Being a Magician in the Face of a Pandemic

4/9/2020

"The times are urgent enough for us to slow down." Bayo Akomolafe
Collage by Bella Moon

Magicians fans have been sad the past few weeks as another favorite show came to an end. And everything feels extra sad because we’re all under unusual stress anyway. Even the beloved actors that brought these characters to life are feeling it with us as we all self-isolate and we all watch for the updates and wonder what tomorrow will bring. I’ve seen mentions of isolation doggie photo shoots from Olivia Taylor Dudley, family quarantine yoga from Jason Ralph, Brittany Curran’s appreciation for grocery delivery from a small business. More than one of them posted about the online version of a party they had for the April 1^st finale. And on March 23rd, Jade Tailor shared a photo of herself and her dog holding a sign about who she stays home for, and asking her followers to share who they stay home for.

Think of this as Kady Orloff-Diaz continuing her work of leading the hedges around the world. Much like the bonding spell they did at the end of Season Four, this requires cooperative magic. As Kady said in that episode (4.13) “We tell everyone. And I mean, all over the world… and we all do the same thing at the same time.” Well, we’ve been telling everyone. Some governing parties have been more proactive than others, but many of us have urged the public to take stricter precautions than at least the US government has required. Sadly, Margo foresaw this problem; “You can’t get that many people to cooperate. This isn’t Sesame Street.” She’s right, and so many aren’t, but the rest of us need to keep going.

Alice explains that there are several people who won’t help, but so many that will. “They’d have to keep casting the entire time so we can keep the Monsters in the bottles til we get them through the seam.” That’s the same thing Kady (via Jade Tailor) has asked of us on her Instagram. “Who do you stay home for?” asks us to remember how we’re all connected, and to join in on the cooperative magic that will reduce the damage from this pandemic. Staying at home. I just hope enough of us do the same spell long enough to get the “monsters” under control (i.e. flatten the curve and get vaccines available to everyone.)

While we’re staying home, though, the world is changing drastically, in more ways than many of us can really comprehend (I know I can’t). There are countless articles on COVID-19’s affect on society, economy, our understanding of what’s truly “essential” in times of crisis, etc. Memes and headlines abound about how we need to come out of this pandemic with a better system. And that’s the jumble of feelings that struck me in the gut as I rewatched the finale. (Series finale spoilers ahead). In order to protect all of Fillory from the Dark King and all the re-risen dead (and, it turns out, the Beast/Martin, too), the Magicians had to use a magical ark to rapture all Fillorians, destroy Fillory, and use the World Seed to build a new Fillory to move the people and other creatures to.

Alice begins by suggesting they all need to accept themselves exactly as they are in that moment, “the good and the shitty” because magically, they can only adjust for inner circumstances if they acknowledge them. Moments later, during the spell to create the new world, Fen shares her memories, and maybe she needed that push to acknowledge the shitty parts so she could adjust for them.

“I remember the first time I saw my dad use magic to make a knife, and then he wouldn’t show me, because I’m a girl. I remember my dad gave me away to a stranger and that’s where I realized, Fillory kinda sucks sometimes. … I’m talking about my Fillory. That place could be backwards as shit. And I’m thinking I don’t want to replicate that. … Can’t I just have the best of Fillory, the best of us, of Earth, plus the best of those cool movies Todd and I watched? That’s the home that I want. That’s what we deserve.”

That’s what we all deserve. We’re living the experience right now to prove just how necessary it is for every person to have health care unrelated to their jobs, and how important the service workers are and that they both need and deserve better pay, paid sick leave, and better policies on using sick leave. We’re seeing (those of us paying attention, anyway) that our system was designed horribly, and what might’ve been good about it is mostly broken. We need a better future. We’re begging to emerge into the beginnings of a utopia instead of continuing our previous dystopic slide.

In the world of The Magicians, access to magic comes through pain; pain of being abused, pain of depression, pain of losing a loved one, just to name a few examples from the series. We’re all in pain right now. Some are in financial pain because of a lost job, some are grieving loved ones already lost to this pandemic or to other causes, some are in physical pain because of lack of access to food or medications or a safe place to sleep, and basically all of us are experiencing various levels of the shared trauma of fear and uncertainty, the grieving of those “normal” lives we used to have.

If there’s anything I’ve learned from The Magicians, it’s that sometimes you just push through to do your part, even when you have no idea what the overall outcome will be. So now is the time. I’ll keep doing my part, keep casting that ‘safer at home’ spell while we depend on the heroes (i.e. doctors and scientists) to bottle up this monster (or bottle the vaccine to defend against it?) and let us know when it’ll be safe to go out again. And I really hope that we can also band together and push our elected officials (and elect new ones as soon as possible) to make sure that the world and society we create out of this pain can be a better one. Maybe we can even get the crispy bacon fields Josh found in their new world.