‘Willow’ is a visually stunning but tonally adrift mess

It’s been a little while since the Disney+ series Willow dropped on the platform, but I think it’s only fair to express my grief and disappointment in the series itself.

The series starts around seventeen years after the film adaptation left off. Princess Kit Tanthalos (Ellie Bamber) is all set to marry Prince Graydon, played by Tony Revolori, who looks more out of place than an MCU-set Flash Thompson. 

The series has Willow mentoring Elora Danan, who was the small child that Willow rescued and took care of. Danan now works as a cook for royalty, often overlooked by many of her peers and coworkers. All of her power is tested when her love interest Prince Arik is kidnapped by the Gales and Elora must find her true power to vanquish her enemies. 

Now that the synopsis is out of the way, let’s get into the good of the series. The show is as visually dazzling as one would expect from a Disney+ series coming out in the year 2022 about a stunning fantastical landscape with beautifully filmed cinematography.

However, that seems to be where the positives end with this incomprehensible and unnecessary foray into a world that nobody really cares about. 

The show’s pacing is bolstered by an uneven narration that makes both facets of the show nearly incomprehensible and to make matters worse, the show looks like it should be set in the Middle Ages and you have the main characters give the most cringe-worthy dialogue that makes it sound like it were written by Gen-Z’ers. I’m almost certain that people in a serious franchise like that would not be saying, “Hey, where you at!”

Moreover, the stakes are almost non-existent and fail to live up to any credible threat that makes the audience feel….something. This tv show is purely for the most ardent of fans that grew up with the movies back in the 1980s. 

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