The Magicians (Lev Grossman)

[sholio]

I read Codex (Grossman's novel before this one) about a decade or so ago, and hated it with a burning fiery passion and swore off ever reading anything else by him, particularly as I had vaguely osmosed from the premise + this being more or less the theme of Codex that The Magicians was going to be essentially "everything you love was a mistake and also life is a pointless barrel of suck."

But I decided to try the books after reading approximately a million pieces of meta about the show and its terrible life choices last summer, and I have now discovered that I was about a million percent wrong about this book and its general themes. I loved it. I didn't love everything about it, but on the whole I found this book delightful, and delightful in many ways that were 180 degrees opposed to what I was expecting.

I think what I was most wrong about was that I had expected this book to be pointedly tearing down the entire Harry Potter/Narnia/portal fantasy genre - I went into it braced for it to be a book whose purpose is to make you ashamed of loving portal fantasy - and it's literally the opposite of that. This is a book clearly written by someone who loves portal fantasy, but is also working through that thing that happens when you grow up and start to recognize the feet of clay in the books you loved as a child and the people who wrote them.

The basic theme of the book isn't "portal fantasy sucks and loving it makes you naive"; it's "wherever you go, there you are." A magic world isn't going to fix your problems because what you get out of it is in large part what you bring to it. It's not a magic bullet to fix your problems; it's just ... the world. It is what it is: beautiful and terrible and magic and full of wonder. You'll still be miserable in paradise if you don't fix what's making you miserable first. And yes, growing up means you'll have to recognize the problematic elements in the books and authors you loved when you were a kid, but the wonder is still there; it's still okay to love them, just with a more nuanced appreciation of the good and bad.

I think going into it with a general idea of where it was going (in vague terms) was also helpful, since I kinda generally knew that magic school and Knockoff Narnia were going to turn out to be a lot darker than the protagonist is expecting, so I think rather than being thrown by it, I was relieved it ended up being actually less dark than I was braced for. I also knew ahead of time which characters not to get too attached to (though even knowing that Penny wasn't going to make it, I wasn't quite expecting the horribleness of what actually happened to him). Plus knowing that there are more books and having a (very vague) idea of how everything turns out helped with the ".... but wait" of realizing how much isn't explained and how often characters just meander in and out of the plot and are never heard from again with their story only half finished.

It's also a book that's steeped in incredibly charming detail with a lot more humor than I was expecting (even in the middle of the book's darker half, I must have giggled for a full minute at the line about Enthouse, the tree porn magazine). I found the first and last parts of the book more engaging than the somewhat depressing and draggy middle, but on the whole I really loved it. I'm not sure if I would have also enjoyed it at the age when I hated Codex so much, when I was a somewhat less cynical person, but I think it happened to resonate for me now in a particular way: it's essentially a book about coping with the disillusionment of the world not being what you wanted it to be, and figuring out how to navigate through that and find your own meaning and be happy with the imperfect world rather than waiting forever for a perfect version to come along. And this very pointedly does not have to involve giving up on magic; it just means learning to accept that magic is going to be flawed and imperfect too. I think it was abundantly clear to me, especially in the Narnia sections, how beautiful and fascinating the magic world truly is, and how much Quentin's depression and self-hatred are influencing what he gets out of it.

I was completely baffled that apparently a lot of book readers hate Quentin until I got to the middle of the book and then I was like "....oh, okay, I get it now." XD At 17, he's sweet but self-absorbed and obsessed with the opposite sex in that awkward teenager way. At 22, he's ... still the same, and it's a lot less charming on a 20-something than on a teenager. I did genuinely like him and feel for him all the way to the end, especially because of certain spoilerthings (he spent MONTHS looking for the quest beast just because he wanted it to fix his friends ;____; - I think it was impossible for me to ever hate Quentin after he used his very first wish to ask it to fix Penny). But yeah, I found him relatable as a teen and progressively less relatable as he continued to fail to grow up. The book does a great job of depicting the clumsy flailing towards adulthood of adolescence, the falling in and out of friendship and love that is the college experience, but then they got out of college and were still like that and I started finding them harder to like, though it picked up again toward the end.

Despite its charming elements and humor, this would still be a pretty depressing book overall if it weren't for the last two pages. You know how some books can be lifted or shattered by the strength of their ending? This is one of those. The ending actually made me cry. It ends on not only an absolutely wonderful image but also an emotional kick in the teeth that I really, really loved.

Without the last scene, the book's message is essentially "You can't save people no matter how hard you try." And then the ending flips that around utterly and becomes "Your friends will save you whether you deserve it or not." Even when you're mired in severe depression and made every possible wrong decision that you could have made. Even when you're not the chosen one you wish you were. The Real Magic Was The Friendships We Made Along The Way - except not that sappy; it's more about having gone through hell and then realizing that your friends are going to be okay and you are too. That final scene is so incredibly charming and affirming, and makes me smile every time I think of it.

So yeah, I loved this book far more than I was expecting, and I'm looking forward to diving into the next one.

It also makes me EVEN MORE baffled that the show did the thing that it did, because the entire POINT of the book is Quentin being forced to come to terms with the fact that he's not the hero, being ingloriously taken out of the fight as soon as it starts and then having to watch his friends fight and die in a situation he literally got them into, and someone else wins and someone else saves his ass, and he has to get up and keep going after having all his illusions about himself and his place in the world cut away, and that's the whole point. Like ... how can you feel like killing him off is somehow better and more thematically appropriate than that?

EDIT: Aaaand the comments are now full of future-book spoilers, so I've turned off comment email notifs on this post and am neither reading nor checking comments anymore. Feel free to continue discussing things, but be aware that I am not monitoring comments here anymore. If things go massively sideways, someone please tell me.

Comments

[sartorias]

Innnnteresting! I have avoided this book partly because right before CODEX came out, I was in New York. He was already being lionized for this book, and was at an sf/f related event that I attended. He and a female horror writer on the panel were exchanging congratulatory remarks about how superior their taste was, over the drooling trolls who loved crap like Lord of the Rings and (gag) C.S. Lewis, and how superior they were in their artistic nihilism and their totally adult focus on the abyss of nothingness, which is what grownup literature does, and the rest is for the immature escapists la la la, two solid hours of it.

When I heard people loving this book for its "deconstruction of Narnia" I lost any remaining trace of interest--I figured I'd put in those two hours of hearing Narnia, Middle-Earth, and so forth slagged, so I didn't need another fictional dose. But your review makes it sound intriguing.

[sholio]

See, that is EXACTLY the impression I got from Codex and is the reason why I didn't read this book for so many years. And for all I know, maybe he meant it to come across that way and failed to stick the landing. But there's such a lavishing of detail and delight in the magic parts of the book that even if the author was conflicted about it, the love still shows.

This book is not going to be for everyone's taste. It's very male-gazey, for one thing. And there are so many other things to read in the world that there's no need to read a book you're uncertain about! But I really liked it and I'm glad I read it.

[sartorias]

Tastes evolve, and I specifically have made a lot of snap, or callow, judgments when younger, so revisiting a book is always a good idea. I know pretty quickly if I'm going to nope out again, and I do love rediscovering something. (Not that I was young when this one came out, but there was the above nope-[out that had nothing to do with the actual book).

[hamsterwoman]

I was totally braced to read that you'd hated it, because that seems to be a very common reaction from fannish folk (and to be fair, there are things here that one could hate! post-school Quentin is not the most likeable protagonist, and neither is anyone else, and there's what happened to Alice, and I imagine that if one is very invested in Narnia, one could also not be a fan), but I'm so happy to hear that you did like it!

I haven't read book 3, and I liked book 2 less than I liked book 1, but I really loved The Magicians. Grossman's prose is so great, and I really liked this take on magic school, and I love that you called out the Enthouse line, because that was probably my favorite bit in the book (and cemented Josh as my favorite character).

[sholio]

I hit the Enthouse line and I must've giggled for a minute straight, I swear. XD

But yeah, I loved it! \o/ I had also gotten the impression that a lot of people in fandom hate it, but I feel as if they must have been taking away a very different message from the book than I did. I spent the whole book (especially the Fillory parts) just waiting for the other shoe to drop and the book to stab a knife through the entire portal-fantasy genre, but it doesn't - instead I ended up feeling like the entire message of the book is about learning that your childhood favorites are flawed and then learning how to love them anyway. It's not like everyone in Fillory or at Brakebills is evil or the whole thing is a lie or anything like that - I mean, Quentin obviously ends up feeling that way about Fillory when he learns how thoroughly he's been manipulated, but at the same time it's very clear that that's all down to Quentin himself and his depression and guilt, as well as his all-or-nothing, black-or-white approach to the world. (I mean, he's also just been through hell, poor kid.)

And the entire thing is suffused with obvious affection for magic-school and fantasy-portal tropes, as well as for the entire found-family, group-of-friends-against-the-world thing. (I mean, Eliot even explicitly refers to Quentin as family at one point.) The book brings a slightly cynical real-world sensibility to all of this without undermining any of it (at least, I didn't get that impression), and that particular mix of elements really worked for me.

[recessional]

it's essentially a book about coping with the disillusionment of the world not being what you wanted it to be, and figuring out how to navigate through that and find your own meaning and be happy with the imperfect world rather than waiting forever for a perfect version to come along.

Interestingly, that much confirmed very definitely for me that I don't want to read it, and that its subtext would almost certainly aggravate me just as much as I thought it would. Although possibly not for the same reason as many people who wouldn't like it would.

( . . . .I think I had some very different underpinning experiences/understandings of a lot of those formative texts/etc than a lot of people did, and I'm turning this around also with the fact that my even smaller-me childhood favourites were The Jungle Book and The Fox and the Hound, but also like . . . . for me Narnia was an endless sequence of losing Narnia, at the end of every book, and not just because they went home but because the minute their back was turned Narnia inevitably would go Wrong somehow; and given once I've finished next episode the one after it is "Bigger Rocks, Longer Fall, More Death" for the Silm podcast, welp.)

[sholio]

With the caveat that I'm definitely not trying to argue you into liking this book in any way (in fact I'm not sure if this book would be your thing in the slightest; there are things I think you might really hate), I think it's only "losing Narnia" in this book in the sense that it's losing the perfect escape-world in your head and having to accept the flawed-but-wondrous reality of a magic world that you can stay in as long as you want, if you're willing to put the same amount of work into living there that you would have put into life in the nonmagical world.

I mean, I think in that sense it comes down to what Narnia is for you - I really never had the "perfect escape world" aspect to my own enjoyment of fantasy, so the entire disillusionment the protagonist goes through in the book (coming to realize that the magic world, rather than being a place where heroes always win and things always work out how you want them to, actually contains assholes and death and sometimes the people you think are the good guys are really the bad guys and the books were just a biased account of historical events that were actually very different and so forth) is like, well, duh, of course it works that way, I never thought it didn't - but I also, in general, relate hard to wanting to nope out when things fall short of perfect and having to learn to accept and even love the slightly less-than-perfect reality ... so for me the book worked on both levels: I couldn't quite relate to the particular brand of disillusionment that the book deals with (and therefore wasn't having my childhood portal fantasies tarnished) but I did relate hard to the book's overall message of making lemonade out of your own personal lemons.

[recessional]

Right, whereas for me the entire experience of the portal fantasy (since something had always gone horribly wrong since the last time you were there) was making lemonade out of your lemons: the fantasy part was, well. Being able to.

"The world is imperfect and you will always be grieving, all things are flawed and all you can possibly do is make the best of what you have" was an omnipresent thing, for me, in those worlds/stories/etc; the bit that was an empowerment fantasy was "there will be at least ONE thing worth doing that with, that will actually make things okay-ish, and you won't be helpless/meaningless/totally lost forever, and endless rejection will not actually be your unavoidable lot in life".

(Sometimes it quite literally was "well you'll die horribly but at least you'll do it saving someone even if only one person ever knows.")

Which: the other is not a bad story or anything! It's just confirmation that it's not For Me because not only were they not my Perfect Escape Worlds, the "escapism" was the above, so the reframe would grate as much as I got the sense it would when I flipped thru it.

[ginger_rude]

. for me Narnia was an endless sequence of losing Narnia, at the end of every book, and not just because they went home but because the minute their back was turned Narnia inevitably would go Wrong somehow

I think some of the Magicians is about rereading those books as an adult and realizing how shitty that is, and getting pissed off at Aslan.

[sheron]

The basic theme of the book isn't "portal fantasy sucks and loving it makes you naive"; it's "wherever you go, there you are." A magic world isn't going to fix your problems because what you get out of it is in large part what you bring to it. It's not a magic bullet to fix your problems; it's just ... the world. It is what it is: beautiful and terrible and magic and full of wonder.

Oh that sounds wonderful! I love that.
*off to read the rest of the review*

[sholio]

I really enjoyed it! Of the various people I know, I think you might like it in particular. It's got a mix of literary qualities and fantasy/magical tropes that I think you would enjoy.

[yhlee]

Avoiding spoilers but actually you make this sound VERY COOL. :D *ponders* I wonder if my library has it?

[sholio]

I feel as if it's a book that people will probably be very polarized on, and there are absolutely legitimate reasons why some readers may nope out on it hard, but I really loved it. (I loved it for some of the same reasons that I love Cherryh's books, come to think of it - which are also very polarizing books.)

[kore]

Just as an FYI, if it's a possible trigger, Quentin is often really really depressed and he's attempted suicide and been institutionalized in the past. It's a really good portrayal of depression, but a lot of what sholio's talking about re "wherever you go, there you are" is deeply tied to that. (Argh now I think I may have conflated memories of the first book and TV show. But Grossman depicts depression very realistically in these books.)

[kore]

I really wasn't a fan of most of the first book, except ALICE, but I loved the second and third books.

I also really don't see it as an anti-portal story -- Grossman did a lot of press before the first book came out kind of trash talking Narnia and Rowling (he did a pretty shitty interview with her in 2005, and apologized for it later: http://levgrossman.com/2010/05/the-post-about-the-time-i-met-j-k-rowling-part-2/). I don't think he would be that way now, but his attitude in interviews and PR about the book definitely influenced the book's reception. Reviewers also said "Like Narnia/Harry Potter but with sex and drugs!" and that's really not what the series is like either. It's WAY more like Narnia to me than HP, and there isn't a one-to-one correspondence between the Narnia books and this series but he riffs a lot on it. (Like, Umber and Ember are clearly his "version" of Aslan -- down to swapping in Ram for the Lion/Lamb -- but he definitely re-creates them, especially in the last book. It's more, well, transformative.)

I think if you read the other books you'd really like where Quentin ends up -- it's really different from what the show did. (It's also Alice/Quentin endgame all the way and there's really no Eliot/Quentin.)

[ginger_rude]

It's funny, I feel like the showrunners' decision to end the way they did makes a lot more sense as a "twist" if they had followed the books much more closely, because Quentin really IS the hero protagonist in most ways--I feel like the books go from deconstruction to reconstruction--and the other characters are pretty much adjuncts. And, as noted, he is much more the normative, heterosexual (with some underlying homoerotic yearning but then who doesn't), normative dude than show Quentin. (Who I've always thought besides everything else isn't the world's most gender normative in a lot of ways, and shows up as potentially neuroatypical than you'd necessarily get from the books).

[chelseagirl]

I got an ARC of the first book through one of the early reviewer programs I used to do, and brought that and a hardcover to a signing -- one for me, one for a gift. Grossman -- who I know used to be a reviewer for an actual periodical -- questioned where I got it from. I get authors being protective of their work, but he did it in a way that made me so uncomfortable I wanted to sink through the floor and I had a lingering bad feeling for a long while. And I teach required college classes to students who don't really want to take them, so I'm not a fragile flower. ;-) (Contrast: I brought an ARC to Salman Rushdie to sign and he made a joke about eBay but then was compensatorily gracious.)

It took me two seasons to give the show a try, and there was enough that I liked that I kept watching. There have been some aspects to the new post-That Thing season, particularly some Eliot & Alice interactions, which show a level of awareness that the fans have been loudly proclaiming the production staff lacked entirely.

[sholio]

UGGGHHH that's really terrible, and I'm sorry you had that interaction; I can see how that would put you off an author's work pretty much permanently. >____> (I have had bad IRL experiences with authors that put me off their work for less cause than that!) Also, it would never have occurred to me that an author would object to signing an ARC, so I find that completely baffling on all levels.

[kore]

Oh Lord, he was Time's big book reviewer, yeah. And he was often a tone-deaf reviewer and apparently also often a jerk in person, altho I think he's mellowed out more now.

There have been some aspects to the new post-That Thing season, particularly some Eliot & Alice interactions, which show a level of awareness that the fans have been loudly proclaiming the production staff lacked entirely.

Oh man, I love "Alice and Eliot talk it out" type stories, but my own grief shattered my life for like the past four years and I just don't think I can watch it. (They decided to kill off Q's dad like three months after my dad died and I was just like, REALLY, UNIVERSE? Hah.)

[ginger_rude]

Well, if the staff didn't have it before, it was hard to miss from all the shouting. I did like the Eliot/Alice bonding a lot. I'm curious to see what they do with Julia, because so far it just seems like a token gesture or so at the problems people were having with her arc.

also liking Margo returning to being more...complicated. and the Margo/Eliot scenes in general.

and the larger plot actually seems potentially interesting.

People have been commenting that it's "slow" so far plotwise, which is...odd, to me. I guess I have a different idea of what means 'plot' than some? To me, character and relationship shit -is- plot, and that's been very prominent, even if they're still setting up exposition and hints for what seems to be the action plot.

I'd be interested to see something about that w/r/t fic writers and writing, because so much of it is focused on character and relationship as opposed to "defeat the villain's dastardly plot, save the Republic" or whatnot. At least, in the circles I'm familiar with.

[schneefink]

I haven't read this book yet because I was told that Quentin being depressed plays a major role, and for a long time I wasn't in a brainspace to easily cope with that, but I think that by now I could probably deal with it, so maybe I'll check it out :)

[sholio]

It definitely does - like Kore was saying above, Quentin being depressed is a big thing in the books, and in fact the first book has a very bleak depiction of depression that I could very easily see as a bad-brainspace thing for someone who struggles with that. So yeah, keep that in mind if you do!

I'm reading the second book now and it's not nearly as much that way, if that helps - it seems like the general thrust of the books is being depressed and getting better, but keep your own mental health in mind! <3

[kore]

The second book has a very detailed description of a young woman's depression, too. But it's really good. But not something you want to read if you're in a bad space, probably.

[ginger_rude]

Interesting.

I really liked the book the first time I read it. I was pretty disappointed in the second, and then the third picked up again. For a long time, I said that I liked the show better, and in many ways, there are still things it did/does better. That said,

It also makes me EVEN MORE baffled that the show did the thing that it did, because the entire POINT of the book is Quentin being forced to come to terms with the fact that he's not the hero, being ingloriously taken out of the fight as soon as it starts and then having to watch his friends fight and die in a situation he literally got them into, and someone else wins and someone else saves his ass, and he has to get up and keep going after having all his illusions about himself and his place in the world cut away, and that's the whole point. Like ... how can you feel like killing him off is somehow better and more thematically appropriate than that?

Yes. And in the show that keeps happening over and over again, and--well, idk. I am watching season 5 after all, because sigh. Basically they're making the show about everyone else -instead- of Quentin, and using the death to explore grief. Which, in and of itself, all other things being equal, might not have necessarily a bad thing, but...they really could have dumped the shit about how woke they were in doing it, because it was like, have you read your own writing?

I'd be curious as to what you think of the latter two books. Especially the last one.

I get the impression that Lev Grossman did not, in fact, love this choice. There's a podcast called Physical Kids where they have writers and actors and others from the show on sometimes. He called the show's choice something like an "inversion" of how he went in the books, but also said that with Quentin and his depression, it always could have gone either way.

Which honesty isn't something I would have thought; he's not nearly as overtly depressed in the books as in the show. In fact, I think a lot of why he comes off as unlikable in the books is that it's not entirely clear if you're not familiar with depression that that's what's happening here. Whereas in the show, his mental illness struggles are -so- centered that it becomes that much more egregious that his somewhat ambiguous self sacrifice is talked up as "death of the traditional normative hero" and a triumph and his story was at a natural end.

Still, though, the books. I reread them not long ago, and...I like them a lot less than I did. It's not just Quentin; I don't really like -anyone- in them except for Alice. Part of my problem is that in many ways--you might or might not agree if you get to the books where he starts alternating POV--almost every character is like a variation of Quentin. The voice, the obsessions, the competitiveness--

--the competition. That's a big theme in the books that isn't so much in the show. The books, I think in a way they boil down to:

"I went to an Ivy League college and all I got was more of this lousy depression."

The unhappiness, the grinding, and dear god the snobbery. Much of which, I think, is not conscious on the author's part. There's also a lot of cringeyness w/r/t sexism, racism, Eliot's sexuality...

and there's a lot of contempt.

One thing I will always like better about the show is that Julia has a genuine deep friendship with Quentin. In the books, she barely seems to tolerate him, and he barely seems to know her. In general, the show's better about showing connection. The flipside is that the showrunners seem a lot more enamored of grimdark for the sake of it, and perhaps more pessimistic in general.

Per Codex: I read it a long time ago, and remember it as...odd. Very first-novel feeling, I suppose. V. interesting premise, a lot of intriguing potential plot, and then it just...fizzled.

[kore]

I really liked the book the first time I read it. I was pretty disappointed in the second, and then the third picked up again. For a long time, I said that I liked the show better, and in many ways, there are still things it did/does better

Am I the only one who LOVES book three? lolsob. I mean, I love the Q and P--- bits. I kinda skim the other chapters. //shame ITA that the show often does things better than the books, though -- I know he worked very closely with them on a lot of scripts, so it's interesting, almost like he's getting to redraft his own work.

Basically they're making the show about everyone else -instead- of Quentin, and using the death to explore grief

Oy vey. Yeah I'm potentially never watching that.

I'd be curious as to what you think of the latter two books. Especially the last one.

(P--- <3333)

I get the impression that Lev Grossman did not, in fact, love this choice. There's a podcast called Physical Kids where they have writers and actors and others from the show on sometimes. He called the show's choice something like an "inversion" of how he went in the books

Didn't he say something like, he was walking past the writer's room and heard them talking about it/saw something written out on the whiteboard, and that was how he found out? Yeeeouch.

but also said that with Quentin and his depression, it always could have gone either way.

WHA. I mean I guess that's a version of Plath's "how did I know the bell jar wouldn't descend again," but Quentin the last book seems way more realistic and grounded and stable. (I liked him a lot. I am sad we will never see Jason Ralph do Older Quentin.)

I think a lot of why he comes off as unlikable in the books is that it's not entirely clear if you're not familiar with depression that that's what's happening here. Whereas in the show, his mental illness struggles are -so- centered that it becomes that much more egregious that his somewhat ambiguous self sacrifice is talked up as "death of the traditional normative hero" and a triumph and his story was at a natural end.

That's REALLY well put. And also, yeah, depression often does look very off-putting and self-absorbed from the outside, even when the person is in incredible pain and can't really help how they're acting! One reason why it's so difficult for people who haven't had it to understand. And you're totally right, that very realistic portrayal just did not map onto the "Look at that, you saved your friends, and they all remember and love you, everything's fine now step through the door" ending. Then again the books didn't have the Monster!Eliot plot, which just seemed to finish Show Quentin off completely. Like, if he could get Eliot back, that was worth everything to him. Only the show completely soft-pedaled that too, with the "Look at the het grand romance! Look!" bullshit. Argle.

One thing I will always like better about the show is that Julia has a genuine deep friendship with Quentin. In the books, she barely seems to tolerate him, and he barely seems to know her.

Oh man, in the books, it's like Quentin never gets over nice-guy crushing on Julia, and her character, except in those searing alternate chapters in book 2 (I love them so) is so opaque. Stella Maeve is so beautifully expressive (really that whole cast is so great) she brought so much more depth and soul to the part. I really did feel they had been best friends -- that bit with them under the kitchen table!

In general, the show's better about showing connection. The flipside is that the showrunners seem a lot more enamored of grimdark for the sake of it, and perhaps more pessimistic in general.

The show was GREAT with connection ("Under Pressure!") and then just kept throwing it away to the extent I was like, you know, I went through this already in the fucking MCU. They gave me a bunch of characters I love, got a Team The Best Team feeling going, and then they all got split off into dull mainly het pairings and there was all this Angst about Alienation. It starts to feel like they're constantly breaking up the band not for the story, but for the sake of the breaking and re-connecting, and if they do that enough times, it's just going to feel cheap. And I think Quentin's death as the finale of the last season is a really big example of that. "Now everyone will REALLY feel bad." And I'm just like, EVERYONE has come back from the dead on this show! Sometimes repeatedly! Why are we suddenly getting a season-long moral lesson on bereavement? It's like Buffy S6 and "Well, this is the way the real world is, kiddies." It's so patronizing and unfair to the audience in a weird way. The show has always approached darkness with a lot of zany elements (cancer puppy, omg) so for them to just suddenly be like "people DIE, and then everyone is HORRIBLY SAD" feels like a breaking of the contract. (cpolk had a great thread about that on Twitter, I think.) It's not just "hey you got sadness in my fun sexy show," but more like, you can surprise or trick or comfort or shock the audience. But you can't cheat them. It wasn't so much about audience expectations or HOW DARE YOU KILL OUR FAVE but the feeling the narrative had been betrayed.