'The Magicians': The destruction of Fillory would be the best but most painful way to end the show
Spoiler alert for 'Be the Hyman' - Episode 11 of Season 5 of 'The Magicians'
Rupert Chatwin (Sean Maguire) is about to unwittingly end the Multiverse to be united with his true love. The only way that the High Kings of Fillory and their friends can think to stop him is to destroy him - but the only way to do that is to destroy all of Fillory in the process. It's starting to look like Fillory's days might now be numbered (14 days until the finale, if you're counting), but the end of the Fillory we know might just be the most apt way for the show to end.
Fillory is a lot more than just a magical land of absurd adventures; Fillory is the place that makes magic real. In one way, this is literal - the Wellspring of all magic is found on Fillory. In another way, its existence as a story on Earth has ingrained itself in many people's minds. Before Quentin Coldwater (Jason Ralph) and his friends discovered it was real, Fillory represented a pure, childlike wonder that more real world magic often lacks. Fillory was meant to put the magic in magic, essentially.
Fillory is very directly based off of Narnia. Before 'Harry Potter' came around, 'The Chronicles of Narnia' was a classic literary archetype of a magical world secretly hidden away. There have been countless children who have checked behind their cupboards in the hopes of finding a secret passage to a place that proves magic is real, and Quentin spent most of his childhood looking for a secret passageway just like that.
A lot of 'The Magicians' has been about that journey - of Quentin finding out that not only was magic real, but that Fillory was too, and that both of them were, in their own ways, disappointments. Magic has consequences, magic has failings, and behind the curtain of an impossible dream are a lot of irreverent people who should never have been left in charge. Fillory was revealed to be an absurd place that had its own problems, instead of a magical escape for Quentin.
The seventh and final Narnia book, 'The Last Battle,' destroys the land of Narnia - and replaces it with a purer, more perfect version of Narnia, like the shadow of an object being replaced with the real thing. In the final book that 'The Magicans' is based on, 'The Magician's Land,' Quentin uses the world seed to do something similar for Fillory, having been exiled from the original Fillory to give Julia Wicker (played by Stella Maeve on the show) a chance to visit another, more perfect kind of Fillory. Saying goodbye to Fillory was always the goal - it was the only way to get to whatever came next.
It's fortunate that 'The Magicians' has been so focused on finding ways to deal with grief. While initially, it was a way of helping its fans deal with the grief of losing Quentin along with the characters, the loss of Quentin has grown to be about the loss of the show itself.
Fillory has come to represent a dream of a better world. Like all dreams, it's been crushed, it's been disappointing, and it's come filled with complications of its own when it finally becomes a reality. A pure Fillory was never a reality, and growing up means saying goodbye to that dream and moving on to something new. With the world seed, the magicians are going to find out what that new thing is, but whatever that may be, it's another story. For all its absurdity, Fillory has been at the heart of 'The Magicians,' and with the show ending soon, it's time to say goodbye.
The next episode of 'The Magicians' airs March 25, on Syfy.
