Well into season 2 of The Magicians, which has already departed in several ways from Lev Grossman’s best-selling trilogy, show-runners John McNamara and Sera Gamble are introducing what’s perhaps their most original plot device yet: a song and dance number. (And they’re in good company, too.)

“I was acutely aware that, in the middle of a drama, an audience is not expecting to see a musical number,” says McNamara, who befriended Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim was he was 19. A certified musical comedy buff, McNamara had too many favorite songs to choose from. After ruling out “Don’t Rain on My Parade” from Funny Girl and “something from Hamilton, which has so many numbers about fighting injustice and . . . each other,” he decided instead to have the magically blessed twentysomethings of Brakebills University burst into a rendition of Les Miserables’s “One Day More.” VF.com has the exclusive clip:

McNamara explains that he needed “to whisk Eliot from fear to bravery, moving from A to B…and that’s one thing the song does very well.” Though initially fearful that the song “was a little too commercial,” McNamara says he hopes that “its familiarity will actually add to its effect. I guess I wanted to err on the side of populism. I don’t want to sound pretentious, but I think we are kind of training the audience to expect this, and my hope is that the next song could be something where the audience goes, ‘Wow, I’ve never heard that before.’”

Told they’d have to sing, the cast reacted “variously.” Hale Appleman (Eliot) is a trained singer who had played Javert in a school production of Les Miserables. But Summer Bishil (Margo) was quite nervous—she had never sung—though she turned out “to have quite a beautiful voice.” The biggest surprise, however, was Brittany Curran, who plays Eliot’s Fillorian beard—because, McNamara says, “we had no clue [she could sing]. And I was ready to dub her.”

“It was just sort of a happy accident,” adds Gamble, “that everybody sang so damn well.” The Magicians airs Wednesdays at nine P.M. on Syfy.