If your heart is still bleeding after the shocking death of Quentin Coldwater in The Magicians 4×13, that’s okay. If you’re done or uncertain about tuning in again, that’s okay. If you’re optimistic for what further seasons might bring, that’s okay. Here, we don’t want to speculate about the reasoning or decision making process about his exit. From production, personal, or creative standpoints, choices were made in the complexity of a TV show production with lots of moving parts. We’re not going there. We’re staying here, in the communities that fans build around stories and characters that are created by actors and writers and then become ours.
Quentin and Penny in the Underworld, episode 4×13 (Eike Schroter/SYFY)
We do want to make space, in between the more negative emotions surrounding the finale that are valid and widespread, for gratitude. In the cold, sometimes violent landscape of the Internet, we want to extend gratitude to the cast and crew members who acknowledged the solemnity and distress of the community built around their creation. Especially and fervently, to Arjun Gupta, who has for weeks shown an incredible amount of empathy and love for the people who love this project that has been his and the whole team’s work and life for years. Hale Appleman and Olivia Taylor Dudley have sent out simple but powerful messages of empathy and love towards fans recently. While not everyone in the cast has had a comment, we respect their silence and extend our empathy and love right back. Taking on the emotional labor of comforting desperately saddened strangers shows the kind of selfless, genuine kindness that we sometimes forget really abounds all around us.
Quentin watches his loved ones mourn him, episode 4×13
We want to also extend gratitude to Jason Ralph, who has put years of his career into Quentin Coldwater and took the task of making a magician boy real and raw and so much like so many of us. Quentin wanted to be the Chosen One, but Quentin was just Quentin. He felt too much and loved too much and hurt too much, and maybe was starting to figure out that there was no such thing as too much. Quentin was queer and depressed and complicated. He wasn’t the hero of his own story most of the time, but he wanted to be. Jason did a consistently fantastic job of showing that week in and week out. Though there is a feeling among many that needs to be respected that his ending was mishandled, that it felt too much like someone who fought so hard simply gave up. But we want to see it differently. And we can. Because he, like all of the other characters that have come into our lives and reflected something of ourselves back to us, is ours now.
“Did I do something brave to save my friends? Or did I finally find a way to kill myself?”
– Quentin, 4×13
We can interpret the silence of that heartbreaking moment however we want. However we can. However we need to. We are the owners of this story every time it is handed to us. We believe that Jason acted his heart out in that moment to show us that Quentin did not want to die. He didn’t want to go, he wanted to go back to Alice and Penny, he wanted to get back to Eliot and Julia. He wanted to graduate, probably. He wanted to have a family again. He wanted to live. We don’t have to believe that Quentin Coldwater succumbed to his lifelong battle with depression, despite the showrunners’ insistence on the ambiguity of the moment. We’ll take that ambiguity and raise it our certainty. Maybe that’s all the victory we get this time.
Quentin battles with his own mind, episode 1×04.
Except, maybe that doesn’t have to be it. Since fandom has become what it is, thousands of fans who identify with minority characters have mourned the loss of their representation in a multitude of positive ways. From Clexa fans who started an entire convention to celebrate queer women’s representation after The 100 killed off yet another queer woman on TV to fans of Shadowhunters who in light of the show’s untimely cancellation raised over $23,000 for the Trevor Project, which provides suicide prevention resources for LGBT youth. Losing Quentin, a bisexual man with a lifelong battle with depression, has spurred fans on to be a force for good just the same. A campaign has been created for the Trevor Project, in honor of Quentin’s character; the “Thank Q” campaign has already started and is going strong — you can find it, share it, and donate to it here.
Which brings us to our last point, until the next time we’re spurred into wild meta and analysis on this show that sometimes truly and fully has the power to break our hearts. This fandom is kind. At this moment, it is in broad strokes angry and upset, saddened and uncertain, but it is undeniably kind. And like so many fandoms before, fans around the world have come together to grieve yet another dead queer character on our screens. Authors hurry to write fanfiction where we work out the grief of an aftermath, or create new realities where the characters all work in a coffee shop and have cute dates all the time. Those who identified with Quentin’s sexual identity and his struggle with mental illness remind each other that his story might be over, but not ours. As we’ve been struggling with our own grief over the loss of such a beloved character, we wanted to finish by extending gratitude to The Magicians fandom for their perseverance and the support they’ve shown the cast and each other — we do not mourn quietly. And whether you move on to other shows and interests or stick around, we hope you keep a little magic in your heart.
The Magicians returns to SYFY next year with Season 5. Seasons 1-3 are available now to stream on Netflix.
