'The Magicians': We need a hero, but where have all the good gods gone?
Spoiler alert for 'The Magicians' Season 5 Episode 10 'Purgator'
If there's one central theme that binds all seasons of 'The Magicians', it is that blind faith will always let you down if you're hoping it comes without complications. That is true of magic, it's true of Fillory, but nowhere is it truer than of the gods.
This episode, we see that Hades (Michael Luwoye) is grieving the loss of his wife, Persephone (Garcelle Beauvais), and he is not handling it well.
He has abandoned his duties as ruler of the Underworld, leaving it to his underlings to figure things out, and is hanging out on Earth playing video games and indulging in junk food. He's depressed, and it takes the literal end of the world to jolt him out of it.
One would think that the God of Death would be able to handle Death better. As someone who has been responsible for billions of souls passing through his gates, one would think he would have learned some better coping methods.
Perhaps some advice for mortals grieving their own, or souls trying to grieve their own deaths, but no, like all privileged, sheltered people, Hades is blindsided by something he thought was beneath him.
"There's no Underworld for gods," he says, mournfully, as if there aren't millions of humans who have to process their own grief without the knowledge that there's an Underworld waiting for them. What he's going through is rough, and it's human, and it's messing up all the souls he took on the responsibility for.
Where the other magicians this season have been finding a way to balance their grief with what they need to do to get the world saved, the God of Death has locked himself away, allowing for a Multiversal apocalypse to nearly come to pass.
If it wasn't for Julia Wicker (Stella Maeve) taking it upon herself to complete a quest meant for Quentin Coldwater (Jason Ralph), not one, but two apocalypses may have gone unnoticed.
It's ironic that she's done more to save the Multiverse as a mortal stripped of her divinity. Nearly every god that 'The Magicians' has featured has been a selfish, indulgent being, unable to fix the world without getting more competent mortals to do the gruntwork.
Julia feels doubt, this episode, for having taken up a world-saving quest that wasn't meant for her, but it's obvious that the mechanisms meant to keep the Universe safe are all broken.
The gods are not watching, and there's no one coming to save the day if Julia and her friends don't figure out how to do it themselves. It might never be enough because those who were supposed to be in charge hid behind arbitrary laws and their own indulgences.
Ultimately, the world isn't really in the hands of those with the most power. It's up to those taking up an unfair amount of responsibility on their shoulders to save the world. Hades can (and really probably should, just to check in) go to Hell.
The next episode of 'The Magicians' airs on March 18 on Syfy.