The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s Mysterious New Magician Character, Explained

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel has always blended fact with fiction, depicting real life comedians like Lenny Bruce (Luke Kirby) and Moms Mabley (Wanda Sykes) alongside fictional characters like comedian Sophie Lennon (Jane Lynch) and singer Shy Baldwin (Leroy McClain). In Season 4, we meet yet another performer striving for stardom: the magician Alfie (Gideon Glick), who Susie (Alex Borstein) takes under her wing as a new client.

Like Shy and Sophie, Alfie is not based on a real person. But unlike those two, he’s certainly not performing on stage when Susie meets him. After gambling away Midge’s money and being denied a check for burning her childhood house down (because the insurance company suspected foul play), Susie spots Alfie conning patrons at a dive bar. “I guess your card, I get a drink,” Susie overhears him say to two men. The darkly dressed, haggard-looking magician insists he’s “very famous” and has performed for the Queen, “the crown heads of Europe, and the rest of their bodies if they’re still attached.”

He’s a quick talker and good at tricks, but it’s his intuitiveness that really sets Susie on edge. Within moments of meeting her, he correctly guesses that she has money troubles and seems to allude to her arson. (Though Susie is also paranoid enough in that moment to think his vague statements hold deeper meaning.) “You know, it’s not good to be in bar when you’re depressed ... Where would you like to be right now?” Alfie says while twirling a straw. He then snaps his fingers and transports Susie to a forest, having successfully hypnotized her for a second.

There are definitely magicians who performed during the ‘60s and ‘70s that Alfie could have been modeled off of: Doug Henning was known for his Houdini-esque escape tricks, while Mark Wilson inspired generations of magicians with his Saturday morning show The Magic Land of Allakazam. Alfie’s bar tricks also have some basis in reality, as conning and magic are often viewed as two sides of the same coin. As reported by Inverse, con artists are skilled at what social scientists call “framing,” which means telling stories in ways that appeal to the beliefs and wants of their current target in order to get them to buy into their abilities. This is what we see happen with Susie when Alfie distracts her long enough to pull a sleight of hand by saying things like “money is hard to come by” and “go up in smoke.”

Ultimately, Alfie is sort of like a mirror for Susie: a personified version of her woes and desperation. His whole appearance is similar to her own, with his black hair and dark wooly hat and clothes. She’s irritated by him — declaring she “f*cking hates magicians” — yet also pities him and even nurses him back to health in Episode 4. You could argue that Alfie is actually clairvoyant and has peered into Susie’s past, but it’s unlikely that The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel will venture into the paranormal. Rather, Alfie seems to be a way for the show to explore Susie’s anxiety that her life could only get more difficult by season’s end. She already has her hands full with the intractable Midge and Sophie, and adding Alfie to her roster may be a way to further demonstrate how hard it is to be the one on the other side of the curtain.