Whatcha Been Watching?

I started back up on the treadmill a week or two back, and at the same time discovered that The Warrior Nun‘s second season had come out. That was nice timing.

If you haven’t seen it, it’s based on the comic Warrior Nun Areala, and it’s basically about a secret order of fighting nuns taking on supernatural enemies. Ava is an outsider who accidentally ends up gaining the order’s secret weapon: an angel’s halo that gives her superpowers.

If that sounds a little goofy as a premise, it is. This is a show that leans into spectacle and what if ideas, and sometimes the depth and character development and worldbuilding is a little weaker. But let’s be honest. The Warrior Nun isn’t a show you watch for the deep philosophical messaging. It’s a show you watch to see kick-ass nuns taking on robed cultists and big CGI bad guys.

It’s fun and violent and I admit I didn’t see the twist at the end of season one coming. It’s been long enough I can’t really say how season two compares to the first, but I enjoyed it, and it got me through my treadmill workouts.

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I’ve also gotten drawn into Wednesday, an Addams Family-based series about Wednesday that’s part murder mystery and part teen boarding school drama, but with all that macabre Addams style mixed in.

From the discussion online, I know this one isn’t for everyone, but I’m enjoying it. Wednesday has just a tiny sliver of enough humanity and vulnerability beneath all the snark and darkness, and I love it.

The proliferation of werewolves, sirens, vampires, and other creatures feels a little overdone, more like a Disney Channel idea with murder and violence thrown in. But I like it. Wednesday’s overly warm and fuzzy roomate, Enid, is particularly fun. They make a good odd couple.

I’m halfway through, and just finished the parental visit episode, which gives some depth and sympathy to some of the secondary characters.

Side note: one of the complaints I’ve seen is about the casting of Luis Guzmán as Gomez Addams. Look, I’m not super-familiar with the comic and other source material, but even I can see he’s a much better match for the original Gomez than pretty much any other portrayal I’ve seen.

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And finally, we went and saw Black Panther: Wakanda Forever on Sunday. That one was hard. It shouldn’t be a spoiler to say it’s heavily focused on grief. With the loss of Chadwick Boseman and the decision not to recast his role as T’Challa, it pretty much had to be. After the past 3-4 years, that made it a bit harder to watch.

Overall, I thought it was good, but not great on the level of the first film. It felt like there was too much going on, and we lost some of the smaller, quieter moments that helped make the first one so great. I wanted more bits like Okoye getting teased about her disguise make-up, and less, “Oh look, here’s Valentina Allegra de Fontaine whose presence only kind of makes sense unless you’ve seen this and that and/or studied up on Marvel history to prep for the film.”

I thought Tenoch Huerta was great as Namor, though the flapping ankle wings were just silly. I wish we’d gotten more of Dominique Thorne’s Riri Williams/Ironheart.

Overall, as Marvel sequel movies go, it wasn’t bad, and it could have been a lot worse.