The Magicians showrunners planned a sixth season, just in case

SyFy’s The Magicians aired its final episode just the other night, and while it was a satisfying ending, it’s hard to wonder what might have been if the show had gotten one more season.

There are a least a few people in the world who don’t have to wonder, as the showrunners revealed to Entertainment Weekly that they had a sixth season planned, just in case SyFy wanted to bring them back. “We have a document that may someday be available on eBay that is the arc of season 6,” said co-showrunner John McNamara. “I mean, you have to be just optimistic enough to be ready in case someone writes you a big check to produce a season on television. I know Henry [Alonso Myers], Sera [Gamble], [executive producer] David Reed, and I were really starting to get excited as we mapped out the broad strokes of what a season 6 should be. It was interesting.”

The finale ended with Alice (Olivia Taylor Dudley), Margo (Summer Bishil), Josh (Trevor Einhorn) and Fen (Brittany Curran) having arrived in Fillory 2.0, about to release all the Filorians they saved into their new world. Eliot (Hale Appleman) ended up a teacher at Brakebills, Kady (Jade Tailor) was the leader of the Hedge Witches, and new parents Penny (Arjun Gupta) and Julia (Stella Maeve) were traveling around the universe with their newborn daughter looking for a portal to the new Fillory.

It’s hard to imagine the show moving on from such a finale, but the show must go on…at least in theory.

THE MAGICIANS — “Fillory and Further” Episode 513 — Pictured: (l-r) Olivia Taylor Dudley as Alice Quinn, Stella Maeve as Julia Wicker, Rain Steele as Merritt/Plum, Arjun Gupta as Penny Adiyodi, Summer Bishil as Margo Hanson — (Photo by: James Dittiger/SYFY)

The show was based on author Lev Grossman’s The Magicians novels, although the series went pretty far afield of them in spots. Co-showrunner Sera Gamble talked about working the third and final book in the series, The Magician’s Land, into the fifth season. “We didn’t know at that point [of breaking season 5] whether we would have a season 6 or not,” she said. “We have a philosophy in the room every season that if there’s a story we’re burning to do, we’re not going to save it for later, we’re going to do it now.”

"There was an overwhelming feeling that we should do this very moving piece from The Magician’s Land; the World Seed story is that story. We all set our minds to plotting a good story that ended with them backed into a corner [and] having to let go of this thing they love. It ended up making a lot of sense for us in a season that’s so much about each character contending with many different flavors of grief and learning how to let go of things, and bring new things into their lives in smaller ways. The big one is, we also have to blow up an entire planet."

But they couldn’t everything from the books, in part because they had ideas of their own and in part because some of the stuff the novels is pretty far out there. “I remember the idea that evolved into a smaller episode where there were two versions of Dean Fogg — we had an idea on the board about doing at least an act where everyone was played by Rick Worthy,” said Gamble. “We called it the Council of Rick in a little nod to one of our favorite shows, and we couldn’t quite justify it yet. We probably would’ve gotten there if the show went on 15 seasons. But there’s a lot of really crazy creatures in [Lev Grossman’s] books. There’s a giant demon who’s stark naked with big dangling balls. We frequently would pitch that demon in episodes and then he would fall back out again.”

That demon Gamble mentions was called a cacodemon. In the books, Dean Fogg uses magic to place a cacodemon in a tattoo on each of the magicians’ backs. The demon could then be called upon to protect the magician, but only once.

As a huge fan of the books, I always wanted to see the cacodemons in action. We got a version of it when Quentin (Jason Ralph) used saved Eliot and Margo from Alice, who had turned into an evil creature called a Niffin. But I’m happy the showrunners successfully adapted most of my other favorite parts from the books.

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