SHADOWHUNTERS: MAGNUS BANE TV SHOW CHARACTER

BEFORE I START: The following character analysis IS NOT MINE. This words belong to a blog I found on Tumblr and I loved so much I decided to share it to the people who read mine. All the credit has to be given to http://tinaliatum.tumblr.com/ so if you want to know more about it, you should definitely follow her on tumblr cause she is amazing, this ARE NOT AND I REPEAT NOT MY words, just sharing it.

This is the TV SHOW CHARACTER ANALYSIS, not the book one, and are based on the sides of the TV show. Today we are going to be analizing The High Warlock of Brooklyn, the snarky and mysterious Magnus Bane! Remember every Wednesday is a new character!

ABC Family's Shadowhunters Character Analysis: Magnus Bane

played by Harry Shum Jr.

Magnus Bane

Character Summary: On the surface, Magnus has oodles of snark and dry sass. He shrugs things off, pokes at people and lets the chips fall where they may. But beneath that, he is a deeply wise, cautious and jaded man. He seems to view the world like a well-read book – where once he may have hungrily turned each page, he now knows the pages all too well. He’s no longer waiting for the happy ending because he knows it’s not there. Magnus Bane is a man made deeply cynical by the shitty book he’s been given.

He finds pleasure in life where he can find it – he’s just as likely to DJ at a club as he is to run around naked at Burning Man, but his excessive and expensive nature only reads as a warning sign that he has begun to petrify. The years have been unkind for so long that he’s stopped looking for the light at the end of the tunnel despite how much he wants it to be there, and he’ll only be able to hide behind his sarcasm and humour for so long.

Despite how hard he plays, he takes his job fairly seriously. As High Warlock of Brooklyn, his presence is commanding, and he seems to be a leader among his people – when he talks, everyone stops and listens. He’s deeply connected in the greater network of Downworld and seems to have some pretty big authority within that. He is known by the Clave to have a deep distrust of Shadowhunters.

He’s a wildly entertaining character at face value – and he’ll have the show audience absolutely snickering – but underneath is where he truly shines. He has a darkness there and a completely raw vulnerability holding on for dear life. This Magnus Bane is quietly haunting, and he may just break your heart.

In regards to Clary Fray: Magnus regards Clary with sympathy and regret, having reluctantly cast the memory spell on her as a child. It’s apparent he’s been watching over her for quite some time, perhaps feeling he owes a debt, and though he’s genuinely pleased to meet her again as an adult, he’s concerned to see her in the company of Shadowhunters. He’s fairly staunch in his will to stay out of their plans to track her mother, but he is not immune to her and eventually he relents after seeing her save the life of a warlock child. He tells her in what becomes a rather poignant moment that she is more like her mother than she will ever realise, and effectively hangs up his neutral status to join Clary’s mission.

In regards to Jace Wayland: Jace, in Magnus’ eyes, is a typically arrogant Shadowhunter boy who is nothing but trouble, and he offers Clary his protection, believing he can do a better job than the Clave. Because his main goal is helping Clary, and because he knows Clary can’t do much without his help, and because he understands Clary has Jace under her thumb, Magnus is perfectly comfortable in knocking the Wayland boy down a few notches. They argue and throw half-seething quips back and forth and it’s highly entertaining. Jace is the fly, and Magnus is the gigantic fly swat.

In regards to Alec Lightwood: Magnus is taken, quite literally, by surprise when he sees Alec for the first time. Having narrowly avoided one of Alec’s arrows (which finds itself in the chest of an approaching henchman of Valentine’s), he lays eyes on the eldest Lightwood, fierce and poised with his bow, and then his heart is beating for a different reason entirely. Magnus regards Alec as important early on, and he cuts Jace short to focus on Alec and hear what he has to say. It’s unclear as to what the motivation is – whether he respects Alec and sees him as the true leader of the pack or simply because he’s physically attracted to him – but Malec fans will find both reasons satisfactory. Regardless, Magnus’ unabashed flirting is received with an endearing mix of surprise, embarrassment and interest on Alec’s end, and it’s here that Magnus and Alec begin their long journey together.

Where ABC Family’s Shadowhunters could take Magnus Bane: Like Alec, he threads through several storylines – Jocelyn’s, Luke’s, Clary’s, Alec’s, Valentine’s – as well as his own, so there will be no shortage of Harry Shum Jr on our screens. In fact, his character sides are the longest and clock in at a generous 13 pages. He’ll be our clearest connection to Downworld, as well as one of Clary’s biggest soldiers, as well as play a vital part in Alec’s development throughout the series.

Overall Character Grade: A++

The television rendition of Magnus Bane is far, far more than just the pet warlock we saw in the books – he’s a highly knowledgeable expert in his field, and his authority over the connections he has in Downworld makes him a powerful component in the overall series. The details the writers have given him are lovingly thorough and thoughtfully concieved, and will please the fans immensely. He wields blue magic and a lot of it, his cats eyes are specifically panther, and he is in contact with Tessa which shows an exciting, touching cohesion. Harry Shum Jr’s incredibly multi-faceted version of Magnus Bane will be sure to light up our screens and tug on our hearts.

SHADOWHUNTERS: PROMO TEASER #1 BREAKDOWN AND SYMBOLISM

Last week was Shadowhunters madness. We actually got a promo teaser on Thursday, the next day we got a trailer and then on Saturday was NYCC and we got a 6 minute sneak peek of the Pilot and is too much to share in one post so right now i will break down and give my opinions and explain what i think some things mean in the 1 minute promo teaser we got first. Tomorrow the trailer and then the sneak peek.

If you haven't watch the promo teaser, make sure you watch it before you read this so we are on the same page, here it is - 

So let's start talking about what we just saw. A lot of people (the majority) was really happy about it, including myself. It looked really artsy and the reason they did it like that it's because they don't only need to impress book fans but also new fans that are watching, and that teaser just captures your attention. I saw some people saying they didn't like the special effects, i thought they were really good and the only purpose is to capture attention so if I was you i wouldn't pay attention to special effects that much. But the teaser was more than just special effects, if you are a book fan you could have noticed that Shadowhunters capture this characters essence (from 6 books) in 1 minute and they did it so perfectly it exceed my expectations and i was so happy cause the little details in this teaser are the ones that really count, let's break it down so you see what i am talking about:

The teaser starts with Simon and Clary. Simon is covering Clary's eyes and there's cake in front of her. Just in this first seconds they introduce to us their friendship, they hug so obviously they are close friends, and  the surprise cake clearly indicates is Clary's birthday, which is how the show starts.

If you notice the cake have some angelic runes drawn into it, this kind of foreshadows how this runes has always been part of Clary's past they have always been there but she doesn't know what they mean or why she is drawing them. 

Then we listen Clary's voice saying "when i turned 18 i discovered the truth about the world" and she is blowing the candles and all of a sudden the room turns dark and the smoke coming out of the candles goes up and forms an angelic rune, Clary just stares at it. This represents how Clary is thrown into the Shadow World on her birthday and everything just turns dark for her, her whole world is turn upside down, she loses her mom and finds out that the world she knew was nothing like she thought. Simon being in the backgroung is also good, because he is drawn into this world along with Clary.

When the runes goes up, it zooms inside it just when Clary is saying "discover the truth about the world" so i think its cool how they zoomed you in into the Shadow world literally, like if you imagine the first part of the teaser as the mundane world and then Clary just suck into it over to the Shadow World along with the audience is pretty amazing.

On the next part we get out first little taste of the Shadow World and the first character we see is Magnus Bane of course, which is accuarte since all of this started with Magnus taking away Clary's memories when she was a child. We see Magnus living his life as the party man he is, he seems to be in his loft and there's woman and men there with him (which could very well represent him being a "freewheeling bisexual") there's champagne, glamour, amazing music everything that sums up being the High Warlock of Brooklyn and YES HE HAS PANTS ON THIS TIME!

There's a very interesting part i can't understand, Magnus has a key with him (the key has a M curved into it, representing "Magnus" i suppose) and he throws the key into the champagne glass he has and he looks sassy as hell, (Harry Shum Jr. is mind blowing as Magnus) and i love it. I do not know if the key means something but they did show it a lot, so we are going to have to wait until the show airs, if you have theories we can talk about it. Someone said that it was Magnus offering Alec a champagne glass and that the key was the key to his loft so he could come over later, i thought it was funny.

Then we see Clary and she looks confused and there are some shadows moving behind her, and then all of a sudden Jace comes out being badass of course and this represents you know Clary metting Jace then being thrown into the Shadow world and Jace being the one that guides her through it, protecting her at least before she can protect herself from the shadows that represent the demons of course.

Jace kind of jumps so when he lands on the floor there was like water on it so when he lands a rune comes up. The rune is the FEARLESS rune. Listen this is great, the fearless rune represents Jace so well cause we all know Jace never really cared about what happened to him, he is a respected Shadowhunter and he take his job very seriously and he is in fact very fearless and brave. The fact that they put it there makes me think they are getting the characters essence so well. Also the fact he is with this seraph blade which is Jace weapon it's pretty cool.

Also another part i liked about this is the way Clary sees him, she is intrigued by him and that's exactly how Clary looks at Jace at the begining, with a mix of surprise and also not denying to herself the fact that he is very handsome.

Then we get introduced to a second Shadowhunter, Alec Lightwood. The first thing that we see is Alec with his bow and arrow which is Alec's weapon ( which in the movie they didn't even mentioned it smh) and i love the fact they showed that trait about him. I thought also it was very clever that they had Matthew Daddario (the actor) in a blue room cause his eyes looked kinda blue-ish in that and we all know Matt has green eyes and Alec has blue so it was very clever.

And because Alec is a Shadowhunter too he got his own rune too like Jace, and what do you think it is? Alec got the LOVE rune which also is super accurate because Alec does goes to a lot of struggles with his sexuality and with who he can love or not. But that's not all, The love rune appears behind Alec but at each side of the rune if you look closely there are two very important people for Alec standing there.

We see Magnus and Jace standing behind Alec and this was my favorite part, becuase the love rune (which is torn into two parts representing Alec thorn between Magnus and Jace) being there and having Alec in the middle represents so well the struggle Alec deals with, he needs to separate the feelings he has for his parabatai and adoptive brother Jace which he though he was in love with and the feelings he might feel for Magnus which just came into his life and the fact they are exploring Alec like this makes me want to cry of happiness because Alec didn't have a lot in the books and he deserve his time to shine.

Alec shoots an arrow staight into the our next Shadowhunter, Isabelle Lightwood. We don't have a lot of Izzy in this trailer but i think what we see is enough. She looks gorgeous as we all know Isabelle is and she has his whip, she strikes a pose which actaully resembles the rune she got, Isabelle got the PRECISION rune which is also accuarte cause her weapon is a whip you need precision to use that thing, and we hear a whip sound while the rune was coming up and it looked really good, Also can Emeraude (actress) teach me how do you have perfect hair while using a whip? she looked so amazing.

Then we got a little taste of Clace, we see Clary looking over something trying to do something really impulsive probably and Jace looking at her and taking her away from there or whatever situation she will probably get into that will have her killed and that is how Jace's and Clary's relantionship is at least in the first two books, Jace is always there with Clary, watching over her. 

Then Clary says "some people have a dark side, really dark." and we trasition into this place and while Jace and Clary are leaving Simon comes up literally from the other side.

As you can see Simon is wearing all black and he finds himself in a very strange yet glamorous place, we see a woman behind him if you notice.

"no vacancy" do you guys watch Bates Motel, or ever watched Pyscho by Alfred Hitchcock? Well the No Vacancy sign obviously represents a Hotel, and the blood dropping out if the candelabra is such a creepy touch i loved it. So where can Simon be? i don't even think you can call this a spoiler anymore cause they literally spoiled it for all of us in the next scene:

Simon is at The Hotel Dumort, were the vampires of New York live we can say. We book fans know what Simon goes through with his vampirism and it seems that he would begin his transition a little early on in the show and is in here were the show can turn really dark just as Clary said. The woman behind to me represents Camille Bellcourt the leader of NY clan and the guy maybe Raphael? (that is just me guessing) it is like foreshadowing. 

I love this part where everything turned dark and Simon is just standing there, cause for me this very well can represent the darkness and the struggles Simon goes through when he is turned into a vampire, the confusion, inmortality, he trying to get used to drinking blood, his family and all the stuff we know book Simon went through.

Then we see Luke Garroway, who is in the show a NYPD detective (which is super cool i love that change) and we see him going through some grafitti maybe representing NY or the "downworld" of NY and he has his gun, and this represents how Luke is not a regular cop, he investigates the murders comitted by demons or downworlders and also as you can see in the grafitti there are some wolves carved into it, and the fact that he is in the middle and the full moon comes in represents him not only as a werewolf but as the center, the pack leader.

And then the last bit of the trailer we see some stuff really quickly:

Clary going in the middle of a storm of burning drawings, representing her ability to draw im guessing.

Then we see her using a seraph blade, while Jace is there. This is how Clary will eventually is going to need training when she discovers she is a shadowhunter and she can't save her mother alone, and Jace is the one that will help her train, just like in the books.

AND HOW ABOUT THE PART WE ALL PAUSED WHEN HE SAW IT THE FIRST TIME? You guys know what part i'm talking about right? We all paused when this happened:

And i want you to look carefully at the picture above cause it sums up Magnus and Alec's relantioship so well. Magnus comes from behind and he doesn't take off this eyes from Alec  not even a second representing how Magnus was drawn to Alec's beauty at the begining, he touches him on the shoulder, which shows us he is confident and he is the one that starts the flirting and then Alec is nervously touching his hands and slowly looks at Magnus. Alec's innonce and confusion is shown in that little gesture. This is great and so well done and it was just a second. Malec is going to kill us all.

And then at the very end we see Clary with a black leather jacket already and a angelic rune behind her. This represents Clary's transition of a mundane girl (at the begining of the trailer) - into confused girl who is learning about this world (the second part of the trailer) - to the shadowhunter and brave girl we know she is.(this last part).

So there it is guys, as you can see the trailer is fulled with symbolisms and hidden messages that a book fan should have seen. The special effects and the music will capture new fans that will eventually learn more about this. I enjoyed the teaser a lot and i am so excited to see how they have been studying this character so well to bring them to life correctly this time!

If you read this, thank you so much!

SHADOWHUNTERS: ISABELLE LIGHTWOOD TV SHOW CHARACTER

The following character analysis IS NOT MINE. This words belong to a blog I found on Tumblr and I loves do much I decided to share it to the people who read mine. All the credit has to be given to http://tinaliatum.tumblr.com/ so if you want to know more about it, you should definitely follow her on tumblr cause she is amazing, this ARE NOT AND I REPEAT NOT MY words, just sharing it.

This is the TV SHOW CHARACTER ANALYSIS, not the book one, and are based on the sides of the TV show. Today we are going to be analizing the gorgeous and badass Isabelle Lightwood. Remember every Wednesday is a new character.

ABC Family's Shadowhunters Character Analysis: Isabelle Lightwood.

played by Emeraude Toubia

Isabelle Lightwood

Character Summary: Our television version of Isabelle sounds like a black leather whip dipped in caramel, which may sound incredibly odd but that’s what comes to mind upon reading her lines. She’s sharp, sleek, and gets away with a lot – she sneaks out of the institute for secret night time trysts with downworlders and sneaks back in afterwards like a sated cat. She sums herself up perfectly during a conversation with her brother: I do my duty and whatever goes down on my own time is on me.

She’s selfish outside the mission but utterly focussed on the job, though she doesn’t believe being a shadowhunter is the be-all and end-all.

In regards to Clary Fray: She views Clary in the beginning as a bit of a lab rat – she does not understand Jace’s fixation on the mundane girl. Their interactions seem pretty seamless after that, but there’s not much to go on.

In regards to Jace Wayland: Not a lot of interaction between them in the sides, though it’s clear she respects him. They are similar in that they both like to rebel and live dangerously, so there is a kindred bond there.

In regards to Alec Lightwood: This dynamic is interesting. They’re clearly close, they tend to say the same things at the same time and even have a silent telepathy between them. She seems to have Alec wrapped around her little finger – he covers for her whenever she sneaks out and he backs down when she bites…and yet in a heartbeat, the tables can turn and it is Alec who has her in the palm of his hand. She reads him perfectly, can tell what he’s thinking and because he’s nearly always struggling with something, she immediately feels compelled to do whatever she can she fix it. He tries to protect her from her own decisions, while she tries to protect him from everything and would gladly carry his pains for him if she could. There’s a deep love there, and I believe the trials and tribulations Alec may face will make her re-evaluate the way she lives her life.

In regards to Simon Lewis: There’s not a lot about this relationship to go on in the sides, but taking into consideration their individual character studies, her encounters with Simon may very well be a turning point for her. She’s used to being admired, she’s used to being lust after, she’s used to meaningless encounters with meaningless men – she’s not, however, used to a man looking her in the eye and wanting to know who she really is. I think Simon’s going to be a cause of great confusion for her.

In regards to Maryse Lightwood: There’s a big disconnect here. Isabelle prefers to steer clear of her mother and refers to her with great disdain. I don’t know the reason for it, but it may have something to do with how Maryse tries to control her children.

In regards to Robert Lightwood: The complete opposite. Isabelle is a self-proclaimed daddy’s girl. She plays up the daughter card with enthusiasm in his presence and delights in having him spoil her. I do think there is something else there behind it that may not be so happy though. The two have an alliance of sorts, and I think together they’ll try to redeem their family name in order to prevent Maryse from enforcing Alec’s political marriage.

In regards to Max Lightwood: If Alec is the father figure, Isabelle is the mother. She knows her young brother well enough to know when he’s telling lies, and her and Alec share a strong telepathic bond when it comes Max.

In regards to Meliorn: This relationship is driven by Isabelle’s desire to have control over herself. It’s highly sexual, purely about scratching an itch. It’s her fraternising with Meliorn that her mother uses as an explanation for why the Seelie race is withdrawing from their league with the Clave, which has further tarnished the Lightwood name. It seems Isabelle may use Meliorn to turn the tides and reconnect the Clave’s broken alliance with the fair folk, and this will be in an effort to redeem her family’s standing and possibly spare her brother from the political marriage he may be forced into.

Where ABC Family’s Shadowhunters could take Isabelle Lightwood: Isabelle is going to do a lot of growing. She’s a very selfish character outside of her love for her family, and I believe she’s going to learn the hard way that doing whatever you like has grand consequences. She’ll probably have the most growing to do out of the entire cast, and I think as her heart begins to open up, we’ll get to watch her blossom from an indulgent, careless girl into the fierce, brave, caring young woman we all know Isabelle Lightwood to be.

Overall Character Grade: A

Book Isabelle and television Isabelle are very similar, and without being stuck behind a Clary-centric lense, we’ll finally get to see what makes the girl.