#toaseriesreview

[ravenfirelair]

Long review of my thoughts on wizards. *spoilers*

so yeah, I finally finished the final series in the tales of arcadia series: wizards and oh boy, was it a lot to take in. while overall it was good, but there some problems here and there. first, for the most part it did feel rushed, I really feels like content that could have been made for 2 seasons was squashed down into one. Why they even didn’t bother with a second season is beyond me. At times there was so much going on it was hard to keep up with it all. I did like douxie as the main character, I’m glad this series focused more on him to flesh out his character more. 

With morgana it feels like she switches sides to drastically too much, she goes from magic is good, we must protect all magical creatures to destroy all humans to I need to save my brother king arthur too much. Plus it was weird that when the arcane order pulled her out of the shadow realm she didn’t want to fight anymore and just wanted to be at peace. You would think she would be more hellbent on revenge after the ending of trollhunters. As for steve, at first I was excited to see him in the poster to see what he does in the show, and I honesty a was a bit disappointed, he doesn't do that much at all besides get in the way and be annoying and he is just kind of there without serving much of a purpose. Usually his annoyingness was toned down in trollhunters and 3 below, but in wizards it was upped to 100 percent and it gets really cringe worthy at points. In all honesty I would of liked it better if toby was the one that fell through into the time travel portal with douxie and the others, it would of served better narrative to the story to have the original trio back together and toby would have been a less useless character. Plus I feel toby and jim’s relationship has gotten servery sidelined since claire came more into the picture.

I liked the idea of hex tech, a secret society of wizards secretly working as tech repair people, i wished that idea was explored more in the series and to know exactly how many people are secretly wizards in arcadia. I liked this series portrayal of the lady of the lake, certainly different from what you would expect. I really liked the dragon character as well, I hope to see more of him in the movie. I was kind of disappointed only one 3 below character showed up in this and was not involved more in the story and it was not the big crossover we were hoping would happen in the series, but then again there is the movie going out, so maybe the big crossover is saved for then. And yeah, that means no tronos in this, which is disappointing, but not surprising, but a lot of other people’s favorites characters only got small cameos or didn’t show up at all. so I feel like I was not the only who got shafted, but then again like I said, movie coming on the way so maybe all the characters we missed in wizards will show up there. I think the show was certainly bold to kill off both king arthur and merlin in the short time frame of the series. Killing off mostly important characters seems to be a theme in this series.  I did like how the show gave a little bit backstory on Arrrgh and blinky, how arrrgh became good and became friends with blinky, that was nice.

This series had me really conflicted on merlin, he is still very much an ass throughout the series, but this series did show some really good moments of him too, like how he really cares for douxie and wants him to succeed at being a powerful wizard and in the end was willing to sacrifice his life for his apprentice.  And that merlin and douxie did have a good relationship, even if merlin was a strict grumpy old cunt sometimes. I know it doesn't excuse him for the horrible shit he did to jim and the bad decisions he has made, but still it did show that merlin did had a heart. Another thing I’m really conflicted about is jim turning back into a normal human at the end, on one hand yes, I’m glad jim can finally go back to his normal life, but on the other hand it made the tough decision merlin placed on him seem to have less impact and all the stuff merlin said about the change being permanent kind of meaningless. And yeah, I felt the magical tear from claire was kind of cliché. But then again it’s a kids show and most kid shows can’t get away with sad endings. Overall, I thought the series was pretty good, didn’t really reach all my expectations, but I thought it did good enough job to further wrap up the story.

I did feel the ending of the series left a lot of unanswered questions, like who are this arcane order and what to they want? I want to know more about the genesis seals and how they are used to destroy the world? How does jim and the others continue that fight without the amulet? Without the amulet, does that mean there will be no more trollhunters? Why couldn’t jim pull Excalibur out of the stone? Did the other trolls ever reach their new home in new jersey? Will the rest of the characters really show up in the final movie? Hopefully all these questions will get answered in the final movie coming out.