I can’t really say I came away from the debut of Disney’s new show all that impressed…at least not at first…

A Lying Witch and a Warden

They say first impressions are everything, and this episode didn’t leave much of an impression. We are introduced to a whimsical and maladjusted young girl named Luz who drives her peers up the wall with her reckless fantasy-themed misadventures. She’s sent to spend the summer in a reform school before stumbling upon the magical world of the Boiling Isles. There she meets a wayward witch named Eda who agrees to take Luz on as her apprentice rather than let her languish at summer camp.

As tired as the trope is, I was on board with the whole “normal girl discovers a magical world where all myths are real” premise at first. The Boiling Isles seem like a grungy, crapsaccharine world as opposed to glitter bombs like Mewni or The Land of Ooo, and who doesn’t like a crazed felon of a witch voiced by Wendie Malick? It seemed like Luz had an interesting character arc ahead of her, learning to form a healthy boundary between fantasy and reality. However, the events of the episode only seemed to validate her capricious nature, adopting the whole “persecuted because we’re different” moral.

The thing is, Luz’s shenanigans were portrayed as genuinely harmful, bordering on sociopathic. While I can relate to her sense of ostracism, the same message can get worn out after the hunredth time it’s appeared in cartoons. As I was watching the episode, I was half-expecting a twist at the end that would make her pause and re-evaluate her manic pixie dream-girl mentality, and maybe form a pushback against such glitzy absurdism alongside episodes like The Way of the Willow in Tangled’s animated spin-off.

I saw some potential for this in the character Warden Wrath. He and his henchmen have an interesting plague-doctor aesthetic and act as an authoritarian police-state in this otherwise lawless magical world. Despite their grim exteriors they seemed no more dubious than the con-artist, Eda. Perhaps their seemingly oppressive regime had shades of gray to it?

I imagined that perhaps the Boiling Isles was located in an alternate dimension to the real-world, that like matter and anti-matter they must remain separate or risk destroying each other. However, wistful dreamers in the real world, like Luz, thin the barriers between these worlds with the power of their feverish imaginations. On their side of the wall are “deviants” who dream of doing normal things like accounting or baking gluten-free desserts in their cloyingly bizarre world. Both put the fabric of existence in jeopardy and Warden Wrath’s answer is to imprison and repress anyone expressing such tendencies.

I feel like this scenario would introduce a moral conflict to Luz’s worldview and embody her struggle to separate fantasy from reality. What did we get instead? He’s just an old meanie who apparently thinks writing fan-fiction about vegetables falling in love is wierd in a world populated by pixies who like to eat people’s skin. Adding to that, he himself has a really creepy infatutation with Eda for evading his tentacled clutches. There’s no way internet wierdos aren’t going to have a field-day with that.

With any luck, there might still be some potential for a denouement like this, but at this point I might be indulging in more wishful thinking than the protagonist.

Overall: 6/10

But there may still be hope…

Witches before Wizards

I honestly think this episode’s premise should have been used for the premiere instead. It followed through on the direction I thought the previous episode was pursuing to begin with. Luz finds that the luster of her magical adventure has worn off. She’s less a heroine on a magical quest and more of an errand-girl for her crazy wino aunt. Seeking a true magical adventure, she easily falls prey to an illusionist puppet-master (yet another octopus monster with a beef against Eda) who dubs her as the chosen one and sends her on a sham of a magical quest that turns out to be a trap.

By the end she learns that only her attitude can make things special, not a perfect fantasy world, and that she can see splendor even in cesspits like the Boiling Isles if she’s willing to look hard enough. Also, don’t trust strangers…I feel like they glossed over that with Eda in the last episode.

In my eyes, this redeems the premier, enough to convince me to follow it and review each individual episode like I do with the other shows I watch. At first I was going to leave you with my thoughts on the first episode and check back in at the end of the season with my final evaluation, but episodes like this have revived my interest and shown me that the writers are earnestly trying to do something novel with the show. Now, I have no doubt I’m in for some filler episodes and light-hearted romps for the first few episodes, but if there are more like this one, it may be worth the effort to slog through them.

Overall: 8/10