Keep or Cancel: Will The Magicians season 4 happen over at Syfy?
Are we going to get The Magicians season 4 coming on Syfy in the future, or is this series in any severe danger at all? This is a worthy subject for our Keep or Cancel series, and it’s something that we’re excited to dive into further now.
On paper, all sings suggest that a Magicians season 4 will happen, mostly because it makes very little sense for it not to. Over the past couple of years, Syfy has really tried to emphasize that this is one of their flagship shows. They’ve put a lot of time into promoting it and allowing the producers a chance both to replicate the source material while making it their own. Ending the series now just would feel like a disservice to everyone who’s become so invested over time.
Also, ending the series now would be a disservice to everyone who continues to watch and allow it to perform pretty well in the ratings. We’re talking about a show that, so far in season 3, is averaging a 0.3 rating in the 18-49 demographic. That’s down slightly versus season 2, but it’s less than 15% and that satisfies our rule for acceptability. (Keeping 85% or more of your demo audience year to year is pretty good in modern TV.) Add to this the fact that The Magicians actually improved from season 1 to season 2 and you’ve got a pretty good sense as to how devoted this following is. They are going to stick with the show no matter what, and with that all you have to do is keep cultivating story for them.
Is there really anything to worry about here at all? Sure. This is Syfy we’re talking about here. We’re not over Dark Matter, and before that we really weren’t all that over Alphas or Caprica before that. Syfy giveth, and yet they also taketh away. We’re grateful that the network puts on the air innovative series but the vast majority of them don’t have a tendency to last all that long. It’s hard to really come up with one specific reason for that other than that this genre can be expensive and there’s often not much of a margin of error.