In 2015, Syfy brought an interesting new show to television. The Magicians, inspired by a series of novels, used themes from Harry Potter and the Chronicles of Narnia but applied them to adults in their 20s pursuing a magical degree program. An infusion of pop culture, fascinating relationship dynamics, musical numbers, and high stakes quests made the show a dream come true for fantasy fans. Renewed for a fifth season, the series returns with new episodes in 2020.
Users of the Internet Movie Database are able to rate movies and television shows once they release. For TV shows, users can even rate individual episodes. Ratings range from one star (the worst) to 10 stars (the best). After over 50,000 ratings, The Magicians has ten top episodes from the first four seasons that range from 8.3 to 9.6 stars.
It’s definitely true that some series only improve with time. Only one of the top-rated episodes of The Magicians comes from season two. None make the list from season one. The series has steadily built on a strong foundation to have even better episodes every season.
The Bad News Bear S4E09 (8.3)
With a markedly lower rating than the rest of the top 10, this episode seems like an outlier. It’s still a stellar hour of weaving a lot of separate stories into one giant plot.
“The Bad News Bear” features most of the characters paired off to accomplish separate tasks. While Margo and Josh travel to Fillory to offer up Bacchus to the god inhabiting Eliot’s body, the others are equally busy. We get Alice teaming up with Santa in the Library, Penny and Kady teaming up with counterfeit magic cards, and Julia babysitting Quentin while he holds on to the literal bad news bear so everyone else has luck instead.
With so much going on, fans were still treated to surprisingly emotional moments with all of the pairings.
Divine Elimination S2E03 (9.0)
“Divine Elimination” gets its name from Ember’s gross act with the magical wellspring. Aside from that, this episode is not lighthearted and funny. It’s the kind of episode you would expect out of a season finale. It was only the third episode of season two! That’s probably why it makes the top ten.
The episode sees Julia team up with the Beast to take on the god who assaulted her. Of course, she does it while using Marina as bait and while Quentin and his magical friends in Fillory plot to take the beast out. As a result, Julia is too late to save Marina, and Quentin is too late to save Alice from burning up her own soul to defeat the beast. Huge risks in the writing prompted a huge emotional response from the fans and one stellar episode.
Twenty-Three S3E11 (9.0)
After all the talk of time loops and alternate timelines from the first two seasons of the show, fans get a real taste of them in this episode. The series revisits Timeline 23. A previous episode saw Julia meet with the Alice of Timeline 23, but this time, she and Josh actually visit the other timeline.
While there, they meet the other versions of Josh, Quentin (now the Beast!), Alice, and the ghosts of Eliot and Margo, Penny, and Marina. Josh and Julia team up with the Josh, Marina, and Penny of the alternate timeline to stop the Beast and get the key he’s been hiding. They also inadvertently bring Penny and Marina back to their timeline with them, something fans everywhere are grateful for.
All That Hard, Glossy Armor S4E10 (9.0)
One of the best decisions the team behind The Magicians ever made was including musical numbers in their shows. It can make even the direst circumstances feel light and entertaining. That’s just what happens in this episode.
While Quentin, Julia, Penny, Alice, and Kady are all hard at work on Earth to find a way to save the possessed Eliot, Margot is alone in the realm that holds Fillory. Recently banished from her kingdom (and leaving Fen in charge), she winds up hallucinating a few musical numbers in the desert on her own personal quest to find a way to save Eliot. While Margot sings her way through discovering the men of a desert group are keeping major secrets from the women, Alice and Kady find out the Library is hiding things from magicians. There are a lot of reveals in this episode, all offset by some fantastic music.
Six Short Stories About Magic S3E08 (9.1)
Though most of the episodes of The Magicians break into several smaller stories, this episode is the first time the title has actually acknowledged that. Fans went in knowing exactly what they were going to get. As usual, all six of the stories link up to the same season three mission: the search for the keys.
Julia and Fen discover the McAllister family keeps faeries as slaves - and uses their ground-up bones to create a magical drug. Penny works in the Underworld and the Library to track down a missing key. Kady, Quentin, Harriet, Victoria, and Poppy all take a magical bridge to get into the Library. Through these stories connecting, we also get to see that the Library’s Cassandra (as in the ancient prophet no one listened to) might be Alice. There’s also the reveal that Harriet, the woman who thinks magic and knowledge should be free, is the daughter of the head librarian. So much information came to light in so many short stories!
The Fillorian Candidate S3E12 (9.2)
As the quest for the keys begins to wind down, the audience gets the tease about the monster that’s to come. They also get a lot of seemingly unrelated plot pieces that all connect to the quest.
Alice is working for the Library, who is not happy with Julia’s god-like status. Julia’s power continues to grow. She’s even able to grow an entire forest of trees. Meanwhile, in Fillory, when Margo and Eliot attempt to make a new deal with the faerie queen, she declines since they aren’t royalty. That leads to their attempt to rig an election, which doesn’t go exactly as planned. Margo does, however, end up elected to the position as High King thanks to her being on the good side of the talking animals.
This episode had a lot of bits and pieces going on to get to that final key. Each one brought the group one step closer to releasing magic back into the world, but also to one intense new villain.
Escape From The Happy Place S4E05 (9.2)
If anyone ever wanted a chance to get inside Eliot’s head, this episode is for you. While a lot of the episode focuses on Julia, Quentin, and Alice’s plan to rid themselves of the being possessing Eliot, the more interesting part of the episode is getting to see how Eliot views himself.
Trapped in his own mind, Eliot appears to be living the good life at Brakebills. When the part of the previous host that’s left in his head appears though, Eliot finds out he can still regain control of his body. All he has to do is find a doorway through his worst memory. Eliot discovers his worst memory is actually one with Quentin. When Quentin approached him about starting a relationship, Eliot, out of fear, turned him down. It’s a heartbreaking moment but allows Eliot to take his body over long enough to prove to Quentin that he’s still in there.
The episode kicks off a whole new path for season four as it’s now not enough to get rid the evil, but the group has to make sure Eliot can survive.
Be The Penny S3E04 (9.3)
Fan-favorite character Penny tragically died while astral projecting in a previous episode. Of course, because he was astral projecting, Penny wasn’t technically dead. This episode gave fans an hour with him as he tried to figure out what to do without a body and without any of his friends knowing he was still technically alive.
Penny gets to see just how his friends would react to his death. While he’s hurt that nobody appears to be mourning, he forgets they’ve all got a lot going on and no time to process their grief. Everyone is still on the hunt for the magic keys. It’s not until Eliot gets a hold of the key for truth that anyone knows Penny’s spirit is still lingering. Of course, by then, he’s already decided to burn his body and move on to the underworld!
All That Josh S3E09 (9.4)
For a long time, Josh was a side character in the show. “All That Josh” placed him in the spotlight as he rejoined their quest.
He accidentally ended up in a version of the world where a god fed off of people’s happiness. Alice, Kady, and Quentin also end up there in the episode and have to save the day. While they’re busy doing that, Julia is busy trying to help faeries, and Eliot and Margo are about to be executed after being removed from the Fillorian thrones.
As it turns out, Josh only got to this reality thanks to finding one of the keys. It’s the key of unity, which leads to one fantastic rendition of “Under Pressure” by the entire main cast as they’re all telepathically linked. Their unified song helps get them all out of their respective predicaments. It’s a little ridiculous, but it works surprisingly well.
A Life In The Day S3E05 (9.6)
The highest-rated episode of The Magicians is responsible for over 10,000 of the ratings the show received on IMDb. It’s easily the most popular episode of the series, but also one of the best crafted hours.
Like many of the best episodes of the show, there are a lot of stories to process. Most of the main characters are paired up on different aspects of their quest. It’s the Eliot and Quentin of it all that hooks viewers though.
The two go on a side quest for a key that involves creating a mosaic. Their quest takes decades. The two friends live side by side, grow old, and raise a child together. Eliot and Quentin develop real feelings for one another. Because of the fantastic nature of time travel, it all technically happens in another universe that they only initially remember pieces of. It’s both heartwarming and heartbreaking, and speaks to the depths of the relationships between the characters in the series.
