Legend of the Seeker: Denna

The one with the half-crazed, half-broken dominatrix...

This is it is you guys, the episode which made everyone sit up straighter and think: “huh, maybe this is a show we should start taking seriously.” Which is strange in a lot of ways, as the episode capitalizes massively on the fact that its main antagonist is Ms Fanservice, beginning the episode with a slow-motion close-up montage of... well, this. If you didn’t know Terry Goodkind’s kinks before, you sure as hell do now.

And yet, it’s difficult to be too snarky about it, simply because the writing allows its titular character to be so much more than mere wank fodder. Remember how the Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation trailer featured the money shot of Rebecca Ferguson climbing out of the pool in a bikini? And then in context, it actually made sense because she was timing herself to see how long she could hold her breath underwater, an essential part of the heist she was prepping for?

Much like that example, Legend of the Seeker goes heavy with the fanservice that Denna provides, and yet it’s an intrinsic part of her character, there’s a justifiable reason why most of it exists, and it’s backed up by surprisingly solid writing. (Not award-winning writing, but solid writing). Sometimes things can pander to the lowest common denominator and be surprisingly deep and meaningful at the same time. It doesn’t happen often, but it can happen.

That Denna and her ilk are based on sub/dub dynamics is so undeniable it hardly bears mentioning: they call each other “mistress”, they wear skin-tight leather, and they torture their prisoners into brainwashed submission through a process that they refer to as “training”. Admittedly, I’ve not read any on-line discourse about how it’s potentially questionable that these women are a. the bad guys and b. themselves slaves to Darken Rahl’s will, but again – the fact that there’s so much more to Denna’s character than just the cliché of the dominatrix in her boots and leather probably helped save the show from criticism.

The episode is also noteworthy for devoting itself to the prolonged physical torture of its male hero and his gradual mental breakdown, which.... yikes. I can’t think of many comparable examples of this beyond Crichton in Farscape (who was raped off-screen) and John Sheridan from Babylon 5 (though that was more psychological). Again, the show’s commitment to playing with gender norms is what helps elevate it from the usual shlock you’d expect from television fantasy in the mid-noughties.

The episode starts with the aftermath of Shota’s premonition in the previous episode: that Richard will be betrayed by “the one in white”, that is: Kahlan. In something that’s been nicely seeded throughout the preceding episodes, Kahlan’s fear of hurting Richard with her abilities is what motivates her to seek out another Confessor to take her place (which might be more poignant if we knew more about the supposedly ancient bond between Seekers and Confessors, and what it is that Kahlan specifically contributes to Richard’s cause in her role as said Confessor).

It’s also tangled up in the fact that after waking up from a nightmare (in which Kahlan deliberately stabs Richard, just in case her greatest fear wasn’t obvious enough) the two have their first kiss, in the middle of a conversation about how much he trusts her, which of course only sends her paranoia into overdrive. And honestly, Bridget Regan performs this nonsense so well – that she’s playing a woman who is afraid she’ll betray the man she loves because her superpowers would make him her slave if they ever had sex is completely ludicrous, and yet here she is, selling the hell out of it.

So she heads off to find a replacement Seeker, making her conveniently absent when Richard and Zed come face to face with Denna, the Mord Sith.

First of all, we have to applaud the sheer audacity of a name like the Mord Sith. Nabbing Sith from Star Wars and Mord from The Lord of the Rings is so shameless it deserves nothing but respect.

Slightly more questionable is the fact that this is clearly Richard’s first run-in with the Mord Sith, and his complete unpreparedness demonstrates that nobody has ever bothered to mention their existence to him before this very moment. I mean, isn’t an elite team of gorgeous women who can effortlessly turn magic back upon its owner something he should have been given a heads-up about LONG before now?

He’s overpowered easily, and when he wakes he’s shirtless and chained up in a Mord Sith dungeon with Denna. What follows is pretty intense: there’s mind games and probing questions and plenty of physical pain thanks to the agiel and its very effective sound-effect, and from a writer’s perspective, a lot has to be done in a very short space of time when it comes to making the audience believe Richard is genuinely succumbing to Denna’s torture.

At first he uses that tried-and-true technique of imagining himself with a loved one (Kahlan, obviously), only for Denna to corrupt this fantasy by placing herself in it, and she herself uses the equally old trick of planting a fellow prisoner in the dungeon that can befriend Richard before further eroding his trust by revealing his true loyalties are to her.

During the course of the torture, Denna even uses her agiel to stop Richard’s heart and then resuscitate him with “the breath of life”, something that would surely mess with anyone’s head (and will be important by the end of the episode).

And of course, it’s always the villain that inevitably gets to divulge the Big Secret. Denna is the one who gleefully tells Richard the price of Kahlan’s love: that their being together would inevitably confess him (though there’s a great character beat in this scene, when Denna naturally assumes that she’s already confessed Richard in order to make him love her, because that’s obviously what she would do in Kahlan’s situation).

Jessica Marais puts in a great performance, moving from calm and collected to on the brink of raving madness at a moment’s notice, and even finding room for some real vulnerability when she explains the agiel causes her pain when she so much as touches it. Only someone with the face of an angel could play this role in order to best highlight the character’s contrasting cruelty, and she nails it.

Like Kahlan, her abilities are born out of strict discipline and self-control, and there’s an obvious parallel at work when Kahlan seeks out her friend Lara to take her place as Richard’s Confessor, only to discover that she’s confessed the population of a village. There’s not enough time to delve too deeply into the situation, but as Lara defends her decision by stating she’s helped these people drive the D’harans from their home, Kahlan points out that by taking one of the men as her lover, there’s a pretty good chance that Lara simply enjoys the power that comes with having an entire village under her sway.

As Zed unwittingly points out when he tells Kahlan what’s happened, Richard is essentially in just as much danger of becoming a pawn at the Mord Sith’s hands as he would at any Confessor’s. Aside from being treated with a modicum of more dignity, is there any difference between Lara’s confessed lover and Denna’s brainwashed stooge that deceives Richard in the dungeons? 

Mord Sith and Confessors are simply two sides of the same coin, as is demonstrated in Kahlan’s plan to free Richard: she states that killing the Mord Sith torturing Richard might break her hold over him, which is exactly how one is released from a Confessor’s control (and indeed, what happens to Lara).

Which leads to another ethical conundrum emerges when Kahlan is faced with the impossibility of springing Richard from the heavily guarded D’haran fortress, only for Lara to offer the manpower of her confessed villagers. Kahlan argues against the possibility of using mindless slaves as cannon fodder, though Lara points out that the Seeker’s life is much more important than theirs. Does Kahlan have a choice in forcing others who have no choice to fight and die for the greater good? Whew, this shit is complicated.

The episode’s major conflict, that of freeing Richard from Denna’s control, is wrapped up a little too easily. Although Kahlan is taken prisoner after Richard uses Denna’s agiel on her, it turns out to have been a ruse so that he could save her life and have her confess him before he loses himself to Denna (good thing that they’re put in adjourning dungeons with a small door between them). After she refuses, the two of them are brought to the torture chamber together, Denna orders Richard to kill Kahlan to complete his training, and he resists after the two of them tearfully stare at each other long enough. Because you know, love and stuff. It’s not too profound or clever, but it gets the job done.

(What happened to all the soldiers that were meant to be guarding this place? There’s only about six or so seen on-screen, and the issue of the confessed villagers fighting on Richard’s behalf is resolved when Lara is killed and they all disperse. Which is dealing with the problem by not actually dealing with it).

But of course, the real conflict of this episode wasn’t in rescuing Richard, but for Richard to mentally hang on long enough for help to arrive. It was touch and go there for a while, but the cherry on top of this episode is the Hoisted By Her Own Petard quality of Denna’s defeat. Richard gets his hands on the Sword of Truth, and despite using her power to deflect it as she so effortlessly did at the beginning of the episode, Denna has by this point trained Richard to withstand enough pain that he can force himself through her defenses and stab her.

It’s nicely played, though the episode’s final scene is in Denna receiving, rather than bestowing, the breath of life. She’s too good a character to lose just yet...

Denna feels like a tentpole episode for a lot of reasons. It introduces the Mord Sith, which becomes a major element of this show in its entirety, to the point where one of their number will be a main character by the second season. Denna herself is a fantastic addition to the show, and her existence contributes to the show’s deep interest in subjects such as free will and personal responsibility.

It’s also the first time that the stakes have been raised exponentially, not by endangering any of the character’s lives, but in putting the protagonist through an ordeal that might have irrevocably changed him. Though it’s not likely that sustained torture would leave anyone feeling stronger in real life, in this case the fact that Richard seems to have gained a bit of internal strength in his final scene still feels deserved within narrative bounds.

Essentially, it’s a game changer.

Miscellaneous Observations:

As testimony to her impact, Denna is the only episode this season that is named after an actual character (I haven’t seen season two yet, so it may be the only one in the entire show). 

Kahlan decides that the "betrayal" Shota spoke of refers to the fact she left Richard to seek out another Confessor. Which... uh, okay? If memory serves, this is the last time it's ever mentioned (unless season two goes into it further) so it's pretty much a damp squib of a prophecy.

"So that amounted to pretty much nothing, then?"
"Yup, pretty much."

This is a good place to discuss the aesthetics of the show, which I’ve always enjoyed. In what has to be a direct contrast to the flowing white robes of the Confessors, the catsuits of the Mord Sith are the colour of dried blood, and the long braids and the agiels help complete the ensemble, as part of their perfectly groomed and controlled look. I remember way back when this series was first announced that book readers were asking themselves how on earth the show was going to adapt these weapons, since they were essentially torture dildos, and yet – they pulled it off.

They also successfully capture the intrinsic tragedy of the Mord Sith: taken from their homes as little girls, tortured and terrified into submission, and then forced to kill one of their own parents to prove the completion of their “training.” I mean, that’s some dark shit right there, and though I haven’t seen season two yet, I know the writers return to this well with their exploration of Cara.

But between that backstory and the fact that they’re in pain every time they touch one of their agiels, the show successfully delivers a set of characters that are both victims and villains. In many ways they’re like the old school Biblical witches: evil and wicked and powerful and gorgeous, but also in thrall to a more powerful male leader, whether it’s Rahl or the devil. In that sense it’s difficult to put any feminist spin on them: the power they wield is the result of suffering, they hurt and/or radicalize other young women in their turn, and they’re totally subservient to Darken Rahl (as we’ll see in Denna’s next appearance).

In another nice gender flip, it’s not a violent male who is attracted to the innocence and kindness of a young woman, but a cruel and violent woman who is seemingly touched by the gentleness of a man. Denna is baffled but intrigued when Richard tries to help his fellow prisoner for the sake of a child he’s never met, and later is gobsmacked when he asks for Constance to train him, so as to not make Denna suffer further with the use of her agiel. By their final scene, when Denna is exhorting Richard to kill Kahlan, she does it within the context of Richard mercifully ending Kahlan’s pain, having figured out what makes him tick.

In any other context, I’d be calling foul on the intimacy of her death at Richard’s hand, considering it focuses on their faces to the point where he gently touches the side of her face as she dies (remember how Guy impaled Marian with his sword and the writers enthusiastically called it “their consummation”?) but we’ve just watched her torture him for thirty minutes, so it’s poetic justice. That, and she’s not actually dead anyway.  

And Richard’s inherent goodness is demonstrated throughout the episode, in ways that you don’t normally see attributed to a male character. When he sees that Kahlan is uncomfortable after he kisses her, he apologizes and says: “I won’t do it again if it upsets you.” How often do you hear those words out of the mouth of a male lead? And moments like his request that she confess him because: “I’d rather be your slave than hers”, and the way he collapses with exhaustion on her shoulder at the end of it all – oh, I’m sure my little adolescent heart was doing flip-flops the first time I saw this.

On a different note entirely, the actor who played Lara’s lover is called Gareth Reeves and he’s a kiwi actor that I once saw play Hamlet – and he was excellent! It makes you wonder though, about the sheer difficulty of making a living as an actor, if you can go from one of Shakespeare’s greatest roles on the stage, to a bit-part as a mindless toy-boy in a relatively low-budget fantasy show. 

But I noticed his performance when Lara's died, demonstrating through his reaction that it wasn't just being confessed that kept him by her side - he really did love her.

It’s the episode that heralds the show Growing the Beard, in which all the pieces come together, hefty topics such as control and trust are explored, and there’s so much left over to unpack in regards to the characters, the power dynamics and the ongoing story. Its guest star was unforgettable, and Craig Horner and Bridget Regan both upped their game in the acting department. 

More than any of that though: it’s a total surprise. Who could have guessed from that deliberately provocative opening sequence that there was a quality story about to unfold: a satisfying standalone episode in its own right, but one that also has long term implications for the series as a whole?