Rachel Lawson's The Magicians Podcast · Rachel Lawson

'Tis The Season To Be Grim v 1

April 4, 2026·40 min·3 clips

In the afterlife, Grim Reaper king Mortimer argues with Fate about interviewing a murder victim's ghost during Christmas.

The episode opens with a comic song, Dance of the Grinches, establishing the anti-Christmas tone before Chapter One introduces Blake Alexander, a local coroner assigned alone to the murder case of Tim Wong, a man who reported being recruited as a Manchurian candidate by a foreign government. His lawyer Gabriel, the Masked Chicken, adds to Blake's misery with an unsolicited Santa hat. Blake's son Lance, secretly the supernatural assassin known as the Necromancer, agrees to split the paperwork. In the afterlife, Blake as the skeletal Mortimer attempts to interview Tim Wong's ghost, but Argent, Fate in human Santa form, ejects the ghost for being unChristmassy and cuts off the investigation. Lance continues the case while his own daughter and grandson are noisy distractions at home. Blake independently identifies the hitman's employer, goes to confront them, and is shot and imprisoned. Lance finds him near death in a hidden panic room and transports him to hospital. Chapter Two shifts to Blake autopsying Lance's latest supernatural assassination victim, who is dressed in a Santa outfit by Argent's order. The morgue team gives Blake a Grinch-themed Christmas T-shirt and dancing Grinch toy. Blake's Grim Reaper carolers, press-ganged by Argent, fill the hospital. At the police station, Blake's uncle Simon unknowingly comments favourably on the very Necromancer son the police are hunting. In the afterlife, Argent forces the skeletal Mortimer to drink brandy despite being a skeleton, soaking his Santa suit and leading to his wrongful arrest at T-Mart. Chapter Three follows Blake undercover as Santa to investigate a murder in a Santa agency, with Lance arriving drunk after fortifying himself at a pub. Lance fails to recognise his father in costume; Blake drags him away and confronts Argent for sending a drunk assassin on a children's errand. Days later the shopping centre Santa stint ends when a perceptive child punches Blake and removes his fake beard. At the police station, Lance enchants a Santa hat onto Blake's head so it will not come off until after Christmas. Chapter Five travels to New York in winter, where Blake, his son Lakelandite, and Fred — revealed to be Blake's older self, a time-traveller who accidentally became his own grandfather — walk in the snow. Blake is miserable and cold; Fred is charmed by the Christmas decorations. Blake's irritation at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony builds to breaking point, and his electrical nature short-circuits the giant Christmas tree, igniting it in front of a screaming crowd. Chapter Six closes with the Grinch's Guide to Ruin Christmas song reprising the anti-festive theme.

As heard by us

A bleak Christmas farce where seasonal cheer keeps curdling into deadpan gothic chaos.

Rachel Lawson's Christmas special pushes holiday cheer into darkly gothic chaos, trailing Blake Alexander from a hospital to a station office and then into the afterlife, with Santa suits, skeletal carolers, and a stubborn naughty-and-nice bureaucracy crowding the path.

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Why you'd press play

For Christmas cheer that comes with skeletons, carols, and a depressed hospital.

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