‘The Magicians’ Star Arjun Gupta: ‘All Hell Breaks Loose’
In The Magicians, Syfy brings us a world where magic is real and deadly. The series, which is in its first season, follows a group of students recruited into a secret academy as they discover that the magic found in their childhood fairy tales is much more than just fantasy. If you’re thinking this sounds very familiar, you might be right, but this series is actually not based on the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling. A look at the series teaser, which premiered at New York Comic Con, reveals as much.
The Magicians, adapted from Lev Grossman’s best-selling novels, is just beginning its first season, and fans are already hooked, the suspense of the series keeping them on the edges of their seats. Hoping to alleviate some of that anxiety or perhaps amplify it, Arjun Gupta, who plays Penny, teases fans with a look into the future of the season.
The Magicians‘ Actor Arjun Gupta Warns “All Hell Breaks Loose”
The Magicians moves fast. While the Syfy series is only four episodes into its first season, already the Brakebills magicians, who are only beginning to learn the extent of their abilities at that secret academy, are facing a deadly adversary in the form of The Beast. Adding to the reign of terror to which The Beast has subjected the people of Fillory, the Brakebills also face confrontations with the adversarial Hedgewitches. It’s certainly quite a bit of mayhem for new magicians to face so early in their indoctrination into this new world of magic.
Even so, The Magicians‘ own Arjun Gupta reveals that things are about to get even worse. For Penny, his own power of traveling leads him to a confrontation with The Beast, which is something he would rather have avoided.
“Then Penny experiences that, traveling somewhere that he wasn’t — he has no idea where he is, and he’s in the dungeon and he’s confronted with probably the person, creature, that scares him most in the world.”
The revelation that The Beast has been responsible for training Penny is apparent to fans of The Magicians, but it’s still something Penny hasn’t quite grasped yet, says Gupta. Meanwhile, Kady, played by Jade Tailor, has been acting as a kind of double-agent, stealing secrets and giving them to the hedgewitches, so Gupta reveals that will also contribute to bringing things to a chaotic end by the first season finale.
“Everything’s going to come to a head. No, man, Sera and John pull no punches. They pull no punches. It. Gets. Crazy. Like, I cannot express that enough, just how wild this is about to get.”
The Magicians Will Eventually Reveal What (& Where) Is Fillory
As the season progresses, we learn that Penny’s traveling abilities on The Magicians aren’t just limited to the real world. Just like The Beast, Penny can leave our reality and travel back and forth to the realms within the storybooks and fairy tales of his childhood.
“Dungeons and beasts are not part of the children’s books, so it really hints that there’s a dark side of Fillory,” Gupta explains. “What is the dark side? Is it like the Grimm fairy tales? Is that what Fillory really is? We’ll find out soon.”
Penny isn’t alone on The Magicians, and as the season progresses, Arjun reveals that he and his classmates will start to bond as they all realize that they need one another. It will be a struggle, because of the diversity of this group, but Arjun hints that some underlying challenge will bring them all together. Could that have something to do with The Beast and the existence of Fillory? That remains to be seen.
The next episode of The Magicians airs on Monday, February 22 on Syfy.
[Image by Syfy]
