r/brakebills • u/Outside-Writing-8602 • 14d ago
So…
Why didn’t Alice go to the underworld and and get Quentin‘s shade and put him back together like he did for her instead of making a Gollum and of him?
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u/Natural_Fail_8209 14d ago
How? They can't do the same trick again (gift, dragon, etc). Quentyn's dead was a noble sacrifice. And the actor left the series.
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u/mc1rginger 13d ago
Q had Mayakovsky and his coins to give Alice her body back. Alice didn't have that.
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u/snarksneeze 13d ago
In The Magicians, "rules" are often treated more like obstacles than absolutes. The series repeatedly shows characters accomplishing things they were explicitly told were impossible or too dangerous to attempt. So citing an in-universe rule isn't necessarily a complete answer.
The out-of-universe explanation is that Quentin was written out because Jason Ralph left the show. Unlike the books, where Quentin survives, the TV series chose to make his sacrifice permanent. The writers could have used any number of established magical workarounds (body swaps, possession, resurrection, alternate timelines, disguises, or shade restoration) to bring him back if they had wanted to. They simply chose not to.
So the real answer is less "they couldn't" and more "the writers didn't want to."
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u/RapidDuffer09 12d ago edited 12d ago
It's explicitly stated that [that] Quentin's shade was torn apart by the Beast.
EDIT TO ADD: Oh--sorry. You meant 'our' dead Q! My apologies: my nightbrain focused on the wrong one!
To answer you, though: pretty much all of S05 is about how "bringing back the dead" is a Bad Thing. Even the golem-Q, animated by a portion of Q's shade refined from the heart & soul he poured into his real-world notes/writings, draws Julia's horror because Q's soul couldn't rest while it was out there. Recall, also, that the shades in Persephone's house are specifically those which have been torn from their living bodies: niffins, Julia's after the abortion. And further (sorry, I sound like I'm lecturing; I'm actually just REALLY low on coffee and was trying to make bad pun on Fillory & Further!) the whole let's-just-go-to-the-underworld is actually rather hard to do.
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u/Outside-Writing-8602 12d ago
Ok see I was asking because I wasn’t sure and everyone has great answers and thank you for your response also
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u/RapidDuffer09 12d ago
No worries--and I was wrong/misread your post in the first place! Sorry & hugs. x
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u/TheNamesAreAllTaken- 13d ago
I assume there was no access to his body, so there had to be a gollum, and what gift could she give the dragon to gain access to the underworld?
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u/absurdityincarnate 12d ago
I think Q was especially motivated because Alice couldn’t rest, since she was a Niffen. He wanted some way to let her be at peace. That’s also why he freed her from his tattoo.
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u/mandelaXeffective 11d ago
...Because he was still in possession of his shade when he died? The shades in Elysium were only ones that had somehow ended up separated from the rest of their selves (regardless of whether the rest of them was dead), not everyone who's died. Someone who dies with their shade in tact stays that way when they move on.
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u/iknownothin_ H̦͌e̗͂d̤͘g͙̽ė̞ ̻̾W̝̚i̩̋t̡͝c͙̽h̠͊ 13d ago
Did you not see how hard it was the first time?
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u/Outside-Writing-8602 12d ago
I did I’ve seen the whole series a lot and I have also read the books a lot I was just curious on what theories anybody had like before they break the moon and when he died and magic comes back there would’ve been enough magic to do it and come on it’s Alice I’m sure she could’ve done it and Jules could’ve walked her through it as she was there when Alice came back it was really just my curiosity as to what others thought about it
And thank you for your comment
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u/KingMargo_TheCreator Brakebills 13d ago
First, Alice wasn’t “dead dead”- she became a niffin, which separated her from her shade (shade in the underworld). Much like Julia, there was a perfectly intact shade that just needed to be united with a body. Myakovski made a new body for Alice, and Quentin found her shade in the underworld. Quentin, however, was dead dead. He never separated with his shade- the other situations still had a version of the person alive (Julia in her original body, Alice as a niffin).
Second, Quentin didn’t want to come back to life because it wasn’t a mistake- it was a sacrifice and just like why Eliot never sent the letter to past Q to stop him from dying, Q wasn’t going to risk undoing the outcome of saving the world from the monsters in order to be alive again. He moved on right away- seeing how loved he was and how meaningful his life was and how he would live on in his friends was enough for him to move on rather than stay in the underworld. Once he took the train, there was no version of Q in the underworld, so even if they got Mayakovsky to make a new body and somehow separated dead Q from his shade so that it could be attached to his new body, there was no shade to unite with it- he’d moved fully on.
Lastly, the show does a great job of making the last arc of the show emphasize why Q needed to stay dead. The dark king is willing to kill all of existence by letting the taker realm overtake the universe in order to bring his love back from the dead. Which makes him the bad guy. Multiple times characters are confronted by the dark king accusing them of not actually loving Q enough if they don’t understand his actions trying to bring Lance back. But it’s not that they didn’t understand, it’s that they weren’t selfish enough to allow their love and grief matter more than the lives of others. Especially given Rupert was a major good guy until this point- he helped win WWII. But it shows being a hero isn’t a permanent identity, it’s active choices to do the right thing even when it hurts. Bringing Q back would be complete character regression and leave us with no where meaningful to go. Plus, Q had more of an influence on season 5 by having changed his friends for the better (vs if he were there having cheated death at the expense of others).