“Magic doesn’t come from talent. It comes from pain.”
The second episode of Syfy’s new fantasy series The Magicians filled in a lot of exposition that was skimmed over in the premiere, but did so at the expense of the first episode’s moments of horror and wonder.
Full spoilers for episode 2, “The Source of Magic,” continue below. For our spoiler-free review of the first episode, “Unauthorized Magic,” click here.
“The Source of Magic” works well as a companion to the first episode of The Magicians, “Unauthorized Magic.” But on its own, it slows down the series’ momentum as it gets bogged down in trudging through backstory and magic mechanics without giving the show time to breathe. There’s no moment in the second hour of The Magicians’ two-part premiere that fills the viewer with as much awe as The Beast’s debut, and the show is speeding through so much content that it’s missing out on some much-needed character development in the process.
But that’s the bad of “The Source of Magic,” and there is plenty of good as well. The second episode hunkered down at Brakebills and picked up in the aftermath of The Beast’s attack. Professor Sunderland (Anne Dudek) interrogated the students who witnessed The Beast’s arrival and set her sights on Quentin (Jason Ralph). During her questioning, the scene kept flashing back to the actual attack, showing how Margo (Summer Bishil), Alice (Olivia Taylor Dudley) and Penny (Arjun Gupta) fended off the creature after Quentin restarted time.
Anne Dudek and Jason Ralph in The Magicians
These flashback sequences were stunning, and the choreography of the fight underlined just how beautiful The Magicians can be. (The hand gestures used to cast magic are another unique and cool element of this show.) In her attempt to get to the bottom of why The Beast managed to get into Brakebills, Sunderland let slip a pretty big fact about this magical world: it is just one world of many. Determined to figure out who let The Beast in, Sunderland narrowed down the four responsible — Quentin, Alice, Margo and Penny — and, after Penny turned him in, threatened to expel Quentin.
Considering we saw Quentin in a mental hospital in the first episode because he felt that he couldn’t find his place in the world, this is a huge knock for him. As he goes on to tell Eliot (Hale Appleman), getting kicked out would be something he wouldn’t be able to come back from. This is a big story moment for Quentin, but the way The Magicians is chewing through its story makes this happening in episode 2 lack the weight it needs. The same can be said for Quentin’s emotional call to Julia (Stella Maeve); he is asking his best friend for her support in losing his potentially losing magic when only an episode before he was completely callous when she found herself in the same situation.
Hale Appleman in the Physical Kids Cottage in The Magicians
This is where The Magicians’ storytelling is suffering from not spending enough time developing its characters. “The Source of Magic” revealed some important information about several of its Brakebills students — Alice broke into Brakebills to become a student there, Eliot killed a person when he discovered he was telekinetic, and Penny was unwittingly trained to be a magician by The Beast — but most of those details come off as just facts instead of details key to understanding characters’ personalities and motivations.
Of all the characters, Eliot is the one who shines in every scene he’s in (“Jesus, you didn’t tell me you were dangerous!”) and is the high point of the side characters so far. It’s fitting that he delivered the core bit of exposition in this episode that separates The Magicians from other urban fantasies of its ilk: in this world, magic doesn’t come from talent; it comes from pain. Eliza’s (Esme Bianco) two scenes in “The Source of Magic” hearkened back to this as she told Quentin he needed to grow stronger in order to face what is to come, and she and Dean Fogg (Ricky Worthy) discussed how they don’t have enough time to train the latest crop of students to defeat The Beast.
Quentin and Alice got more screen time together as he filled her in on the sordid history of the Chatwins, Christopher Plover and Fillory. Though we didn’t get to visit Fillory or Jane Chatwin in this episode, these details were dropped for the viewer to absorb and play a big role foreshadowing what’s to come.
Hannibal’s Kacey Rohl in The Magicians
The Magicians crammed a bunch of information into its Brakebills scenes, but spent about as much time with Julia and her hedgewitches in “The Source of Magic.” Because the series was speeding through so much exposition on Quentin’s side of the story, Julia’s entry into the hedgewitches’ group and her introduction to Marina (Kacey Rohl) dragged. The hedgewitches make an interesting counterpoint to the magicians, especially in showing the cost of magic and the ripple effects of Brakebills’ exclusionary policies. And even though Julia’s arc wasn’t as interesting or seemingly significant as what was happening with Quentin, at least the series showed her putting a bit more effort into her magic using instead of everything coming so intuitively to him. Shouldn’t things be harder for him in the magical world?
The Magicians delivered another solid episode in “The Source of Magic,” but it needs to slow down its breakneck pace soon in order to let the audience catch up and settle into this world. The second episode delivered a lot of exposition but explained it through a lot of telling instead of much showing. Fortunately there are a lot of significant things happening around Quentin and Julia, which continue to make the world of The Magicians interesting. The hook in this episode wasn’t as jaw-dropping as The Beast, but the set-up for what is ahead definitely makes me want to come back for more.
