In the cliffhanger ending of last week’s fairly silly episode of Willow, our heroes were attacked by trolls, one of the more menacing creatures from the original film. And as I wrote in my review, that had me hoping that this week’s new installment would feature a more serious threat to the protagonists.
Instead, Willow showrunner Jon Kasdan and his writers have chosen to undercut the trolls as well, giving them “regular” speaking voices instead of the grunts one would expect and making the lead one a bureaucratic fussbudget.
But before we get to that, the episode opens on the poor captive Airk Tanthalos (played by Dempsey Brik), still alone in an abandoned city on the edge of the world. Then we cut to the mines of Skellin– basically the Willow equivalent of Moria from Lord of the Rings but with evil trolls instead of dwarves– where Kit (Ruby Cruz) and Willow himself (Warwick Davis) are imprisoned next to an eyepatched detainee (special guest star Christian Slater of True Romance fame) who initially claims to be Madmartigan. Of course we the audience, as well as Willow and Kit, know this is not their old friend / father, and we eventually learn that he is instead Allagash, a former ally of Madmartigan’s who once helped him search for the Kymerian Cuirass. Meanwhile, the rest of the gang sneak into the mines to rescue their companions, with Elora Danan (Ellie Bamber) still struggling to master her magical powers and Prince Graydon (Tony Revolori) fumbling his attempts at improving his relationship with her. After meeting the above-mentioned administrator troll named Sarris (performer Tom Wilton from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker), Allagash, Kit, and Willow are able to break free of their cages and set out looking for the real Madmartigan who Allagash claims is still alive and trapped deep within the mines where the fabled Cuirass was being held. We get more history about Thraxus Boorman’s (Amar Chadha-Patel) adventures with Allagash and Madmartigan, and when the former two come face-to-face again, their competition for the long-sought-after artifact heats up again, bringing them to blows.
Once the larger group is reunited, they finally come across the chamber containing the Cuirass and must solve a series of riddles in order to enter. Inside, they find their treasure (though for some reason it doesn’t seem to work for Allagash) and Kit hears the voice of her father (provided here by Val Kilmer’s son Jack Kilmer) calling to her. But the chamber’s entrance collapses and they all must flee, with Allagash seemingly abandoning them at first, then returning to sacrifice himself so that the others can escape the mines. Then there’s another cliffhanger involving Kit potentially drowning and Elora needing to use Cherlindrea’s wand to save her, plus Airk encountering another prisoner (Rosabell Laurenti Sellers) in his forsaken city. But it’s not the story that’s the problem here– on paper that all sounds fine. The issue comes with the overreliance on humor that falls flat more often than not. The Willow movie is equal parts funny and adventurous, to be sure, but in these last couple episodes of the series the writing has leaned more in the direction of goofy, oddly refusing to let any real stakes or threats exist without severely hamstringing them. As a viewer, it’s hard for me to stay engaged or feel like these characters are in any real danger when they’re casually chatting about interpersonal matters while life-or-death battles are taking place behind them. These moments are played for laughs, of course, but the laughs don’t come because the two tones of the series are in direct conflict with each other rather than working together toward a cohesive whole.
There are scattered moments here that work– I liked when Allagash pulled a skeleton arm out of a dusty hole and then told immediately instructed Kit to stick her own arm in the same hole– but they are few and far between, the highlights of Willow remaining its production design and visual effects, while the talented cast members are doing their best with the material they have. Slater’s Allagash is a fun character, but his whimsical nature disappears among a backdrop that never takes itself seriously, instead of standing out as a mischievous exception to the rule like he should. Much like last week, I am holding out hope that this season will pull out of its current slump and find the right balance between more traditional fantasy-adventure and irreverent playfulness (that can work in appropriate measures) in its final two episodes.
New episodes of Willow debut Wednesdays, exclusively on Disney+.