I never intended to talk about the Nevers, because it's on HBOMax which even most twitterati aren't going to bother to pay for, and because Joss Whedon's work like this seems very repetitive, and of course his star has gone down in flames. It seemed unlikely his last series would get much discussion or acclaim, nor deserve it anyway.
And all of that would stay true if we only talked about the first half of the pilot episode. If you really, really wanted Buffy writing but in steampunk London updated for 2020 sensibilities, you got exactly that.
I am going to take the rare step of declaring SPOILERS. If you think you are possibly going to watch this pilot (again, on HBOMax, which lets be honest we only subscribed to for the Snyder cut) then do so before reading this.
The first half is, you know, fine. It's a show in an oppressive patriarchal society with women running around kicking superpowered kung fu butt. It adds to Buffy a much more distinct awareness of *class* (because we are talking about the times with the tropes of Victorian aristocrats and industrialization and slums), and the show is using disability as a its central metaphor. All of the superpowered marginalized outsiders are "Touched" in a term that has both negative connotations alongside pretty awesome results, and much of the dialogue is like a tumblr talking about being disabled. Not wrong really, but very much what you'd expect.
The period setting production values are expensive. The actors are good actors and *very pretty*, despite jokes about "the ugly one" no one in a Whedon universe is ever not gorgeous. It is kinda regrettable that their central actress, Laura Donnelly, looks and sounds so much like Eva Green when the show this will be most compared to is Penny Dreadful. The problems this Orphanage for Gifted Youth face are detailed in the pilot: high nobility who consider any disruption to the status quo a threat, fey pimps who want to coerce the Touched and sell them in a sexual manner, rebel Touched who are murdering people in back alleys alluding to Jack the Ripper and are led by someone named Maladie, and mysterious mechanical-like men who are just outright kidnapping vulnerable Touched. The Orphanage itself is an idyllic Garden of Eden where all the Touched use their delightful superpowers to make a harmonious utopia and get along without drama - all threat comes from the outside. (Very reminiscent of the classic tumblr argument about the differences between Storm and Rogue.)
It's fine, a return to pre-Avengers form for Whedon, and due utterly to be forgotten especially as its creator's star fell. (For the record, directorial tyranny on set of the like Whedon has been widely accused should disbar someone from having that sort of power again. Though it seems likely this abuse is widespread in Hollywood and Whedon should not be its sole scapegoat. We need structural solutions.) It's smoothly entertaining but entirely predictable. One should always keep in mind Supermechagodzilla's critique of Whedon's entire political project, which applies here as much as ever.
Then the second half begins, with Maladie slitting the throat of a man costumed as Satan in the middle of the opera, giving a tour de force monologue rant.
I killed the devil. Is no one going to say “thank you”? It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay, petal. It’s not your fault. It’s the doctor. Oh! Oh, there’s so many people. Did you all come in hats? Now all of your brains are naked. No? You shall have a wreath of eels with the tail in your mouth.
Devil’s specialty is eels. Which is known by you as a serpent. Oh, but it’s only Adam. It’s all the same when it slithers. (whispers) Eve had a cunt.
Why am I here? I came to kill an angel witch. Oops. But the closer I came, the more I felt I was here for a r…
Because I… saw God. He was all light. And He put on me His wreath. He came. He came to us all, and you all turned your backs on Him. You lied. You said He never.
But He makes hum. Oh, He sings. (gasps strained note) I could never make it out, but I feel His hum, like a comb in my throat.
And I feel it. I feel it. Him. Here. Who… Who…
Ah, bugger it. Take the angel.
The performance is somewhere between Summer Glau at her craziest in Firefly and Eliza Dushka in her most murderous roles, so still not super original. But the scene takes her insanity much more seriously than any Harleyquinn wannabe in Whedon's toolkit has before. This is someone who saw God and was driven mad by the experience. Mad enough that she is forever trying to kill the devil, like an abandoned Archangel.
There's a chase and a fight scene, some sublime singing by a plot-important Touched, and some confrontations full of weighty reveals (the fey pimp is commanding the salt of the earth detective, both once again very entertainingly acted.) An Evil Doctor talks about dissecting the Touched to find "where God touched then" and the two main characters have a heart to heart about the mission to rescue the girls.
Then we cut back to what we were seeing at the start of the show, three years ago when all these marginalized innocents got their powers. And we see...
A steampunk spaceship of glowing white light descend out of the clouds, dissolving over London, as every character looks up in awe. The snowflakes of the dying ship drift down and Touch the characters we know to be of that affliction. And the way every character uniquely interacts with the snowflakes tell us how those characters relate to God. Some reach for God, others are restrained while God falls onto them, others are literally dying and rescued by God, some collapse to the ground with His presence.
It is the best scene Whedon has been involved with since second season Buffy, just these last 5 minutes of the show. We see the glory of God that has driven Maladie insane. And we see everyone (but her) just forget the ship as soon as the dissolution is complete.
It's an exploration of transcendent luminance I did not expect from the first half of the show.
Now, I am very doubtful that as the lore of the show develops, this spaceship will really be the divine presence. It's almost certainly going to have a wikipedia like explanation as some cross between Worm backstory and Asgard from the MCU. Advanced aliens who think Earth needs to stop oppressing marginalized communities to be welcomed into galactic society, etc. This spaceship and its species will inevitably be normalized and made banal by all the "mythology" that will end up being behind it.
But those explanations are in the future. For this particular episode, the imagery was of a vessel of God, anointing angels. And that was much more than I expected today. (Though not enough for me to pay for the rest of the series.)
