Willow turns in a solid finale with “Children of the Wyrm”

After traversing the breadth of the land, facing off against Bone Reavers, Gales, trolls, and their own doubts, our band of heroes has arrived at the end of the road. The Willow season finale ends what has been a pretty fun ride.

As always, there will be SPOILERS beyond this point for the latest episode of Willow.

Willow Episode 8 review: “Children of the Wyrm”

Elora Danan (Ellie Bamber), Kit Tanthalos (Ruby Cruz), Willow (Warwick Davis) and all the rest have finally arrived at Immemorial City. Like The Lord of the Rings or The Sword of Shannara, Willow is a quest fantasy story through and through; the entire show has been about one big journey to reach this point. That means that a lot depends on how well the show sticks the landing, since it has to pay off everything it’s taken to get here.

Fortunately, “Children of the Wyrm” is yet another solid episode of Willow. If you haven’t enjoyed the tone or style of the show so far, it’s unlikely the finale will change your mind. But if you have been enjoying the series, then the finale won’t disappoint. It wraps up the show’s first season in a satisfactory manner while leaving the door wide open for future adventures.

We begin with Kit and Elora, whose leap of faith off the waterfall in “Beyond the Shattered Sea” led them right to the heart of Immemorial City. The corrupted Prince Airk (Dempsey Bryk) tries to convince them to go into the city’s temple and hear out the Crone/Lili (Rosabell Laurenti Sellers), who he says is really not that bad! Elora and Kit aren’t buying it. The opening scene is one of a few times in the episode where characters are back-to-back while throwing around amusing banter. There are a lot of small beats to play in this scene, like Elora’s reactions to Airk’s changed attitude, Kit’s desperation to sway her brother, and the thought that maybe, just maybe, he’s not wrong to ask them to lay down their weapons.

But Prince Airk is wearing all black now and paling around with the Gales; of course he’s being influenced by the Crone’s evil. Once they’re inside the temple, we get another fun smattering of dialogue where we find out that the brown goop Airk has been drinking is actually the equivalent of milk from the Wyrm. It’s just as gross as it sounds, and Willow immediately lets us know it’s in on the joke as Kit begs Airk to stop talking about it. The tongue-in-cheek nods to the audience are as plentiful as ever. They’re part of the show’s charm. Yes, Willow can get silly at times, but it always feels like it’s very much aware and making that choice intentionally.

The Crone traps Elora and Kit in a vision where they’re each tempted by a person they care about; Kit speaks with her mother Queen Sorsha (Joanne Whalley) while Elora is offered a chance to marry Airk. The Crone gives each of them a chance to basically hit reset on the entire journey, saying the Wyrm has the power to put them back into their happy, oblivious lives, except with all the things that were previously out of their reach.

The voice of Madmartigan speaks to Kit in her moment of doubt, swaying her back from the brink. I can’t lie: this moment was one of the few where I almost choked up a little. One of Willow’s biggest strengths has been that it is just so earnest with its characters. It was nice to get one last appearance from Sorsha and Madmartigan (voiced by Val Kilmer’s son Jack Kilmer) here at the end of the season.

But it’s too little too late. The Crone turns Kit to stone, and we find out that Elora has seemingly accepted the Crone’s bargain as she walks down the aisle to marry Prince Airk. The visuals in this dream sequence look beautiful, as does the episode as a whole.

At the last minute, Elora has a hilarious realization that she’s just “not into” Prince Airk anymore. Psych! But by then the Crone already has her devious fingers in Elora’s mind. Fortunately, Willow shows up just as all seems lost and banishes the illusion. And then all hell breaks loose.

A CGI battle royale

While Kit and Elora are hanging out in Immemorial City, Jade (Erin Kellyman), Graydon (Tony Revolori), and Boorman (Amar Chadha-Patel) are having their own crisis of faith. Despite any doubts or fears, they each leap off the waterfall to go help their friends below. But the rescue is short-lived; like Kit, they’re also turned to stone while the Crone is working her magic on Elora. As such, when Willow miraculously turns up and breaks the spell, Kit, Jade, Graydon, and Boorman are all freed as well.

What follows is an old-fashioned fantasy brawl, as everyone in the party gets their hands dirty fighting the Gales, the Crone, and even Prince Airk. Once Willow arrives, the Crone reverts to her true form: a decaying, decrepit sorceress who has lived for untold years in Immemorial City.

The battle has a lot of cool moments. It is first and foremost a CGI spectacle, with lightning bolts shooting all over the place, monsters running amok, and sword fighting. There were a few moments where I started to zone out and wondered if the sheer amount of CGI was going to make the battle feel weightless, as it sometimes does in Marvel stuff. Thankfully, there’s so much going on and the attention to detail is so good that it always grabbed me back.

When the dust settles on the battle, our heroes are victorious but the cost is high. Elora embraced her power and defeated the Crone while Kit donned the Kymerian Cuirass in order to fight off her possessed brother. The Crone tossed Graydon through the magical gateway that led into the Wyrm’s dimension; we get a final glimpse of him in the ending scene of the episode, revealing he survived but is now primed to be possessed by the evil force within. But Prince Airk is saved, cleansed of his corruption.

Willow leaves off with the Crone and Gales seemingly defeated, but the ominous promise that the Wyrm is still awakening and is now “pissed off” because of their intervention. Prince Airk is now part of the traveling group. They stroll off into the sunset in search of a way to escape the desert surrounding Immemorial City. What they get into next, we’ll find out if Disney decides to do a second season.

Willow Bullet points

• While many Disney projects in the last year have felt like they’ve rushed their visual effects a bit, the finale of Willow looked spectacular.
• The Kymerian Cuirass is cool. It functions kind of like the medieval equivalent of Tony Stark’s Iron Man suit, expanding to cover Kit’s body in gleaming scales. The retractable sword is also a great touch.
• Boorman gets in plenty of jokes here at the end of the season. I’ll miss his sense of humor (though the moment where he offered to make out with Graydon or Jade was a little weird since he’s seemingly so much older than them).
• The acting in general has been pretty good; there’s no weak link in the cast. That said, this episode had some of my favorite performances in the series from Warwick Davis, Ellie Bamber and Ruby Cruz.
• The end goals of the villains was often pretty opaque, the big threats unclear. I kind of love that the show pokes fun at this in the finale when the Crone says “don’t even pretend like you know what that means” after Kit accuses the villain of wanting to “banish Elora to the thirteenth night.”
• There is a post-credits scene where we see a mysterious hand pick up the book from the opening of each episode. It places the book on a shelf beside two other tomes, labeled “Volume II” and “Volume III.” Seems like a pretty clear hint that plans for seasons 2 and 3 exist, though whether we’ll get to see them probably depends on reception to season 1.

Verdict

“Children of the Wyrm” is an all-around solid finale to Willow’s first season, ending the show with exactly the type of panache and whimsy that has marked its run so far. The show feels like a perfect marriage between Lucasfilm’s classic adventure films and more family-friendly Disney projects, which sets it apart from a lot of other recent fantasy shows. After this finale, I’m hoping more than ever that we get a season 2; there are clearly more stories to be told, and the heart of the production very much seems to be in the right place.

Episode grade: B+

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