Wizards: Tales of Arcadia

Yeah, on the surface it seems to be a worthy end to the Tales of Arcadia. And yeah, the show thunders through tons of plot in ten short episodes. But in my opinion it really falls flat - even more so than 3Below - in what made Trollhunters so exceptional in the first place: Great, believable characters, with well fleshed out - and often surprising - development. New characters have half-hearted high-speed arcs with blunted emotional impact (Arthur, Douxie) or don't get much of anything at all (e.g. Nari and the rest of the Arcane Order) And well-known characters are well...it feels like "going through the motions", like e.g. Claire, but my biggest disappointment would be Steve. We were given a brilliant subversion of the "sports jock bully" trope with *real* growth in the original series. Since then he has regressed to the bumbling comic-relief sidekick. (There *were* a few well-done character arcs, Callista for example: Simple, but believable and effective. And I found Morgana somewhat fine as well.) And the plot itself...well, some nice ideas there, but when there's such a high pace, it would have been nice if the plot points themselves were crafted a bit more carefully. To give just an example - the ruse to get Jim back from the Arcane order. Going in with a flaky illusion, some sweet talk and no backup/escape plan whatsoever?! Jeez, the world is at stake, it's a big risk to even try it, and *that's* your brilliant plan? From the Wizard Merlin finally trusted as an equal? Honestly, this extremely cheapens Merlin's sacrifice. And what makes it so grating: so much time is wasted with worn-out antics (and it's not just Steve), even when available running time is so scarce.

Trollhunters was brilliant. Three below was a fantastic part 2. We were waiting in anticipation for Wizards which based on the previous two Tales From Acadia, promised much. It delivered little. The whole thing was rushed. There was no character development, scenes seemed to end before their time, there was far too much fighting and cuts from one scene to another, sometime before the music from the previous scene had ended. This means relationships and characters have no time to develop. The story feels contrived, it goes back on what happened in previous TFA, which is frustrating. Characters seem to act in a way that feels alien, betraying their presonalities. It makes for a very hurried, unfunny, dull boring end, which strangely leaves a small cliffhanger at the end. A cliffhanger for a series that I really no longer care about. I'm not sure how this happened. Did accountants say that it needed to be done on a budget, or finished before it's time? Who cares? Spoiler alert: Save your time and watch the last episode or just read the next bit: Jim ends up as just Jim, not a troll, Merlin dies, most of what you watched before didn't happen and they live happily ever after unless the series does well and they can milk it some more with characters you wont care about.

This is very much in the same vein of Trollhunters. All of the main characters are back (well most of them) and it is much closer to the original series than 3 below. Talking of 3 below, they only mention it in passing, but the character development is definitely still there. Although there are a couple of plot points from Trollhunters that were ignored.