Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
As soon as I told actor Hale Appleman that I had just seen the Season Two finale of The Magicians, he asked, “Did you survive? Are you okay?!?” He then quipped, “We certainly tried to do everything in one episode — again — so we’ll see how it goes.”
Tonight’s big finale caps off a totally electrifying season that gave us everything from fallen heroes to evil fairies. The Magicians is the rare fantasy series that forces fans to confront the harsh realities of the genre. C.S. Lewis might have made the Pevensies’ rule of Narnia seem like a piece of cake, but when Eliot, Alice, Quentin, and Margot become Kings and Queens of Fillory, they have war, political parties, flailing crops, and assassination attempts to juggle. You know, they have to actually rule. Of the quartet, Hale Appleman’s Eliot has to take on the most responsibility. As High King, the buck ends with him and he constantly finds himself challenged by the role.
Appleman told me, “It’s been a really interesting season because in Season One, you kind of have Eliot playing the role that he’s manufactured for himself as this all-knowing party boy prince of Brakebills. He has it all figured out and he’s not trying to pop his own bubble. And then Season Two is a complete unknown, so the contrast between the two seasons is something that I found pretty fascinating for me to help guide Eliot through.”
One of Eliot’s newest allies is Fen (Brittany Curran), a Fillorian woman whom he’s forced to marry to take the kingdom. The match throws more than one curveball Eliot’s way. Appleman said, “I think it was interesting to have a character like Fen played against him as someone who moves through the world with a kind of purity of purpose, it seems. She’s quite pure in a lot of ways and simple – simpler than Eliot it seems. And that’s kind of a revelation to him. Her innate goodness is something that throws him a little…so that was kind of an interesting new wrinkle for him.”
“And he wouldn’t have chosen her for himself and I don’t think that it’s a marriage of love,” he added. “I still don’t think he’s in love with her. I don’t think that’s what it’s about. I think it’s a matter of circumstance and taking one for the team in a way. He really is saving the integrity of everyone’s mission through this marriage. And it’s a way out of his old patterns and I don’t think he recognizes how hard that will be — he’s a recovering addict.”
Fen isn’t the only woman in Fillory at Eliot’s side. Eliot’s strongest ally is his best friend Margot (Summer Bishil). However, their relationship became fraught when Margot seemingly betrayed Eliot and Fen by bartering their unborn baby for a favor from the fairies. “This season I felt that you watch Margot really step up a lot and really take ownership of her potential as a leader — even if she has a lot of missteps,” Appleman said. “She’s a little power hungry and slightly dictatorial, and you definitely don’t want to surprise her with some bad news. Beheadings come to mind… It just seems that she’s a bit of a powder keg and Eliot’s trying to rule with more diplomacy. So there’s an inherent fracture in their relationship in that they’re trying to govern in different ways.”
“I love working with Summer. Summer is my partner on this show and we just compliment each other. We have an innate chemistry. There’s a little bit of a yin/yang thing with Summer and I. We each of a bit of each other and for the most part we compliment each other. We work in different ways. We come from different life experiences and we have different outlooks on life, but we’re very there for each other. And I think that kind of connection really lends itself to our relationship on the show.”
Eliot’s big moment of the season was arguably the massive magical homage to Les Miserables. To help Eliot gain the courage to challenge another king in single combat, Margot casts a spell that gets everyone to break out into song. I asked if the cast had any input into the musical choice and Appleman said, “No, not at all. And in fact, it wasn’t something that I knew was going to happen until about a week before we did it. So yeah it was a really quick turnaround…but that was something that was bigger than anything I’ve ever shot before so it felt like a tall order in the time that we had. And that paired with the fight sequence was…you know…it was a lot of preparation in a very short amount of time. It was a busy week. Luckily I got to have a few training sessions with the sword so I felt like I could execute the battle sequence with as much confidence as possible in the time that we had.”
“I would love to do more of that, actually,” Appleman said of the fight scene. “That was something that I had mentioned to John (McNamara) and Sera (Gamble) – if there’s any opportunity for Eliot to swashbuckle or have a battle, that’s really something that I would love to do. And there’s a sequence in the books, that loosely inspired that moment, in Book 2 of The Magician King, in which Eliot takes on a foe from another kingdom. It’s one of my favorite parts so I was happy that they were really able to fold that into the show really beautifully. Yeah, hopefully I’ll get to do more in the future.”
Still, that show-stopping scene wasn’t Appleman’s favorite of the season. “I loved the scene in episode one where Quentin (Jason Ralph) says goodbye to Eliot and he’s not sure he’s ever going to see his friends again. They’re all ready to go and he’s sort of sitting in the Armory there, doing some research, trying to understand how best to serve his kingdom. It’s his first moment trying to self-actualize his role as king and he’s really overwhelmed and tossing it off with humor. You know, ‘I’d like to be known as the “Champagne King,'” Appleman said. “But it was a tender scene between Quentin and Eliot and an acknowledgment of their friendship and I think that’s really important. I enjoyed an opportunity for Eliot to express his need for his friends. I think that doesn’t happen often and it was a rare moment of true vulnerability, if not complete emotional transparency.”
The Season Two finale of The Magicians airs on Syfy tonight.
