‘The Magicians’: Julia’s shade isn’t going anywhere… for now

The bizarre partnership between Julia (Stella Maeve) and the Beast (Charles Mesure) has been an absolutely delight to watch in “The Magicians” Season 2, even if he seems to be slowly trying to turn her evil.

That struggle between good and evil isn’t going anywhere, according to Stella Maeve.

The Season 2 premiere highlighted a lot of the similarities between Julia and the Beast formerly known as Martin Chatwin. They were both violated and raped, which warped their worldview and led them down dark paths. For now, Julia’s dark path seems at least a little noble, seeing as she’s trying to stop Reynard (Mackenzie Astin) and keep the Beast from killing anyone else in the meantime. The Beast’s agenda… not so much.

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Whatever his “plans” are that he wants Julia to be a part of, they’re most likely ten different kinds of awful. They also, for some reason, require her to abandon her “shade.” We don’t know much about the concept of shades yet, except for that  they’re the beating heart of what makes people human; a fraction of their soul, if you will.

“We do play with the shade a lot,” Maeve says, “Essentially it’s like, what if somebody came to you and said, ‘Come with me, I can remove all the pain you’ve ever felt in your life, you won’t feel anything — that being said, you won’t feel anything.‘ With the bad is the good, and not being able to feel pain, how can you ever really experience happiness?”

Right now, Julia’s shade is what’s keeping her in agony as she relives her sexual assault and the trauma associated with it over and over again. That intense pain and rage is tearing her apart, even the Beast can see it. So naturally, he’s offered to remove it from her and set her free — but it also means abandoning the parts of her that feel love, empathy and basically any kind of positive human emotion too.

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We’ve had a first-hand look at what that can turn a person into (a six-fingered mass murderer), and it’s not the future Julia wants for herself.

That being said, we don’t think this seed was planted in Julia’s mind for nothing. It’s impossible to say whether she’ll actually abandon her shade at some point if the trauma becomes too much (or what kind of monster that could potentially turn her into), but we’re going stay on high alert for now.

“The Magicians” airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Syfy.

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