'The Magicians' Season 5 Episode 13: Fen, the birth mother of the new Fillory, proves to be a 'dark horse'
Over five seasons, we have seen all the major characters take the lead in their own ways, saving people, making sacrifices and coming out the other side looking like heroes, except Josh Hoberman (Trever Einhorn) and Fen (Brittany Curran).
Both of them have been relegated to mostly sidekick duties, with Josh handling the cooking, magical or otherwise and Fen, as the only Fillorian of the gang, being tapped repeatedly for her in-depth knowledge of Fillory.
But in Season 5, the last season of the series, we have seen Fen rise from sidekick to full hero status. Speaking about her character's arc over four seasons, since she appeared on our screens, Curran, who plays Fen, told Entertainment Weekly in a goodbye video, "Fen was born to be a side character and ended up as a hero. And she is such an inspiration to me...how her growth has inspired people makes Fen even more real to me."
Truer words have not been spoken. What's more, this transformation came at the tail end of the last season from Episode 11 onwards. Fans were behind her 100 percent as she gave Margo Hanson (Summer Bishil) and the rest of Earth magicians a piece of her mind for constantly dismissing her until they need her. She is the one who knew enough about Fillory to recognize and save Umber's pocket world that played a key role in saving every Fillorian native as their world exploded in the final episode.
Without her, it would have been impossible to destroy Fillory (which would amount to mass genocide) to save the multiverse from the dead. And if that wasn't enough, in Episode 12, her quick thinking saved the world seed after she stashed it in her vagina, which was moist and warm enough to keep the seed safe till it was ready to be used. As Margo puts it, after they are stranded on new Fillory, "you carried the whole world in your cooch".
And even, in this moment of triumph, she chooses to give the honor of releasing the Fillorians from the pocket world to the new world birthed by the world seed to Margo, who she rechristens "High King Margo the Creator". But while she gave the title of "Creator" to Margo, there is no doubt that the new Fillory's "birth mother" is Fen.
Her actions not only save all Fillorians, but her imagination also gifts them a better world, circumventing all the "bad things" about old Fillory and imbuing it with only the "best" things the gang could imagine. Thus the fields of bacon and trees that deliver pizzas and none of the sexism of the old world.
Fen, also technically saves all magic, because, without this in new Fillory with a functional Wellspring, there would be no magic and no magicians. It is a beautiful thing to watch a character grow and evolve on a show. It is even better when they surpass all our expectations. Fen has been one of those characters who has been a late bloomer but boy was it worth the wait.
'The Magicians' last episode aired on April 1 on Syfy.