Magic is a natural resource, and in the second season of SyFy’s the The Magicians, it looks like the power of magic is dying.
The new trailer teases specific plot points which also occur in the show’s source material, the Magicians novels by Lev Grossman. The second book — The Magician King — offers an explanation for why magic exists in the multiverse at all: It has been leaking into various worlds because super-beings with even greater power accidentally let their powers out. Magic then, is kind of hack that “regular” people have employed from the fabric of reality.
The just-released first trailer for the second season shows Quentin, Alice, Eliot, Penny and other Brakebills students both in the land of Filory, and seemingly, stepping into other worlds, too. This recalls aspects of the The Magician King where the character Josh tells of his travels into a wide variety of different dimensions. The notion of magic itself actually being in danger of dying out entirely comes from one of Lev Grossman’s favorite fantasy influences: The Magic Goes Away, a 1976 book written by Larry Niven. There to, as in The Magicians trilogy, the last bits of magic might be eradicated from the world altogether, unless somebody called “The Warlock” can make things right.
This new trailer also shows Julia’s alliance with the Beast, a plotline unique to The Magicians show, and not found in the novels.
The Magicians Season 2 will premier on SyFy on January 25, 2017.
