The Magicians: The Secret Sea Show Only
April 10, 2019 7:22 PM - Season 4, Episode 12 - Subscribe
Quentin yells at a plant. Margo stares at a fish.
My thoughts keep returning to this episode throughout the day, as I’m despondently realizing that Quentin/Eliot looks to be ending up as yet another example of long con queerbaiting. Someone on tumblr pointed out that Quentin’s reasons for loving Fillory should have included getting to live a life & raise a son with Eliot.
Is our best case scenario going to be that Eliot gets his body back, then seeing that Eliot & Alice are back together never tells Quentin how he feels? (Worst case scenario being Eliot getting killed off, but I can’t imagine the show doing something that stupid.)
And I just cannot wrap my brain around Margo choosing to stare at fish-Josh rather than fight the Monster for Eliot. Just bizarre writing.
posted by oh yeah! at 2:53 PM on April 11, 2019 [4 favorites]
Is our best case scenario going to be that Eliot gets his body back, then seeing that Eliot & Alice are back together never tells Quentin how he feels? (Worst case scenario being Eliot getting killed off, but I can’t imagine the show doing something that stupid.)
And I just cannot wrap my brain around Margo choosing to stare at fish-Josh rather than fight the Monster for Eliot. Just bizarre writing.
posted by oh yeah! at 2:53 PM on April 11, 2019 [4 favorites]
If she is leaves the fish, he dies. She has to trust the others to save Eliot, while she's the only one who can keep Josh alive (although I can sort of see her in battle with a Ziploc baggie fish taped to her waist, eyeball floating next to him). She had to choose certain death over trusting the group which was a leap of faith and love for her. A big deal for Margo, quietly done.
I am very side eying Alice and Q. I note that she leaned in for the kiss first and he followed, because he is an idiot, but if this ends up without Eliot and Q getting to at least try a serious relationship - I want to see that! I want further than just the start of relationships, I want the inbetween long term stuff.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 3:31 PM on April 11, 2019 [7 favorites]
I am very side eying Alice and Q. I note that she leaned in for the kiss first and he followed, because he is an idiot, but if this ends up without Eliot and Q getting to at least try a serious relationship - I want to see that! I want further than just the start of relationships, I want the inbetween long term stuff.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 3:31 PM on April 11, 2019 [7 favorites]
Also team Angry Blonde, kill the pedophile in the finale. How has he in any way shown he has changed?
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 3:33 PM on April 11, 2019
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 3:33 PM on April 11, 2019
It's not queerbaiting because both characters involved are pretty definitively explicitly canonically queer.
at least, that's the argument, i dunno, I've had a lot of reservations about the "no labels!!" aspect of the show. On one hand, in 4x05 Quentin was talking about wanting a romantic relationship with Elliot. It's hard to slice that as anything other than queer.
On the other hand, Elliot's response is "Quentin , you're not .... [actually into dudes when you're not drunk.]" So Elliot thinks that Q is not queer. I think the popular interpretation is that Elliot thinks "i'm not actually what he wants and it will just not work out." But my interpretation was that he thought, "That wasn't actually a romantic relationship, it was a lifelong working friendship with occasional drunken benefits, and you would know the difference if you weren't straight. I love you and our friendship but I actually want a husband."
Because the on-screen evidence isn't really conclusive, IMO. "Quentin is bisexual" and "Quentin is straight but experimental" are both consistent with the text. So I guess that part I would call queerbaiting. I like that they're willing to let things be complicated and open-ended, but it's bringing up uncomfortable memories of my high school crush
The question of Queliot as a relationship, though, is a solid and established part of the narrative. It has been spoken aloud. Whatever way it gets resolved, it is real.
> Quentin’s reasons for loving Fillory should have included getting to live a life & raise a son with Eliot
From Q's perspective he got shot down and rejected ... so he might be repressing that as much as Elliot did.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 10:22 PM on April 11, 2019 [8 favorites]
at least, that's the argument, i dunno, I've had a lot of reservations about the "no labels!!" aspect of the show. On one hand, in 4x05 Quentin was talking about wanting a romantic relationship with Elliot. It's hard to slice that as anything other than queer.
On the other hand, Elliot's response is "Quentin , you're not .... [actually into dudes when you're not drunk.]" So Elliot thinks that Q is not queer. I think the popular interpretation is that Elliot thinks "i'm not actually what he wants and it will just not work out." But my interpretation was that he thought, "That wasn't actually a romantic relationship, it was a lifelong working friendship with occasional drunken benefits, and you would know the difference if you weren't straight. I love you and our friendship but I actually want a husband."
Because the on-screen evidence isn't really conclusive, IMO. "Quentin is bisexual" and "Quentin is straight but experimental" are both consistent with the text. So I guess that part I would call queerbaiting. I like that they're willing to let things be complicated and open-ended, but it's bringing up uncomfortable memories of my high school crush
The question of Queliot as a relationship, though, is a solid and established part of the narrative. It has been spoken aloud. Whatever way it gets resolved, it is real.
> Quentin’s reasons for loving Fillory should have included getting to live a life & raise a son with Eliot
From Q's perspective he got shot down and rejected ... so he might be repressing that as much as Elliot did.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 10:22 PM on April 11, 2019 [8 favorites]
From Q's perspective he got shot down and rejected ... so he might be repressing that as much as Elliot did.
Yeah I was going to add that I was surprised he didn't use that as a reason to hate Fillory
posted by numaner at 7:48 AM on April 12, 2019 [1 favorite]
Yeah I was going to add that I was surprised he didn't use that as a reason to hate Fillory
posted by numaner at 7:48 AM on April 12, 2019 [1 favorite]
I have been mentally circling this episode since watching it last night, and I am still not entirely sure how I feel about it.
I would vastly prefer that the Christopher Plover plot be dropped entirely. It was one of the worst parts of the books and it continues to be one of the worst parts of the show; nothing would have been lost by having not included it. It feels like the show is setting him up for a bad end and I find myself feeling concerned about how they want us to feel about it. Plover did an absolutely monstrous thing and he was imprisoned and tortured for over eighty years for it. Anyone looking at my posting history will see that childhood sexual abuse is a subject that has had a direct impact on my life, but I can still see that there are some very good reasons why our legal system does not allow any random angry blonde to add "and also the death penalty" when she decides that eighty years of torture is insufficient. Especially in light of Plover pointing out that Alice could send him to any of the numerous worlds where he could live without posing a danger to anyone, it feels like the show is taking the position that harm reduction is insufficient and that there is no limit to how much punitive retribution is appropriate. It feels gross.
Quentin was lucky that everyone present decided to give him a pass when he said how important it was that Fillory was there as a place of escape for people like him (conventionally hot white male with a genius-level IQ who would have been headed to Harvard had magic school not scooped him up first). One of the best themes of the first book that was sadly dropped in the later books and that the show has avoided almost entirely is that obsessive love of escapist media is often pretty unhealthy. I guess that you don’t get a show made on SyFy Network by exploring those kind of ideas, but it was still irksome to see the show present Quentin’s love of escapism as a virtue.
Am I the only one who feels like Monster-Julia has facial expressions that are reminiscent of Chloë Sevigny to a distracting degree? I am into it.
I want Quentin and Eliot to wind up together because Eliot wants it. Quentin is a scrub and Eliot deserves better, but I am willing to overlook that if it is the price of Eliot getting what he wants.
I am ok with Margo deciding to stay with Josh. She is the only one who can keep him alive; she has done her part for Eliot and the others can carry it from there. She intentionally infected herself with lycanthropy to keep Josh alive already; there is a lot invested there. I am still not convinced that their relationship is a good idea (the things that make Margo fun to watch also make her mostly unsuitable to be partnered with anyone, much less someone as historically prone to getting his feelings hurt as Josh), but it did not strike me as wildly out of character for her to stay with him.
I predict that the entire narrative point of Julia being possessed so late in the game is so that in the finale someone (probably Quentin, but maybe not) will be forced to choose between her and Eliot. I would not mind in the slightest being wrong about this.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 4:54 PM on April 12, 2019 [6 favorites]
I would vastly prefer that the Christopher Plover plot be dropped entirely. It was one of the worst parts of the books and it continues to be one of the worst parts of the show; nothing would have been lost by having not included it. It feels like the show is setting him up for a bad end and I find myself feeling concerned about how they want us to feel about it. Plover did an absolutely monstrous thing and he was imprisoned and tortured for over eighty years for it. Anyone looking at my posting history will see that childhood sexual abuse is a subject that has had a direct impact on my life, but I can still see that there are some very good reasons why our legal system does not allow any random angry blonde to add "and also the death penalty" when she decides that eighty years of torture is insufficient. Especially in light of Plover pointing out that Alice could send him to any of the numerous worlds where he could live without posing a danger to anyone, it feels like the show is taking the position that harm reduction is insufficient and that there is no limit to how much punitive retribution is appropriate. It feels gross.
Quentin was lucky that everyone present decided to give him a pass when he said how important it was that Fillory was there as a place of escape for people like him (conventionally hot white male with a genius-level IQ who would have been headed to Harvard had magic school not scooped him up first). One of the best themes of the first book that was sadly dropped in the later books and that the show has avoided almost entirely is that obsessive love of escapist media is often pretty unhealthy. I guess that you don’t get a show made on SyFy Network by exploring those kind of ideas, but it was still irksome to see the show present Quentin’s love of escapism as a virtue.
Am I the only one who feels like Monster-Julia has facial expressions that are reminiscent of Chloë Sevigny to a distracting degree? I am into it.
I want Quentin and Eliot to wind up together because Eliot wants it. Quentin is a scrub and Eliot deserves better, but I am willing to overlook that if it is the price of Eliot getting what he wants.
I am ok with Margo deciding to stay with Josh. She is the only one who can keep him alive; she has done her part for Eliot and the others can carry it from there. She intentionally infected herself with lycanthropy to keep Josh alive already; there is a lot invested there. I am still not convinced that their relationship is a good idea (the things that make Margo fun to watch also make her mostly unsuitable to be partnered with anyone, much less someone as historically prone to getting his feelings hurt as Josh), but it did not strike me as wildly out of character for her to stay with him.
I predict that the entire narrative point of Julia being possessed so late in the game is so that in the finale someone (probably Quentin, but maybe not) will be forced to choose between her and Eliot. I would not mind in the slightest being wrong about this.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 4:54 PM on April 12, 2019 [6 favorites]
Quentin is a scrub and Eliot deserves better,
This a thousand times! I want Eliot and his Bambi back together and care much less about who either of them is with sexually. Mind you, I'm one of the minority who dislike Quentin and Alice (possibly because she reminds me way too much of myself, but that's another story) and like Josh. Anyway, we're coming up to the end of the season, so the best we can hope for is a fleeting moment of happiness for some, and then something terrible for everyone in the next season. It's always fun to see pretty people suffer.
posted by Fuchsoid at 2:34 AM on April 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
This a thousand times! I want Eliot and his Bambi back together and care much less about who either of them is with sexually. Mind you, I'm one of the minority who dislike Quentin and Alice (possibly because she reminds me way too much of myself, but that's another story) and like Josh. Anyway, we're coming up to the end of the season, so the best we can hope for is a fleeting moment of happiness for some, and then something terrible for everyone in the next season. It's always fun to see pretty people suffer.
posted by Fuchsoid at 2:34 AM on April 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
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Mostly I'm just so anxious to get to the finale. Even if it is bound to end in some fresh hell again, maybe we can at least get Eliot back?
posted by oh yeah! at 8:36 PM on April 10, 2019