The Night Circus

The Night Circus is an American cable television series created for FX by IllegalNova, based on the 2011 fantasy novel by Erin Morgenstern. It is produced by Travis Beacham and Erin Morgenstern. Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Prospero the Enchanter, a powerful circus magician who, alongside the mysterious Mr. A.H- (Ralph Fiennes), grooms their young proteges Celia Bowen (Daisy Ridley) and Marco Alisdair (Walter Perez) to proxy their rivalry with the exhibits as a stage. Sadie Sink, Claudia Kim, and Ezra Miller also star in the show.

Premise
1887! A prosperous year for Great Britain as Queen Victoria reigns Britain. In London, there is a circus that has been entertaining circus-goers for thirty years known as Le Cirque des Rêves (The Circus of Dreams). The magical traveling circus is open only from sunset to sunrise and featuring such strange and wondrous attractions such as blooming garden made entirely out of ice, acrobats soaring without a net, and a vertical cloud maze where patrons who get lost simply step off and float gently to the floor. A network of devoted fans styling themselves "rêveurs" ("dreamers") develops around the circus; they mark themselves to each other by adding a splash of red to garb that otherwise matches the characteristic black and white of the circus tents. In the circus, there is a magician named Prospero the Enchanter and a fortune-teller named Mr. A.H-. They both have young grooms who they trained in magical spells and illusions to proxy their rivalry with the exhibits as a stage.

Prospero trains his daughter to sharpen her innate talents by holding larger and more complex magical workings in her mind. Celia takes her position on the game board as the illusionist who makes true transformations, adding tents and maintaining mystical aspects from the inside. Mr. A.H- teaches his orphan ward with books in the ways of glyphs and sympathetic magic and illusory worlds that exist only in the mind of the beholder. Marco takes a position as an assistant to the producer of the circus he works from the outside in, connected to the circus by a magical link to the central bonfire, but not a part of it. The two deceive the circus goers and each other with nightly magic, soon falling in love despite being magically bound to a deadly competition with rules neither fully grasps.

As the competition continues on, both competitors become constrained with no sign of a conclusion in sight, nor predilection of how a winner will be determined. Others working in the circus began to notice strange happenings connected to it, such as the blueprints disappearing from the designers' offices, and the performers appearing to bound to the circus and can never fail, leave permanently, have accidents, or even age. Poppet and Widget, twins given birth to by a performer on opening night, have found themselves developing magical powers. The producer of the circus has his memories completely wiped out, and one of the initial investors dies in suspicious circumstances when they start to discover the underlying truth of the circus. When the building tensions between Prospero and A.H- and the jealousy of Marco's ex-girlfriend spurned for Celia caused an innocent "rêveur" getting accidentally stabbed in a circus tent, Celia started to search for a way to end the game as quickly as possible while at the same time saving the circus and those involved with it.

Celia determined from Prospero that the game must continue until one of the participants is unable to go on, which usually means their death. She also finds out that the circus contortionist, Tsukiko, is not only a magician herself but the champion of a previous contest in which her opponent committed suicide. After an attempted negotiation with their mentors fails, Tsukiko believes the competition is putting the circus and its members at risk. She conspires to magically murder Marco to end the contest, believing him to be less crucial than Celia because he was not part of the circus. Celia rushes to save him at the last moment, causing the two to be ripped from reality and becoming incorporeal spirits forever bound to the circus. With its magical keystones removed, the central bonfire goes out and the circus environment begins to cease to exist. Celia and Marco save the circus by magically rebinding Poppet, Widget, and their new friend, an enthusiastic circusgoer named Bailey Clarke, back to the circus, relighting the fire and bringing back the spirit of the circus.

With Celia and Marco both existing only as ghosts, unable to compete but content to haunt the circus together forever, the contest is declared complete via stalemate with no winner. Poppet and Widget negotiate the release of the remaining circus properties from the former producer and Mr. A.H-, and the book ends with the revelation that Poppet, Widget, Bailey and the circus still exist in the modern-day, preserved for a century and more.

Cast and characters

 * Daisy Ridley as Celia Bowen


 * Walter Perez as Marco Alisdair


 * Benedict Cumberbatch as Hector Bowen / Prospero the Enchanter


 * Ralph Fiennes as Mr. A.H-


 * Sadie Sink as Poppet Murray


 * Tamlyn Tomita as Tsukiko


 * Ezra Miller as Widget Murray


 * Ruth Negga as Tara Burgess


 * Mia Wasikowska as Isobel Martin


 * Max Charles as Bailey Clarke


 * Hayley Kiyoko as Hinata