The Magicians: 5 Of The Best Side Characters (& 5 Of The Worst)

Though the show has always had a large cast of main characters, The Magicians crossed into the unknown after the season four finale in which the main character of the show, Quentin Coldwater, sacrifices himself to save his friends and grant them a new lease on life and a world with magic.  Though the show is in its final season, fans welcomed the change of pace, switching their focus away from Quentin and onto the rest of the ensemble.

Keeping track of the actions of the nine main characters of the show can be rough sometimes—so it’s no surprise that a lot of the side characters and their heroic (or despicable) actions get swept under the rug and forgotten.  Before the show ends, let’s take a closer look at some of the best and worst side characters The Magicians has featured.

9 Best: Poppy Kline

Felicia Day is a truly bright and welcome presence on this show where she plays Poppy Kline, a Draconologist magician with a penchant for brutal honesty and a tendency to act in the most selfish way possible.  (At least she’s honest about it.)  Thanks to Poppy, we got one of the funniest sequences on the show in the episode Home Improvement, season four, episode eight, in which Quentin and Penny become mentally enslaved to a dragon egg.  In some of her first appearances, she’s helping Quentin through his breakup with Alice, which is an upbeat change of pace from the tragic situations of which the rest of the season is composed.

8 Worst: Jane Chatwin

Jane Chatwin certainly does her best, resetting the timeline over forty times in an attempt to stop her ruthless brother Martin Chatwin from killing all of our favorite characters and inadvertently destroying Fillory by emptying the magical well.  Even though her intentions are purely good, the mystery she casts over the first season is frustrating.

When that mystery is finally solved, her unwillingness to reset the timeline and help Quentin save Alice is very unhelpful—as is her unwillingness to help Eliot save Quentin… or Fillory for that matter.  At least she was good for stealing from.

7 Best: Professor Lipson

Keegan Connor Tracy shines in this sassy caricature of a burnt-out professor struggling to stay sane amidst the chaos that comes with working at Brakebills.  Professor Lipson has given us hilarious moments, like breaking into the potions pantry while drunk during a magic shortage.  But she’s also been a voice of reason, healing the main characters of The Magicians over and over while they mangle themselves in various adventures and quests.  When Penny 40 was dying, viewers got to see Professor Lipson not just as a source of comedy, but also as a skilled healer and Magician.  In short, it’s nice to see her step into the role of Dean during season five, where she shines just as well as she did before.

6 Worst: Professor Pearl Sunderland

Where Professor Lipson shines, Professor Sunderland—well, what a cringe.  Even though Penny 40 is a college student, his weird sexual tension with Professor Sunderland was awkward enough before she tied him shirtless to a chair in a manipulative attempt to help him.  She eventually breaks off the relationship (if you could call it that) but the amount of screen time spent on this imbalanced power dynamic gets pretty dull.

All of that doesn’t even account for the fact that she never actually taught Penny anything useful about how to be a traveler.  Her screentime outside of harassing Penny largely includes her complaining to Dean Fogg.

5 Best: Benedict Pickwick

A favorite character in the show and in the books, Benedict Pickwick was the most innocent character to ever appear on the show.  His only hobby and passion in the world were making maps, which is the purest thing a person in a fantasy world could love.  When the Children of Earth (Eliot, Quentin, Alice, and Margo) take their Thrones in Fillory, they meet Benedict and immediately enlist him to be the royal mapmaker, which is his lifelong dream.  After a betrayal by Poppy, Benedict is killed while helping Quentin and Eliot find a key to save magic.  Since he dies holding the key, we see him again a few episodes later when Penny 40 dies and is sent to the underworld for the key.  Luckily, Penny gets Benedict a job as a map keeper in the Underworld Library, and he gets his happy ending after all.

4 Worst: Tick Pickwick

Unlike his son Benedict, Tick Pickwick is kind of a jerk.  He and the Pickwick family were caretakers of Fillory while the Children of Earth were being kept away by the Beast, also known as Martin Chatwin.  Most of his frustrations stem from believing he did a better job of ruling Fillory than the Children of Earth ever did, which was a prejudice reaffirmed to him by the terror the Beast brought down upon Fillory.

When the people overthrew Margo and Eliot, Tick practically led that revolution.  He even laughed at them a few times before they were about to be executed.  When Margo won the election, she told Pick she wouldn’t kill him because of his usefulness to Fillory, and Tick was last seen as one of the refugees that fled from the Dark King via the dwarf in the Clock Barrens.

3 Best: The Fairy Queen

The Fairy Queen reigns as one of the most complex villains (and allies) The Magicians has ever featured.  After Margo was voted back into power, her initial feud with The Fairy Queen transformed over the course of the season into mutual respect and admiration.  In some ways, The Fairy Queen taught Margo a lot about how to be a ruler—and how to be a ruler who is a woman.  She even gifted Margo with a Fairy eye, something Margo uses to see spellwork in ways normal humans cannot.  When Julia learns the McCallister family is butchering Fairy slaves in order to create magical fuel for their spells, she and the Fairy Queen team up to free the Fairies and take down the McCallisters.  Unfortunately, one McCallister survives, and as a last-ditch effort to protect her people, the Fairy Queen sacrifices herself to make a deal in which no fairy would ever be hunted again.

2 Worst: Pete

During his very first scene, Pete magically binds Julia to a bar bathroom heater and then magically rips her shirt off, so it shouldn’t really be a surprise that Pete made the sour side of this list.  Continuing his good work as a con artist, he tricks Julia into a dangerous hedge witch audition for Marina, which she thankfully survives.

A few episodes later, Pete sells Julia out to Marina, which results in the erasing of her boyfriend and childhood best friend James’ memories of her.  Pete shows up again several seasons later as a lost beta leader who convinces Kady to take Marina’s place as an unofficial leader of hedge witches.  Though he’s less threatening now, and a bit less annoying, it’s difficult to ignore his shady past.

1 Best: Marina Andrieski

Marina wasn’t a character in the books, which are mostly from Quentin’s perspective and cover Julia’s time spent as a hedge witch sparingly, if at all—but this character is one addition we can get behind.  Marina is the same age as Quentin and Julia, and even though she was kicked out of Brakebills and had her memories of spellwork stolen from her, she still managed to climb up the social ladder of hedge witches to become the leader of the East Coast hedge witches.  After excommunicating Julia, Marina continues to grow a tough-love friendship with the goddess-to-be.  After Marina 40 dies helping Julia catch Reynard the Fox, Marina 23 hops timelines as a self-proclaimed “refugee” and in season five we’ve seen her in the background, stealing buildings and casting extremely strong and mysterious spells.  We can’t wait to see what she’s up to!

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