"But I'm really starting to worry that there aren't any answers."

I’ve had a recurring desire to make a post about why I (mostly) didn’t enjoy the fifth and final season of The Magnus Archives; on some level, I’ve wanted to do so since the show ended in 2021. I appreciated its narrative ambition; I understood – to a degree – what it was aiming for thematically; and I liked some individual scenes and moments. But many of the storytelling choices caused me a disproportionate amount of distress, even by the standards of the horror genre, which I recognize is supposed to make people uncomfortable. It’s also difficult to separate my response to Season 5 from the fact that it was released during the first year of COVID, so I’m sure that I will write about that, too.

I recognize that I’m supposed to be uncomfortable" is part of why I’ve been mentally turning over and pulling apart my reactions for such a long time. One of my issues with Season 5 is that the world-building pushed some of the same scrupulosity buttons as certain Internet discourse that distills issues of privilege and oppression down to very extreme, binary arguments. So I have the same doubts about my response to TMA that I do about those arguments: "Does this bother me for legitimate reasons, or am I just a Sensitive White Lady getting my Sensitive White Lady Feelings hurt?"

And since the anticipation of each episode, from week to week, was part of what stressed me out, I might wait until the follow-up podcast, The Magnus Protocol, has ended before I listen to any of it.