His scenes beg for more context. The moment before the show’s first fight sequence, Sunny exchanges only three sentences with a pack of bandits before things get violent: Ribs get cracked, heads are snapped, and one man is even impaled on the skewer of his own pig roast. Lots of blood is shed each week on Into the Badlands during variations of the same fight scenes, sequences that are as awe-inspiring as they are gory. But they feel like distractions set up to compensate for a rather lackluster, one-dimensional protagonist.



Even Sunny's origin story is vague in a way that makes it seem like the writers failed to develop him beyond the silent, seemingly cool and collected fighter. "This man standing here is a far cry from the miserable whelp I laid eyes on all those years ago," Quinn says in the first episode, noting that he found Sunny as an abandoned child with "no parents, no name, no past." Impressed that Sunny managed to survive on his own, Quinn took him in and forged him into a warrior. Maybe there's more backstory to come in future episodes. But for now, it feels like a cop-out. Why doesn't Sunny have an epic origin story like his white action hero predecessors? He's reduced to a mental shortcut.

However, Sunny is more than a docile servant to Quinn: He shows compassion, and he does rebel — very, very quietly. He saves M.K. from a gang of nomads, and he’s coaching the young fighter so that the two of them, along with Sunny’s lover, Veil (Madeline Mantock), can flee the Badlands altogether.

The fact that Sunny has a lover, who's also the mother of their unborn child, marks the only significant difference between him and nearly all Asian men in Hollywood. Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li rarely ever get the girl in their onscreen roles. Remember Li’s hug with Aaliyah at the end of Romeo Must Die? Into the Badlands’ depiction of Sunny as someone who's sexually desirable — and has sexual desires himself — is an improvement in Hollywood's representation of Asian men.