Willow Episode 7 Review
By Kieran Burt.
Willow’s penultimate episode has dropped and delivers the threat to Airk that should have been a part of the whole season, the villains get a very quick (and boring) fight sequence, and there is a confusing drop in motivation loss from Elora to force Kit into growing.
The episode opens with Airk finding out more about the mysterious girl called Lili he’s trapped with, exploring the city and opening up about his past. They have a quick flirtation, where she exclaims that she won’t fall for his charm. This sort of scene should have been in an earlier episode. Airk has been unfairly treated throughout the show, it’s almost as if the creators forgot him.
Elora saves Kit from her watery death, but doesn’t receive much of a thanks. Throughout this episode, Elora finally seems to be coming into her own, becoming more confident in her abilities and using magic with far more ease. This confidence is undone though at the end of this episode, where it collapses in a heartbeat. At first this might look like it’s to do with the Immemorial City not being at the end of the Shattered Sea, but this isn’t the case.
Unbeknown to everyone else (including the audience), Elora has been communicating with the Crone, to tell her that she will kill Elora in a duel, and told her some spells. The latter is quickly revealed in a training fight with Willow, but how or when this started isn’t clear. It comes as a bad shock near the end of the episode, and contrived so that Elora has an easy confident drop for the finale.
But going back to the start of the episode, The Doom chases the heroes, for a very brief second, and fights Boorman. It’s over extremely quickly, but is a reminder that he is one of the four villains stalking Willow and his team. It’s a shame his design and the rest of the Gales haven’t been used other than very brief interludes. The presence of the villains has been minimal both in this episode and as a whole, meaning that the stakes have felt minimal.
Midway through the episode, there is an epic training montage, for the young characters, and while the use of a pop song instead of an original score was again a downside, it did feel like a fun sequence. There were lots of varied visuals and the camera shots, this sequence definitely is the best looking so far. And this has to do with the lighting, which is darker and illuminated by the lights of the spells flying. Kit and Jade finally get to properly accept their love for one another.
This love arc is a great example of natural representation, as the show hasn’t called it out once and shoved it in the audience’s face. It’s felt as natural to the show as a male and female romance, which is what more shows should strive for. It hasn’t fallen into the trap of putting them in stereotypical male and female roles either.
Boorman’s character is sidelined throughout the episode, not getting a lot to do. This is a shame, as he’s been a huge part of the humour of the show. Hopefully in the next episode he has one last hurrah.
A late reveal sees new character Lili turn out to be evil, and presumably turn Airk evil too. It admittedly is a surprising twist, and makes the conflict more than just saving him, but now they have to turn him back. It gives him more agency, and means he doesn’t simply sit the finale out.
This episode had some ups and downs, with some character beats that didn’t make full sense or should have been set up in prior episodes. The villains too feel vacant from their own series, contributing to the lack of stakes and need to get Airk back. But the beautiful training montage makes up for some of this, and concludes a relationship that succeeds in being meaningful representation.
