Week-to-Week: Willow's whirlwind world-building worked...most of the time
Reflections on the end of Disney+'s legacyquel
Hey, everyone—Myles here. I’m going to be traveling through mid-February, and while I might occasionally have some week-to-week thoughts that I’ll share here, and I’ll start coverage of a couple of shows, I’m going to be allowing some of the site’s contributors (and maybe some new faces) drop in with some other thoughts as we progress through the next month or so. First up, Lisa Weidenfeld—who just finished covering Mythic Quest’s third season—drops in with some thoughts on the finale of Disney+’s revival of Willow.
Willow has been playing a balancing act all season. It’s both a very straightforward fantasy adventure, and a show geared towards young adults that airs in an era of very meta action comedies. Fantasy can be almost painfully earnest as a genre, but commenting on the absurdity of what’s happening around the characters constantly runs the risk of making the viewer self-conscious about the proceedings. Sure, we’re following a traditional hero’s journey about Kit, an arrogant royal, and Elora, a reluctant Chosen One, but they both talk like a couple of 20somethings who wouldn’t sound out of place at a Starbucks.
There are times when its own meta-commentary makes the whole thing seem like it’s apologizing for what it is, and then there are times when the effort to cut the tension a little bit works. To be fair, for most fans of fantasy, there is a certain amount of hand-waving around the group of people doing the thing in order to protect/find/destroy the magical what’s-it. Kit having trouble explaining the plot of this show in their final confrontation with this season’s Big Bad, the Crone, is right on the borderline between extremely relatable (I watch this every week and I don’t know if I could have explained it beyond “the Crone wants to kill Elora”) and so self-conscious it hovers right between breaking the tension and ruining the moment. But this is (checks calendar) 2023, and audiences expect some winking at the camera from their genre adventures.
When it’s not blushing furiously over its own world-building, the show has still managed to have a lot of fun playing on its own tropes. It’s easy to see how Kit, in earlier incarnations of this plot, would have been a boy, and fallen for Elora. They’ve followed a pretty traditional enemies to lovers arc all season, but the platonic nature of their eventual connection made their decision-making around trying to rescue Airk, Kit’s brother and Elora’s alleged true love, more about choosing to do something together, rather than for each other. A lot of the conflict both of them have experienced this season has revolved around their own respective lack of agency, and the finale is all about them choosing things. Elora, despite her previous low station as a castle cook, still had freedom in who she was and what she was doing, and the burden of taking on a savior role sat incredibly uneasily with her all along. And Kit both loved the status of being a princess and hated almost everything about the obligations it laid on her. The constant agony that she might not be good enough at being the hero made up the vast majority of her bluster, but it also gave her that much more motivation to follow through on their adventure. It made a certain amount of sense in the final conflict that Elora is more tempted by the false vision the Crone offers than Kit is, even if Kit’s father does help her. Kit is all too familiar with the burden of responsibility, even if she was trying to run away from it in the pilot. Elora has spent all season getting a crash course in how awful it is to be a chosen one.
The arc between the two of them was probably what worked best all season, and the resolution in the penultimate episode that they’d go to rescue Airk together was probably the best emotional payoff that a show this meta and, let’s be honest, chaotically plotted, could get. The slapdash nature of some of the developments was on display in the finale, particularly around Airk, a character who abruptly evinced a strong desire to be King and rule over his sister despite previously seeming like a pretty chill dude. It was a little hard to imagine that even possessed, he’d want that.
The finale both ties off a lot of its plot threads from the season (Elora finally embracing her powers, Kit getting to be a hero, the dilettante-ish Boorman deciding to stand for something) and is a little less fun than prior episodes. The final showdown between Elora and the Crone is inevitably a letdown, given that there’s no way to demonstrate a magic battle other than finger zaps, and the show’s insistence on drawing it out between multiple scenes does no one any favors. And Boorman and Jade don’t get a ton to do, with Boorman’s big fight happening off camera and Jade mostly playing supportive girlfriend. It’s missing the shaggy camaraderie that made up the quest portions of the season.
Willow has, despite its occasional goofiness, set up a lot of interesting threads throughout the season, and it’s a shame not to see some of them get more play here. For one thing, Willow himself has been struggling with the notion that his family back home needs him, but here his eventual choice to help Elora isn’t really explained. At this point there may need to be some kind of support group for women whose fathers abandon them in favor of their adopted daughter Elora Danan. But he’s the titular character! Pausing a moment with him as he turns back from going home to help save the world might have tied off that narrative more. And remember when Jade discovered she’d been lied to her whole life? Because the show hasn’t brought it up since they left her rediscovered childhood home in Wildwood. And Graydon, whose characterization has probably been the thinnest of the leads, gets yanked into some kind of Wyrm dimension without much to show for it, beyond being the easiest character to temporarily write out of the group.
That’s just the show this has been all along, though. It’s sort of…70% of a decent show. There’s a lot of solid narrative built around Kit’s arrogance, Jade’s sense of duty, and Boorman’s slippery charm, and then a much looser collection of threads around who Elora is outside of this quest, or what Graydon’s whole deal is, or why Airk was the twin chosen to be kidnapped.
Still, if Disney decides to keep going with it in a second season, there’s plenty of new stuff for them to try, with the twins reunited, and the journey to get out of the Immemorial City. I hope we get to see it.
Stray observations
This bugged me all season. If they’re all going to pronounce it “Eric,” why is his name Airk?
Boorman has the only reasonable response to potential imminent death: politely checking in to see if anyone wants to make out. Also, that character has been giving off bi vibes all season, so the confirmation is nice, even if it’s a little jokey.
The show is leaning heavily on the idea of a reappearance of Madmartigan at some point, but it was nonetheless a little weird to have him be present by voice only, considering that is the specific thing Val Kilmer lost.
I get that it makes sense for Kit’s hero’s quest, but I genuinely thought Jade would turn out to be the one of them who was pure of heart enough to wear the cuirass. I appreciated that Kit is not super sure of how to take it off, though.
Why is short hair an indicator of villainy for both Airk and Elora? Conversely, Kit’s short hair is a part of her rejection of typical princess behavior. Much to consider, coiffure-wise.
Unless we were meant to read A LOT into those bucolic childhood flashbacks, Airk is not Kit's boyfriend. (I know, I know, it's a typo, "boyfriend" for "brother". I do stuff like that all the time.)
Pretty much exactly my opinions: the earnest throwback stuff is good, some of the modern meta stuff works, a lot of it doesn't, averages out to about 70% good. Assuming we get volumes 2 and 3, I'll miss Graydon as part of the fellowship for as long as his teased heel turn lasts; his was my favorite arc in volume 1. I thought Elora was the weakest link. It's not the actor's fault; I just don't think the writing made her transition from McGuffin to character particularly convincing.
It was a perfectly ok show, I had little to no expectations so it had a low bar to clear for me. If it gets another season I'll probably watch, if it doesn't, ehh. The plotting seemed really loose in a couple of episodes, I think a few times I was like, "Wait a sec..", but other than that it was some light fare to pass the time.