[9.2/10] There are parts of Barbie that aren’t for me. I am a guy. A “Ken” to use the film’s own lingo. I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman. I don't know what it’s like to face those challenges myself. So much of the film is about that experience, both the idealized version that Barbieland represents, and the sometimes harsh reality of it our unwitting doll protagonist crashes into in the real world. I can appreciate some of those things secondhand, and even be compelled by them, but they’re not going to resonate with me the same way they will for someone who’s been through it.
There are parts of Barbie that are very much for me as a guy. As someone whose high school Xanga page used to autoplay “Push” by Matchbox 20, some of the comedic tweaks of masculinity hit a little too close to home. I’ve waxed rhapsodic about The Godfather ad nauseam. I’ve played music “at” girls I liked. And more seriously, in my wayward youth, I treated romantic partners like a solution to my problems rather than ends unto themselves. The film’s playful jabs, and its more serious critiques, are on point, and will resonate even if you’re the target of them.
There are parts of Barbie that are for me as someone who simply appreciates when a film has a distinctive look and feel all its own. Director/co-writer/three-for-three visionary Greta Gerwig and her collaborators construct an incredible world for their title character. Translating a doll’s playspace for the big screen could easily go terribly awry. But their realization of Barbieland is stunning in how vibrant and creative it feels. Everything from the layout of Barbie’s neighborhood, to the movements of the characters, to the texture of the ground give this unique realm a tremendous sense of place. The details big and small are a brilliant example of how to blend the realism of modern film with the bizarre but endearing unreality of such a specific setting.
There are parts of Barbie that are for me as a lover of out there, postmodern camp. WIth that locale comes the wild cosmology of the film: a neat mishmash of a land of imagination crashing into the problems of modern life, of spritely cartoon characters finding unexpected cracks in their paradise, of goofy figures playing their roles to the hilt without a hint of irony, and of a wide-ranging satire that spoofs the gendered elements of society and the peculiar quirks of a toy box world at the same time. Bright colors, wild schemes, beachside battles, song-and-dance numbers, wide-eyed characters, undeniable weirdos, all wrapped in a candy-coated shell. If Barbie hadn't already dominated the box office, it would be destined to be a cult classic.
And as that box office take suggests, here are parts of Barbie that are for anyone. I’d argue they’re the most important parts. I may not know what it’s like to be a woman. But I know what it’s like to grow up. Beyond the gender critiques that swirl around the film, this is, first and foremost, a story about steadily realizing that the world is bigger, more challenging, and more complicated than the ones we perceived and imagined as children.
Through a nigh-magical bond with the young woman who played with her, our protagonist, Stereotypical Barbie, starts to think about death. She starts to feel existential dread. She deals with stress and fear and unease and even (gasp) cellulite. The most piercing aspect of Gerwig’s third feature is how it uses the doll’s awakening conceit to analogize both the humbling, terrifying broadening of perspective we get as we grow up, and the generational motion sickness we get from looking back at what enchanted us, what inspired us, when we were younger.
In that, Barbie is insightful. It is hilarious. It is delightful. It is inventive as all hell. And it is deeply profound.
What’s doubly impressive about all this is that the call is coming from inside the house. If Gerwig, for example, made a thinly-veiled “Malibu Stacy” movie, we’d praise it as subversive. Somehow, though, this is an official branded release that deconstructs and reconstructs the gender politics that Barbie reinforced and then evolved with, that satirizes the Mattel Corporation itself (headed here by one of Will Ferrell’s trademark manchildren characters), takes square aim at the patriarchy, and uses the existence of genitalia to symbolize self-actualization. To convince the powers that be to cosign such a transgressive take on a beloved icon is an achievement beyond the art itself.
How could the suits say no to talent like that though. With her Oscar-nominated pedigree, Gerwig brings the same reimagining virtuosity and millennial vanguard she showed off in Little Women. Margot Robbie simply is Barbie, embodying the blithely joyous icon, and then nailing the subtle and shattering changes that came as she slowly feels the weight of the world beyond her shores. Ryan Gosling nearly steals the show with his committedly weird, blithely blinkered, and yet somehow pathos-ridden take on Ken. Comedy vets like Kate McKinnon and Michael Cera bring wry laughs in perfect casting as “Weird Barbie” and just plain “Alan” respectively. And the diversity of the denizens in Barbie’s world is plus that aids in the sense that damn near everyone here is perfectly cast, no matter how big or small the role.
Despite its incredible successes, the film is not perfect. In places, it feels unfocused. Barbie strives to cover a lot of thematic ground in less than two hours. As a result, even though it remains stellar on a scene-to-scene basis, sometimes it comes off disjointed as a whole. While many of its criticisms are right on target, some feel like the male equivalent of “bitches be shoppin’”-style observations. That sense of caricature in some sequences fits the heightened tone of the film, but can seem comparatively shallow to the movie’s more incisive critiques and observations. Late in the film, those critiques and observations start arriving in what amounts to a few blunt spoken essays, rather than arising organically from the situation.
And yet, this is a film of great nuance. Despite the sense of Ken as a blithe, patriarchy promoting dope, the script has genuine sympathy for him, and even uses him to explore gendered marginalization in the context of Barbieland. It plays in the space of motherhood, examining the challenges and expectations that can drive parents and children apart but also the beauty and understanding that brings them back together. It manages to encompass nearly every part of the conversation around Barbie, while also internalizing them to one person’s journey of self-discovering in a way that feels surprisingly natural.
That comes from the sheer boldness and ambition of the story. A doll “malfunctioning” from her owner’s existential quandaries, barging into the real world and coming back shaken by it, with layers of meta commentary and Charlie Kaufman-esque recursive self-reflection, is a hell of a thing to try, let alone pull off with flying (mostly pink) colors the way Gerwig does.
What holds it all together is the way this story comes down to Barbie herself as a protagonist. After psychological tugs and troubles that are a metaphor for the growing, scary understanding we all develop over time, Barbie breaks down. She’s ready to give up in the face of it. She’s lifted up by someone who gives voice to the challenges and contradictions, but in the end, after this enlightenment, isn’t sure what she wants.
The conceit of making her creator a godlike figure, there to bless her and open doors for her, is one of the film’s canniest choices. In Rhea Perlman’s pitch perfect rendition of Barbie inventor Ruth Handler, Barbie has a mother, one who symbolizes the goal not just of feminism, but for all parents -- to try to make the lives of their children a little safer, a little kinder, a little better than theirs were.
So Ruth gives her child the gift of vision, a chance to see and feel the breadth of experiences that await her if she leaves the safety of Barbieland and a safe childhood view of the world, and trades it for the world of adulthood, with all of its terrors and pitfalls, but also a waterfall of joys, fellowship, and wonders. That closing sequence, set to Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?”, is the bravura crescendo of the film that surprised and moved me.
It is a cinematic showpiece to capture, well, life, and beyond that, the sublime, terrifying choice to embrace that complex array of experiences, good and bad, that await you. To accept that, to countenance the overwhelming scope of existence, knowing that it will overtake you and that it will end, is an act of profound courage, and a gobsmacking thing to successfully convey on the silver screen.
No matter who you are, you feel that plight. You feel that awe. You feel the spiritual catharsis of a doll who knowingly becomes a person, and scarier yet, a grown-up, with all that comes with both. You feel the hardship and hope of choosing to live in a messy and imperfect world and to be messy and imperfect. And that part of Barbie is for everyone.
[8.4/10] When I realized we were getting an anthology-style episode centered on Hooty, I assumed this was going to be a comic relief, assorted hijinks outing for the show. And I would have been good with that! The King story, which falls the most into that framework, was delightful. Instead, this is one of the most powerful episodes of the show, and it caught me completely off guard.
As I mentioned, King's story is probably the lightest. Hooty trying to help him by uncovering what type of demon he is has all sorts of comic potential. The taxonomy of bugs/bipeds/beasts creates a solid framework for the silly “tests” that Hooty runs on King. And the comic exchanges that ensue between them are quite funny (let’s not talk about the cocoon).
But naturally, it lands someplace more profound. I honestly love that Hooty cheerfully tells King that he still doesn’t know what kind of demon King is, but that he’s still glad that King is who he is. But I also like how the show leans into King's distress at thinking he would have at least one answer to his identity and being thwarted even there. It's a familiar trope, but I still love that it’s bringing out that emotion (in the throes of demon puberty, naturally) that allows King to discover that he has a special vocal ability, showing that Hooty did do some good.
(That said, I find the reveal of King's obvious relative coming to give him a letter and Hooty just swallowing it utterly maddening. I know it’s a way to prolong the story until when the show’s ready to unbox it, but still! C’mon! What a tease!)
Eda’s story is my absolute favorite though, and one of my favorite things from the show writ large. The scenes and memories in her dream help us to better understand her psyche and sympathize with what she went through to become the superlative witch we know and love. The fact that she hurt her father in one of her transformations helps establish why she felt she had to stay away from the people she cared about and not let anyone get too close. And with the flashback to her breakup with Raine, we see how her embarrassment and insecurity about it prevents her from actually opening up, forming new bonds, or asking for help. It’s incredibly sad to see these traumatic moments in Eda’s life, that still cause her pain today, and they help illustrate what she's grappling with.
I love where the show ends up with it all though. The imagery of her on the beach, tethered to the owl who’s trying to get away just as much, is a powerful, impressionistic reputation of her challenges. (As Disney properties go, it made me think of Kingdom Hearts.) I adore her epiphany and urge to try to live with the owl, commune with it, rather than fight each other. The owl calming down and even curling up in her lap is a great rendition of that concept, and the fact that once she makes peace with it, it gives her a new powerful “harpee” form is a neat way to pay that off practically.
I’d never really thought about the metaphor behind Eda’s curse. I’d kind of taken it to be a chronic disease or something along those lines. But in this episode, it feels like a metaphor for mental illness or other emotional disturbances. The idea of worrying that you’re going to lose control of yourself and hurt someone, the fear of letting someone get close lest they get to know that side of you, the reluctance to ask for help, all align neatly and resonantly with mental health struggles. So that makes the notion of making peace with those parts of ourselves rather than fighting against them all the more powerful. Whatever the analogy (and this one doesn’t map perfectly onto Eda’s circumstances), the way the realization feeds into Eda’s breakthrough is wonderful.
Luz’s story leans back into the comic hin=jinks side of things, but also pays off the long-simmering attraction between her and Amity. While I love Hooty’s dorky attempts to set the mood for love (him as a paddleboat is particularly delightful), the shtick with Luz trying to prevent Amity from seeing it gets a bit over-the-top sitcom-y for my tastes. Again, the show leans hard into the teenage embarrassment angle, and loses some of the truth of their otherwise adorable crushes on one another.
At the same tie, there’s the kernel of something really genuine at the heart of this one. However high volume the illustration, it’s relatable for two people to like one another, but be uncertain about making the first move, or if the other person will think they’re cool enough, and wanting the big steps in your relationship to be perfect for the sake of the person you’re wooing. The pair’s romance is very sweet, and their teenage nervousness about it very relatable, so that helps cover for any broadness in the material.
And they pull the trigger on it! Seeing them finally ask each other out is very wholesome, and the support Luz gets from her adoptive family makes it all the sweeter.
I also love how it makes everything work within the confines of the frame story. Hooty feels unimportant and gets some encouragement from Lilith that he’s an essential part of the household. (I mean, he is the household.) So him trying to help his family members with their problems, thinking he made a hash of things, only to see that his meddling got them all where they needed to be is a really nice note to play for the show’s resident punching bag.
Overall, this is one of my favorite episodes of the show to date, one that serves all of the main characters well with a unique format and big boost for Hooty to boot!
[8.5/10] Poor Luz. From the minute she’s desperate for a distraction to take her mind off the phone reminder, you know whatever eating at her is going to be emotionally harrowing. And it was.
One of my favorite things about season 2 is that it engages with the fact that Luz is away from her mother and her life in the human world. Season 1 is a blast, but in the back of my mind, I often found myself wondering how, if ever, the show would pay the bill of having run away to a place where she faces down supernatural danger on an (at least) weekly basis.
Luz’s visit home answered that question to some degree. But her destroying the portal home to protect her mom, while also separating Luz from her, made for a more interesting emotional strain for our protagonist. Now home isn’t the thing she’s running away from; it’s the thing that’s out of reach, and with it, so is her mother.
That’s hard enough in a season where Luz’s main quest is opening another portal home. But I love how this episode leans into the small, down-to-earth things that Luz is missing from being in the Boiling Isles. After a few oblique hints, the show confirms that Luz’s father passed away when she was young. To miss her and Camila’s ritual, to gather flowers for one another, as he once did, to visit his grave and mourn this important member of their family together, is a sacred thing. To miss that, to be reminded not only of a painful thing like the loss of a parent, but to be unable to comfort someone you love going through the same thing, or be comforted by them, is devastating. No wonder Luz wants to do anything but think about it.
I love that element of this one too. Sometimes, unavoidable, unfixable things take up residence in our brains. It could be grief, or worry, or garden variety pain. Whatever the form, it cannot always be conquered. Sometimes all you can do is try to focus on something else so that this complicated thought or feeling doesn’t weigh you down too badly.
So it’s relatable when Luz jumps at the chance to help Amity with a straightforward problem that promises to distract them all day. I like that Luz genuinely errs here, and not in a take-backsies sort of way. She coaches up Amity and cheers her own in a Witches’ Duel rumble modeled after professional wrestling. She enters the tournament herself once the competition begins and she realizes that simply staying in Amity’s corner wouldn’t keep her occupied enough. She babbles while Amity and her sister need to focus to complete a healing spell between rounds. And in her anxiousness to do something, anything besides think about what’s bothering her, she messes with Amity’s abomination minder and inadvertently alerts Amity’s father that she’s disobeying his wishes.
The need to stay in constant motion, remain totally occupied lest the bad thoughts creep in, makes Luz sympathetic. But at the end of the day, she also lets her problems hurt Amity, and she even lies about it. The stakes aren’t tremendous, but it’s enough of a betrayal to have meaning. And it’s cathartic when Luz admits what she’s going through and explains what drove her to these mistakes to a girlfriend who is stung, but who still cares.
Granted, Amity has her own struggles here. Luz’s story alone would be enough to bump this one up to “great” territory. The Owl House does its audience one better, though, with an episode that explores Amity’s relationship with her dad. The idea that Amity wanted to join this rumble in the first place to follow in her dad’s footsteps is endearing. But it also comes from a place of estrangement. Since he drifted away into his work and her mom’s pan, Alador’s been distant with his children. This is partly an act of rebellion from Amity, choosing to find her own way rather than try out for the Emperor’s Coven like her mother wants. But it’s also partly an effort to understand her dad a little better by doing what he did, since he’s so closed off.
So I love Amity sticking up for herself. I love the shared strength the father and daughter demonstrate when they’re working together rather than at cross purposes. I love Amity continuing the arc she began last season, forging her own path and her own life distinct from her parents’ expectations.
But I also like that she calls her father out for this stuff. She’s frank with him about feeling that distance, feeling like he doesn’t understand her or even know her, feeling like he let her Mom dictate her life and just went along with it. Alador’s admission that she’s right and commitment to do better earns a handshake, not a hug, which recognizes the complexity of a problem that can’t be solved with a single conversation or gesture. There’s truth in that, and it laces Amity’s big triumph of self-actualization with some lingering family problems that haven't been resolved yet.
Interestingly enough, she’s not the only Blight offspring who finds their way in this episode. While Em is in Amity’s corner for most of the festivities, Ed feels out of place and a little useless. His magic skills don’t seem to fit well with anything, and he worries that he’s bad at the lot of it.
Shock of shocks, his problem ends up dovetailing with King and Eda’s efforts to make a blabber potion that forces rumble champion Warden Wrath to spill the beans on Belos’ plans. It ends up being a good story of Edric finding his tribe. He too doesn’t seem to fit in perfectly with the Blight family’s rigorous standards. And when he tweaks the potion, leading to Wrath turning into an unstoppable beast, he worries it will undo the good work and esteem he earned helping Eda and King find the creature ingredients for their brew.
But Eda, ever the fan of coloring outside the lines, pats him on the back instead for mixing magicks and improvising. It’s a nice sign of Ed’s strengths that connects to one of The Owl House’s key themes -- the way supposed misfits have value even if they don’t fit into traditional structures. Seeing Edric praised for his ingenuity even when things go wrong, and made a member of the Bad Girl Coven, is a surprisingly heartening part of what I assumed would be a comic relief storyline.
There’s not many laughs to be had when Luz confesses what’s been bothering her to Amity. There’s a realness to this moment, in the way a young adult wants to seem like they’re unbothered, like they’re not making a big deal out of something, when it’s obviously a very big deal, that I adore. Luz’s talk about the difficulty of being away from her mom on such an important day is heartbreaking.
But talking about it with someone she loves also gives her a comfort that simply trying to run away from the thoughts can’t. Amity offers solace, in the way a good partner would. But she also finds a way to recreate the ritual, just a little, in the way the Boiling Isles allows for. It’s something different, but something hopeful. And the imagery of the two sitting under falling cherry blossoms, sending a bouquet of flowers into the sky with their shared magic, while Camila sets a bloom out for daughter as well, is one of the most beautiful bits of imagery in the whole show. It adds a lyricism to this emotional breakthrough, the hardship of being away, but the peace that comes with support and action instead of distraction and evasion.
The end result is one of my favorite episodes of the series to date. By digging deep into the toughest part of Luz’s separation, The Owl House vindicates what she’s missing by being away, but also the community and support she’s found to help comfort her here.
[9.3/10] For a character whose presence I was a little resistant to at first, I’m amazed at how much I feel for Hunter here. The show has done work nudging him further and further away from his “uncle’s” programming. This is the final straw, the last step that makes him understand why everything about Belos is toxic, and it nearly breaks him.
Why wouldn’t it? I think Eda puts it best in the early part of the episode. People don’t want to hear that everything they’ve founded their lives upon is wrong. It is an unmooring thought to immerse yourself in, whether it’s learning that the societal beliefs your community rests upon are mercenary and wrong, or learning that your personal connection to someone is founded on a lie. Hunter doesn’t want to believe these things about Belos any more than the citizens of the Boiling Isles do. So when he can deny the truth no longer, when confronted with the horrible reality of who his uncle is and who he is, he is shattered by it.
There is so much pathos in that. And as with so much of the show’s subtext, it speaks to real life young adults breaking free from the systems they were brought up in, and learning that the people who raised and mentored them are not the good-natured souls they thought. That gives it extra power.
But for Hunter to figure that out, he and Luz have to discover the truth via entering the Emperor’s mind. I love the setup. Willow’s mindscape was one of my favorite episodes of season 1, so returning to that conceit, and melding it with the series’ myth arc, makes for a strong premise. The fact that Luz and Hunter end up there together, but accidentally, with no way out creates stakes. And the connections to Raine’s resistance and Eda’s efforts to protect her ward without magic all make this one a keeper.
It also feels like the right time to finally get Belos’ backstory in grand detail. It’s a strong choice to make him a garden variety charlatan, moving from town to town with his tricks and scary stories to try to fool the local populace. The idea that the grand leader of the coven system is all colored balls of light, fantastical claims about being able to speak with the Titan, and garden variety fireworks, speaks to the bunk that underlies his order.
What stands out most, though, is the fear. It’s not enough to promise that the Titan is displeased. It’s not enough to claim that the diversity of magic use is morally wrong somehow. He needs a mysterious Other to unite the people against. So he uses wild magic as his scapegoat, setting fires, burning down homes, and blaming it on Wild Witches who dare to mix magicks. That’s what’s so striking about his rise. Anyone can spin pie-in-the-sky falsehoods. What gets Belos his following is showmanship, certainly, but also that sense of terror, that someone and something dark and wrong is coming to get you, and only he has the answers to stop it. Like so many things on the show, it resonates because it’s true to life for how genuine fascist strongmen operate.
Hunter gradually comes to realize that. One of the touches I appreciate most is how he keeps trying to rationalize what he sees in the Emperor’s mind. He speaks of this place as sacred. He assumes the little impish version of Belos who appears to be leading them to safety represents his pure intentions. He justifies a little misleading theatricality in the name of leading the masses to the right path.
Until the Emperor turns on him too. How dispiriting must it be to defend someone all your life, to devote yourself to their service, only to discover that they never really loved you and view you as disposable. That’s the dagger in the heart for Hunter, the personal side of his uncle’s malfeasance, that upends his life and the life he thought he knew in ways that are understandably impossible to reckon with. There’s plenty of interesting hints at play, from the appearance of similar looking/sounding assistants in Belos’ past, and statements that they all betray him eventually. But the emotional thrust of this one is Belos talking about how easily manipulated his nephew is, and how easily replaced.
(Andrew’s crazy theory: My bet is that Hunter is some kind of magical clone of Philip Wittebane’s brother. In Luz’s spectral visit to the human world, the conspiracy nut mentioned town lore that two brothers were tempted by a witch into the humana world. My bet is that Philip tried to recreate his brother in some form (hence the “nephew” terminology) and the physical recreation of a dead person is why Hunter’s a “grim walker.” The theory would also account for Belos’ “You looked the most like him” comment.)
I appreciate how steadfast and compassionate Luz is through all of this. She never stops trying to show him the truth about Belos. She reads all of the events they witness fairly, even though she’s already predisposed toward believing that Belos is evil. But she also tells Hunter that he doesn't have to go back, that he can stay with them, that there’s another way. The balance of frankness and comfort helps mark Luz as a good person, never wavering, but showing empathy to Hunter at the same time.
I’ll admit, the part of this that doesn’t land with full force to me here is Belos revealing to Luz that he is, in fact, Philip Wittebanae. It’s anticlimactic because the show has hinted strongly in that direction for episodes and episodes now, so it’s not much of a shock to the audience.
Theoretically, it could still make an impact given the effect it has on Luz. But she seemed interested in Wittebane’s diary for practical purposes, not an emotional connection to its author, so no big deal there. She already knew Philip was a bad guy from her time travel escapade, sso that’s no big surprise either. And while Wittebane turning out to be Belos’ nom de guerre from after “Philip” was run out of too many towns is a neat twist, it doesn’t change much.
The most you can say is that it’s a strike against Luz’s ability to return to the human world. If Philip is Belos, and he hasn't been able to make the portal work in all this time with all his sources, then it's right for Luz to be discouraged about her prospects for achieving the same thing. But we don’t really get much of a sense of that in the text, just her being gobsmacked by who he is.
That notwithstanding, I still love all the turns and reveals in this one. For one thing, I’m over the moon for the way the episode plays with your expectations for the personifications inside Belos’ mind. The malevolent-looking representation of the Emperor is legitimately terrifying. Big kudos to the designers and animators, who manage to give him an Eldritch Abomination feel that evolves and becomes more grotesque and frightening with each appearance.
It leads to the grand reveal that this scary-looking creature is not Belos’ darkside, and the spritely boy who leads them about is not a good part of him that’s been lost. Instead, it’s the little cherub who represents Belos’ real self, only taking that form to manipulate our heroes and get them right where he wants them. And the ghastly creature turns out to be the collected souls of the palismans he’s imbibed to stay alive, a horrifying concept made all the more gut wrenching when he traps and eliminates them.
I’m also intrigued by the presence of The Collector, another playful spirit who talks to Belos in private moments and seems to have a form and presence beyond what we’ve seen before. (Gravity Falls fans like me cannot help but see parallels to Bill Cipher.) The idea that Phlip found the partner he was looking for all those years ago, and is still collaborating with them, adds a new dimension to his plans. So does the reveal that The Collector is not a demon as we know them, but seems more like a trickster god, rhyme-inclined and childish in its frolics and protestations. More to come, I can only assume.
Otherwise, there’s some other nice details throughout. The reveal that Belos is a witch hunter is no great shakes since the clues have been there for a while, but him meaning to eliminate all witches does step things up a bit. The twist that he used glyph magic in the form of the coven brands to try to kill witches is an interesting spin on something the audience already knows. And I love the tough choice of Eda to use the last of the Titan’s blood to bring Luz back from the mindscape lest she not be around or alive enough to make it back to the human world. This one is filled to the brim with great lore, great character moments, and great storytelling bits that power it from start to finish.
Overall, what I’ll remember about this one is threefold: that devotion Eda shows to Luz in bringing her back, the lore drops that change the game for Belos’ backstory and purpose, and most of all, the gutting epiphany for Hunter that everything he’d anchored his life to is a lie. Poor boy.
[8.1/10] I owe The Owl House an apology. When Luz discovered that Emperor Belos was Philip Wittebane in “Hollow Mind”, I found it anticlimactic. More than that, I didn’t get why Luz took it as such a devastating revelation.
“Thanks to Them” provides a satisfying answer: because she helped Philip find The Collector, because she blames herself for setting into motion all that he’s done since, and because she’s worried her friends will hate her for the part she played in the difficulties that have steadily exploded since.
It’s her big struggle in this season premiere. Belos may have been thwarted, but things seemed potentially dire in the Boiling Isles when they last left, the witchlings are stranded here, and all of Luz’s efforts to find a way back for them have been for naught. It’s understandable that she’d be down on herself, worry that she’s made her friends’ lives worse through her mistakes and association with them. The teenage experience is one of heightened emotions and stepping into the big choices of adulthood for the first time. Luz is sympathetic in her concern that she’s screwed everything up, and relatable in her worry that it’ll make everyone reject her.
This is The Owl House, a warm supportive show, so savvy fans know things are, in all likelihood, headed for acceptance and affirmation rather than guilt and blame. (See also: the endearing part of the “What I did on my summer vacation” montage where Luz comes out as bi to her accepting and supportive mom.) But it’s still a good way to root the epic threats and challenging predicaments of the show’s major arc coming to fruition in something personal and understandable, one of the show’s strengths. It gives the wide-ranging events covered of the show’s new format an emotional throughline that helps the special feel unified.
Honestly, how well The Owl House pulls that format change off may be the most impressive part of an all-around outstanding episode. “Thanks to Them” has to tell a new story in an almost entirely new setting (something the show struggled with in “Yesterday’s Lie”, cross-pollinate a number of characters who’ve barely bumped into one another before, establish the Hexside crew in their new digs, cover the passage of time, resolve Luz and her mother’s reunion, and build toward the series’ endgame with only three installments’ worth of real estate left.
That it could succeed at all with so much ground to cover would be commendable. That it does this all so well, without missing a beat, is a hell of an achievement.
It succeeds in big ways. One of the big boons of the show is that despite the big threats, it’s a cozy show with characters you want to spend time with. “Thanks to Them” doesn’t skimp on the fact that Willow, Gus, and Amity miss their parents, in the same way that Luz missed her mom on the other side of the portal. But it also seems like a blast to basically have a kid clubhouse for several months, with your best friends all living under one roof. The little bits of Willow’s scrapbook, the montage of the crew thinning and working together, the glimpses we get of hijinks make it feel like one big sleepover you’d love to have gotten to join in when you were a kid.
If I had a complaint about season 2, it’s that Gus and Willow’s stories got a little downplayed in favor of other characters, (and to a lesser extent Amity’s stories as well), but I like the collective story they get here. On the one hand, they’re having a blast. On the other, they’re plainly more than a little homesick. On a third (magical demon hand), they’re good kids who are doing their best to adjust and repay Camila’s kindness and cheer up Luz.
One of my favorite parts of this one is the magical shoe being on the other foot here. It’s a shame that The Owl House’s third season is limited to a few specials, because I'd love to see more episodes centered on the witchlings getting used to the peculiarities of the human realm the way Luz did the Boiling Isles. There’s a lot of fun to be had, and even some sweet moments like Luz showing Amity some non-boiling rain. The fact that they have to navigate it in order to solve the rebus puzzle they find beneath the floorboards of the abandoned house serves the humor (from them not fitting in at various human spaces), plot (decoding the puzzle to help locate fuel for another portal), and character (them working together in the hopes of boosting Luz’s spirits.)
There’s some good lore additions going on as well. Masha, the Halloween tour guide and Jacob’s replacement at the historical society all but confirms that Hunter is a clone of Philip Wittebane’s brother Caleb. There’s also strong hints that Belos’ beef with witches stems from the fact that Caleb left him after falling in love with one, which is an interesting angle that would tie into the LGBTQ themes of the series. And, naturally, the reveal that magic comes from the Titan itself, such that mere proximity to TItan’s blood could be enough to get Luz’s powers to work in the human worlds is a hell of a twist.
Those twists have big import for Hunter, of course. As an inveterate Trekkie, I love that he gets obsessed with the “Cosmic Frontier” series (and seems to have admiration for an ersatz Ensign Rutherford). But on a broader level, I like the idea that he loses himself int his world and even cosplays as a way of trying on a different self. More than any of the others, he feels at home here. As he admits to Gus, when eh was in the EMperor’s Coven, he knew who he was and what was expected of him. Now he’s on his own, with the joy and terror of dictating his own destiny and purpose. The idea that ti’s a safe way to try out his true self, with bumpers big enough to keep him safe, speaks to the escape and representation I suspect many viewers feel for The Owl House itself.
To the point, I love how supportive Luz is when she realizes that Hunter literally and figuratively feels more comfortable behind a mask, and gives him one to put him at ease. And there may be no more touching moment in the show than Luz telling Hunter he’s family now, the kind of acceptance and kindness he never got from his biological family, and the poor young man breaking down in tears from the force of the moment.
But as much as I adore Hunter’s progression, I think my favorite part of this one is the exploration we get of Camila. Maybe it’s because I’m a lot closer to her age than Luz’s at this stage of my life, but it’s honestly lovely to get to see things from the mom’s perspective with complexity and empathy.
In particular, I love the choice to account for why supportive, accepting Camila would choose to send her daughter to the human equivalent of a conformatorium camp. Camila’s nightmare about it is heartbreaking. You can see her lauding her daughter’s offbeat creativity, defending her against tsk-tsking parents, and earnestly trying to do what’s best for her little girl.
But you can also see the powers of intolerance and conformity box her in too. You can see the legitimate suggestion from the outside that some of Luz’s “acting out” could be a product of grief over losing her father. You can see Camila trying to keep a stable school environment for her daughter. Most of all, you can see Camila recalling her own bullying as a child (see also: her nervous response to Hunter finding the ostensibly hidden Cosmic Frontier materials), and not wanting her daughter to suffer the same thing.
Seen through that lens, the “reality check” camp is not the oblivious act of a parent who doesn’t get their kid, but instead a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency measure by a loving parent, worn down by the same traditional forces Luz is resisting, trying to protect her child from the worst.
It’s easy for me to sympathize as someone who cares deeply about a bevy of lovable, off-beat youngins’ who come from nerdy stock, since I too worry about the challenges they’ll face in a world that tends to punish, rather than celebrate, difference. And it’s also easy for me to sympathize with Luz, since I too was an offbeat kid whose oddball interests and occasional (read: frequent) lack of tact made it tough to make friends or fit in. This is a familiar story, in a good way, which makes it resonant across the generational divide.
Which is why I like how the climax of this one brings all these threads together to bridge that gap. The return of Belos is terrifying. It’s terrifying because the simple fact of him surviving and making it to the human world is concerning in and of itself. It’s terrifying because he possesses Hunter, once again corrupting this kind soul. And at a base level, it’s terrifying because he returns to his palisman-strocity form, does fearsome battle with our heroes when they’re caught off guard, and most harrowingly of all, mortally wounds Flapjack.
I’m legitimately pretty impressed that a Disney show went there, even if Flapjack’s wounding and death is done in tasteful, impressionsitic terms. It makes sense that Belos would crack into one more palisman. But it feels tragic because Flapjack was this angel on Hunter’s shoulder, nudging him gently toward a better path. It was a pure force for good, one who stayed persistent in its efforts to help when it would have been all too easy to just fly away. Its sacrifice, its willingness to give its life so that Hunter can regain hsi, is an ultimate act of devotion, one made all the more heartening, and all the more heart-rending, by the choices that led Flapjack to that point.
Not for nothing, the battle where Flapjack perishes is another superlative outing visually for the show. The animators always bring their A-game to these big showdowns, and this is no exception. The fluidity of the magical chaos, the fight for the vial of titan’s blood, and the sense of genuine peril is all there in the imagery at play.
But so is the storytelling. Things come to a head when Luz’s role in Philip’s rise comes out in the open. Instead of the judgment and excommunication she expects from her friends, she gets absolution and encouragement. I love the theme expressed in that -- that it is no sin to make an honest mistake, and that it’s a sign of courage and character to keep standing up for what’s right despite that.
There’s a lot of adolescents who need to hear that. It’s easy to beat yourself up for missteps, especially when you're young and everything feels like the end of the world. The idea that it’s okay to mess up, that you can still learn from your mistake, and you don’t have to bear it for the rest of forever, is wholesome and uplifting. And the understanding Luz gets from her support system that Belos’ whole deal is tricking people, and the confirmation that they still love her for who she is, remains heartening.
Especially when it comes from her mom. Camila gets her own bit of redemption here. Let’s be real, it’s nuts that after witnessing a demon monster pop up and threaten the children in her care, Camila’s response is, “Time to take them back to a place where they’ll face many more of them!”
But granting the premise of the show, and understanding that it probably wasn’t going to end in the human realm, it’s just as rousing to see Camila not only support Luz returning to the demon realm, but come join her. It is, in a roundabout way, an apology for trying to send her to the “reality check” camp in the first place, an affirmation of the helpful experiences her daughter had on the other side of the portal, and a crucial recognition that, despite Luz’s sad diary entries, there’s never been anything wrong with who she is.
It’s a lot to tackle in forty-five minutes. And I do still wish we got a full season to explore these ideas in more depth. But damn if The Owl House doesn’t make it look seamless, and feel moving, in the process.
[8.0/10] This was a very well-written episode! Everything is nicely set up, both emotionally and plot-wise. The twists and turns are well earned. Thecomedy is on point, and there’s even some solid Gravity Falls-esque teases for big reveals yet to come.
It’s nice to get an early episode here to establish some pathos for King. It would be easy to keep him as a comic side character, and he could easily excel in that role. But having him genuinely want to be a teacher to Luz, and more than that, to be taken seriously by his peers and erstwhile friends, makes him a sympathetic character. When Luz learns that about him, and eventually leans into his demon-knowing talents, it helps them relate since she knows what it’s like to be disregarded or underestimated, and it brings them closer together from some joint problem solving. That's deft character writing, which does well to establish what I would anticipate being one of the core relationships of the series.
I also love the premise of a terrifying beast who’s loose in the house that turns out to be none other than Eda. The animation on the beast in shadow is fantastic. There’s a real sense of movement and terror to her bounding about the house. There’s a clockwork quality to King warning about demons, and wanting to be heard, only to end up causing one to emerge when trying to help Luz with her witch training so she’ll pay attention to him. The poetic irony of it isn’t lost on me, and the resulting beastie rampaging around makes for a good obstacle and threat for our heroes.
I love the solution though. The show establishes that it’s not clear how a human like Luz will be able to do magic without the enchanted bile sack most witches have. King helping her review the footage of Eda doing the spell, leading Luz to see the pattern and recognize that drawing it on something allows her to make the magic happen, is a really nice touch. There is, again, a clockwork quality to Eda teaching Luz a light spell earlier in the episode and it being the thing that helps them quell Eda’s cursed form later. The action that ensues from King and Luz’s team-up to stop Owl Beast Eda is very good as well.
The humor here is on point too. There’s a lot of good gags rooted in King being a little sad and pathetic, but endearingly so. His discussion of various demons is quite funny, and I’m also a fan of the scrabble-back, adorable and sad sack as anything. The show’s got plenty of good one-liners here, which is an early strength, and even just Hootie’s silly voice manages to tickle my funny bone.
I’m also naturally intrigued by Eda’s curse, the dream where she sees the shadow of who did it, and what it means for her future that she turns into some kind of owl creature. (Her sleeping in a nest and liking shiny objects like an all important light-up pen are a nice touch in that regard.) What I’m particularly interested to know more about is whether this curse is a metaphor for something. Eda explains that she was cursed as a child and can’t remember, but that with medicine, it’s manageable. That's true for any number of conditions people develop, and I’m interested to see whether they explore that idea or tie it more explicitly to real life maladies.
Either way, this is a “regular” episode that nonetheless is really well-built from start to finish. Good show!
[7.9/10] I’ll confess, I’m hesitant about The Owl House’s reluctance to let its characters commit genuine sins rather than simple accidents/misunderstandings. King can’t actually “temporarily disappear” Willow and Gus when he’s jealous, just sprays them by accident. Luz doesn’t really think she’s better than the kids in “detention track”, they just have a miscommunication. Amity didn’t really reject Willow as her friend because Willow was bad a t magic, she was just forced to by someone else.
This is a show for kids, granted, but also an ambitious one, with big reveals and good character arcs that mean it’s fair to hold it to a higher standard than giving its main players moral outs like that. People mess up. That’s real life. This is a good enough series to tackle that head on rather than treating the idea with kid gloves.
And yet, I like the twist here. The show has already hinted at their being former friends with some cryptic, unspoken break-up. That bill is paid now, and it’s a doozy. Despite the pair being playmates as youngins, Amity threw Willow out of her birthday party, ostensibly for being a
“weakling” at magic, and started hanging out with Dasha and others who pick on WIllow constantly.
But the truth is that Amity never wanted to end the friendship, but was told to do so by her parents. I’ll confess, I don’t love that it’s a “cruel to be kind” situation, where Amity’s parents threatened to hurt or otherwise stymie Willow and her family if Amity kept hanging out with her. It lets Amity off too easily.
But I do like that, similarly to Pacifica Northwest in The Owl House’s spiritual predecessor, Gravity Falls, we’re learning that Amity isn’t bad. She is, instead, the product of a home life that’s designed to mold her into something bad. And if anything, she’s tried to find respites away from it, to be a different person than the one she’s expected to be. Throw in the classism and sense of prejudice to the whole thing, and you have a potent story of someone dragged into the muck of arrogance and bigotry, who’s trying, through good, eye-opening friendships, to climb her way out of it. That hits home in a way the nerfing of Amity’s actions doesn’t for me.
I also like the concept here. While it's a little nuts that, even in a magical school, they would have the students “print out” photo memories that could seriously damage the minds of the witchlings they come from if damaged, and then just leave them sitting out. But regardless, it’s fun to have an Inception-like scenario of Luz and Amity running around in Willow’s head, trying to right what went wrong after Amity accidentally burned several of Willow’s memories. (Again, accidentally being the key word here.)
For one thing, Luz is a great side character. I enjoy her as the protagonist, but it’s a reminder that she has a Homemr-esque ability to just being a wacky and hilarious secondary figure for an episode and still excel in that role. Her excitement over Willow’s history, and the fun she has loping around in her mind is neat.
I also like the conceit of the fire monster destroying memories turning out to be “Inner Willow.” Certain other Disney productions prepared me for the twist, but I still like her as a representation of Willow’s anger at Willow. It’s a good way to dramatize the idea that personal betrayals like that can turn joys and fond remembrances and other positive emotions from past memories into nothing but frustration and resentment. The tragedy of not only halting a friendship for the future, but wrecking the fond recollections of the past, is a canny choice.
The B-story is a nice bit of comic relief. Gus trying to find the most interesting person to interview for his school paper project, with Eda and King competing for the spot, is good fodder for hijinks. THere’s not much to it, but the gags are solid. (I like King describing his greatest attribute as his decisiveness, only to then yell, “Wait I changed my mind!”) Plus, the fact that Gus ultimately chooses Hooty is a superb swerve.
But I also like that the ending isn’t just about absolving Amity for the actions in the past; it’s about fixing her actions in the future. Regardless of whether Amity had a comprehensible reason for ending her friendship with Willow, she didn’t have to sit idly by while the mean girls picked on her. Her resolution in the present to stop that teasing, and her impulse to distance herself from the mean girls shows Amity learning and making amends. It’s the kind of thing I do appreciate on this show, that even if they go light on main characters screwing up, they go big on them not just apologizing, but taking steps to make it up.
That’s what makes Amity’s growth here so engrossing. It’s not the excuse for the past. It’s the sense that, as we can see from her brown hair in old photos, she doesn’t quite fit in with the Blythe family. She’s been crammed into a mold that she doesn’t fit into. And now that she’s fund a more supportive, healthy group of people to fuel her, she’s beginning to make good on her mistakes in the past, and chart a better way forward for her life on the Boiling Isles.
[8.8/10] The cliche for any sequel is “more”. Take what the audience liked from the first installment and just keep piling it on. On the surface, you could mistake Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse as suffering from the same pathology.
Its predecessor, Into the Spider-Verse had seven spider-people. Across the Spider-Verse has a hundred. Into the Spider-Verse gave us a glimpse of a handful of alternate realities. Across the Spider-Verse spends meaningful time in scads of them. Into the Spider-Verse clocked in at less than two hours. Across the Spider-Verse spills twenty minutes over that benchmark and demands another outing to finish its story. To the casual observer, this surfeit of cinematic real estate and the spider-beings who occupy it could be mistaken for second-installment bloat.
Except that Across the Spider-Verse is not mere excess. It is, insead, redolent with added ambition. Its predecessor stunned with a distinctive, cel-shaded art style, occasionally pierced by denizens with more anime or Looney Tunes-inspired aesthetics. Across the Spider-Verse elevates the visual brilliance to jaw-dropping, superlative levels.
Miles Morales’ cel-shaded digs return. But so too does Spider-Gwen’s watercolor world. The futuristic metropolis and impossible geometry of Spider-Man 2099’s headquarters. The parchment-styled weathering of a da Vinci-inspired Vulture. The bustling, South Asian-inspired environs of Spider-Man India. The Zine Queen cut out look of Spider-Punk. The transfixing and occasionally disturbing visage of The Spot as his form grows more and more frazzled and medium-defying the more interdimensional energy he absorbs. 2-D. 3-D. Stop Motion. Live action. Digital designs. Ink and paint creations. Comic panels. Old polygons. New pixels. The new Spider-Verse entry is a triumph of medium-blending glory where the milieu is part of the text and subtext and themes at the heart of the piece.
The same goes for the action. Into the Spider-Verse featured all manner of memorable sequences. Avatar: The Last Airbender veteran Joaquim Dos Santos is among the film’s co-directors, and it’s hard not to feel his influence as this follow-up feature ups the ante. Miles has a comical but brilliant “Now that’s thinking with portals” skirmish with The Spot. The omnibus all-comers spidey-fight is the pinnacle of arachnid spectacle it should be. The kinetic and frenetic energy, rife with medium-mixing action, remains a staple of the movie’s cinematic grammar.
But it’s just as winsome in quieter moments. The way the light brightens amid a hug between Gwen and her father. The way she and Miles share a peculiar perspective as they gaze upon the skyline of the city together. The look of pain in her and Peter B. Parker’s eyes when Miles learns the truth. There is an expressiveness, a commitment to using every last inch of every last frame to make you marvel and gasp and feel the meaning behind each moment through imagery alone that would be worth the price of admission even if Across had nothing else to offer.
Thankfully, it also has a plot that is remarkably ambitious and untroubled by traditional forms. Despite its multiversal bent, Into the Spider-Verse is a remarkably tight and focused film. That’s to its credit, taking a wild-eyed story, anchoring it in both the universal and the specific, and making it feel deceptively simple.
As a follow-up, Across the Spider-Verse is epic, multi-faceted, even messy. There are scores of moving parts. Two reintroductions and brief “While you were gone” recaps to orient the audience. All of space-time is at stake once again, but the solution is not as straightforward as stopping the big bad machine. It’s to resew the fabric of the universe as tears emerge in the wake of the last solution. The villain is an overlooked consequence of the first movie’s adventures swollen to eldritch horror proportions; and the villain is one of your own, sacrificing the noble principles that your kind are founded upon in the name of preserving the status quo; and the villain is...well...you, denied the good fortune and cosmic protection you inadvertently stole. Oh yeah, and it’s only part one.
Despite the scope, the movie never feels like too much or anything less than self-assured. There’s a lot going on here, narratively, personally, and thematically. But it all feels built to fit together, designed to build toward a greater whole, while embracing a complexity and ambition that few films are willing to entrust general audiences with.
Part of what keeps that kaleidoscopic plotting accessible and comprehensible is that it’s always grounded in the emotions and psychology of the characters. This is, on the surface, a story about myriad reflections of the Web-Head crashing down on one another. But it is, at heart, about two adolescents struggling with their relationships with their parents as they try to “find their tribe” and their place in the world as budding adults.
The great claim-to-fame of the original Spider-Man comics was that Peter Parker was a hero who fought colorful bad guys on rooftops, but who also had real problems like family and rent, just like you. Across the Spider-Verse carries on that spirit. Amid the reality-shifting dramatics, the film is spurred by Gwen suffering when her loving father learns her true identity and recoils. And it’s spurred by Miles wanting to grow up and grow away from his loving but enveloping parents, so he can venture off and find a community that he thinks will understand him and help him to follow his dreams.
The circumstances are extreme. But the conversations between parents and children are real. There’s an almost shocking verisimilitude -- borne by writing, performance, and animation in concert -- to the back and forths between Gwen and Captain Stacy, and between Miles, Jeff, and Rio. The tone of being reluctant to accept the love of someone you worry won’t fully accept you. The frustration of failing to live up to your parents’ standards while still trying to define your own. That definitively Spider-Man quality of feeling as though you’re trying so hard and still letting everybody down. Peer down into the bottom of this film, and you will find truth, gushing out of each frame as much as the aesthetic glory.
You can feel it in the way Gwen and Miles relate to one another, two kids on unique journeys who feel like the world doesn’t understand them. You can feel it in the words of parents like Jeff, Rio, Captain Stacy, and a gloriously returning Peter B. Parker, who think the world of these kids but worry about their future and how to keep them on the right path. And you can feel it in that universal, youthful sense of longing for a new adventure worthy of the new you, and in the equal and opposite chastening that can come when you realize it’s not always less complicated or as warm as the comforts of home.
This is an epic film, full of big ideas. But it never floats away or gets lost amid its own dizzying scale. Because it keeps those real feelings at the center of everything it sets out to achieve.
Those ideas give the movie ballast though. The premise of the film is that Gwen has joined an interdimensional “Spider Society” whose mission is to repair the anomalies caused by Kingpin’s collider in the first film. The twist is that Miles cannot join her there, because he is, in many ways, the original anomaly. His spider bite came from an arachnid meant for another universe. He wasn’t meant to be Spider-Man.
The reveal works on so many levels. There is great power in making the practical and emotional obstacle of the piece a statement to a mixed race child that they don’t belong. He receives nothing but rejection from a community he thought would accept him, because of what he is rather than who he is. In a film with people of color prominently in front of and behind the “camera”, that comes with a particular resonance.
To the same end, there is a meta commentary on the nature of Miles as a character and his place in the broader Spider-Man media franchise. Considering the real life racist backlash to the fancasting of Donald Glover as Spidey (which gets a nod in the form of his cameo as MCU Prowler), it’s easy to read those sentiments about him as being an aberration or a mistake in the light of fans who rejected Miles because he wasn’t Peter, because he was Black and Latino, because he didn’t fit all of the standard tropes that had been cranked out for Spidey across hundreds of projects.
I trust the rebuke of these things will come in time, but textualizing the backlash Miles’ champions have had to fight in real life, with the same sentiment Miles must combat in a fictional one, dovetails with the sharp meta commentary that has come with these films to date.
And last, but not least, it’s worth noting that at the core of the dispute between Miles, who wants to chart his own path apart from both mom and dad and the Spider Society, and Miguel O’Hara, its ostensible leader who wants to repair the foundations of the multiverse, is characterized as a dispute over “preserving canon.”
There’s a striking notion baked into that framing. The film posits that certain events that have recurred across time and mediums for Spider-Man -- things like a mentor perishing, the death of a noble captain, and other iconic Web-Head moments -- are fixed points in any Spider-Man story. They must occur, lest the bounds of reality be shattered and everything be lost in their wake.
In a less complex film, that could be taken as the bare oppression of conformity (one sure to be dismissed reflexively by Hubie Brown, the film’s infectiously entertaining anti-authority punk Web-Head). More to the point, it dovetails with themes of established gatekeepers telling a mixed race child that the status quo must be maintained, and comics purists rejecting alternate takes on the traditional (mostly white) vision of Spider-Man.
But the purveyors of these ideas are not facile straw men. They are, for one thing, Miles’ friends. The thing that spurs Miles to resist is the sense that this adherence to canon means his soon-to-be-promoted-to-captain father must die. Peter B. Parker makes the case, one made in countless Spider-Man works before, that loss is difficult, but that it helps spur Spider-people to be who they need to be, to accept the responsibility that comes with the great power and be a force for good in the world.
As much as he is the film’s antagonist, Miguel O’Hara is a poster child for someone who tried to disrupt that idea, and lost everything in the process. He lost his family, and pulled a Rick and Morty (whose influence is keenly felt here) by hopping into another universe where his alt-reality equivalent died to take his place. The rush of images we see suggest the universe rejected him like a human body rejecting a new organ, and the whole world, including the daughter he wanted so desperately to reunite with, was lost. He has walked the path of putting your own happiness and desires above “the way things must be”, and he’s seen the consequence.
More than that, the shocking tease at the end of the film is a clever depositing of Miles into the universe whose spider he inadvertently stole. He sees the consequences of a world without a Spider-Man. He sees the hardship and misery, for his family and for his community, that his own self-actualization is accidentally built on. These are not easy things to reject or ignore, but rather strong counterbalances to our natural sympathies for Miles.
And still, despite that, there remains great sympathy for the defiers of canon. Much remains to be explored and vindicated in the forthcoming third film in the series. But signs point to validating our heroes even if they stray from the usual or accepted arachnid touchpoints. If Into the Spider-Verse seemed designed to prove that anyone could be legitimate as Spider-Man so long as they take in his ideals and refuse to give up; the two follow-ups seem poised to suggest that you can, in fact, chart your own path away from what has always been, and be no less valid, no less real, no less worthy.
The other main poles of the story exemplify that. The delightful-turned-horrifying Spot is a “villain of the week” determined to flip the script and become a true nemesis and fearsome destroyer of worlds. Spider-Gwen is a version of a character who is, in the vaunted canon, meant to be one of those tragic losses that wounds the Web-Head but ultimately sharpens his resolve; and she is, instead, the hero who lost him and decides to keep going. And Miles is an accident, someone who became Spider-Man by happenstance and deviation rather than by inertia or fate, who nonetheless validates his place in the silky firmament of arachnid tales with each choice he takes to vindicate the good they fight for, and the good in himself, whether or not it fits with what came before.
To encompass all of this in one-hundred and forty minutes is remarkable. To try to accomplish it in double that time still seems like a lot. But as kinsmen like Everything Everywhere All at Once (which receives a small shout-out here) demonstrates, there is great transcendence to be had in weaving together text and metatext and character and commentary and stunning visual acumen into a greater whole.
Across the Spider-Verse is certainly that too. It is a worthy successor to the 2018 film, maintaining the same comic air, remixing energy, and emotional depth. But it also raises the bar, letting its palette, its ideas, its characters expand and grow more complex with the added mandate and leeway that comes with such a success. The creative team behind the film have arrived with something that does not simply go for more. It goes achingly deeper, jaw-droppingly wider, and poignantly further than anything we’ve seen before.
[9.5/10] It will be hard to top “Into the Bunker” when it comes to momentousness. Our heroes journey into the underground hideout of the infamous author of the three journals. Dipper finally comes clean about his feelings to Wendy. And if that weren’t enough, Gravity Falls delivers and homage to The Thing featuring none other than Mark Hamill. We’re hitting epicness overload here.
But I think my favorite part of this one is simply how well it handles the long simmering Dipper/Wendy situation. There is something agonizingly relatable about being a kid and having a crush on someone who is a few years older, definitely unobtainable, and deep down in your heart, you know it wouldn’t work, but you still can’t help but like. Dipper’s nervousness between trying to express his feelings, realizing it’s a bad idea, and being spurred on by Mabel to just out with it so he’ll feel better makes you feel for the poor kid.
Not for nothing, this is a great Wendy episode and showcase for why Dipper would nurse his schoolboy crush on her beyond her fun slacker attitude. There’s a nice casual rapport with them, from laughing at cheesy B-movies together to being on the same page about going on neat adventures. More than that, though, Wendy is a badass. Between her using her lumberjack competition skills to open the tree hideout, to spelunking her way through the bunker, to getting into raucous combat with a shape-shifting monster, Wendy proves that despite her lackadaisical bona fides, she’s a capable, kickass champ to have in your corner when you’re in a tight spot.
It’s that fight with a shape-shifter that prompts Dipper to spill his guts. Seeing Wendy hurt or worse brings out a vulnerability in Dipper. He’s distraught and blames himself and laments that it happened before he had the chance to tell that he’s in love with her. Once again, you feel for the poor little guy, so anxious about sharing his feelings up to this point, trying his best to just move on and doing everything in his power not to come clean about his feelings, only to feel crestfallen over the fact that he might lose her entirely having never fully expressed how much he cares.
What a brilliant move it is to have the “grievously injured” Wendy turn out to be the shapeshifter in disguise, with the real Wendy right behind to hear the whole thing. While in other hands, the fake out could feel cheap, here it plays nicely into the established existence of the shape-shifter and the standard “Which one should I shoot?” trope. The move allows Gravity Falls to have its cake and eat it too when it comes to Dipper’s crush and his nigh-pathological inability to speak honestly about it.
Part of what makes it seem like fair play, though, is that Wendy and Dipper have an incredibly mature conversation about it afterwards. I love the reveal of Wendy saying that of course she knew, because she’d have to be blind not to. But she very gently explains that she’s way too old for him, and Dipper knows and acknowledges it. Her reassurance that he can handle any awkwardness, given how much weird stuff he’s already braved, is very wholesome. And I love the resolution that, even though their ages are too far apart to make an actual romance anything but creepy, she genuinely values Dipper’s friendship, thinks the summer was boring until he showed up, and would be legitimately upset to lose their companionship. It’s a great place to land, one that acknowledges why this crush is impossible, but vindicates that there is a wonderful connection between them, just not the one the twelve-year-old thought about in that way. I really admire the way Gravity Falls pays this off in a sensitive and uplifting way, rather than dragging it out for another season or otherwise turning it into wish fulfillment.
And by gum, that’s only half the episode! I cannot tell you how exciting it is to parse through all the major teases we get in this installment. The gang finding The Author’s bunker, replete with the same mysterious symbols and similar machinery to what Stan’s using is such a thrill, that makes it seem like the show’s truly advancing its mystery arc. Cryptic clues that The Author was planning for some kind of apocalypse, that they may have created the various creatures who lurk in Gravity Falls, and that, given the shape-shifter’s comments about them having six-fingers and the type of rubber gloves Stan used, may also have something to do with the suspiciously similar bunker under the Mystery Shack, get the mental gears turning.
I love Gravity Falls’ standalone episodes, but it’s also nice to feel like we’re making progress toward unraveling the big mysteries the show has been teasing from the start.
Plus hey, Mark freakin’ Hamill! He is, as always, great playing villains in animation, giving the shape-shifter a truly malevolent premise. And full credit to the design and animation team. Beyond showing that the shape-shifter has encountered the various supernatural beings of the town (include the “The Hide Behind” from the Dipper’s Guide shorts), they also come up with some fantastic Cronenberg-esque character designs for the shape-shfiters various other forms.
The shape-shifter material itself is pretty great. I love the way the show baits and switches us, with Wendy and Dipper seemingly running into The Author, with an appropriately steampunk-ish, eccentric explorer look that communicates the vibe of someone with all the answers to this strange place. But the moment Wendy smartly clocks the exact same man on a can of beans, and the guy blinks his eyes sideways, you know some freaky stuff is on.
The ensuing “Who’s the real _____” shtick is fun and spooky. As mentioned, it pays off well with the Wendy/Dipper situation, but even before then, the show does a good job of creating a paranoid atmosphere. Not for nothing, while far less dramatic, Mabel and Soos make for a great comedic pairing, (Soos’ failed attempt to do a rhyme had me in stitches) and Soos’ efforts to ensure he remained the right shape were great.
On the whole, this episode is a real homerun. It works on its own as a scary tale of a shapeshifter in a mysterious location tricking and terrorizing our heroes. It works as part of the show’s larger mystery arc, dropping some big clues and our way to a few more tantalizing questions. And it delivers the best ending imaginable to the long-running subplot of Dipper’s crush on Wendy, resolving things with sensitivity, grace, and heart. What a treat this show is, to be so good at story, character, horror, and humor all at once.
Meh. Quite the collection of overdone cliches:
-- It's a crime drama, about a family!
-- The eldest is in charge, but is not the brightest so covers it up with bellicosity. That combination can't possibly lead to trouble.
-- Our protagonist is ambitious, ruthless, and smart. That combination can't possibly lead to trouble.
-- The youngest is dumb and violent. That combination can't possibly lead to trouble.
-- Fortunately, they're surrounded by good women, if only the boys will listen to their wisdom.
-- It's got a beautiful woman, but she's on the side of the law. Oh no! Surely she won't fall for the haunted bad boy.
-- The saintly friend wants nothing to do with the family's evil ways. I'm sure he won't be pulled in.
-- The copper sent to stop them is just as ruthless as they are. What nuanced levels of morality!
-- It's set in olden days so it can be "gritty" and "edgy" with it's violence.
All in all, I liked it better when it was called Ripper Street. I'll watch more, but only because my brother recommended it. If it ends up good, great for me. If it ends up bad, I can berate my brother for his poor taste. Also great for me.
"No we need you!"
Haja: "You have my word."
Owen: "Beru, what are you doing?"
Beru: "We both knew this day might come."
[Beru chucks Owen a blaster.]Beru: "She'll come when the suns go down."
Darth Vader: "Anakin's gone. I am what remains."
Darth Vader: "You didn't kill Anakin Skywalker. I did."
Reva: "I couldn't do it."
Obi-Wan: "Who you become now, that is up to you."
Obi-Wan: "Both were exceptional people... who bore an exceptional daughter. I wish I could tell you more."
[Leia looks at her parents.]
Leia: "It's okay. You don't have to."
Obi-Wan: "Hello, there."
Qui-Gon: "Well, took you long enough."
Qui-Gon: "Come on. We've got a ways to go."
6.5/10
Hop Pop: "A Plantar, Frog of the Year, I'm so proud."
Anne: "Sprig, you have the most important job of all: the spectacle!"
Sprig: "Oh, my frog, oh, my frog, oh my frog!"
Anne: "At the party..."
[Sprig squeals.]
Anne: "You're gonna tell Ivy how you feel about her."
[Sprig frowns.]
Sprig: "Wha— Huh?"
Polly: "I'm just kidding, Wally. Get in there!"
Wally: "Validation!"
Ivy: "Oh, hey, Sprig."
Loggle: "At least the party's lit now, Anne."
Anne: "You were right about me, Mayor. I am selfish. I got so obsessed with proving I deserve this, I ruined everything. I'm not Frog of the Year. Why did anyone even vote for me?"
Hop Pop: "Anne, we didn't vote for you because you're flawless. Eh, far from it. We voted for you because of how far you've come. You've grown so much in your time here, and this town just wouldn't be the same without you."
Grime: "Nice to finally meet you, Anne Boonchuy."
8/10
Gus Illusion: "Did we do bad?"
[Luz gasps.]
Everyone: "Whoa!"
Luz: [Pants] "Gus, you ran away so fast, but I didn't want to interrupt, so..."
[Luz inhales and puts her hand on Gus' shoulder.]
Luz: "I think you should go."Gus: "All right, I'm in. Where do we find these Galderstones?"
Amity: "If you give me back my hairband, I'll read you whatever book you want tomorrow."
Kid: "I can grow an entire forest and make my own butterfly sanctuary."
Amity: "Huh, the human world sounds... odd."
Luz: "Maybe it would be less odd if I showed you around someday."
[Amity sits up.]
Luz: "But, uh, let's turn back. I don't wanna push you."
[Quickly, Amity grabs Luz's arm and pulls her along.]
Amity: "We're getting that diary."
Bria: "Angmar!"
Angmar: "Hmm?"
Angmar: [Playfully] "I said you're on lookout duty. And if I catch you playing with any more bugs, I'll make you eat them! Okay? I believe in you!"
Gus: "No, this isn't right! I won't let you steal these."
Gus respecting the dead. I approve :)
I like the worldbuilding of past Illusionists and human citizens in Bonesborough. It makes the world feel more lived in
Malphas: [Deep voice] "Amity."
[Cut to daytime outside.]
Malphas: [Normal voice.] "I'm just, like, super disappointed in you. Like, I can't even process these feelings right now."
Stranger: "Oh-ho! I am the keeper of the Looking Glass Graveyard."
Amity: "Everything's changed since you came here. Being around you, it... makes me do stupid things and I wish it didn't."
[Luz & Amity tear up.]
Luz: "It's okay, I, uh—"
[Luz sniffles.]
Luz: "I-I do stupid things around you too, Amity."
Bria: "Why isn't my magic working?"
Amity: "So, how's it look?"
Edric: "It looks like you're about to get in big trouble with Mum."
[Emira slaps Edric.]
Edric: "Ow."
Emira: "I think it looks great. But, yeah, maybe don't tell her I helped."
Edric: "Bold move, sister."
Amity: "Uh, okay. Good to see you. Farewell forever."
8/10
Lilith: [Giggling] "Watching the ink dry is the best part."
Hooty: "Avenge me!"
[Hooty pretend dies.]
Hooty: "Bleh!"
Hooty: "Porta-Hooty, reporting for Hooty!"
Luz: "Ooh! A door fit for a tyrant!"
King: "Hehe, that's me!"
Eda: "Get out of here. I'll hold it back and meet you outside."
King: "Ah, no! Keep that thing away from me!"
King: "Eda was right, wasn't she? I was never king of anything. I'm nobody."
Luz: "You are somebody, and I love that somebody very much."
Eda: "You sure they'll be all right?"
Luz: "Hooty knows what to do."
[Hooty spitting maniacally.]
Eda: "You sure they'll be all right?"
King: "But I was too small to do anything."
King: "Someone called me their son. Luz, I think it was my dad."
8/10
Lilith: "Surround the house!"
Hooty: "Sorry. Eda doesn't like trespassers. But I'm always here to make new friends."
Hooty: "I did it! Oh, hey, look, it's a bug!"
Students: "Good luck, Ms Lilith."
[Lilith inhales.]
Lilith: "Thank you, students. Good luck with puberty."
Luz: "It's time for a heist."
Gus: "Finally, I'll know how to become my best self."
Gus clone: [Whispers] "You're always your best self."
[Gus sobs.]
Lilith: "Sister."
Eda: "You've always looked down on me because I'm wild, but, fortunately, that just made me work harder than you."
Eda: "Maybe it is the curse. But then how pathetic are you that you can't best me at my worse!"
Luz: "Eda, stop. You'll run out of magic!"
Eda: "It's my power, kid. And before you showed up, I spent my whole life wasting it."
Eda: "All right, kid. Listen to me. I'm going away, and I don't know... if... I can bounce back this time. Watch over King. Remember to feed Hooty..."
Luz: "Please, no."
Eda: "And, Luz, thank you for being in my life."
8/10
Eda: "Hey, freeloaders, guess what today is."
Luz: "Is it your birthday?"
King: "Is it my birthday?"
Hooty: "It's my birthday."
Eda: "No! It's Human Treasure Day!"
Luz: "So, what'd you think?"
Amity: "It was... fine."
Luz: "So fine you drew yourself with Malingale the Mysterious Soothsayer?"
[Amity disintegrates the drawing.]
Edric: "Of course, she knows two spells. Right, Luz?"
[Luz laughs nervously.]
Luz: "Yeah. Of course, I know two spells."
Eda: "Now. No time to waste. You'll have to follow my teachings exactly. We gotta go somewhere special."
Luz: "Yes!"
Eda: "A place where magical energy just f-lows."
Luz: "Yes!"
Eda: "A place like the Knee!"
Luz: "YEEEEEES!"
Edric: "So what are you working on? Some powerful?"
Luz: "Yep. Powerful spells. I'm working on one that's so crazy. Eda's a pretty good teacher."
Hooty: "Yep! It's your faithful pal, Hooty, reporting for duty. Up at dawn, taking orders all day long."
Luz: "Magic is everywhere."
King: "Hey! How dare you mutiny! Unhand your commander right now!"
King: "Hooty, Hooty. Great news, buddy. You can be in the boot camp. First task: destroy the boot camp."
Booty: "Mmmmmm. No, thanks!"
Luz: "Don't worry, Eda. I get it now. I was so obsessed with learning my second spell, I didn't listen to you. But now I'm gonna save you. Yeah, yeah, yeah... yeah, yeah."
Eda: "Well, at least I got to see her misplaced confidence one last time."
Luz: "Azura Book Club? AZURA BOOK CLUB?!"
[Amity blushes and whispers.]
Amity: "As long as it's a secret club, okay?"
Eda: "What the heck did you two get into?"
King: "Um, excuse me, we're having a moment here!"
Hooty: "You'll never understand what we've been through together. Never, never!"
Steve: "Yeah! All hail the emperor!"
King: "Hey, there's more to life than shipping."
Luz: "Don't you dare insult shipping in my presence."
Typewriter: "What the heck, man? Learn to collaborate."
King: "My publisher is throwing a huge party for my book, Ruler's Reach, and I, uh... I'd like for you to be there."
[Luz tosses it aside. King winces.]
King: "All right, fine. Be that way, I guess."
Piniet: "Oh, you cad. Not only are you a great writer but a practical joker as well."
King: "That's true— Wait what?"
Piniet: "This is truly awful!"
[Piniet whispers.]
Piniet: "Looking forward to the real draft."
King: "'Truly awful'? But I'm a bestselling writer. How?"
[King spots Luz.]
King: "Luz. I can't write without her."
Luz: "I'm not writing for you after you made fun of all my ideas."
Luz: "Uh, can I help you?"
Piniet: "Perhaps."
King: "What are you doing with her? Let her go!"
Piniet: "You wrote Ruler's Reach together. So if you don't want her crushed, you'll write together again. Oh, don't give me that look. Some of the best books were written in literal crunch time."
Luz: "That's a toxic mentality that contributes to burnout and unrealistic expectations!"
Piniet: "Make your deadline or you'll never be able to hold a pen again."
Luz: "All I wanted was to write a dumb story with my friend."
Luz: "Hey. Being with you is one of my favourite parts of this dream."
Eda: "Catch you later, sis."
Lilith: "Not if I catch you first."
7.5/10
Notes
Fennec Shand: "That was fast."
Boba: "We'll lockdown at the palace."
Skad: "It's a bad idea."
[Boba turns.]
Boba: "Is that so?"
Skad: "...it is."
Boba: "And where do you propose we wait for reinforcements?"
Skad: "...here."
Boba: "...here? In these ruins?"
[Skad nods.]
Boba: "Nonsense."
Boba: "The palace offers greater protection."
Drash: "If you want to abandon Mos Espa and hide in your fortress, go ahead. We're staying. The people who live here need our protection."
Mok Shaiz: "Does Fett have any other resources to call upon? He used to live in a Tusken Raider tribe in the desert."
Peli Motto: "It's an X-wing. What's an X-wing doing here?"
Peli: "Well look who it is!"
Boba: "I thought I smelled something."
Cad Bane: "Before you get any ideas. I've got back shooters too."
Drash: "Hey... Thank you."
Fennec: "Manners. I like it. You're welcome."
The Mandalorian: "It's against the Creed. I gave you my word. I'm with you until we both fall."
Boba: "You really buy into that bantha fodder?"
The Mandalorian: "I do."
[Boba nods.]
Boba: "Good."
The Mandalorian: "We got real problems."
The Mandalorian: "Our energy weapons can't get through, and our kinetic weapons have too much velocity."
Pyke: "Sleemo!"
The Mandalorian: "Okay, little guy. I'm happy to see you too."
Drash: "Can you pick off some of the fighters?"
Freetown fighter: "I'm used to desert hunting. Can't miss at this range."
Peli: "Peli's got you covered."
Cad Bane: "What's your angle?"
Boba: "This is my city. These are my people. I will not abandon them."
Cad Bane: "Like the Tuskens."
Cad Bane: "Let's find out."
Boba: "This is my city!"
Cad Bane: "You tried to go straight."
Cad Bane: "I knew you were a killer."
Freetown Bartender: "The rancor's on the loose!"
The Mandalorian: "It's gonna be okay."
Peli: "Where'd you go, kid?!"
Boba: "Thank you."
The Mandalorian: "All right. But this is the last time."
"Directed by ROBERT RODRIGUEZ"
Review
Btw, I still like this episode. And I've gotten complaints that I'm just being negative for no reason, but to preemptively combat this, let me say it's because I'm trying to study the shows I'm watching because I'm a screenwriter. I also criticise stuff I like.
6/10
Mogami: "So what you're experiencing is a parallel world that could've easily come to pass had your circumstances been slightly different. I'll just sit back and observe how you fare in this environment without your powers."
Mogami: "You had many relationships in real life, and you were fortunate enough to be surrounded by good people. But situations like that are rare."
Mogami: "You're extremely talented brother is just a stranger here."
Mob: "It'd be so much easier if I was stronger."
Mogami: "I'm sure this seems incomprehensible to you,"
Mogami: "But she's bullying you to secure her position in society."
Mogami: "But after living in this world for six months without your powers,"
Mogami: "After my demise, I became an evil spirit and decided to use my powers for myself this time..."
Mogami: "You are allowed to use your powers for yourself. You should use them for yourself."
Dimple: "You're not staying here? Shigeo's done for. You gotta accept that. Why not run away?"
Reigen: "Because I still have faith in him."
Dimple: "In this situation? You're not really that stupid, are ya?"
Reigen: "Yup, actually, I am. Let me guess: this is the first time someone's placed so much trust in you too, right?"
Mob: "Apologise."
Mogami: "And that's why I didn't want you to travel the same path I did."
Dimple: "Yo."
Mogami: "The six months you spent here are forever etched into your heart and mind."
Mob: "I'm surrounded by good people. I need to be more thankful for them."
Mob: "When you interact with other people, it can have an effect. And because of that, I was able to change. Thanks to them, I'm stronger. Much stronger than if I'd been on my own."
Mob: "Wait... That's right."
[Grabbing hand.]
Mob: "I remember now. I came here to save someone."
Dimple: "He really has changed huh?"
Narrator: "The powerful blast created from Mob's positive emotions at 100 percent annihilated the great and powerful evil spirit Mogami."
Mogami: "No matter how much you struggle, your path will lead you to the same place mine did. To ruin."
But he's doing the opposite of yours, Mogami. Yours led to ruin because you started using your powers for yourself (to save your mother). Mob is using them to help people (which you did before you went down the ruinous path)
God damn, the animation though
Mob: "That people are able to change. Mogami and Minori both taught me it's possible. The people around me changed me as well. Now I understand I can do the same thing for others too."
Mob: "I don't get it, Master. Why aren't you claiming your reward?"
Reigen: "Just look at how many people got hurt. Not exactly a big success. You should never accept money that you feel you haven't earned. If you do, you'll start taking the easy way out every time."Reigen: "You know... You're better off working part-time for me than becoming famous or powerful. I hope this serves a good lesson for ya."
Dimple: "Come on, give me a friggin' break..."
Review
I know that all sounds like a bunch of nonsense, so let me make this simple. I interpreted this episode's message as, "positive emotions will trump negative emotions and that people and positivity can enable you to change." The problem is that this is what the episode propagates in the second half, but in the first half, it's exploring way more ideas like privilege, bullying, and selfishness. But it's forgotten in the second half? Also, the final message still disregards the earlier one on privilege. I guess it's addressed by Mob pledging he'll use his powers to help people?
This episode is really convoluted, unfocused and confused. It's trying to juggle all these different ideas under the guise of "positivity beats negativity" but it comes off as undercooked.
6/10
David: "With meowmeowbeenz, students can rate teachers. Teachers can rate students. Everyone and anyone can rate each other."
Abed: "Meowmeowbeenz takes everything subjective and unspoken about human interaction and reduces it to explicit, objective numbers. I've never felt more alive."
Jeff: "How?"
Annie: "She's nice to people, Jeff. You know Shirley."
Shirley: "Oh, Vicki, thank you. Did you just give me four meowmeowbeenz?"
Vicki: "Um..."
Shirley: "I love my four from Vicki."
[Vicki's rating goes down.]
Vicki: "No! Stop it! I didn't mean it!"
[Vicki sobbing and running away.]
Jeff: "Yeah. I do know Shirley."Jeff: "I'm like, 'That's two cups,' and she's like, 'What?' I'm like, 'Two cups, balls back, tops off.' "
Abed: "Small talk, guys. I make small talk now."
Star-Burns: "These are snacks for the fives."
Leonard: "Yeah? You're a two."
Annie: "Leonard, would you rather a three serve the fives food?"
Leonard: "No."
Abed: "Give my spot to someone else. I don't want to be a five. I was happy as a three. I'm miserable."
Shirley: "Oh, dear Abed. So humble."
[Abed's rating goes up.]
Abed: "You people are monsters."Man: "You know... I once loved a two."
[Man sighing.]
Man: "Matthew... He was my everything. But... numbers change."
Britta: "Actually, keep the tray tables where they are, Koogler."
Jeff: "Oh, great mother of ones, Mustard-faced saviour, there is still a five hiding among us that has not been cleansed."
Britta: "Nonsense. All fives were reduced to oneness in the great purge of about two minutes ago."Koogler: "So how do you cleanse a five that's unregistered?"
Jeff: "Delete it."
Britta: "No! No! Wait! NO, DON'T GO! Where are you going?!"
[Voice breaking.]
Britta: "No."
[9.2/10] Oh man, this is one of the show’s very first tour de force pop culture homages, and it’s still one of the best. Like the best Community parodies, it gets the details right. The way it captures the Goodfellas-esque montages of folks working the system, and voiceover to set out the hierarchy is pitch perfect. It mirrors the rise and fall of those wiseguys in a safely funny Greendale setting, while being self-referential enough about it to wink without winking too hard.
But it’s also just a great Greendale story. That’s the secret to these Community spoofs. Sometimes they’re just fun, but at their best, they used the sturdy structure from some other work to slip in strong emotional or character material within that framework. In this one, you have Jeff dealing with his own ego and control issues that are exposed when Abed takes charge. And for Abed, you have someone who has trouble connecting and relating to people feeling fully functional for once when the chicken game let’s him reduce human interactions to a series of inputs and outputs he can understand.
Their shared moment at the end is laugh-worthy but also potent. Jeff realizing he has the ability to connect with others, but isn’t always great at serving their needs rather than its own, and having the reciprocal semi-epiphany from Abed that he wants to help his friends but isn’t good at forging those bonds really works to deepen both of them and show bits of growth. Sure, its steeped in not just mafia movie tropes but all sorts of other pop cultural call-outs, but that’s Abed, and it works.
Plus, it’s just a damn funny episode. This is the origin of both “Streets Ahead” and “Annie’s Boobs.” The various things that sate the desire of the rest of the group, from Pierce’s entourage to Annie’s backpack to Troy’s monkey to Britta’s hair care to Shirley’s chicken-based flirting with a hunky classmate are each hilarious, and only topped when Abed messes with each of them to teach the rest of his crew a lesson. And the whole thing being part of a frame story where Abed is recounting this to the Dean while being questioned about missing hairnets puts an awesome button on the ep.
Overall, this is one of the first hints at Community becoming the intertextual but character-committed show that would allow it to break the trappings of its sitcom origins and really flourish, and it’s a treat to go back and watch that happening.
This show is absolutely phenomenal. Rise of the TMNT is similar in tone and execution to the DuckTales 2017 reboot. This takes characters that were relatively flat (don't get me wrong, I loved the 80s run back in the day) but injects so much more life and personality and depth into all of these characters. Their relationship is much more believable that they are all brothers, with Splinter as more of a comical dad figure. The bold creativity reflects in their new different designs: Raphael is a giant snapping turtle, Mikey an ornate box turtle, Donnie is a soft-shelled turtle (which gives him the excuse to create interchangeable tactical shells), while Leo gets the best character overhaul, a red-eared snapper turtle who isn't just the notoriously boring leader and is arguably the funniest character (what!?). In fact, Leonardo isn't even the leader in this, and Rise of the TMNT is could also be considered the rise of Leonardo as a leader. The animation itself is beautifully stylized and has some GREAT action scenes (the best of all TMNT series) they don't rely on trotting out the same villains beyond Shredder and The Foot. It's a creative and lovingly-crafted interpretation of the Ninja Turtles that honors its past but forges ahead on its own path. Oh, and it's actually FUNNY.
[9.5/10] If there has been one thing consistent about Aang from the beginning, it’s that he follows his own path. From the minute we met him and he was more interested in riding penguins than showing spiritual reserve, it was clear that this was an Avatar who did not fit the mold. There was a uniqueness to him, a purity, that belied the chosen one bearing he had to carry.
That’s what stands out in Avatar: The Last Airbender’s wide-ranging, epic, moving finale. More than the moral turmoil that Aang had experienced in the last few episodes, more than the massive battle between the forces of good and the comet-fueled Fire Nation, there is a young man, making a choice because it’s what feels right to him, what feels true, and it is that trust in himself, that commitment to being who he is, that sees him through.
What is almost as impressive about the final two episodes of A:tLA, which essentially constitute one massive climax for the whole series, is how they manage to give almost every notable figure in the series something meaningful and dramatic to do. The episode truly earns the epic quality of its final frame, whether it’s focusing on the Order of the White Lotus retaking Ba Sing Se; Sokka, Toph, and Suki trying to sabotage the Fire Nation air fleet; Zuko and Katara confronting Azula; or Aang having his showdown with Ozai. The combination of all these great battle, all these profound and grand moments, make for an endlessly thrilling, dramatic finish for this great series.
The siege of Ba Sing Se mostly serves as a series of fist pumps for the viewer, getting to watch these trained masters face their foes with ease. Like the rest of the episode, it shows off the visual virtuosity as the series pulls out all the stops for its final battle. Jeong Jeong redirects fire with awesome force. Bumi launches tanks like play things with his earthbending. Pakku washes away enemies with a might tidal wave, and Piando slides on the frozen path over the wall, slashing away at Fire Nation soldiers all the while.
And Iroh? Iroh breathes in the power of Sozin’s comet. He creates a fireball that bowls through the walls of the famed city. He burns away the Fire Nation banner that hangs over the palace. It is a sign that for as much as A:tLA is a story of the last generation letting down the next one, there are still members of the old guard there to fight for what’s right and make a stand for a better world.
That world is threatened by the Fire Nation Air Fleet. In truth, the cell-shaded CGI war balloons look a little dodgy. Something about the animation is a little too stilted, to where when the cinematography is cool, the computer-generated elements stick out like sore thumbs and hurt the immersion of the show. Nevertheless, there is something truly frightening about Ozai and company at the head of those ships, imbued with power by the comet, launching these fireballs and streams of flaming destruction down on the land below. It is a terrifying image that brings to mind footage from Vietnam of fire raining from above. As much as the cel-shading looks a little off, the imagery of the elemental powers used in the episode is awesome, in the original sense of the term, provoking terror and astonishment.
Thankfully we have our two favorite badass normal folks and the resident (and as far as we know) only metalbender to help destroy the fleet. It is a nice outing for Sokka, Toph, and Suki, who find a way to not only contribute to the great war effort, but to have moments of risk and drama where you wonder if they will make it out alive or not, featuring big damn hero moments for each of them.
It’s hard to even know where to begin. There is Toph launching the three of them onto the nearest ship, turning into a metal-coated knight, and neutralizing the command crew. There is the hilarious interlude where Sokka manages to lure the rank-and-file crewmen into the bombing bay with the promise of cakes and creams, with the lowly henchman making extremely funny small talk before being dumped in the bay. It’s nice that even in these heightened moments, the show has not forgotten its sense of humor.
But that humor quickly gives way to big risks and bravery from the trio. I appreciate that Sokka’s ingenuity gets one last chance to shine, when he’s inspired by Aang’s “air slice” and repositions the ship he’s piloting to cut through the rest of the fleet, downing as much of it as possible. That move, naturally, leads their vessel to go down itself, and the big escape separates him and Suki.
Still, Sokka and Toph are undeterred, and after some close shaves, Toph uses her metal-bending abilities to change the fin on another airship to send it into its neighbors. Again, it’s nice to see the show, even in this late hour, finding creative uses for its characters’ talents, which give each of them a chance to have a hand in saving the day. That includes Sokka and Toph finding themselves pursued by Fire Nation soldiers, and Sokka getting to use both his boomerang and his “space sword” one last time. And when despite having taken out their pursuers, it still looks like all is lost for the pair, there is Suki, having taken command of another airship, there to save them from their tenuous, dangling position.
It’s a superb series of sequences, one that manages to combine some incredible in-the-air action and combat with character moments that feel true to the people we’ve come to know over the course of the series. Toph still has her smart remarks; Suki still manages to be in the right place at the right time, and Sokka, far from shrinking from the moment as he feared after the invasion, employs the creative solutions to difficult problems that have become his trademark. It is a great tribute and final triumph for all three characters.
But they are not the only trio of Avatar characters who find themselves embroiled in combat on the day Sozin’s comet arrives. But far from the larger-than-life, heroic tones of the battle in the skies, the fight between Azula, Zuko, and Katara has an air of tragedy about it.
What’s impressive is how, so near the end of the series, A:tLA can make the audience feel for Azula, even as she is at her most deranged and dangerous. It is late in the day for a character study, and yet we delve into Azula’s broken psyche in a way that the show has only toyed with before. What’s revealed is scary, but also sad, the pained cries and last gasps of a young woman who never really had a chance, who was brought up by a tyrant like Ozai, rather than a kindly old man like Iroh, and it left her damaged and alone.
It also left her paranoid. One of the defining leitmotifs of Avatar: The Last Airbender is the way that Aang, despite being the chosen one, laden with a solitary destiny, has found strength in his connections to his friends, who sustain him in times of doubt and difficulty. The finale underscores the importance of that by contrasting how Azula alienates everything approaching an ally she has, and it leaves her not only vulnerable, but deeply suspicious, until she loses her grip on her own sanity.
That’s dramatized in the way she banishes a humble servant girl for daring to give her a cherry with a pit in it, in how she banishes the Dai Lee for fear that they will turn on her the way that she got them to turn on Long Feng, in her equally harsh banishment of her twin, elderly caretakers (or at least one of them), when they express concern for her well-being. Though Mai and Tai-Lee have only small roles to play in this episode, the force of their presence is felt in the way that their betrayal of Azula leads her to believe that everyone is a backstabber or turncoat in waiting, and that, poetically enough, becomes the source of her downfall, to where when the threat truly emerges, she has no one there to help and protect her.
And yet, that is not the deepest depth of her loneliness. In a particularly difficult moment, one where Azula has taken out her anger on her own hair, she sees an image of her mother in the mirror. It is a bridge too far, the ultimate pain that Azula has refused to confront, replaced with ambition and intimidation so as not to have to face it. But that vision represents a knowing part of Azula, one that understands how she’s succumbed to fear and paranoia, one that cannot help but feel the hurt of the belief that her own mother thinks she’s a monster, and one that knows despite that, her mother still loves her, something that makes that pain all the more unbearable.
It also makes her less capable, less focused, less ready to face her brother in a duel. Zuko sees the way that his sister is slipping, and is willing to face her alone in the hopes of sparing Katara since he believes he can win. Their fight is a beautiful and tragic one. The combination of Azula’s blue flame and Zuko’s red one echoes the red and blue dragons that reinvigorated Zuko and Aang’s firebending abilities, and which represented the conflicting sides of Zuko’s own psyche. The opposing forces swirl and twist in the field of battle.
But unlike the rest of the episode, this is not played as an epic confrontation. It is played as a moment of great sorrow. While the whirl of the fire blasts rings out and the structures around the siblings singe and crackle, wailing violins play. Azula cackles and cries out, her eyes wide, her smile crooked, her demeanor unhinged. Zuko is not simply conquering an enemy who has tormented him since he was a little boy; he is doing what he must do against someone who has everything, and yet has lost everything, including her mind.
That just makes Azula all the more dangerous, but that ends up making Zuko all the more noble. While Azula is wild and unsteady, Zuko is prepared, baiting his sister into trying to blast him with lightning in the hopes that he may redirect it and end this. Instead, Azula charges up her power and, at the last second, aims it a bystander Katara rather than her brother. The move throws off Zuko, and in the nick of time, he dives in front of the blast and absorbs the electricity to spare Katara. It is the last sign of his transformation, an indication of his willingness to sacrifice himself for one of the people he once attacked himself. It is a selfless gesture, and a desperate one, that shows how Zuko’s transformation is truly complete.
It also leaves Katara fighting a completely mad Azula all by herself. I must admit, I was mildly irked when Zuko cast Katara aside and intended to fight Azula solo, sidelining one of the show’s major figures, but I should have known better than to think the series would avoid giving her one of those vital moments of glory and bravery.
With a dearth of water in the Fire Kingdom capital, and Azula too crazed and unpredictable to fight straight up, Katara must also be creative. Her water blasts turn to steam against Azula’s electric fury. But Katara is as clever as she is talented, and in yet another inventive way to defeat the enemy, she lures Azula over a sewer grate where, just before Azula is able to launch a deadly attack, Katara raises the water and freezes the both of them in place.
Then, in a canny move, she nabs a nearby chain, uses her waterbending abilities to move through the ice, and confines her attacker so that she is incapable of doing any more damage. It is an imaginative way to end the fight, one that show’s Katara’s resourcefulness and gives her a much-deserved win. She heals Zuko, who has truly and fully earned her respect and admiration. Azula has only earned a bitter end – her manic screams devolve into sobs, the loss of so much, the crumbling security of who she was and what she was fading away, until all that is left is a pitiable, broken young woman.
Azula has been a one-note villain at points in the series, one whose evil seemed inborn and whose nature left her without some of the complexity that other figures in the series have possessed. But here, she becomes a tragic figure, one who has committed terrible deeds and who tries to commit more, but whose being raised to obtain power at all costs leaves her unable to enjoy or sustain the only thing she’s ever wanted, and utterly alone.
Aang, on the other hand, is trapped between two things that he wants very badly: to defeat Ozai in order to end this war and save the world, and also to avoid taking a life. Their confrontation lives up to the billing and hype it’s received over the course of the series. The mountainous range provides the perfect backdrop for their fight, with plenty of earth and water for Aang to summon as he combats the series’s big bad at a time when Ozai is infused with the tremendous power of the comet.
The two dart and dash across those jutting rocks, a furious ballet accented with mortal, elemental beauty. Ozai declares that Aang is weak, that he cannot defeat Ozai, particularly at the height of his powers, and despite the realization that this is not the kind of show where the hero fails in the final act, you fear for Aang, for what will be required of him in order to end this. This is, after all, not how this fight was supposed to happen. Aang was supposed to have mastered all four elements, to be Ozai’s equal, not a talented but inexperienced young upstart trying to best the man who has conquered the world.
So in a difficult moment, he retreats into a ball of rock that provides temporary but needed protection from Ozai’s assault. It calls to mind the big ball of ice that Aang retreated to a century ago, a safe haven when the weight of the world became too much for him, and he hid rather than rose to face it. It cements the possibility that Aang is not ready for this, that he was never ready for this, and for all the good intentions he may have, he will pay the ultimate price for that.
Instead, when Ozai penetrates the rock and sends Aang flying, he reaps more than he bargained for. The former Fire Lord’s blast shoots Aang into a nearby rock, and as a sharp point digs into the scar from where Azula nearly killed him at the end of Season 2, it triggers the Avatar state.
Aang emerges from the pile of rubble that the gloating Ozai approaches. Aang glows and speaks with a voice of thunder and fury. Ozai comes at the demigod with all his power but Aang slaps away his flaming blast with the back of his hand. The Avatar assembles the four elements, bringing them to bear against his opponent. He surrounds himself in a bubble of air; he summons earth, fire, and water in rings that surround him. He comes at Ozai with his full force, sending him reeling through rock and rubble, confining him with the land itself. Aang raises this swirl into a knife’s edge, driving it down into his prone opponent.
And then, once more, at the last minute, he stops. The whirl of elements turned into a lethal weapon evaporates into a harmless puddle. Aang stands, unable to do it. Even in the moment where he seems poised to fulfill his destiny, Aang cannot bring himself to snuff out a life in this world. It is against everything he believes in, everything he stands for. Ozai declares that even with all the power in the world, Aang is still weak, that his inability to do what must be done to his enemy renders him lesser.
It is then that Aang finds another way. He confines Ozai using the earth itself once more, rests his hands on Ozai’s persons, and begins to bend the energy itself. What ensues is a spiritual struggle, one that matches the confluence of red and blue that signified the two sides at war within Zuko. For a moment, it appears as though even in this, Ozai will triumph, that the red glowing embers that represent the cruel spirit of this awful man will overtake our hero. It’s rendered in beautiful hues, a burst of light erupting across a dark landscape.
But Aang is not to be overcome. The outpouring of pure blue light emanates from his body. He will not be moved, not be altered, not be changed. Instead, it is Ozai who falters, his ability to bend fire, his tool for committing all of this evil, is taken away from him. The threat is over; the war is done, and Aang has fulfilled his destiny, on his own terms.
There is release, a chance to reflect and take stock and enjoy the glow of having completed this difficult journey. Aang and Zuko speak to one another as Roku and Sozin once did – as friends. (Incidentally, the also confirm that the entire series took place within just a year, which seems kind of crazy.) They embrace, the two young men who were once bitter enemies now trusted allies. Mai and Tai Lee are released and seem to have new destinies themselves. Zuko credits The Avatar to a throng of people at his coronation as Fire Lord, and he is not surrounded by Fire Nation loyalists, but a balanced group of supporters from all nations, there to help rebuild the world. “The Phoenix King” promised to burn down the old world and make a new one from the ashes, and in a way, he has made good on his promise, albeit not in the way he intended.
There is such hope and catharsis in these last scenes. Aang is at peace, his mission complete, freed from the burden that created so much hardship over the past year. Zuko too is in a place of calm, having restored his honor and ascended to the throne, though not as the vicious ruler his father envisioned, but as the kind and noble man his uncle did, one ready to lead his people to a new era. After one hundred years of war and bloodshed, there is the hope that this new generation, one that has tried to cast off the scars and mistakes of the past, can make a new way forward.
We also get one last scene of Team Avatar as we knew them – simply enjoying one another’s company. Iroh plays music, the rest of the gang chats, and Sokka creates an embellished, mostly inaccurate drawing that he defends in his trademark way. This is a family – an unlikely one, filled with individuals collected from across the world from different backgrounds and temperament, but one that, through their shared vision and efforts and care for another, really did manage to save the world.
Aang gazes upon this scene lovingly as he walks out to see the new day and drink in the peace of his surroundings. Katara follows him, and in a wordless scene, with the glow of golden clouds behind them, the two embrace, and then kiss.
It’s the one scene in this finale that I do not care for. As I’ve said before, despite Aang’s crush, the chemistry between him and Katara always felt more friendly, even motherly, than romantic, a childlike crush Aang would need to one day move past than the trappings of true romantic love. It sends the series out on something of a false note, albeit one that the show has teased many times over the course of its run.
Still, it represents the larger idea of the episode – that even with the weight of the world on his shoulders, Aang chooses his own path, one true to who he is and what he believes. I’ve expressed my skepticism about his unwillingness to take Ozai’s life, but however foolhardy it may seem at times, it is a reflection of the young man who never seemed like the Avatar he was supposed to be, who instead, forged his own way. That way was often off-beat, confused, and at times, well-meaning but foolish, but it was always a moral one, and more to the point, one that reflected the unique attitudes of the young man who carried them.
He chose to run rather than be sent on his Avatar training. He chose to fight rather than sever his connection to the people he cared about. And he chose to find another way rather than violate his personal, ethical code against killing another human being. In the end, he became his own sort of Avatar, one that did not simply accede to the will of destiny or expectation and tradition but instead made his own way without sacrificing the purity of his spirit or his convictions. There is something admirable, something true in that, and it makes for a satisfying finish to this incredible series.
Avatar: The Last Airbender truly deserves that superlative. Though the series took some time to find its voice, eventually it would flesh out an incredible world, filled with well-developed characters, a deep, generational lore, and a core cast who grew more multi-dimensional and complex as it progressed. The show deserves to take its place among the great stories of chosen ones, the stellar, epic tales that offer hardship and hope, struggle and success, tragedy and triumph. With an attention to detail and character that made those larger-than-life events meaningful, it captures an amazing journey. The series is the story of a collection of young people, amid a war and a struggle they are not quite ready for, renewing the promises that this world can offer and discovering who they are in the process. In that, they returned harmony to the four nations, and to one another, and that’s what makes A:tLA so great.
I have heard from more than a few people liking season 2 over 3, and I can see 3 being a bit bumpier (I really like the resolution to Boiling Rock two-parter, but didn't feel too much for the whole thing overall). Still, Zuko's arc alone helps propel the series to higher complexity, and 3 is just ambitious and constantly inventive throughout that I can't help but feel it's a step above.
The first half alone is so jam-packed: from the show's own version of Buffy's The Zeppo in "Sokka's Master", self-knowing (superpower-)teen angst of "The Beach", "The Avatar and the Firelord"'s past-present parallel of epic sweep, to the horror film-tinged atmosphere of "The Puppet's Master". Show's best standalone episode ever happens just before the finale though; "The Ember Island Players" is one great meta-fiction palate cleanser, so hilarious.
Speaking of finale, I have been trying and failing since I completed it to think of a show that saves its very best for its very last, like Avatar did with "Sozin's Comet". Such a spectacular, rousing, pour-all-in finish. Its Part 3 "Into the Inferno", especially, instantly becomes one of my all-time favorite episodes ever. I still get thrills and chills from many music cues and visuals from this finale (Ozai first noticing Aang and zooming towards him; the melancholic orchestra that accompanies that deeply tragic sibling duel). If not for the fact that this has a sequel series, I might be tempted to rewatch the whole thing right now again.
[8.6/10] I have to admit, I am a complete sucker for this sort of thing. I love the novelty of a television show or movie reinterpreting its own story as though it’s a story being told in-Universe. From C-3PO recounting the events of Star Wars to the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi to Arya Stark watching a stage play of the events of Game of Thrones, there’s just something about a story exploring how stories distort and reimagine and reshape real events and people for the sake of poetic license that really works for me.
And it worked for me here! For one thing, I love how meta this whole damn episode is. It’s not the sort of thing you can do too often, or your story becomes a little too much of an ouroboros, but once in a while, it’s a delightful opportunity for comedic reflection. (Though Community made a cottage industry out of it.) I laughed out loud at Sokka talking about the play as the sort of “time-wasting crap” he misses. I really enjoyed the touch that the poster for the show mirrors the cover of the AtLA DVDs. Even just the show being split up into three acts, or Suki noting that Teem Avatar gets beaten a lot, was a nice, self-reflective touch.
I also love the craft of the way the episode turns its story into a stage play. Having Aang be played by a woman on stage, Peter Pan-style, is an inspired move. The attention to detail in how bending was portrayed on the stage – with colorful ribbons and other stagecraft, was very creative. And most importantly, it worked as both a parody of Avatar’s story, of theater conventions, and the way that real events become exaggerated when committed to fiction.
That comes through most in how all of the show’s protagonists are caricatured in the stage version of their lives. Sokka as a guy who cannot stop making meat jokes, Katara as someone who’s always crying and making speeches about hope, and Zuko as someone constantly talking about his honor are mighty fine one-note parodies of our heroes. The dialogue and delivery of the show is hilarious, and it provides a nice opportunity for AtLA to make fun of itself, but also to have its characters make fun of each other, with Toph in particular saying there’s a lot of truth on that stage.
That feeds into the way that the show, cartoonish and outsized though it may be, feeds into everyone’s insecurities about who they are and how others see them. The silliest of these in Sokka crying at the story of Princess Yuweh. It’s a broad moment where she’s talking about having eaten pickled herring, but the magnitude of that event still affects Sokka.
The most heartening of them is Zuko regretting the way he betrayed his Uncle Iroh. As silly as the two are portrayed here, it has enough of a ring of truth that it serves as a reminder to Zuko of one of this greatest regrets. He’s still tortured by what he did, and it’s a nice way to show that even silly or inaccurate art can move us or affect us when it touches on something sensitive in our pasts or personalities. But I love the way Toph reassures him that by staking out his own path and joining Team Avatar, Zuko has redeemed himself with his Uncle even if he doesn’t know it. It calls back nicely to Toph’s conversation with Iroh, and her “sign of affection” for Zuko after telling him that he was all Iroh talked about is a sweet moment all around.
The trickiest of them was Aang being upset by the depiction of Katara and Zuko as romantic in the stage show, with stage-Katara talking about Aang as being nothing more than a little brother. It plays into his concern that he is not masculine enough and that his crush does not see him as anything more than a little kid.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not big on the Aang-Katara shipping business. I never really felt the chemistry between them (save for the moment in the titular Secret Tunnel) and as much as I enjoy the relationship between the two characters, it never really scanned as a believably romantic one, which makes all the teasing and agonizing over Aang’s crush on Katara kind of dull to me.
On the other hand, there’s a realness in their scene together outside the theater. Whether or not they make sense, there’s truth in a young kid having a crush on an older girl and worrying that he is not seen as mature or manly enough to cut the muster. (Hell, it happened with me and my wife!) Aang’s pain and frustration at caring for Katara and his distress when it’s not clear that she returns his feelings, feelings he blocked his charka for, are sympathetic.
But so are Katara’s, who very reasonably says that there are much bigger things going on right now than their romantic feelings, and that she is unsure of how she feels. The heightened environment of being on the brink of war and conflict, is not always the best environment to find your true feelings. As much as the last episode set at ember island devolved into overwrought Dawson’s Creek-style teen angst, this felt realer and believably awkward and painful for both Aang and Katara.
And yet for as funny an episode as this is, and as much as it leans into the character’s feelings about themselves and others, the end turns to the greater task at hand. The depiction of Azula slaying Zuko, and Ozai killing The Avatar, are clearly disquieting to the Aang Gang. The theme of the evening has been the way that even this exaggerated show reflects a truth that can unnerve our heroes. Seeing visions of their own failures and deaths is just as worrisome, evincing a fear that the future these men and women on stage are depicting will have as much truth of the real world in it. It’s a chilling reminder of the magnitude of what’s to come, and the threats that lie ahead. Art, as Shakespeare put it, holds up a mirror to nature, and sometimes the reality of what it reflects can rattle us, in the best and worst ways.
Brett: "In the '80s everyone has a clique. Nerds, jocks..."
[Nerds and jocks laughing. Mayors laughing maliciously.]
Brett: "... evil mayors who wanna tear down the rec center."Kid: "We're not answering any questions from adults, not until this town lifts the ban on dancing."
Glenn: "I had to stay three hours late to supervise the brats I sent to detention, but then they kept coming of age!"
Andre: "This town is racist as hell. Everyone keeps bowing at me. A kid challenged me to a karate fight, and everytime I say something, somebody rings a gong."
Gigi: "Mmm, mmm, mmm. I thought I raised you better than this."
Brett: "Okay, Brett, it's no big deal. You just wanna stay here longer with your friends. Just a couple spritzes of Nostalgia Max, and they will love it here as much as you do."
Blockbuster Man: "What do you want to see?"
Reagan: "Everything."Myc: "Seriously?" [Chuckles.] "No wonder your dad left."
Kid: "That's it!" [Tires screech.] "Fuck you, Myc!" [Myc flies off bicycle and soars like E.T.]Reagan: "Brett, what's with your whole 'Firestarter', Slimer vibe?"
Myc: "Tragic, dead at 40."
Reagan: "Hey, fuck you."
Review
What a predictable yet great episode. No, seriously, the entire story is surprising. Actually, it's what "WandaVision" should've been but just wasn't. This is great. More of this please.
[7.5/10] Failure is hard. It’s an obvious statement, but how it impacts us, how we respond to it, is telling. As we start the last season of Avatar, Zuko won his fight; Aang lost his, but they both feel like they failed.
It’s easy to understand why Aang feels that way. Ba Sing Se has fallen, as the twin grannies declare in colorful fashion, and the Fire Nation looks to have all but fully won this hundred-year war. Aang was there. He tried to fight it, and in the end, he couldn’t prevent it.
So when he has to hide his arrows to pretend to be dead, he pushes back on it, because it’s a reminder that everyone knows he failed, that he failed to stop this from happening 100 years ago, and he couldn’t stop it from happening again. It causes him to push his friends away, to try not to bring them down into his failures or make them, as he tells Katara, have to clean up his mistakes.
Zuko won, and he should feel victory, but his homecoming is bittersweet. It’s too much too soon to say that his conscience is bothering him, but as he returns in glory, he realizes that the event which has restored his honor may be a falsehood. He remembers Katara’s magic healing water, and knows that Aang may still be alive.
That creates a tinge of hollowness to everything. He is once again the Fire Prince. He faces his father, the one who scarred and banished him, and is welcomed, treated as someone who has come of age and regained his birthright.
But Zuko didn’t slay the Avatar. As Azula seems to suspect, based on her giving him the credit, maybe no one did. Though Zuko has everything he wanted so badly for these two seasons – his father’s respect, the chance to return home, the adoration and respect of his people, it all feels empty, because it’s a house built on sand.
Meanwhile, we get little bits of exposition to let us know where we are and how things have changed since we last saw Team Avatar. The conceit that they’ve captured a fire nation ship with Hakoda (Sokka and Katara’s dad) is a good one, providing plausible cover for them to move through the fire nation and creating some new dynamics. Sokka is his usual comic self, taunting and then thanking the irony gods. Toph is still a fun addition to the crew. But the best new detail is the relationship between Katara and her father.
Holy hell Mae Whitman! I must admit I mostly know the voice actress who does Katara from Arrested Development, and almost by design, she doesn’t get a chance to do too much there. But there is such hurt and power in her words when she confronts her father for leaving. There is a depth of feeling in the performance, the way she projects the way that Katara understands that her father had to leave them, but also the pain she felt from having to be separated and, in a sense, dealing with the loss of both her parents. It’s complex writing of a complex situation, and Hakoda’s response is age appropriate and heartening, but man is it a dynamite performance from Whitman.
Her sense of loneliness when Aang leaves speaks to the thing that Aang has that Zuko no longer does – friends and support. Zuko cannot trust his sister, who’s doublecrossed him plenty. He cannot trust his father, who banished him in the first place. Maybe he can trust Mai, since they apparently are an item now, but we only see her offer meager support here.
Aang, on the other hand, has Roku and Princess Yue, to remind him that Avatars before him have failed, and that he’s already saved the world once. It’s easy to lose perspective, carry your failures too heavy, and forget your good deeds. And he also has Team Avatar. The group hug at the end, after Aang accepts his new position in the world and is surrounded by the people who care about him and want to help him, is a sweet image, one that suggests the thing that gets us past failure are the people who love us whether we win or lose.
Notes:
Man: "You mutant son of a bitch."
Marilka: "I don't know what to do in Blaviken for the rest of my life, except go to the boring old market."
Geralt: "And kill rats."
Marilka: "And dogs."
Geralt: "You don't want my monster. You want me to kill yours."
Stregobor: "Very clever. Indeed."
Geralt: "What kind?"
Stregobor: "The worst kind. The human kind. Its name is Renfri."
Geralt: "Wizards are all the same. You talk nonsense while making wise and meaningful faces. Speak normally."
Renfri: "If I tell you, Witcher, that I can neither forgive Stregobor nor renounce my revenge, is that it? I admit I'm a monster?"
Geralt: "Yes. Or... you can leave Blaviken... and finally live. You choose, Princess."
Ciri: "And why are you not there? Wherever they are."
Lazlo: "My duty is to protect you."
Ciri: "You're resentful of that burden."
Lazlo: "It's the greatest honour of my life."Mousesack: "Many, many years ago, sorcerers were known to lock little girls in towers. I'm beginning to understand why."
Ciri: "You know cautionary tales don't work on me."
Mousesack: "The girls were said to be cursed. They were said to announce the end of the human race."
Ciri: "Ooh."
Mousesack: "So they were systematically killed. The end."
Ciri: "No!"
Boy: "What are you doing?"
Woman: "It's me, my son."
Boy: "What is this?"
Woman: "It's okay."
Geralt: "If we cross swords..."
Renfri: "I won't be able to stop."
Marilka: "Get out of Blaviken, Geralt. Don't ever come back."
Review
That was an interesting start. The time flew by and each storyline felt easy to follow. I don't know—we'll see how it goes. Otherwise, it's a promising beginning.
Wait, who is Butcher with?
What an intro
Susan: "You're really working this one, huh?"
Butcher: "Just being an upstanding citizen, luv."
Hughie: "She's not a bad person."
Butcher: "She's a Supe, Hughie. Just like the fucking rest of them."
The Deep: "So, get this, the dolphins there, I mean, they are really underfed and abused."
Hughie: "He's got a son?"
Homelander: "Take it easy just relax."
Queen Maeve: "What do we do?"
Homelander, carry it
Man, The Deep and Maeve trying so hard to be heroes but they're too weak to fight against the corporation
That's gonna be in Maeve's and my nightmares
Hughie: "You want to quit stroking my ego and show me what you really got?"
Frenchie: "So I know what's it's like to want to go home."
Frenchie: "No. Let me talk to her."
Butcher: "Don't be fucking stupid."
Frenchie: "What if she's a Spice Girl?"
My god, man. This show is bananas. Fricking bananas. This is what superheroes are about, man. This is what the MCU should look at sometimes. Being a hero is hard and in this world, all heroes are discouraged. it's so depressing man but I hope they can get through it. Frick.
Billy Butcher: "You'll love it."
Hughie: "Uh, not likely."
Man, that was great. What an intro. I love the characterisation of Hughie and Annie (I'm so glad they decided to show a hero with an outsider's perspective). Like, this world is messed up. Nobody here (except Annie) seems to have a code. They all seem like assholes. And getting a normal person's perspective is great too. Like, two really unique perspectives you don't get in superhero media. God, I'm hyped.
