There was no Willow review last week, and you’re going to notice that, because I don’t review things I don’t like. Last week’s episode was Episode 5, and it was bad. It was just bad.
It’s what you guys know I call a bridge episode. A bridge episode is an episode that serves no purpose other than to get us from A to C. It’s the B in the middle. It’s the bridge. People might argue, well, this happened and that happened and the other. It was a very uninteresting episode. All the things I find annoying, the out of context speech and the modern talk (which, by the way, they only double down on this week), all the stuff I’ve found to be very patience-trying about this series, that’s all Episode 5 was.
So this is Episode 6, “Prisoners of Skellin.” Ambushed by trolls, the party must rescue Kit and Willow from the troll prison Skellin, where they find a man posing as the legendary Madmartigan, only to uncover that he’s actually the self-styled troubadour Allagash, who like Boorman left Madmartigan behind a long time ago. Boorman leads Kit and the others down to Wiggleheim’s vault, where she hears the voice of her father as the cavern starts to collapse. Airk, still lost in the Immemorial City, finds himself face to face with someone new.
I like it better than last week. But not by much.
Gesundheit, and Where Are We
The show has got me so frustrated, because there are really good elements, and then you have stuff like Elora sneezing and Jade saying “Gesundheit.” That’s clearly a German reference to a God bless you or something along those lines, which again begs the question. Where are we? Where is this taking place? What is happening here?
Then you have the troll leader. Apparently these are intelligent trolls. If you remember the movie, trolls were literally these not so intelligent monsters that ran underneath bridges and stuff, the whole bit. In this one you have one that sounds like he’s straight out of a James Gunn movie, like a Guardians of the Galaxy movie or something, because he’s all, hey, what’s going on, guys? Meanwhile his sidekick partner is like, oh, kill them.
You find out this is a giant prison that’s run by the trolls. It’s a mining whatever, but it’s controlled by the Crone, so they serve her. They’re ultimately looking for Elora Danan, because everybody is. She loses Cherlindrea’s wand only to recover it later. It’s a whole thing.
And probably because I was frustrated, I missed something. I did catch that they were being attacked by trolls. I missed the part where the trolls took Kit and Willow prisoner and everyone else escaped.
The Christian Slaterssance
So Kit and Willow get taken to the crow’s cages, and you find someone there. It’s this character Allagash, who’s being played by Christian Slater, who in my opinion, only because of the sheer volume of things I’ve seen him in, must be experiencing a Christian Slaterssance. He’s also a voice in a show I like a lot on Netflix called Inside Job. It’s an animation.
Oh man, he’s Madmartigan. Kit asks who he is, and obviously Willow realizes there’s no way he’s Madmartigan, and she also knows that’s not her dad. Only then do you uncover the fact that his name is Allagash. He is who he is. But Allagash says that Boorman betrayed them.
Back with the other group, the ones trying to get down there. Oh yeah, by the way, Scorpia is Jade’s sister. That’s a thing now. For those of you who are just kind of in passing keeping up with the show, we learned that Jade is actually the daughter of Kael. Again, a lot of things thrown at us very fast last week that have no value. By no value I mean you’ve built me no stakes for me to care.
Xena, Hercules, and the Translation I Don’t Buy
I feel like the show is very confused as to what it wants to be right this moment. But then again, in some instances it’s not. It doubles down on the music and everything else. It’s almost like a modernized version of the old Xena and Hercules series.
For those of you playing at home, the Xena and Hercules series was the Sam Raimi production from back in the day. They were set in medieval-ish times, or old ancient god times, but they were shows where everyone spoke very modern.
And I can’t even go there. I’m willing to sit here and say, okay, maybe this is just how we’re interpreting them. Like it’s a transliteration. They’re actually talking in their normal formal way of speaking, and we’re just hearing them in this colloquial version. I’m sorry, I don’t buy that. I don’t want to sit here and believe that.
Wiggleheim’s Vault and Her Father’s Sword
Ultimately Elora and them realize that Boorman’s taking them somewhere, and he explains he’s taking them to Wiggleheim’s vault. Wiggleheim is an old Nelwyn adventurer, I guess a legendary Nelwyn adventurer, who found treasure and all that stuff and is supposed to have the Kymerian Cuirass in his vault.
Eventually Allagash leads them down, everybody converges and meets there, and you see this whole moment where Allagash and Boorman are wrestling to try to get into the vault. Meanwhile Kit is realizing, and you can see it in her eyes, this is all these guys care about. I felt for her in that moment.
So we push in. She goes in, and they’re fighting over what they think is the cuirass. The end result is she sees her dad’s sword, she pulls it out, and you hear his voice. I’m hoping that was actually Val Kilmer voicing it, because that would be beautiful and wonderful. Or maybe they just got permission from him to do his voice, like Disney’s done with some other things, so you get his voice and the sound of it through technical means.
We’re About an Episode Behind
The whole Madmartigan and Kit thing, none of this is bad. None of this is bad. My issue at the moment is, does the show have time for this, and why wasn’t any of this stuff littered in sooner?
I feel rushed. This is Episode 6. There’s only eight. That’s two more episodes, and we’re hip deep in what should be the beginning or middle of the second act right now. We should be at Episode 5 right now. We’re about an episode behind in terms of how the story should be going.
When I worked in television, there are beats you hit at certain intervals. The idea is it carries you forward. Otherwise you find people feeling the way I feel, which is, what’s happening? Why is this happening? Where are we at in this moment?
Everything’s About Elora
Eventually they’re escaping, and you come to find out not everybody’s a complete scoundrel the way they all think they are. Boorman’s trying to make up for the fact that he left Madmartigan behind. Apparently it wasn’t malicious, but it was definitely cowardly. Allagash is the same. He wishes he could have gone with Madmartigan, but Madmartigan wouldn’t let him go with him.
So he has this moment with Kit where he tells her, I believe the reason I’ve survived all this time is so I could tell you this. He wanted me to tell you that he had to go fight what’s down there, because he trusts you guys to handle what’s up here. What’s important up here.
And she’s like, what’s that?
Elora Danan.
Everything’s about Elora, and it only makes Kit angrier. As they’re escaping through this glowing area, it’s almost like ice or crystals of some sort, she’s having a confrontation with Elora. And Elora’s like, listen, you can hate me, you can yell at me, you can do everything else. Can we do it someplace else?
Then a piece of debris from above smashes the thing they’re standing on and Kit falls through. As soon as she falls through, it starts to seal up, through black magic or whatever, and she’s now underneath. Willow’s trying to use his staff, but it’s not powerful enough. Elora backs up, finds Cherlindrea’s wand that she had dropped, and starts doing the same spell. You’re left on a sort of cliffhanger.
Airk Walks in a Circle
Then we cut back to Airk, who by the way we actually started the episode with. And I would have been okay without any of this troll nonsense, without any of this Kit story, if you’d have lived in with Airk for a minute. If you’d have shifted gears and said, hey, we’re going to follow Airk’s point of view for right now, I would have been super happy with that. That didn’t happen.
We got him in the very beginning, and he starts walking. When we get him at the end, come to find out he’s now walked full circle. He can’t escape, apparently. He walks out into the desert only to come back around to the other side of where he was. He’s hearing the Crone’s voice inviting him into a door. Then he hears a woman’s voice, because he goes back to the same place he was at and drinks some, I guess, cursed water. It looks cursed anyway. If it’s not cursed it should be, because it’s getting blamed for it.
So he goes and he finds this girl. The show hasn’t done anything that I thought it should do, so I’m going to start trying to see it from where it’s at. If I’m a betting man, I firmly believe she’s going to try to pass herself off either as Elora Danan or as somebody else. Somehow this is the Crone. This is not a good person. There’s nobody you meet in this environment that’s going to be good.
She’s asking him, are you the person who brought me here, this and that, and Airk’s like, no, but whoever brought you here brought me here also. So they’re leading us down a thing, and it’s going to be weird. I think the Crone’s trying to brainwash Airk into joining her somehow. For whatever reason, who knows. Oh no, she does know. She wants to get Elora Danan, obviously.
The Verdict
Willow Season 1, Episode 6, “Prisoners of Skellin,” is a 6 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.
For the record, and I’m not even going to mark it down but I’m going to tell you, my Know-It-All Index for last episode, Episode 5, was a 2. Mrs. Know-It-All said I should make it a 4, but I didn’t like it at all.
This one wasn’t great. At the same time it was better than last week. It was the place we were going, even though I don’t know that I want to be here.
I’m too far into it to quit and not review the last two episodes, so we’re going to see what happens. I’ll see you guys after the new year. Happy New Year.
Tell me your score for “Prisoners of Skellin,” and if you also like Inside Job, let me know that too. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
