Tonight was the Season 2 finale of The Magician. The creators of the show are torturing us by making us wait until 2018 for Season 3.
2018!! Anything could happen by then. That’s like 5 years on Fillory.
Fortunately, there are the books. Oh, yeah. The Magicians is based on a book series by Lev Grossman. If you haven’t read them, you can fill your Quentin/Julia void by getting caught up on the original story.
Spoiler Alert! If you aren’t caught up with the show or books, read at your own risk!
The series does not follow the books. I’ve only read The Magicians (Book 1) and The Magician King (Book 2), but from what I can tell and what Olivia Taylor Dudley confessed, Alice remains dead in print. Thank goodness she doesn’t on the show! What a trip this season has been. Niffin Alice in her full glory!
There are many similarities and nods to the source material, however. Olivia even admitted that she and Jason Ralph bring their copies of the books to set every day. “It’s nice to have the books to check in with the tone of what Lev wrote,” she said. And if there’s one thing The Magicians does well it’s adapting the trilogy to the screen – heightening the stakes, coloring the characters, and adding a ton of humor.
Since so much is different between the books and the series, I compiled a list of what is similar. A list of nods, if you will.
The Magician King parallels:
- Alice turns into a Niffin
- Quentin wakes up in a Fillorian hospital
- And he gets a boring-ass day job like the rest of us pathetic non-Magicians
- Penny joins the library in the Neitherlands
- Benedict the map maker appears
- Reynard the Fox – He doesn’t show up until page 321 of The Magician King, but he does destroy Julia’s friends and get her knocked up.
- The sloth – yes, there is a talking sloth. Quentin is even envious of its life at one point and questions how sloths see the world. Go read the books. It’ll make you rethink that scene in Zootopia.
- The Dragon! Yes, she lives in the waters of Venice, Italy in the book, but at least she was in the show and demands the button from Quentin for access to the Underworld. So stoked to see the dragon.
And if you are wondering what was missing from the show – lots of sailing and keys.
But we had LES MIZ!
Oh Magicians! Why 2018?!? I feel like I’ve lost my shade and won’t get it back until Season 3 starts.
BTW, there are some gorgeous photography on the SyFy site of the cast.
Check out more here.
Follow us on Twitter: Chris @ACCooksonWriter and Rebecca @DownWorldNovel.
Like our Facebook page Novel2Screen for more updates on your favorite novel-to-screen adaptations, including soon to come weekly recaps of The Handmaid’s Tale and interviews!
Or just follow this blog.
Photos courtesy of SyFy.
novel2screen 
One thought on “The Magicians – Season 2’s Nod to The Magician King”