The Magicians Creators and Star Explain That Wrenching, Controversial Death
Both the shows producers and Jason Ralph, who plays Quentin, have confirmed that the character will ..
Both the shows producers and Jason Ralph, who plays Quentin, have confirmed that the character will not return for Season 5. When asked if there had been any thought of linking him and Eliot romantically again before his death, show-runner John McNamara said, “Thats the interesting thing about death in real life—rarely, when someone close to you dies, do you get that kind of movie goodbye hospital scene . . . Thats part of the pain of it. And I think had we given Quentin and Eliot a final scene, it would have had a kind of artificiality to it for me, and it would have lessened the impact that it is going to have on Eliot going forward. Eliot is going to be hugely changed by this, emotionally and psychologically, and in a way, Queliot is never going to die as long as Eliot is alive.”
The episode paid tribute to that in its ending, as Eliot chose to bring a peach to the bonfire tribute to Quentin—a token from their time solving the puzzle together. The episode pays more straightforward attention to the other mitigating factor of Quentins death: his history with mental illness and suicidal thoughts. As he contemplates his decision from the Underworld, Quentin wonders aloud, “Did I do something brave to save my friends? Or did I finally find a way to kill myself?” Both the show and its producers insist the answer to that second question is “no”—as demonstrated by all the ways in which Quentin has grown since the show premiered, when he was suicidal, and all the bonds hes formed, with both the world and his friends. “But,” McNamara told Vulture, “theres a saying that a psychiatrist once said to me, which is that the subconscious always gets what it wants, and the conscious mind often never knows.”
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Gamble said, “We wanted [Quentin] to explicitly ask that question [of whether he killed himself], because suicidal thoughts have been a part of his journey for the whole series, and a huge part of his backstory . . . I watched the scene where he dies, and to me theres no question that hes being heroic, and hes being selfless in that moment, and he has done the math really fast and hes done what he needs to do to save his friends. But because this has been such a painful and constant part of Quentins life, it made sense that he would ask about it. It gave us an opportunity to close the circle that was opened in the pilot when hes facing the psychiatrist and trying to deal with his own mental health.”
“I think he did a really heroic thing without even thinking about it: save Alice, save Penny, take out the bad guy,” McNamara told Vulture. “But this is not a black-and-white show, and hes never been a black-and-white character. To me, when I look at people who do heroic things, sometimes I quRead More – Source
