Quentin Coldwater's mortal sacrifice in the Season 4 finale of The Magicians was a plot twist few fans expected and even fewer liked, which put Season 5 of the Syfy fantasy show at a distinct disadvantage. Instead of merely being the next chapter in a popular TV series loosely based on Lev Grossman's Magicians trilogy, Season 5 had to justify its existence beyond the end of Quentin Coldwater's story.
After watching the first three episodes provided for review, The Magicians does not appear interested in presenting that justification. The Q-shaped hole in the show is too large and too oddly handled to make his death seem necessary, and while the show's other trademark elements (Quippy dialogue! Magic loopholes! Dean Fogg being a bastard!) remain delightful, nothing in the episodes answers the fans' most pressing question: What upcoming idea was so important that Quentin had to die to make room for it?
What upcoming idea was so important that Quentin had to die to make room for it?
Season 5 picks up a month after Quentin's death and follows his friends as they mourn him and move forward to deal with a host of new issues arising: Fillory is sexist now with a Dark King on the throne, surges of magical power are killing magicians worldwide, and there's a time dwarf who'd do anything for a ham sandwich.
It's all classic Magicians stuff, but by now the threat of an apocalypse stemming from issues with the flow of magic is old hat. Q dying should have completely changed the status quo. Season 5 treats it instead as something that happened before the world resumed its regularly scheduled chaos.
To that point, none of the main characters with the exception of Eliot appear to have changed much after Q's death. Eliot is on his own journey of coming to terms with losing out on Quentin's love, but Margot is shelving her feelings in her quest to regain the throne, Penny 23 is hearing weird traveler signals, Kady is being a cool hedge witch, Julia is searching for her purpose, and Alice is making awful magic decisions in service of being a total maniac. They haven't changed, they're just sadder than before, and Q living or dying had at best a minimal impact.
There is some poetry in that idea that Season 5 is about how life goes on after characters die, but "life going on" is not a story unto itself. The Magicians books used Quentin's personal development as the backbone of its story, building on what he learned (and didn't learn) to create a structure that informed the books' themes of fulfillment, choice, adulthood, and loss. There's a possibility that deuteragonist Julia might take up his mantle, but show show offers no logic regarding why she should even have to.
In the first episode of Season 5, Julia laments that she wants Quentin's death to mean something, a sentiment that many Magicians fans share. Unfortunately, the show seems content to navigate his loss through shallow waters. There are still plenty of episodes left in the season to see where our titular magicians may go, but so far Season 5 is unimpressive, repetitive, and leaves the question of Quentin up in the air.
