See review: Episode 306, “The Lowlands”

Sometimes you have to simply accept something for what it is. Now nearing the end of its final season, See is never going to be a great TV series. For those fans still watching, the flaws don’t matter—they’re getting enough of what they love to stick with it. We’ve all been there, loving a show because it speaks to us and entertains us despite a near universal panning by friends and critics.

With Episode 6, “The Lowlands,” See offers plenty of action and peril as the story steamrolls towards its ultimate finale. With stacks of bombs on carts and trebuchets and armies moving to clash, hardcore fans will soon be rewarded with a feast of all the best things See has to offer.

See Episode 6, “The Lowlands” recap

With her entire council murdered by the Witchfinders, Maghra turns to violence, joining Tamacti Jun on a mission to hunt down and exterminate the rebels. They torture the conspirator blacksmith Remend Skelt to learn the enemy’s location and defeat the group led by Shiloh.

Desperate to warn Pennsa of the approaching Trivantian army, Baba Voss and his company take a short cut through the Lowlands, a “tricky” and dangerous smuggling route familiar to Lord Harlan. Ambushed by a powerful group of “Flesh Eaters,” both Haniwa and Harlan are dragged away. Baba Voss and company devise a rescue, but Lord Harlan is killed.

The always-slinky Tormada, now having designed catapults for his bombs, meets up with Nevla (“The Bank’), who brings him a small group of reinforcements. Advancing, Tormada is ambushed and captured by Sibeth and her Witchfinders. Sibeth allies herself to Tormada, proposing a political marriage, and kills Lucien with his own sword. The catapults stand ready.

See, Episode 6, “The Lowlands” review

See sometimes feints at developing its characters, and in “The Lowlands” it extends this treatment to Maghra. With the Witchfinders’ slaughter of her defenseless council members, Maghra discards her instinctive tendencies toward kindness and mercy and adopts the iron fist method of rule previously employed by her sister Sibeth. Gravelly-voiced Temacti Jun offers to carry out the bloody response without Maghra being implicated, but Maghra is done being the benign sovereign.

Donning helm, armor and weapon to participate in the killing of the insurrectionists, Maghra immediately gets to display her new viciousness in the torture of rebel blacksmith Skelt. While a logical response to her experiences, Maghra’s transformation from benevolent ruler to violent avenger is weirdly emotionless. Viewers don’t see a good person torn apart by a war between their nature and the demands of leadership; all they get is Maghra making a difficult choice.

Charging towards its final episode, See falls into a trap that has plagued it all along: when the story needs an extra obstacle, the writers pop in something new, which never feels organic. The “Flesh Eaters” fit this bill in “The Lowlands”; they appear unannounced and out of nowhere and prove a major nemesis for this one episode.

While providing action and peril aplenty, the “Flesh Eaters” are a perfect example of See‘s lazy writing.  As this epic tale roars towards its finale, already-established storylines should be bumping heads and clashing in a thunderous leadup to the final confrontation, but instead, big plotholes get stuffed with out-of-left-field elements.

Looking at “The Lowlands” through this lens, one must name the snarly blacksmith Skelt, the Witchfinder Lieutenant Shiloh and the Alpha Flesh Eater as underdeveloped minor characters who are used as cannon fodder. How is this story so far along and still employing unknown characters to make the narrative work?

Here at the end, the show should be thick with well-developed storylines that hurl each other forward, not relying on plug and play crutches. And poor Shiloh—she’s a professional Witchfinder of high status which means she’s one heck of a fighter—is taken down by wannabe warrior Maghra. Did we miss something here?

Having lost Haniwa’s trail, Baba Voss’s plan to lure in some Flesh Eaters, wound one and track it home is a good idea, and it works. More fighting action ensues; the highlight is Baba Voss duking it out with this week’s anonymous evil boss, the Alpha Flesh Eater. See loses one of its better-developed minor characters, Lord Harlan, who gets to die well.

The Sibeth-Tormada alliance is just plain weird. Both characters are so over-the-top that they almost cancel each other out when onscreen together. They both relish their own perceived brilliance with such smug narcissism I suspect one of them will have killed the other before their wedding night is over.

In conclusion, “The Lowlands” offers up the usual See banquet of sweeping landscapes and well-choreographed action peppered with Jason Momoa’s undeniable bear-hug charisma. It’s a fun show with epic intentions, which goes a ways towards blunting the fact that it’s not that good.

Episode Grade: C

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