The people who say this show didn’t properly depict Lovecraftian horror are ignorant.
Firs things first, H.P. Lovecraft was a blatant racist. I still love reading his fanatical horror though. The themes of white supremacy being threatened by the unknown were clear and obvious to myself throughout all of the famous short stories. So effectively Misha Green wrote the majority of the script as a metaphor of those themes, where the unknown is effectively the end of Jim Crow and minorities around the world rejecting inequalities. That can be interpreted as fantasy to certain people…
The problems keeping this from a higher grade is a lack of proper development, and pretty much all of the trailing episodes of the series having a deus ex machina save the day for our protagonists. In the first three episodes, the stakes were clear, and there were significant consequences for failure. Then our heroes stop losing. Additionally… I did not appreciate the LGBT agenda forced in the series, and upon the black actors and actresses. Were there queer people during that time, yes (James Baldwin), but it did not fit the fantasy horror themes of the show.
The core crew were fucking amazing though. Jonathan Majors has huge range in his acting, and is surprisingly short (means there was some camera trickery when depicting Kang). Jurnee Smolett, a surprise for me, didn’t know she was a child actor (Googled). Abbey Lee I compare to Elizabeth Debicki, a model with intimidating screen presence.
I don’t regret watching this, but damn JJ Abrams produced TV series never getting a proper ending outside of Lost. This ended on a self-contained cliffhanger and a second season was planned, but cancelled due to Covid.
First screened week of December 25, 2024 on Tubi.
