The Magicians: Season Four Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

The Magicians: Season Four Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman July 3, 2020

As mentioned in the review for season three, entering into season four without having not just watched all three seasons of The Magicians but being intimately familiar with the ebbs and flows and the ins-and-outs would be an exercise in futility. The show is a complex organism that has greatly evolved in tone over time, never mind the complexities of its narrative and the characters that drive it. With that in mind, newcomers are strongly encouraged to jump back and begin with seasons one, two, and three. That said, season four serves as something of a course change, though not correction, for the show. It's not that things didn't work before, but season four charts new waters, anyway, in an effort to keep ahead of the potential for staleness within the confines of structural establishment. So while it's vital to understand where the show has been, season four is also an opportunity for a fresh perspective on familiar happenings.

Official synopsis (spoilers follow): Based on the best-selling novels by Lev Grossman, 'The Magicians' centers on a group of friends who discover they have magical abilities and must ward off evil creatures who threaten to destroy the world they've come to know. After embarking on the epic quest of the seven keys, our Magicians may have restored magic but not without a great cost. With their memories erased and new magic-free identities, they're more vulnerable than ever to the ancient, powerful and unkillbale Monster who escaped confinement from Castle Blackspire and jumped bodies to a new host, Eliot.

Season four by necessity picks up where season three finished. It's not fair to expound in detail on what's happened in that time, but suffice it to say that there's both a total rearrangement of who the characters are and what they know about where they once were both physically and psychologically, in terms of their abilities and what once separated them as unique. In a way it's a reset, but a reset of the best kind. There's ample opportunity to bridge, to grow again, and to rewrite some of the rules. And season four does just that, in some ways expectedly, in some unexpectedly, and in one example -- the big one revealed at season's end -- in a way that hurts but in a way that reflects a certain reality, perhaps a position unlikely for a show based around things that don't actually exist. Props for the showrunners' courage and honesty to tackle the most difficult of life's challenges in a way that is true to what has made the show so wonderful to begin with. Season four elicits feelings of both great fun and great sorrow, of wonderful storytelling and questionably painful decisions, but in the end it all works out to the show's benefit, even if it's difficult to process in the moment.

The following episodes comprise season four. The rather terse summaries are of little value but the humor quotient is high enough to warrant a listing. They come courtesy of the Blu-ray packaging.

Disc One:

• A Flock of Lost Birds (45:15): Brian takes a friend out for ice cream. Sam is one week away from retirement.
• Lost, Found, F***** (43:15): Dean Fogg gets a new suit.
• The Bad News Bear (44:06): Kady gets a puppy. Quentin meets a snake.
• Marry, F***, Kill (44:04): Josh gives Margo a muffin. Julia drinks Schnapps.
• Escape from the Happy Place (44:05): Alice and Quentin confront a dog. There are some flashbacks.

Disc Two:

• A Timeline and Place (44:04): Quentin and Julia play Pictionary. Margo drinks some weird milk.
• The Side Effect (44:08): Kady goes to the flea market. What's Zelda been up to? This one's about Fen, you guys.
• Home Improvement (44:06): Penny licks an egg. Alice is jealous of a flower.
• The Serpent (44:06): Quentin eats a quesadilla. Kady and Zelda share a smoke.

Disc Three:

• All That Hard, Glossy Armor (44:07): Musical episode. Margo hits her step count.
• The 4-1-1 (44:00): The gang talks to a book. Tick threatens to drink some water.
• The Secret Sea (43:40): Quentin yells at a plant. Margo stares at a fish.
• No Better to Be Safe Than Sorry (44:07): Quentin and Josh get cake. Quentin reflects on his actions.

The Magicians: Season Four Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Magicians: Season Four's 1080p transfer is very much in-line with the previous season outputs. The show was shot on digital and the elements look rather good in the aggregate. Details are acceptably sharp at worst and beautifully rendered at best. Often, the image favors the latter. Intimates are full of life, boasting perfectly intricate skin details, tangible clothing qualities, and well defined environments, whether sprawling or intimate. Clarity all over is quite good. Colors are likewise well rounded. There's a mild glossiness to the palette, particularly evident on skin tones, but such are of fine depth and accuracy within the show's natural parameters. Clothing tones, environmental hues, and other elements of color are consistently well saturated. Blacks are a little pale and bright but never stray too far from true. The picture does show occasional, but generally light, bouts of noise, banding, aliasing, and macroblocking. None of these are seen in great abundance but all are in appearance to varying levels of light intrusion. All in all a quality Blu-ray image.

The Magicians: Season Four Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Magicians: Season Four casts not a spellbinding DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack but certainly one that conjures up a perfectly agreeable listen. Music is plenty spacious and finely detailed, delivering finely engineered notes through a diverse range of styles, which even includes 80s Pop-Rock songs in "All That Hard, Glossy Armor," the best episode in the season for music. It's often more front-heavy than fully immersive, but the back channels do carry a satisfying amount of content. "Balanced" may be the best descriptor for the track's spacial engagement. The opening title music is a little more aggressively positioned but is rather fleeting in its total throughout the season as the intros last but mere seconds. Other notes are generally of the former's persuasion, enjoying expert front end space and low end balance, along with some, but not much, surround usage. Atmospherics are perfectly positioned and nicely complimentary, while more active sound elements find appropriately potent engagement and detail, even at advanced volume and more aggressive stage fulfillment, including finely tuned feels for seamless movement and, sometimes, discretely located supports. Dialogue is clear and accurate from its natural front-center position.

The Magicians: Season Four Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No supplements are included on any of the three discs. No DVD or digital copies are included, either. This release does ship with a non-embossed slipcover.

The Magicians: Season Four Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Magicians holds as one of the best shows on television, even through a fourth season that rewrites so much of what came before it, but in a way that's respectful to the foundation on which it all was built. The season runs the gamut of emotional highs and lows and, in a way, both punctuate the series and set the stage for a brand new, and final, season. As for the Blu-ray, The Magicians: Season Four delivers quality video and audio presentations. Recommended.