Justin Willman's New Netflix Special

The star and creator of Netflix’s flagship magic show, Magic For Humans, is filming his brand new special later this month, and we couldn’t be more excited.

Justin Willman will be taping two nights of his show at The Fitzgerald Theater in St Paul, Minnesota, on the 21st and 22nd of November.

This is great news for magicians who are fans of Willman and have always wanted to see him do his thing but can’t get to see any of his shows in person, such as folks like me who aren’t based in the USA. 

It isn’t clear what the show's content will be just yet. It might be his most recent theatre show or a combination of his best tricks from the past several.

Willman is currently on tour with his Illusionati show (great name!). The current tour opened in Salem, Oregon, on June 6th and will have played in over 28 cities across the United States by the end of this year. It’s a follow-up to Willman’s previous show, the Magic For Human’s In-Person tour, which took place last year.

Willman announced the recording of this special on the 3rd of September on his social media platforms, where he said this of the show:

A couple of weeks later, he posted an amusing video update in which he tested the view and comfortability of every seat in the theatre (and when I say every seat, I mean every seat… not just the ones in the auditorium…).

Known for his blend of dry stand-up comedy and surreal, mind-blowing magic, this will be Willman’s first magic special on Netflix but not his first live recording in front of an audience for TV. His debut comedy magic special was Sleight of Mouth with Justin Willman for Comedy Central back in 2015.

The key difference here is that this upcoming special is a live taping, similar to how stand-ups tape their live comedy specials. While these sorts of live comedy tapings are commonplace, they are not something we necessarily associate with magicians (beyond Derren Brown).

Netflix has worked hard to call itself the home of live comedy and has also become Justin Willman’s unofficial home away from home.

If you haven’t seen Magic for Humans before, like many TV magic shows since David Blaine popularised the street magic style, this show has a reality TV feel to it. It uses genuine spectators but has a nod towards sketch comedy with some adult themes. Imagine if Ali G or Nathan For You did magic; that’s essentially Magic for Humans.

The show was such a hit that it spawned three series from 2018 to 2020.

Moments from Magic for Humans, unsurprisingly, have gone viral. Perhaps the most popular clip is an extravagant social experiment to convince a regular guy that he had gone invisible. If you haven’t seen it, go look it up; it’s hilarious.

More recently, Willman, alongside a crew of top-notch magicians, released a new show to pull off ‘elaborate pranks on unsuspecting targets to help real people get payback.’

That show was aptly titled ‘The Magic Prank Show with Justin Willman' and also had many viral moments like Magic for Humans, with one particular showing a poor guy subjected to what he believes to be an AI Robot (Willman himself) revealing details about the man that shouldn’t be public knowledge. As you can imagine, it’s both creepy and funny in equal measure.

Willman also performed his aforementioned Magic For Humans In Person show as part of the Netflix Is A Joke Fest lineup earlier this year. The festival is where some of the best names in stand-up and sketch comedy on Netflix perform live. It’s the biggest comedy festival in North America, so Justin Willman’s inclusion is a pretty big deal.

Clearly, Willman and Netflix have got a good thing going on, and the next time we can expect to see the main man himself grace our screens will be when the taping of his live show is released. Whenever that will be exactly is yet to be revealed. (I mean, come on, they haven’t even filmed the thing yet! Give the guy a break!)

The only way you can see precisely what’s going to happen in that show is by heading to one (or both) of the recordings. This is good news… if you’ve already bought tickets. If you haven’t got them already, good luck trying to get in.

At the time of writing this article, the show on the 22nd is completely sold out, with a handful being resold from the 21st. That isn’t to say some more won’t go on resale in the run-up to filming. So, if you’re in the area, keep an eye out if any secondhand tickets get released directly from his site, of course.

And if you weren’t lucky enough to nab yourself some tickets to the taping, worry not! Willman recently announced the presale had gone live for the extension of the Illusionati tour, with more cities across the states from January to May in 2025.

If I were to make an educated guess, I don’t think we will be seeing the release of this special until the Illusionati tour is over. Not only do you have to consider that the recordings have to be edited down into one, nice, neat package for the viewers at home, but also it would be a strange idea to expose any of the material to a wider audience before people get to see the last few remaining dates of the tour.

Hopefully, beyond this special, we can be treated to more series of Magic for Humans, or the Magic Prank Show, or perhaps a totally new venture for this wildly creative magician.

And maybe, just maybe, Justin Willman might consider heading across the pond and doing a show in the UK.

Until then, I can’t wait to see this special when it finally comes out.