 1st season.

The show does get better. It's ocasionally great (S3 is pretty strong and thoroughly enjoyable – with eps 3.04 & 3.05 being really really good, the first one for its storytelling quality, the second one for its emotional payoff). However it has various issues throughout that would have made me mistrustful of the writers, even if I didn't know what happens to Q.

So, you may say I went in prepared and with my reservations. As a consequence I didn't really have the feeling of rage and betrayal that the long time fans did. But I get them and they are so valid. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other, take your time to process the grief in a way that works for you. And stay hydrated.

Now, processing what happened might include some action and engagement. I've seen fanfic writing, article writing, venting on different platforms, sharing the experiences of your lives and loves and mental health, #PeopleLikeMe campaign, Change petition, decisions to stop watching the show and fundrasing for the Trevor Project. Things big and small, heartbreaking and inspriring. The only thing we shouldn't do is harass the writers (and thankfully I've seen very little of that), because harassment is never ok. And we are better than that.

Creators can fuck up (and I will defend their right to fuck up, we're all only human) and we can call them out. Maybe they will learn from their mistakes, maybe not (and if not, well, fans will move on to the greener pastures, where we will get better and kinder stories), but maybe someone else will, someone who is or might become a creator themselves. And maybe there's a little consolation in that.

(And this is why we shouldn't stay silent.)

Thinking about it, I see two explanations for killing Q:

the writers did it for shock value, knowing it will get them some buzz (and they miscalculated how much and what kind of buzz)

the writers really don't understand their own show and characters

I believe it may be both.

Even in the first season, when Q introduces us to the world of the show as he himself gets introduced to it, I'd still say The Magicians are an ensemble show. And the show deals with Q being the „white male lead” in the S1 finale when Q gives Alice the knife (and has a speech dealig with that directly, the show does this kind of thing repeteadly, characters monologuing or explaining trope/plot to another character, it's terrible writing, but it's explicit, you can't say the show didn't say something) and uses the fact that the Beast sees him as the „hero” against it, providing distraction for Alice to act. And the show reinforces the notion of Q not being the main hero of the story repeatedly throughout the series and in various ways (Julia being the variable to make loop 40 successful, Eliot becoming High King and so on and so forth).

So when we arrive to S4 Q is:

one of a diverse group of pretty fucked up but still lovable friends (effectively a millenial found family)

average magician

dealing with his mental issues that didn't go away when he discovered magic/Fillory

canon bisexual

caring and loyal and nerdy and awkward

(Gee, how come so many people identified strongly with that.)

(Sorry for the snark.)

No one holds against Q that he isn't some kind of Chosen One, because it was never what his friends expected from him or valued him for. He sometimes/low-key expected it from himself, but the show dealt with that. Repeteadly. And that was fine and that was subverting tropes.

So when the writers first sideline him and then have him killed in S4 finale (in a pretty straightforward Heroic Sacrifice scene), they don't kill a straight white male hero wearing the plot armor, they kill a vulnerable young queer man with mental health issues. And guess how many of them we have on our screens.

What makes the matter even worse:

they handled Q's history of suicidal thoughts/tendencies horribly

it turns out that what looked like a clear setup for future romantic relationship between Q and Eliot was in fact a setup for Eliot's grief story (Right up the Bury Your Gays alley as if that's still the only story a gay man can get on tv. In 2019.)

I do belive you still can write a valuable and respectful story of a queer person comitting suicide and their family, friends and community being left to deal with the aftermath, but you'd need to put into it a lot more work, time, thought, talent and sensivity than The Magicians writers did or even are (in my opinion) capable of.

For all of the tropes subverting, sometimes very entertaining, The Magicians still were an escapist story at heart. And I really can't think of anything worthwhile the writers archieved by pulling the rug from under its fans.

Other issues with S4 finale that I might write about sometime in the future (but now maybe I’ll go and rewatch some Black Sails, Doom Patrol or Killing Eve):

treatment of Julia and Penny 23

treatment of Kady

treatment of the Monster (really)

treatment of Margo and Josh

resolution of the two main storylines (The Library & the Monsters)

#the magicians #the magicians finale #the magicians syfy #the magicians spoilers #the magicians s4 #tw: death #tw: suicide #quentin coldwater #eliot waugh #tw: mental health

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