“The High Aldwin,” the second episode in Disney+’s new sequel series, Willow, continues in telling the story of the hero’s journey, but it loses momentum and begins to fall flat in a lot of places and characters become rather predictable in their actions. In short, this episode bored me and felt like an incredibly predictable program, but I’ll just try and cut it some slack since I suppose it’s technically meant for children, and it’s only a Disney+ original.
We left off at the end of episode one with the reveal that Dove, the mere servant girl in love with Airk, played by Ellie Bamber (The Trial of Christine Keeler, Les Miserables), is actually Elora Danan, the young sorceress that’s supposed to bring about the demise of the evil Withered Crone. “The High Aldwin” reveals that Willow, played by Warwick Davis (Willow, The Harry Potter Movies), and Queen Sorsha, played by Joanne Whalley (Willow, Daredevil), had a falling out in the past in regards to how to raise Elora. The Queen wanted her to lead a normal life whereas Willow saw her, and still sees her, as a force that must be trained to fulfill the prophecy and become rightful leaders of the Gales. Essentially, we now know why Willow lives in his own little sorcerer compound.
Elora, Kit, Graydon, Jade, and Boorman all venture to the Nelwyn village and meet all of Willow’s followers. Here, we get to see that Willow honestly seems like a bit of a quack. I’m sure he’s knowledgable, but he messes up a bunch of ceremonies and seems out of the rhythm of being an authoritative figure. I got some second hand embarrassment for him, not going to lie.
Carrying on, the group ventures on to find Airk with Willow in company. This is where some things begin to fall apart for me.
First off, Willow’s episodes do not need to be an hour long. At all. The show probably only has about 30 minutes worth of necessary/worthy information per episode, and the next 20 are full of overdone jokes and tropes that we just don’t need. For example, Willow attempts to teach a spell to Elora, and she mispronounces the incantation for about 10 minutes straight. That isn’t needed, and it’s not funny enough to be that long. The longer they extend these moments, the more any sort of humor that was there to begin in the first place just dies. Everything could be more condensed, and then maybe it could be more palatable for me.
All of the characters in Willow continue to just be tropes. Yes, tropes are fun, and yes, it’s fun to create tropey characters and then do something that turns the expectations on their heads. However, so far this show has done nothing but be incredibly predictable with its tropes, and I’m hoping that the writers eventually elect to shake things up in that department. I don’t need to see Elora feel badly about herself for being the chosen one, I don’t need to see Kit be continually jealous, etc.
In summary, Willow has not exactly been impressive thus far, and I’m hoping that the upcoming episodes will help redeem the show for me. Being high fantasy, I think that it has a lot of potential, but it’s up to the creative team to execute that properly and keep up good momentum.
Rating: 6.0/10.0