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[goseaward]

Some thoughts on the Magicians s4 finale. (CW discussion of mental health.) Also please feel free to message me if you need CWs for mental health on the actual show, because you should get them before this episode.

Wow fuck that!!!!!!!

I had watched the first two seasons of the Magicians, and liked it, but also found it kind of confusing, so I gave it up. This season a bunch of my twitter TL got back into it, and I joined them--mainlined the whole series in like a week, have been reading fic (please feel free to leave me recs in the comments lol) and meta ever since, and watching the new eps as they air.

Okay. I guess I'll start with the stuff I thought was good.

• I can see, retroactively, how the season has been structured for this ending, and in that sense it was well-constructed. Congratulations, you built a completely ugly and useless building with some good materials and workmanship!
• Quentin's face when he sees Eliot walk out to the fire.

And now just...bullet points. Of all the terrible things. Because I'm too pissed off to adequately structure this post.

• This interview with the creators. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, FUCK YOU that you're like "We took the depressed character and gave his life meaning--what else could we possibly do with him? His story is done."
• In some sense it is good that they addressed Quentin's suicidality, I think. But "your friends will miss you and they were changed by you" is...not a counterargument to that. It just isn't. And--I'm not going to say much more about that because suicidality is not one of my mental health issues but...I do wonder if the rest of those scenes were a good idea, coming after such a discussion.
• Obviously, obviously I am pissed about the premature ending of the Quentin/Eliot story, and I'm sure 90% of that is personal because it's my ship. But also! They had been doing SUCH good work with it and now I'm ESPECIALLY pissed because it's retroactively revealed to have been a setup to make Quentin's eventual death much more painful!! Instead of its own thing!!! Plus, like, BURY YOUR GAYS. ARE WE STILL THERE. REALLY. IT'S 2019. REALLY.
• I know I am the cheese that stands alone on this but I find all the musical eps/group songs they do to be INCREDIBLY MOTTSY and so the fireside scene was one GIANT cringe.
• Margo being in love with Josh...doesn't bother me. I like Josh, I can kinda see it. HOWEVER, Margo TALKING ABOUT being in love with Josh is so OOC I can't....even come up with a metaphor that is ridiculous enough.
• This season: *talks about rules of story, white male protagonists, etc* This season also: *has a man make an important medical decision for an incapacitated woman he has a mostly one-sided crush on, has that decision work out for the best so he is forgiven* I love Julia with a white-hot fire that is matched only by my hatred of the way her character arc has gone in 75% of the show.
• Speaking of which: Kady just wanted to be Penny's girlfriend? Who thought THAT was A) a good idea politically, B) a good idea character-wise, C) representative in any way of Kady's past non-Penny-related actions OF WHICH THERE WERE MANY.
• So....are we never gonna see Fen again? And did they just imply that Josh also disappeared in that time jump? I was so pissed off about Quentin I may have missed things.
• Seriously. "It wasn't queer-baiting! It was Bury Your Gays instead." We have a whole vocabulary for this, writers. It wasn't new or interesting to do. If you really felt you wanted the show to be about the other characters--who are indeed great!--you could have just...relegated Quentin to being Alice and Eliot's love interest (or just Eliot--Alice needs a new story line) and basically only checked in with him when he was being cute with them. Just totally decentered him. Instead of writing a WHOLE FUCKING SEASON that was JUST about HIS DEATH, apparently, as a way of showing that you don't need a white male protagonist. ALSO of course he was QUEER which is already PRETTY FUCKING DARING for a mainstream SFF show!

Thoughts for the future:

• I'm ALSO pissed because some of the s5 story lines look really interesting and I love Eliot so...I'm probably gonna watch. But I'm gonna seethe about it the whole time, too. Also: Eliot needs to get a love interest about halfway through the season. Say...episode 6 or 7. Definitely NOT episode 5.
• I'm also ALSO pissed because I've now been reccing this show to people and I definitely should have waited for the end of the season to do that!!
• I'm also also ALSO pissed because I was excited about having a fandom again and now...I'm not sure but this might have ruined it for me.
• And finally...I'm pissed because I feel like a fool. I got taken in by something that looked like it was offering me something nice, when it really just wanted to get me invested and then rip it away from me.
• I look forward to whatever the Magicians fandom equivalent of "Epilogue What Epilogue" is.