Shane Owens

The art and character designs were neat and there were many gorgeous shots, but the writing and characters weren’t really up my alley. It feels like there were too many characters to really develop them all and do them justice. The credits have a bunch of behind the scenes animation storyboarding and character designs that are worth watching if you’re into that kind of thing though. The Star Wars stuff was fun. The main group fits all the Episode 1-3 archetypes: Luke (Heron), Leia (Alexia), Han (Smuggler guy), Chewy (Smuggler guy’s friend). There’s basically a lightsaber in the show and Alexia has a map to the enemy’s weak point, just like the Death Star blueprints. The group, other than Heron, wasn’t really relevant though. The map Alexia was protecting didn’t ultimately matter and, really, nothing those three characters did mattered. The show had strong female characters... except for the aforementioned Alexia not really mattering and Hera’s whole motivation being that Zeus cheated on her. I feel like it would have been cool if Hera had been trying to take back her position as the head of Olympus that she is established as having once held, but nope :/ The show kind of ended up effectively being a sausage fest despite there being two main female characters, and it’s unfortunate. Like, substitute Apollo for Artemis so there’s at least one plot-relevant goddess who isn’t a villain, please. Zeus was a bad person and the show kind of hinges on you liking him. Zeus cheated on his wife... a lot... cause he’s Zeus... but he doesn’t really get flak for it other than for some Olympians mildly disapproving. There’s plenty of other stuff he did that was bad, but long story short: he kind of sucks. There was a whole god war, but none of the gods’ motivations really made sense other than Hera, Zeus, Hermes, and Apollo. Like, why is there a god war? I can guess, but it wasn’t really obvious and the gods just kind of picked between sides that weren’t clearly defined. At one point Zeus said that the giants’ bodies could be burned and destroyed. So... why didn’t he do that instead of throwing their bodies into the ocean where they could wash ashore later? The basis of the whole giant issue doesn’t really work because of that detail. Some people will like the show, as with anything, but it wasn’t my cup of tea.

It's like the writer couldn't decide what genre they wanted to write so it's all muddled. It's horror but not, mystery but not, romance but not... It has themes of all of them, but no solid foundation in any of them. The big bad evil guy and ALL of the tension that the show centered around got thrown out like the writer literally forgot what story they were writing and just concluded a totally different story instead. The narrative flow between and even in episodes can be pretty awful. There are whole episodes and characters/character arcs that feel like they should have just been short stories and don't really contribute anything. You could literally skip episode 8 and you would barely and I mean *barely* miss any plot-relevant information. Honestly, I think the show might even be stronger overall if you just skipped episode 8. It is well made, it really really is. There are so many little things it does that I love (I'm a huge fan of Mike Flanagan's work), but the story just doesn't hold up. Haunting of Hill House is one of my favorite shows, and Bly is very different so maybe I'm biased. It just seems very flawed from an objectively technical standpoint. I just can't say I really got anything out of watching the show.