This interview includes spoilers for Wednesday night’s episode of “The Magicians.”
During the table read for the Season 5 finale of “The Magicians” — before the cast and crew knew it would be the finale for the whole series — executive producer David Reed turned to Sera Gamble, one of the three showrunners, and said, “This feels a little more optimistic than we usually are.”
After all, past season-ending episodes had been cliffhangers about absolute disasters — main characters killed, terrifying new villains introduced, the supply of magic to the universe dominated by a fascist authority (or disabled entirely). This time, the showrunners backed off their usual m.o. of whipping out some radical maneuver and worrying later about how to tidy it up next season. Now, they took a gentler tack, allowing the sexually fluid Eliot (Hale Appleman) to finally choose an emotionally available partner, for example, and opening a door for Alice (Olivia Taylor Dudley), Margo (Summer Bishil), Josh (Trevor Einhorn) and Fen (Brittany Curran) to kick-start a new, improved Fillory, one with knife trees, bacon fields and naturally occurring pizza ovens. As Josh says, it’s all “perversely comforting” — not the usual “Magicians” tone, considering its ethos, that magic comes from pain.
Gamble, who wrote the episode with Henry Alonso Myers, one of the showrunners, structured the script to work with or without a Season 6, leaving open the possibility of new adventures (and disasters). “Don’t worry,” she told Reed. “We can sprinkle a lot of pessimism on it in postproduction if we have to. We can make it a little more brutal.” But as it turned out, they didn’t have to. During a phone interview, Gamble and John McNamara, the show’s two creators, discussed bringing “The Magicians” to a conclusion, their unfulfilled narrative wish list, and the most real-world thing about the show, particularly now. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
For a show about magic, “The Magicians” has been surprisingly prescient. In order to save Fillory, they decide to quarantine Fillorians in a pocket world as they destroy the planet.
SERA GAMBLE I was listening to a podcast deconstructing some of the rhetoric right now about where our priorities lie on the spectrum of trying to save the life of every American versus trying to save our economy. We didn’t know we were talking about the same issues regarding destroying Fillory. We all agreed that the right thing for Fen is saving the people and talking animals and unicorns. And yes, we mentioned pandemics, but we had no idea this was coming!
JOHN MCNAMARA If we had pitched this story a year ago to Syfy, they’d be like, “Get out of here.” We’re living through something that not even a combination of Stephen King, Kurt Vonnegut and Michael Crichton could have conceived: that the United States is the least capable country of dealing with a pandemic.
In a weird way, Margo’s decision to sacrifice herself to save Fillory now feels like, “Huh, that’s an incredibly noble leader that we currently do not have.” Whatever I write with Sera next, it’s going to have a feeling of, the worst thing about a crisis is the person in charge.
Could social distancing measures be considered a form of cooperative magic: the power generated when people in disparate locations do the same thing at the same time?
MCNAMARA I like that idea. If I’m Zooming with five family members, that’s a form of cooperative magic.
GAMBLE When we talked about cooperative magic in the mythology of our show, we used this word that people are using a lot right now: exponential. Exponential growth and power. If you get 10 magicians — or even regular people — all focused on the same thing, how much stronger is it?
MCNAMARA Culturally, we’ve really embraced a somewhat self-destructive fantasy, which is the idea of a single superhero saving X — the city, the world, the girl, whatever X is. Historically, it’s almost never true. The greatest accomplishments stem from the group endeavor, from collectivism of some kind. John Adams didn’t write the Declaration of Independence. He encouraged Thomas Jefferson to write it, and then they all revised it, and in the movie “1776,” they sang a bunch of great songs about it. It was a collective experience of people who had huge philosophical disagreements, but one objective. That’s where I think collective, cooperative magic feels like one of the most psychologically and socially real things that we’ve done with “The Magicians,” because it reflects how we founded a new country, won World War II, got through 9/11, got through a pandemic. There was no one person who got us through 9/11; it was a collective consciousness, a collective kindness, a collective spirit.
GAMBLE That’s what keeps me sane right now, focusing on all of the things people are doing for each other. I stay away from my neighbors now, yet I feel closer to my neighbors than I did a month ago, because we’re having the same experience. So I think about the idea of cooperative magic all the time, about the way that people are connected, even if we’re not literally holding hands.
That’s where we came to in the last episode. The problems and the crisis continue, because they always do. You put the world together and it will fall apart again. But you have every confidence that Eliot, Julia and Penny-23 will stop at nothing to find their friends. You can fill in your own version of the epic tale of how our group find each other again, but it doesn’t rely on the relationships even being definable. It’s just they were alone and now they have each other. That’s the point we wanted to land most of all. It’s the way that we view the world, even if the writers’ room is full of people who look and sound and act like your classic fairy tale hero dude.
MCNAMARA Well, to be fair, I look a lot like William Shatner during Season 1 of “Star Trek.”
You’re only saying that because William Shatner is such a big fan of “The Magicians.”
MCNAMARA It’s so true. Sera and I got to meet William Shatner. There had been a bit of kerfuffle over him live-tweeting nice things about “The Magicians,” and someone somewhere had tried to monetize that, and he got very upset about that on Twitter. We were mortified, because we had nothing to do with that, and said we would like to come explain that to him personally. He could not have been a more charming, attentive host. I have pictures of the three of us because I’m a total geek. They say don’t meet your heroes, but you should always meet your heroes.
GAMBLE I was so star-struck, and getting to meet him as an extension of making this show was one of the crazier moments of my life.
MCNAMARA He asked me, “Why are you wearing a suit?” “Because I’m meeting William Shatner.” He said, “Is it OK if I’m just wearing a T-shirt?” And I said, “Well, you’re just meeting Sera and John. This is no big deal for you.”
Did you bring up the possibility of his doing a cameo on the show?
MCNAMARA I’m sure we talked about it. But we were careful not to do stunt casting for the sake of stunt casting.
Well, you have several actors who are completely unrecognizable. Sean Maguire this season, for example, was not only the Dark King but also Sir Effingham, thanks to the pig prosthetics.
GAMBLE So what you’re saying is we could have had Mr. Shatner on the show and kept that hidden?
MCNAMARA He played Ember. [Laughs] No, he didn’t. This is entirely our lack of imagination that we didn’t find the right role for William Shatner.
I’m sorry to break it to you, but this is probably why you got canceled.
MCNAMARA I wouldn’t doubt it. [Laughs]
If you had the budget, what would you have done differently? What was still on your wish list?
MCNAMARA I’m really bummed that we weren’t able to do a magical flying carpet.
GAMBLE There would have been more dragons.
We had a pitch for a place in Fillory called Cocaine Island, inspired by “Rick and Morty.”
MCNAMARA Can I say the one that broke my heart? In last week’s episode, the original ending was that everybody from the heist starts singing their last song, the Jackson 5’s “I’ll Be There.” They’re in beautiful harmony, having closure in their relationships.
In walk Penny-23 and Julia, who had been on a separate story line with no music, and Penny goes, “We missed the musical?” And Julia goes, “Thank God.” I’ll always be bummed that we were not able to shoot that. God knows what Season 6 would have brought. Probably an opera.
Source: Television - nytimes.com
