Tag: metacrone

The Women of The Passage: Character Analysis

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

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One of the main themes of The Passage, both the TV series and the book trilogy, could be summed up in the title of S1 Ep8 of the series: You Are Not That Girl Anymore. The major female characters of The Passage have all grown this season and had an impact on the main arc of the story.

The future relies on Amy Bellafonte and how she weathers the virus and her relationship with the other virals. It’s Dr Nichole Sykes’ commitment to Jonas Lear’s vision that made Project NOAH what it is, and she is still an important part of the evolving nature of the virus and virals. Dr Lila Wolgast has provided emotional, medical and logistical support for Brad, Amy, Richards, Sykes and Lacey at key moments. Shauna Babcock is Fanning’s second in command. Lacey Antoine rescued Brad and Amy and gave them a hideout from Richards’ pursuit. Elizabeth Lear was the catalyst for the entire endeavor. She was both Jonas’ excuse for pursuing the Bolivian rumors until the end of the world and the voice of reason in his head telling him he was going too far.

Shauna Babcock

Though there are a few female inmates who have become virals, Shauna Babcock is the only one we’ve seen communicate with humans and whose backstory we’ve been given in detail. Shauna has lived a complicated life, and has created a complicated web of relationships within Project NOAH. Manipulation is her specialty, making it difficult to tell when she’s being sincere and when she’s using someone.

In the story she told Clark, she’s a victim with a tragic backstory who finally snapped. Shauna was regularly raped by her stepfather from the ages of 8-16, until she was old enough to stand up to him and make him stop.

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Always a Witch Season 1 Episode 2: A University Witch Recap

~ Metacrone

Always A Witch:Siempre Bruja 102 Carmen Takes a Nap and Levitates

In episode 2 of Always a Witch, Carmen settles into the 21st century as she makes an arrangement with Adelaida to stay at the hostel while working there. She also gets acquainted with a new group of friends, while searching for clues about Ninibe’s disappearance and trying to stay one step ahead of Lucien. Carmen audits biology classes as part of her modern cover story, which brings her into contact with many of the people she needs to meet and increases her knowledge about the 21st century and witchcraft.

It’s so refreshing to watch a show about a witch who fends for herself, without an older male handler acting as a father figure to “guide” her actions and education. Carmen has various friends, advisors and mentors in her life, as any normal person does. But there’s no one in her story whose opinion she allows to take precedence over her own, such as a vampire slayer’s watcher, the Charmed witches’ whitelighter, or the male partner of virtually any fictional woman. In both time periods, Carmen listens to the opinions of others, then makes her own decisions. Not even Cristobal can sway her opinions or decisions for long.

Since I hate the trope that a powerful/magical woman always needs a male handler or she’ll become out of control (looking at you right now, Roswell, New Mexico), I’m thrilled to see Carmen able to think for herself at 18. Once Cristobal teaches her to read and write, she adds those skills to her supernatural powers and begins to leave the mindset of a slave behind. During her arrest and trial, it’s clear that existentially, her mind is already free. The Inquisidor even accuses her of seeing herself as equal to her master. It’s not an attitude she develops in the 21st century.

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Roswell, New Mexico Season 1 Episode 6: Smells Like Teen Spirit Recap

~ Metacrone

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In episode 6, Roswell, New Mexico goes back to the characters’ senior year to relive the events surrounding Rosa’s death. Along the way, we also find out the truth about Michael and Alex, Liz and Kyle, Max and Liz, Isobel and everyone, and which dress Liz ultimately wore to the prom. We also discover that Rosa and Liz’s very best friend Maria didn’t figure into their high school lives enough to be featured in this episode.

This is not okay. We were shown in a previous episode that on the night she died, Rosa stopped by the Wild Pony, the bar run by Maria’s mother at the time, to pick up a bottle of booze and avoid Isobel. Is that all Maria is to the rest of the gang? Someone to use when they need something?

I appreciate the reboot making Michael bi and having that form of representation. But Maria doesn’t need to disappear. The original character of Alex was still in the show when Michael was in a relationship with Maria. He was only written out because Colin Hanks had other offers and wanted to leave, not because the showrunners were ignoring him.

WHERE’S MARIA?

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The Passage Season 1 Episode 7: You Are Like the Sun Recap

~ Metacrone

The Passage 107 Jonas Holds Liz' Hand

The title of The Passage, season 1, episode 7 is a deceptive one. In the universe of The Passage, the metaphor You Are Like the Sun can mean that you are the life-giving center of my universe or that you are like a deadly poison. Since the sun itself is both life-giving and deadly, so it is also a metaphorical stand-in for the virus.

The focus in this episode is on the main characters’ important relationships and tragic backstories. Amy, in particular, needs to face her past so that Fanning can’t use it against her, the way he’s used their past against so many others. It’s also time for Brad, Lila and Clark to unravel their complicated history in regard to Eva’s death.

Fanning is focused on Elizabeth as the potential replacement 12th viral and someone he can win from Jonas, while Jonas is fighting the loss of his beloved wife with everything he’s got. Elizabeth needs to make the same choice we saw Carter make, between life as a viral in Fanning’s “family” or death as the person she’s always been. Though presented quietly, with dignity, her scenes in this episode are among the most powerful and moving of the series.

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Always a Witch Season 1 Episode 1: A Leap in Time Recap

~ Metacrone

Always a Witch Carmen with Christobal & Esteban

This is a recap. My review of Always a Witch S1 is HERE.

Always a Witch is the story of an enslaved, time-traveling young witch who escapes the danger she faces in Cartagena, Colombia in 1646 by jumping to the Cartagena of 2019. In the present day, Carmen Eguiluz, the young witch, must perform a mission for the wizard who helped her time travel. Then she can go back to her own time to save the man she loves from being shot and killed when he attempts to defend her, and stop her own execution as a witch by burning at the stake. But once she gets to 2019, completing her mission is more complicated than she expected. She makes friends and enemies as she navigates the future, and it takes teamwork to achieve her goal.

Recap

The episode begins with a seaside vista of sailing ships anchored off the Caribbean coast of Cartagena, Columbia, in 1646. On the shore, a young, dark-skinned woman is chained to a cart, pulled by soldiers. She is being brought to her execution in a coastal fort made from local stone. Soon, the woman, Carmen Eguiluz, is tied to a stake, with a pyre beneath her feet, ready to be burned as a witch.

The Inquisidor reads a heavy-handed list of charges against her:

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Always a Witch (Siempre Bruja) Season 1 Review

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

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Always a Witch, or Siempre Bruja, is a Netflix Original from Colombia. This Spanish language show (with English subtitles and dubbing) is a time travel fantasy about a young 17th century slave named Carmen who is also a witch. She uses magic to escape execution and travel to the present day. Much like the series Outlander, she travels between the two time periods, fights evil foes in both, tries to save the man she loves, must adjust to her new time period, and works to make life better for the people of the past.

Always a Witch is a fresh take on the time traveling witch concept, with a young cast and storytelling that’s grounded in Latin American culture. This show avoids the graphic nature of Outlander, keeping its content more suited to younger audiences, while still addressing the harshness of Carmen’s life as a slave, and the realities of the modern world.

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Season 2 Cast Announced for Altered Carbon

~ Metacrone

AC S2 Kovacs Psychasec Screen

While Altered Carbon still has no official release date, Netflix has released a teaser video to announce the main season 2 cast. As previously announced, Anthony Mackie replaces Joel Kinnaman as the main character, mercenary for hire Takeshi Kovacs. As expected, most of the season 1 cast is missing from the list, but 2 fan favorites are returning. And Simone Missick, a fan favorite from the now defunct Netflix Marvel universe, joins the cast.

Here is the teaser video, with Netflix’s character descriptions and my comments to follow.

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Dark Season 1 Episode 3: Past and Present Recap

~ Metacrone

Dark 103 Mikkel in 1986 Driveway.

Episode 3 picks up moments after episode 2 left off, with Mikkel having time traveled back from 2019 to 1986. He’s gone back to his family home, where his teenage parents brushed him off the same way his present day siblings do. They left the door to the house ajar, so now he wanders in, looking at the house that is and isn’t his home.

He finds Jana, his grandmother and Ulrich’s mother, lying on the couch. For a moment, they each confuse the other with the family members they’ve lost. Jana hopes he’s Mads, and Mikkel hopes she’s his mother. Jana goes to Mikkel and begs him to give her some kind of news about Mads. She becomes emotional, and scares Mikkel. He runs out of the house.

Nurse Ines Kahnwald works in the community hospital. Since she’s a single woman with no family obligations, the other nurses often ask her to take over their shifts when their schedules become inconvenient. Patient and good-natured, she doesn’t mind the extra work at all.

Young Charlotte Doppler finds a dead bird on the road as she rides her bike to school. She puts it in her bag to examine later.

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The Passage Season 1 Episode 6: I Want to Know What You Taste Like Recap

~ Metacrone

The Passage 106 Brad & Amy Outside

In episode 6 of The Passage, I Want to Know What You Taste Like, Winston escapes and tastes quite a few people. Amy learns to use her telepathy and family connection well enough to track him.

It turns out to be Richards who was bold enough to have Lila kidnapped while she was praying in church. Since he’s having her brought to the compound, she joins the team that’s hunting for Winston. She’s just in time, because Brad is not okay with his replacement little girl growing up so quickly and working with the dark side, meaning Horace Guilder. Lila becomes Brad’s new/old handler, in order to help keep the peace.

Jonas and Elizabeth have a loving reunion, but also face the truth about her condition. Sykes remembers the friendship she and Babcock developed before Babcock turned into a semicomatose vampire without the ability to speak. Babcock resents that Sykes didn’t maintain their friendship after it appeared that Babcock was braindead.

It seems to me that etiquette would require the one with the telepathy to make the first move in that situation.

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Amazon Cancels The Man in the High Castle: Season 4 Will Be Series Finale

~ Metacrone

Plus Official Season 4 Teaser Trailer

Another one bites the dust.

As the title of the post says, the upcoming season 4 of Amazon Prime’s The Man in the High Castle, which will be released in the Fall of 2019, will be its last. Many suspected that this would be the case when the show was given an early renewal for season 4, after it had taken so long for season 3 to be released. Another high quality show lost to Jeff Bezos’ short attention span.

But, despite my sadness over the loss, I feel there’s some good news here as well.

For one thing, look at this amazing poster! For another, a teaser video was also released today. And, in an interview with Deadline, the executive producers of the show, Isa Dick Hackett and David Zucker, strongly hinted about the possibility of a sequel series or film.

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