Willow - Episode 3 - Review

Elora being kidnapped at the end of the second episode, definitely put some pressure on the questers, none of whom seem especially fond of the others. With Commander Ballantine now under the spell of the Withered Crone and the heroes none the wiser, did they do anything to save the potential ruler of all?

Of course, the episode opened up with the heroes none the wiser on the abduction of the potential empress, given that she was off on her own attempting to grow a plant. However the group quickly discovers that she is missing and during the search, leads Kit to find the plant all grown up. If you don’t recall, the spell that Willow was teaching was to only grow a small sprout, enough to start really, but her power brought forth a full plant. While Kit is the one to find it, she is not the one to discover the tracks leading away from the camp and while the group chase after them, they are quickly able to discover that Ballantine is the one with Elora. He explains he is taking her back, but the group don’t believe him, even Jade and a fight soon breaks out. While Graydon has smarts he doesn’t have any sword skills, so in combat he is useless and therefore is given the task of attempting to free Elora from the bindings holding her to the horse. Somehow a smoke bomb goes off and within the chaos the guards escape with their prize, leaving the heroes scratching their heads as to what has gone on.

Not content to leave things be, the group chase after them but are unable to track them down a second time, which leads to a decision. Boorman proposes that they take the mountain path to the Slaughtered Lamb, a pub with a questionable history, but Willow advocates for the longer path around the mountain. The group seemingly want to go Willows way, so Boorman opts to go on his own, but Kit decides to go with, wanting to know more about the cuirass and her fathers role in attempting to find it. While the group split up, Elora manages to cut her binds on a small piece of exposed sword and makes a break for some woods nearby. As she is running through the woods, the camera starts to help play up the hunt and while she is scared and on the run, she quickly comes across a pair of woodswoman. After explaining the situation, they offer their service to the future empress, but are quickly discovered by Ballantine. While the one who speaks is killed after a pretty cool move, Elora grabs the other and makes a break for it, but doesn’t get far before she is captured again.

Now rather than explaining the rest of the episode, mostly to avoid saying anything about the end of it, I do want to point out two things. The first is the smoke bomb, it seems to go off almost instantly and provides perfect cover for the bad guys. Now the latter isn’t the issue, but rather the former and that speed of it going off just makes no sense, there is no hype to it, it just goes off. Of course, it doesn’t come out of nowhere as it does get mentioned, but its execution is just so poor, it may as well have been a randomly generated object. The second issue that I had is with Elora and her wooded wanderings, the camera shaking and the general sense that the woods were wrong was fine. It put some danger into her escape, but the issue was with her discovery of the woodswomen, as it was weird. The effect of her not knowing what was going on, the uncertainty of things to then discover two normal as you can get folks, just chopping wood in the middle of the woods, it didn’t feel right.

The weirdness here is something of a trend that the show is starting to highlight, Kit is suffering from first world princess problems and it makes her unlikeable. Jade has some sword skills, but is constantly hiding her feelings, Graydon just seems to have the right knowledge to answer the question of the moment. Boorman has his own agenda and Willow seems to not want to do magic, though he finally does at the end of the episode. Normally in a quest like this, the group has a bonding moment and now we are three episodes in, they don’t seem to have had it yet and it makes it hard to connect to them. Each character on their own, in their own element is likely fine, but we are not seeing them there, we are seeing them in a combined one, but they just don’t seem to care. Finally being able to see Willow cast a spell was a good thing, but the entire old person who doesn’t want to do their thing, isn’t a strong character and they need to address that. When your title character is billed as a spell caster, then you had better have them casting spells.

The third episode of Willow was ok, but it had some issues with its pacing, characters and main threat. On their own, each could be concerning, but all together, they set a worrying tone for the rest of the series. I am sure at some point they will come together, in a proper way, but without that it is hard to root for them, when none of them seem to care for anyone else.

The Score

7.5

Review access provided by Disney

The Pros

+Seeing Willow finally cast a spell

+The final fight scene was pretty epic

The Cons

-The group seem to only want to do their own thing

-Kit is still proving to be the weakest part of the show