The Magicians Cancelled After 5 Seasons; Series Finale to Air in April
The Magicians‘ spell over Syfy is coming to an end; the drama’s current fifth season will be its last, TVLine has confirmed.
The show’s Season 5 finale, set to air on April 1, will now serve as the series finale.
“The Magicians has been a part of our Syfy family for five fantastic seasons,” the network said in a statement. “As we near the end of this journey, we want to thank John McNamara, Sera Gamble, Henry Alonso Myers, Lev Grossman, and our entire brilliant cast, crew, writers and directors for their beautiful creation. But most of all, we thank the fans for their tremendous support and passion. Because of you, magic will be in our hearts forever.”
Update: Executive producer Sera Gamble told TV Insider, “We had the sense going into this season that Syfy… was kind of hitting the point of ‘The cup is full and there’s no more room,'” and as such a fitting ending was crafted. After shopping the series to possible new homes, EP John McNamara said, “None of them seemed in the end like a perfect financial or creative fit. And so we reluctantly just decided, ‘Well at least we have this season finale that was crafted to also be a series finale.’ It was kind of always going to pull double duty.”
The Magicians currently stars Stella Maeve as Julia Wicker, Olivia Taylor Dudley as Alice Quinn, Hale Appleman as Eliot Waugh, Arjun Gupta as William “Penny” Adiyodi, Summer Bishil as Margo Hanson, Rick Worthy as Henry Fogg, Jade Tailor as Kady Orloff-Diaz, Brittany Curran as Fen and Trevor Einhorn as Josh Hoberman.
Through eight episodes this season, The Magicians is averaging 341,000 total viewers and just over a 0.1 demo rating (in Live+Same Day numbers), down 42 and 37 percent from Season 4.
Upon its end, the only ongoing scripted series airing on Syfy will be Wynonna Earp (currently in production for a delayed Season 4) and Van Helsing (which in December was renewed for a fifth and final season).
Upcoming Syfy fare meanwhile includes Vagrant Queen (adapted from the Vault comics, premiering March 27), the Child’s Play offshoot Chucky and the Alan Tudyk-starring Resident Alien.
TVLine’s Cable TV Renewal Scorecard has been updated to reflect The Magicians‘ unexpected end. Your thoughts on the big announcement? Drop ’em in a comment below.
This sucks. It is definitely my favorite show and I was hoping to get one more season. Hopefully it has a good ending. This one does hurt a bit.
Surprise, Surprise. This doesn’t shock me at all. Thjis was why I stopped watching SyFy a long time ago. SyFy has only had one goal, get new viewers hooked on a new show, cancel it, and switch those fans over to their reality TV programming. Killjoys, Dark Matter, farscape, Stargate Atlantis, Invisible Man, Tremors and the list goes on and on and on. For a company founded on the basis of being a scifi network, they sure as heck don’t produce any scifi content.
EXACTLY!!! And they all end in their 5th season with syfy!!
I agree. I stopped watching The SlyLie channel long ago after they canned the Invisible Man & Farscape. They suck at decisions. A show starts at lets say ratings 10. If it goes to 9 they start grinding the axe. Even if it gets another season at 10 that prior 9 is counting against em.
I just watched the finale episode this didn’t feel like a finale. WHAT HAPPENS NEXT!!??? I don’t understand why Syfy always has to cancel on a 5th season. I hope they reconsider bring this show back. ▪︎▪︎bring Q back too it wasn’t the same with out him. Maybe, netflix can pick it up they’re been producing alot of great series and movies. Cancelling the magicians was a poor move on syfy.
I just watched the finale also. I didn’t even know it was the very last one until the very end. The ending of the fifth season didn’t bring anything together. What happened? Is Elliot going to find Margo and everyone else? Are they going to recreate the good parts of fillory? We know the Dark king is alive! Even without Quentin they made it a wonderful season. Alice came back to being more like herself. Penny and Julia’s baby was just born. There is so much more they can tell. Is Margo going to be high King? I’m mad at sci-fi and will never watch another show again off their Network. This could have been on the CW or any other channel if it had been marketed the right way. They said it went down interviews but that’s because it wasn’t marketed right as far as I’m concerned. Still the same great show it was from the beginning and it got better every season.
Can we all message Netflix to pick up Magicians?!?!?!
YES! I just watched the ending, Googled when season 6 would be released – and here we f*?$ing are. That is not a finale, SO much is still left to explore – and they rushed character developments like crazy in the last few episodes. Is there any kind of petition going around? Seems like other networks were interested in picking it up at least.
Yeah we need a petition here. Maybe some other sane network will pick it up. It was so amazing. And I was just getting warm! The 100’s story is getting stretched just because the fans want it. The magicians still had so much to offer. Close a series in the middle of the story is very very wrong.
Maybe Netflix should pick it up like they did lucifer,that was my favorite show.
Yes god please Netflix needs to pick this up also. Loved Lucifer so much. I might stop watching season 5 of the Magicians because of how people are saying it ended. We need season 6 and 7 maybe 8.
I like the way you think! What did happen next? There’s still to much left open ended. I too was waiting for Q to come back like Penny did. Maybe not to stay, but for a couple of episodes.
I think I’m done with Syfy! I can’t get into another show and the same thing happen.
I agree. Let’s get aot of people together and maybe Netflix will see that this is a good show. They did it to Lucifer and this show is for me probably as good if not better! Bring Q back and make a happy ending after a couple of more seasons
Quite SyFy after Dark Matter was cancelled. SyFy crushes FOX in cancelling great series. The worst is that many were starting to tire, retooled themselves and after a great comeback season get the axe. The real SyFy secret is how the clone laboratory continues to produce vile disgusting gray suits that terminates their own best efforts again and again. They are like the world snake eating their own tail. They are great out of the gate, but wreck hugging the rail halfway through the race.
Maybe Netflix could resurrect this series. They did the same with Lucifer and did a great job. SyFy does have a very poor track record with this sort of thing. I stopped watching them too. Have to record the shows and use the fast forward function on my DVR. 17 minutes of commercials per hour. I still watch Winona Earp and Van Helsing. Record the whole season and then binge watch, it just works for me.
Has any syfy show ever gotten a sixth season? They should have known better a long time ago.
I don’t think so. SG-1 doesn’t count because the first 5 seasons were on Showtime. They just rescued it and produced 5 more. Though they did make 2 films as well.
The closest SYFY show I can think of to reach 6 seasons was Haven. While it technically only had 5 seasons, the final season was 26 episodes that aired over 2 years.
I don’t know if this is true, but I remember hearing that, for a long time, they apparently had some sort of standard agreement where Syfy would take over financing of the show if it survived till S6, which meant that most shows were cancelled by S5 at the latest.
right i completely agree i think they should at least sell the show theirs still so much we don’t know i feel like the cw would be a great home for this show because they already have great shows that they’ve run for at least 8 seasons
Writers were idiots … they ran out of ideas long before and was nothing left but to kill it, don’t tell me ya didn’t feel it since season 5 started … it was been driven to the wall since the start !
It was pretty obvious. Although I expected an announcement of “cancellation” after this season ended.
I’m not surprised either, I just hope they are able to wrap up the season with a good series finale rather than a standard season finale.
The show runners confirmed that they knew this would be the last season, and wrote the finale as such. I’m not sure I can post a link to the article here, but its not hard to find.
Ok, I’ll look for it. :)
Just watched it. Nope it was just a standard Season finale and doesn’t work as a finale episode.
I hope they can bring Q back… the show just isn’t the same without him.
With all of the lame Netflix shows you’d think they would have jumped at picking up this series!!!!
It’s become a cultural qliche how Netflix will pretty much produce every submission made by first year screenwriters just graduating 7th grade!
Emotional level of teenage heartache choking on politically correct snorefests.zzzz
this is so ridiculous. at least give them a final goodbye season, its the freakin 5th season!!!!!!!!!!
Noooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!
Booooooooo!! I feel like it was just getting into the other characters stories with Q no longer being the main character. I would love to see a spin off of Alice being a nyphn along with Kady, Penny’s, Margo, and Eliots story. Probably is the best show on syfy. Never watched it live as its never convinced my time. Should include netfilx and syfy app stream too. Will sincerely miss this show.
Another bad decision from SciFi! I am so POed with this network!
Bad decision? Look at how pitiful the ratings were and how much they dropped from last season. You can’t expect a network to keep a sinking ship like that.
With streaming services becoming the norm, the live viewing is going to drop on a series the longer it runs. My wife watches new shows when they air if she can then the established shows get watched on a streaming service. I personally don’t watch shows as they air because the good shows are on when I have other things I need to do, are already streaming programs, or is the one good program on a station that is otherwise trash programming. When Sci-Fi began it was good shows even if half were no longer producing content. Then it spiraled to SyFy and they thought replacing Sci-Fi with Wrestleing was a good program choice. Yes Dwane Johnson was on Voyager but that doesn’t mean I want to watch WWE. The only positive thing about SyFy is that they haven’t spiraled like UPN
Glad I hadn’t got around to starting this season. It’s likely going to end on a massive cliffhanger. Funny they gave 12 Monkeys a ton of notice and ample time to craft a (perfect) finale (and I’m so glad they did), but gave this show the finger. Oh well.
I haven’t started either. If it ends on a cliffhanger I probably won’t. I do that all the time with shows. No point investing the energy.
I’ve read elsewhere that they knew this might happen so they made it so the season finale can function as a series finale. This season has been truly wonderful. Definitely check it out. I think it is close to season 3 quality.
That’s good to know. Thanks.
I read the Deadline article Red Snapper is probably referring to and it said, “While they did not go into Season 5 knowing that it would definitely will be the show’s final chapter, I hear they wrote the Season 5 finale so it could also work as a series finale.”
What are you talking about? This season has been god awful.
Nonsense. It’s been a great season like always.
Agreed. Worst season to date. They started with so many options for each character, but instead we get absolutely no sustenance just fluff. It has gone down hill but it doesn’t mean it couldn’t be much MUCH more with some decent writing and plot scripting. I do have a hunch Q will make an appearance M.KightSamalamadingdong style!
After five seasons they don’t deserve end up with cliffhanger.
They better not end it on a cliff-hanger!
I really like the show and when it was announced that Jason Ralph was leaving on this site I had posted that they would likely lose half their audience for the next season. I have still been watching and this season was better than I thought it would be, but you can’t drop the lead of a show and expect it to go on the same.
We got 5 years out of it (some of the episodes, just “excellent”) and it will live on in syndication forever.
While Quentin was definitely the lead in the books, I would argue that Eliot is as much, if not more, of a lead in the series. I only miss Q in that Eliot misses him.
Too bad, I loved the way this show parodied Narnia, Harry Potter, and other Children’s books dealing with magic.
Considering Syfy almost always ends their shows after 5 seasons, this is not surprising.
I figured the same thing. I take what i can get from syfy…which is only the Magicians and whatever corny movies I feel like watching( or the Harry potter series). Otherwise, i never watch anything on that network.
Unbelievable! I don’t think I’ll be watching any more SyFy shows because they will just cancel them! Sadly I think a big part of the viewership drop was because of the people that were being overly dramatic about the death of Quentin. I was pretty shocked by it but I still continued to watch for all of the other amazing characters/actors who were more than capable of continuing on without one of the originals.
I’m not surprised Syfy has no sentimentality whatsoever. The readings drop Is significant and that’s all they care about. I’m one of the people that gave up the show last year but I agree it would be nice if they got one more season. They deserve a proper finish.
This is honestly the first cancellation of the last several years to really evoke strong feelings for me. I’m deeply disappointed, even though I think we all saw the magical writing on the title sequence wall. Still – very sad and unhappy. I honestly can’t think of another show still in limbo that I care about one way or the other. Just – meh. This one was special.
What the frak, you guys!!! Seriously!! Ugh!!!!! So mad.
This is sad news indeed. But without Quentin around anymore, it wasn’t the same show anyway. At least when they screwed The Expanse, Amazon so intelligently picked that one up. A bit more notice to the makers of this show would have been nice so they could have crafted a great finale instead of the obvious, never-to-be-solved cliffhanger they’ll stick us with.
I hope the creators figured this would probably be the final season when they made their creative decisions last year to kill off the main character. I know there are other leads but Q *was* the main one. He was the gateway character. Killing off the gateway character that late in the game is obviously going to loose you viewers. And it seems the ratings reflect that.
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I’m not saying they shouldn’t have killed Q off if they went into this season preparing for the end. If they didn’t, well they blew any chance of a 6th season the day they wrote Q’s death scene. Because if it ends on a major cliffhanger then that’s a pretty big F U to the fans. Sadly SyFy isn’t 100% to blame for this cancelation.
That sucks, The Magicians was the only show I enjoyed watching on TV, They should at least have an episode 6 with Quentin returning, that would put the show back in business.
Now this truly SUCKS!! So many story lines waiting to be told. So when Van Helsing ends, so will my time on Syfy.
Uggghhhh I know syfy always does this but I was really hoping that they would keep The Magicians around for longer. Now we are going to have some crap ending because they didn’t have time to write a good series finale. If syfy gave them a movie or time to plan the series finale I am sure they would have brought Q back ughh. SSOOOOO MAD.
Also nothing to do with the cancellation but the apocalypse episode this season was by far the best episode of the series.
No it wasn’t. No episode has even come close to the first 3 seasons. Lay down that crack pipe.
Anyone know where we write/email/call etc to try and get a series finale movie or something?
That really doesn’t work these days. Your best bet is social media, Twitter, Instagram, etc if you want to give it a go.
i can live with it, if its a proper series end. Show has been incredibly entertaining.
Come on, Amazon – this is your cue to step in again!
I’m very annoyed!!! I enjoy this show!! I have been waiting to catch-up on last season…..not so sure I’m going to do that now that it’s been cut.
According to Deadline: “While they did not go into Season 5 knowing that it would definitely will be the show’s final chapter, I hear they wrote the Season 5 finale so it could also work as a series finale.”
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Take that as you will. Sounds like the finale could go either way.
I’m guessing it won’t have a satisfying ending since the producers weren’t told in advance that the series would be ending. I really hate when Syfy does that. They know that sci-fi/fantasy fans are loyal so I really hate when the screw us over by not letting producers end a show in a satisfying way.