LogFAQs > #969899770

I just finished the first episode and I have several problems.

To start off, let's talk about the worst part. Willow himself is not in the first episode until the last two or three minutes. He's not even name-dropped until more than halfway through.

Our main cast is instead made up of the kids of Madmartigan and Sorsha, and their young friends. It feels like a CW cast and they have the writing to match. Basically the entire first episode consists of them lamenting their various and overdone relationship woes: M&S's daughter, Kit, doesn't want to marry a prince because she doesn't even know him. The prince, Graydon, is boring and doesn't seem to be interested in doing anything at all. Kit's best friend, Jade, is leaving to be trained as a knight but is being not-at-all subtly shown to be in love with Kit. M&S's son, Airk (who I thought was just named "Eric", because that's how everybody pronounces it in the show), is an overly-romantic sex maniac secretly dating a kitchen girl. The kitchen girl is scrappy, independent, and capable, and is also revealed to actually be Elora (the baby from the movie).

I couldn't even really do my usual thing and come up with joke names to refer to these characters are because they're all so copy/paste from literally any young adult fantasy series you've ever seen or read.

Oh and Madmartigan isn't in the series either. Apparently he's not even getting a cameo.

The concept behind the series is that after the events of the movie, despite Bavmorda being killed and the realm being saved, there's immediately a new prophecy that requires them to hide Elora's identity because another BBEG wants to use her to gain power. Or kill her. Or something. I literally don't know.

About halfway through the series the castle is attacked by four henchman villains who wreck everybody's shit and kidnap Airk/Eric. These villains include Big Angry Guy With Head In A Cage, Girl Who Transforms Into A Giant Bird, Blind Guy With Staff Who Teleports, and Man In Metal Mask With Two Big Whips. This scene plays out pretty much like any group fight scene in the MCU and the villains honestly look like rejects from Thanos' army.

After this attack/kidnapping, the rest of the cast announce that they're going to go rescue Airk/Eric, and Sorsha's just like "okay whatever". The only two adults she sends along with them are a guy she's been keeping the dungeon for years, and an old soldier who gets killed by an arrow to the torso about ten minutes into the journey after telling the kids "you have to be vigilant at all times or you won't survive", because irony is the crutch of a hack writer.

But the most egregious thing to me came during the credits. These are literally MCU credits. You get sketch art of the main cast being drawn on screen, while they choose not to play a thematically fitting song from the series itself, but instead... well...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZNDRSQ9YjU

...that. Exactly the kind of thing I hear in my head when I think about a high fantasy series.

Just... holy fucking shit. What a train wreck of a show.

I'm still going to keep watching out of the vain hope that now that Warwick Davis has shown his face, it might have a chance of improving. But after this first episode I'm not exactly confident in that at all.