Upon returning to the main timeline, barely a word is spoken about their encounter, and queer folks everywhere braced ourselves for that experience to be treated as an anomaly from another timeline. ![]() As they spend a lifetime working on the mosaic, they fall in love, raise a child, and make their queer family work. In Season 3’s “A Life in the Day,” Quentin and Eliot end up in a different Fillory, from before they were born, where they must solve an unsolvable puzzle. It’s the first time Quentin has sex with a man, as far as we know, and it’s the first time we see him start to confront his queerness. In the first season of The Magicians, Quentin, Eliot, and Margot have a threesome. (At least Hale Appleman, who plays Eliot, gets it.) I’ve read all the interviews with the creators and with Jason Ralph, who plays Quentin, and they all read like a whole lot of familiar BS. But, what specifically about the death of Quentin is so frustrating? I’m so glad you asked.įull disclosure: I’m not going to get into the creators’ rationale for killing off Quentin. We’re sick of seeing queer characters die over and over again. And, that, my sweet babies, is why people are pissed about the death of Quentin Coldwater, generally speaking. Oh, did you recognize a bunch of queer-friendly shows in that list? Does that somehow feel like a violation of the promise made when a series goes out of its damn way to present itself as queer and feminist?ĮXACTLY. ( Autostraddle has a very complete list of queer women on TV who have been killed off, for those of you who feel like being sad.) The list is much, much longer when you include non-genre TV shows and film. ![]() Let it be noted that I have only included science fiction, fantasy, and horror TV shows on this list and only those that I know about. Sounds a little rough, huh? Like who would really bury their gays? Oh, just Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood, The 100, The Walking Dead, The Expanse, Jessica Jones, Xena, Smallville, Battlestar Galactica, Hex, Torchwood, Hemlock Grove, Teen Wolf, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Dracula, The Vampire Diaries, Arrow, Salem, American Horror Story, Ascension, Lost Girl, Scream, The Shannara Chronicles, The Exorcist, Van Helsing, Doctor Who, Gotham, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Purge, and last but not least (and not for the first time): The Magicians. So, in order to get some kind of representation, LGBTQ+ characters had to suffer. Queer characters could exist, but only as a warning of what a “perverted” life would bring you. This trope is also called Dead Lesbian Syndrome due to the overwhelming number of queer women who have been slaughtered onscreen - not exactly the representation queer women have been begging for.īack when archaic censorship laws ruled the page and the screen, writing about queer characters was taboo and the only way queer writers, or folks who wanted to create queer characters, could include LGBTQ+ characters was by portraying them unfavorably. Throughout media representations of queer folks, reaching back to 19th-century Victorian novels, the formula has been about the same: An LGBTQ+ character is introduced, they reveal their sexuality or an attraction to a specific person, and then they die, die, die, often horrifically. Well, my friends, let’s revisit a little trope we like to call Bury Your Gays. So, why does it matter that Quentin is dead? Any character could die at any moment (and sometimes all of the characters could die at any moment) and that’s the brave, new, kill-happy world our media is made in. ![]() But we live in the day and age of Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead and Thanos snapping half of the Avengers (and the universe) into nothingness. The decision to kill off a major character - the major character, if the Lev Grossman novels still mean anything (they don’t) - is almost always controversial. There’s no resurrection in the works and no trick of astral projection or Niffin state of higher being can bring sweet, depressed, narcissistic Quentin back. Spoilers for The Magicians Season 4 finale.īy now you already know that The Magicians’ Quentin Coldwater died in the Season 4 finale.
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