Legend of the Seeker: Destiny

The second episode of Legend of the Seeker (which I suppose is the second half of the first episode) already demonstrates a marked improvement on the trope-leaden premiere…

It’s far from being objectively good of course, but neither does it waste any time in establishing the stakes and galvanising our heroes: pointedly named villain Ranssyn Fane (how’d you think your kid would turn out if you gave him a name like that?) has stolen the Book of Counted Shadows MacGuffin and taken off for the boundary so he can return it to Darken Rahl. Reunited with Chase (who I think is meant to be local law enforcement?) Richard and his new squad rush to intercept him.

But the writers infuse fantasy-based logic into the proceedings: having already pointed out that crossing the boundary is a rare phenomenon, and knowing that Fane doesn’t have access to her mode of passage, Kahlan deduces that Fane knows some other way of breaking through the magical barrier.

Which he does: in the last episode he noticed that Chase had possession of a standard-issue D’Haran weapon that had only recently been forged, meaning that he had a way of transporting goods across the boundary – and after going to his house and taking his daughter hostage, he learns that a woman called the Bone Woman has the means to get through the magical barrier.

See, that’s actually pretty clever, as it makes sense that a general would notice another man’s weapons and correctly draw that conclusion with the information available to him.

That said, the inclusion of the Bone Woman – also known as Adie – feels so random and non-essential that I can only assume she was a major character in the books that the writers felt obliged to include despite not really having a use for her. And she was a colourful character, what with the blindness and the outfit and the accent – so her superfluousness feels even more bizarre.

I’m also not entirely sure what she was doing with her nightstone – going across the boundary to buy and sell weaponry? An elderly blind woman?? They could have just had Chase in possession of a nightstone that he’d hidden out in the forest somewhere.

In any case I can appreciate that Fain took a hostage we actually had reason to care about: Chase’s daughter, even if it led to that other perennial favourite of fantasy-fiction: a scantily-clad girl shrieking in mortal peril and running in slow-motion while being attacked by a badly-rendered CGI monster.

Yet even in the midst of this cliché, they make the most of having already established in the last episode that said monsters are attracted to blood, and exist in close proximity with blood flies – Fain utilizes both facts to endanger Laura’s rescuers.

You can tell they’re trying to squeeze in a variety of disparate ideas from the novel, which are there probably better paced and spread out over several chapters, and the world-building is still rather scattershot. Like… where are all these monsters coming from? And Kahlan casually throws into conversation that the souls of the Underworld can travel through the barrier, and that Rahl can communicate with them – two things that I’m pretty sure never contribute to anything plot-related and don’t ever come up again.

The more important scenes of the story involve Richard and Kahlan talking with each other outside Chase’s house, over (and this is the delightfully weird part) a night-wisp that lives in a stone around Kahlan’s neck and talks with vaguely dolphin-sounding noises.

But underneath the fantasy trappings, I’ve always loved that the heart of this show is the relationship between two emotionally-mature adults who can communicate clearly with each other and aren’t afraid to be vulnerable with their anxieties. There is an ever-growing belief among fandom that if relationships aren’t emotionally stunted and co-dependant, then they’re not interesting, and the assumption that conflict and belligerence between two people is inherently compelling has long since escalated into full-blown violence being used (or interpreted) as shorthand for “sexual tension”.

But not Richard and Kahlan. They are blissfully free of all that turgid drama; they talk like adults, listen to and understand and respect each other’s opinions, disagree without fighting, and just be soft with each other in a way that (let’s face it) was rare in 2008 and is even rarer in 2020. Sure, there’s still some details regarding Kahlan’s role as a Confessor that have yet to be divulged, but for the most part these two are allowed to fall in love in a way that actually brings them joy instead of grief and angst. Imagine!

In the final scene they fight side-by-side in the green aurora-like effects of the boundary, complete with plenty of explosions and fireworks, unnecessary spinning and slow-motion. It’s so stupid, I love it.

More importantly, she thanks him for saving her life, he concedes that she saved his life, and they hug it out. It sets the tone for everything that’s to come between them, and I really wish people could get more excited about love stories like this one.

Miscellaneous Observations:

So, does Darken Rahl work as a villain or not? We won’t see him again until episode ten, so Craig Parker has to make an impression now, or else have the audience forget about him.  He’s quite small of stature, so you can’t be physically intimated by him in the way you are by the likes of Darth Vader, but he makes up for in with the quiet consideration with which he plays the part. This guy isn’t a cackling Dark Lord, he’s careful and intelligent and in control, and he knows that – performance choices that go a long way when he’s forced to play out the old cliché of killing the underling because he’s outlived his usefulness.

Michael could have been a more interesting character, what with convincing himself that he was doing the right thing (but for what was clearly the wrong motivation) but he turns on his brother pretty quickly, and it remains unclear as to whether he knew that Richard had been adopted. But if memory serves, we revisit him later in the backend of the season, so we’ll see how that goes.

Surely the scene in which Richard gets too close to the boundary, is pushed out of the way by Zed, who leaps in front of him and is promptly attacked by spirits, could have been staged better. Because wow, it looked awkward.

Ah, a good old Burn the Witch mob, complete with pitchforks. It’s sad but realistic that they would target Kahlan, and does add some insight into how Confessors are perceived – with either great respect or suspicion and fear.

The writers go for a Prophecy Twist in the last few minutes of the episode, with Richard choosing to throw The Book of Counted Shadows into a fire… and I call foul. After all that talk about its importance, he just chucks it away? Also, don’t burn books. That’s bad.

And we end the second half of the first episode with a  standard The Adventure Continues shot, with our trio looking out over a spy-and-bounty-hunter-filled landscape, planning to do whatever it takes to find and destroy Darken Rahl (I actually love that there’s no debate over what to do in regards to Rahl. They know straight off the bat that they’ve gotta kill him). After a pretty mediocre premiere, there’s only six more episodes before we really get to the good stuff…