So I’ve had a lot of thoughts about 4x13 of the magicians. while I would’ve preferred them not kill Quentin at all and us get a sort of conclusion to the arc of Elliot and Quentin confessing to each other once again, I would have been willing to put that on hold to have Quentin’s growth over his mental illness first, the same way that Elliot had growth over his in regards to his feelings for Quentin
I think it would’ve been entirely possible for Q to sacrifice/commit suicide so that when he comes back in season 5 he’s acknowledging how wrong that was.
Plan A for bring back Q:
He comes back shadeless, something that has already been established & we know is possible. It would be sweet and funny to see like a pouty shadeless Q sitting in the corner while everyone try to figure out how to bring back his shade.
however ,I wouldn’t want to go through this route because it would get sort of tedious as it is something that has been done before with a Julia plus we did have World23 where Alice did bring back a shadeless Q and then he turned into the beast—which I don’t think Quentin 40 would do, but since its already a possibility that a Quentin without his emotions is like the worst evil that you could get, to the point that he is a rival for the monster, they probably wouldn’t end up going through the idea of bringing back Q as shadeless
Plan B (my preferred plan that would offer new material and drama)
I would have 1/2 of season five being everyone in the group trying the hardest to bring back Q.
-Elliot would propose shadeless  path but Julia nicks it as she knows how hard that is. Penny23 points out the failure of that in his world. -Alice would be against summoning because of the beast of season 1 so they couldn’t do that.
-they try séances but Q never comes just charlatan who annoys them
the point is that the group try over and over and over to think of any plans to bring Q back, just like how Q didn’t give up on them. Like how he never gave up on Alice when she died & he never gave up on Julia & how Q never gave up on Elliot. How Q literally never gave up on any of the characters when they came to a crossroads where they would die.
I would like for them all to go through that, where they’re trying to like channel their inner Q and his stubbornness to try to find away but they’re also struggling with you know some other thing that’s happening because no one can leave these magician (ie the revolution against the library, Margo and Fillory etc.) so its kind of like a subplot that’s within the main plot that’s sort of also the main plot . But for the living characters it gets harder to look for ways caz they arent Q, so some of them start to accept his death as everything else going on gets to be too much and they start to lose hope of getting him back so they kind of go on these journeys of discovery trying to figure out their feelings about Quentin and what to do in a Quentinless world
Intermingled with that is Quentins side,. Here he gets to the underworld is found by Penny40 caz Q has been hiding from the librarians. Penny40 has mellowed so he tries to be understanding and be a listening ear to which Q pours out his soul to.
Penny 40 ask Q “hey why are you here? why did you do that? I was reading your story, I was watching what was happening to you guys and I’m just really confused like what led you to a decision like that? Don’t you understand you could’ve literally done anything else and figured out another way to save everyone and it would’ve been fine.”
Q has this big emotional breakdown where he admits that yeah he wasn’t thinking it through and has a little monologue of growth where he confronts his depression and realizes that committing suicide wasn’t the answer to his mental illness and he said something along the lines of “you know my whole life I’ve been struggling with these dark clouds with this emptiness inside me, with this hole that was caused by my depression and I spent my whole life thinking I wasn’t worth anything and just hoping that like somehow my life would mean something and when I found magic I thought that was it, like it was Magic.
It could fix everything and I wouldn’t feel sad and I wouldn’t have this hole and I wouldn’t be suffering but magic didn’t fix everything and instead it made it worse only this time I had magic and I kept feeling like I was messing everything up because it was magic. of course it’s supposed to be a beautiful wonderful thing and Fillory is supposed to be this great and beautiful place and some how when I’m there it’s not and that it doesn’t fix everything. magic hurts people and it hurts me and the people around me and everything hurt and then I blamed myself because I killed a God and I cut off magic and then I tried to go on a quest and fix everything but then I made it worse somehow and now the monster was loose and Elliot was gone and everything was so bad. the library was taking over and nothing was right.
magic didn’t fix any of my problems made them worse & everybody around me was miserable and I had a role to play in somehow making magic an evil horrible thing that destroyed everyone’s lives and so I thought in that moment that maybe if I just I did this one last thing and I saved everyone that it would be better and that without me around magic would stop hurting everyone and it would stop hurting me. I wouldn’t be there to mess everything up but then I got here and I realized how was wrong I was.
sure magic didn’t fix everything and it wasn’t a cure-all that I had read about fairytales and I didn’t wanna acknowledge that sometimes things just aren’t as great as you fantasize them to be but I took the wrong approach and now I regret it because being here and lonely without anyone is a lot worse than everything I dealt with up there. because being with you guys and laughing with you and going to brakebills and doing magic, having friends that understood me was worth it. and I would do anything to have it that back ,not only did I hurt everyone I love but I let the darkness inside me get the better of me and it caused me to lose everything I care about because I could’ve done something else. I gave up &I regret it”
Q just acknowledges the fact that he let his depression defeat him and how that was a wrong choice and how he acknowledges that yeah not everything is fixed with magic but that he shouldn’t have given up and essentially committed suicide because in the end he realizes he did want to live and he did want to be with his friends and with the love of his life and you know just a life in general and that maybe the suffering for all of that would be worth it. At the end of the day they made it all worth it and that he would fight for himself so that he could be with them.
so while everyone else is like trying to search for a way to bring him back and inevitably fail and then trying to figure out a way to mourn him and sort of MoveOn, Q spends his time in the underworld hanging out with Penny 40 while. they figure out a wat to get him back to the land of the living.
instead of having everyone attempt to bring back to life and they succeed, it about a man who suffered from depression and suicidal thoughts his whole life realizing that suicide wasn’t the answer and actively trying to find a way to live, maybe he finds orpheus and steals his windpipe to lead a way out of the underworld or somthing
and then the season ends would like him and Elliot making out. like the first thing he does when he comes back is to find El and confess while Elliot cuts off by making out with him and saying how sorry he was for rejecting him and they cry and hold each other and never have angsty relationship problems again cause my heart can’t take it
Short and sweet of what the death of Q should have meant for season 5
We could use Q’s death in two way: 1) everyone tries their hardest to bring Q back but inevitably fail and have to deal with the idea of losing one of their closest friends/love of their life. 2) Q gets to the underworld and immediately realize is he shouldn’t have committed suicide & actively saves himself so for the first time instead of focusing on saving everyone else in the world he focuses on saving himself so that he can get back to the love of his life and his friends.
