Season 5 thoughts after watching for the first time

So, I put off season 5 for literal years and here are my own personal thoughts on it.

It was okay, like I can tell they were doing it under the assumption they weren’t going to get renewed when it was written. It definitely has two seasons worth of plot in it and for that a lot of the character depth suffers in a way.

Not to say it’s bad but from an analysis standpoint and comparing it to the other seasons it seems like it was struggling with juggling the introduction of too many plots and too many characters.

For example, the three sisters who were used as a plot device for the beginning of the season. They definitely were gonna be more fleshed out and progressed if they had more time, that I can say with certainty because we learned actually a lot of interesting tidbits whenever they were on screen.

Do I think they made a mistake ending Quentin’s story in season 4? Absolutely. And I’m not gonna argue whether it was the show runners choice to cut his character or if it was Jason Ralph’s choice, because we really will never know. I’m leaning into the idea that they basically pulled him into a meeting said they were killing his character and he decided to exit the show when he learned that. Do I know for certain? No. But the evidence suggests it was a mutual decision and that feels better than it leaning too heavily on either front.

Either way, based on what I learned from spoiling myself with book plot, the end of the book similar but seems less messy.

I love the magicians, but yeah season five is rather lack luster.

Ngl I blame the shortening of seasons for the rushing of plots. Magicians came out when the 13 episode season were popular, and who knew that was a luxury compared to the 8 episode seasons we’ve been cursed with as of late with other shows.

Truly, if we had gotten 26 episode seasons like we did in ages of old I feel like we could have gotten something more satisfying.

Also poor fucking everyone man- like particularly Eliot I’m surprised he didn’t lose his mind losing Margo. Like Jesus dude has had a ROUGH GO OF IT.

Also I don’t know if it was a book thing or if it was a show only thing- but the Couple cutting off Alice’s fingers was MESSED UP. It felt gratuitous and ngl very pointless!

Overall, wish we had heard about the whales sooner, would have been cool the idea of eldritch horrors in the magicians series is much more interesting to me.

But Rupert and Jane getting to spend the rest of eternity together is sweet.

Some things were finished off nicely and some were like tendrils of hope that they’d get a new season so they left it a little more open.

Overall, I rate it 3/5 stars. Not perfect, not horrible, but a bit lacking.