The Magicians Hedge Witch Tattoos and Julia Wicker’s Rise Explained

The Magicians hedge witch tattoos and Julia’s journey, explained

Syfy’s The Magicians was one of the most interesting shows on television when it launched, and much of the lure is Julia Wicker’s journey from future Yale student to dangerous hedge witch. Stella Maeve plays her. At the start she is the character who has her life together, in contrast to the struggling, depressed Quentin, played by Jason Ralph. The tables turn quickly. Julia flunks the entrance exam for Brakebills, a college for magicians, and is thrust back into the mundane world while keeping every memory of magic.

The third episode, “Consequences of Advanced Spellcasting”, first aired on February 1, 2016, and it is the hour in which that fall turns into a climb. Julia’s story is the show’s unconventional one, and the episode gives her a destination, a mentor and a symbol: the star tattoos that mark a hedge witch of rank.

Those tattoos are the quickest way into the episode. When Marina pulls up her sleeve to show the stars covering her arms, the audience learns two things at once, with no explanation attached. The woman Julia has been trying to impress is the head of the group, and she is a top-level hedge witch. The show then lets viewers spot the same marks on a second character, which links the hedge witches to the school Julia cannot enter.

Why the hedge witch tattoos matter for the rest of the series is a fair question to leave open. The episode treats them as a mark of status, and the later seasons of any show like this one tend to turn such details into plot. For now they work as a quiet piece of world-building: a second magical society, with its own identifying signs, operating below the one Quentin joined.

Julia and the addiction to magic

Unable to let go, Julia, called Jules by friends, becomes obsessed with finding any scrap of magic by scouring the internet. Her boyfriend James, played by Michael Cassidy, is worried enough to call Quentin and plead with him to come to her birthday celebration. He wants Quentin to see how withdrawn and cold she has become, and how unlike her usual self.

The show keeps presenting the darker side of magic, and how addictive and dangerous it can be. In Julia’s case, magic is the drug she cannot get enough of. That framing runs through the episode and gives it an edge that most fantasy series avoid.

At the party, she shows Quentin a spell that took her months to find online, to prove that she has magic, and she begs him to ask the Brakebills teachers for another chance. He says there is a reason she was not chosen and that it is perfectly okay. He gets upset because she was great at everything else and, he believes, cannot accept failure at anything.

Pete, Marina and the cold storage test

Her life turns when Pete, a hedge magician played by David Call, approaches her in the bar’s women’s bathroom. Sparks come out of her hands in self-defense. Pete tells her that not all magic comes from Brakebills and invites her to a safehouse, where she meets other hedge magicians and witches.

She and another newcomer, Marina, played by Kacey Rohl, are locked in a cold storage locker as a test to see if they can free themselves. Marina does very little. Julia finds instructions for a temporary heating spell and is forced to cut human fat from a dead body inside, a necessary ingredient. She then blasts open the locker door and angrily confronts Pete.

He shrugs. The test, he says, was not to prove herself to him. It was to convince Marina she was worthy. The other woman turns out to be the head of the entire group, and that is when she pulls up her sleeve to show the stars tattooed along her arms.

What Marina wants, and the link to Brakebills

Marina likes Julia after seeing her passion for magic, and she is willing to teach her everything she knows as long as Julia keeps proving herself. The head hedge witch is cutthroat and has an agenda of her own. She boasts that she has connections in Brakebills, and it is true. Kady, played by Jade Tailor, is Penny’s love interest and probably a hedge witch as well, since she shows the same star tattoos, and she has been stealing items for Marina.

As Julia learns more magic at the safehouse, Marina tells her she is not fully committed, so she cannot do all the spells. Marina guesses that Julia keeps her boyfriend as a safety net in case she fails. In Marina’s experience, magic only works if you mean it. The logic is hard to dismiss, because the students at Brakebills are isolated at the school with no non-magical distractions.

The tattoos tie the threads together. The show does not spell out their meaning, but they hint that the world of The Magicians has a shadow society of hedge witches with a hierarchy and rules of its own.

Julia and Quentin’s reunion

Julia and Quentin are briefly reunited when Eliot, played by Hale Appleman, and Quentin find the missing book that Kady stole from the Physical Kids’ cabin at Marina’s command. Julia is angry that Quentin shows up and barely speaks to her after years of friendship. He is angry that she has joined the hedge magicians, who are considered the dregs of the magical community.

Julia is offended. She tells him how she fooled herself into thinking he would tell the Brakebills professors about her so they would at least send someone to wipe her memory again. When no one came, she did what she had to. Quentin still believes magic is not for everyone and that she failed for a reason. He asks whether she has thought about how she treated him in the past, knowing he was in love with her, and wonders aloud whether James knows she is hanging out with addicts trading tricks for spells.

Julia is unmoved and asks Quentin if he loves magic and whether it is in his soul. Of course it is. She goes back inside the safehouse and ends the meeting.

Who is who in the hedge witch storyline

• Julia Wicker (Stella Maeve). Failed the Brakebills exam and trains with the hedge witches.
• Pete (David Call). The hedge magician who recruits Julia.
• Marina (Kacey Rohl). The head of the group, a top-level hedge witch with star tattoos.
• Kady (Jade Tailor). Penny’s love interest, probably a hedge witch, who steals items for Marina.
• James (Michael Cassidy). Julia’s boyfriend, who believes her cover story.
• Quentin (Jason Ralph). Julia’s friend, a Brakebills student who thinks she failed for a reason.

Julia, hedge witch extraordinaire: the verdict

The conversation leads Julia to ask James to come over to her place. The audience expects a full confession. At the last minute she transfigures her keychain into a sobriety chip and tells him she had become addicted to Adderall. She has started going to AA meetings to get back on track, and she says she still loves him. James is relieved and believes the story, though it is not going to last. Sorry, James.

Her journey is only beginning, and it will be fun to watch her grow into a much stronger, more dangerous force. Showrunners Sera Gamble and John McNamara made the right call by running Julia’s storyline in parallel with Quentin’s this season, because it adds depth to the narrative. Quentin’s plot runs, with interesting twists, along the path of the hero or chosen one. Julia’s is unconventional, uncomfortable and addictive television, a train wreck that is hard to look away from.

The Magicians aired on Syfy on Mondays at 9/8 central. For anyone deciding whether to keep watching after the third episode, this is the one that makes the case: Julia’s story is the reason to stay.

The strongest feature of the episode is its refusal to make Julia likable at every moment. She lies to James, she brushes off Quentin, and she cuts into a corpse without a second thought. The performance by Stella Maeve keeps her sympathetic anyway, which is what makes the storyline so uncomfortable and so effective.

Sources

• The Magicians (American TV series), Wikipedia — cast, episode lists and air dates