Considering how the last episode ended, things have got a little crazy. Kirsh seems to be "plotting" something, Morrow is sinister as hell, the octopus eye alien is WILD! The whole sheep situation could not be any more disturbing, but most of all, the snake charming at the end is where we ask, "What is happening?" It is one thing for the hybrids to believe they are human, or at least some of them, one of the hybrids to think, "well it happened to Mary, it could happen to me, and in fact, it has", another thing for Morrow to be IN THE HEAD of little boy Slightly, but to have Boy Kavalier try to come between the Hermit and Wendy and the sister being able to charm the snake, this show has stepped up the levels and although there isn't always a lot of action, what we do get is beyond great, especially the use of orifices. The Alien franchise never disappoints when it comes to an alien getting into a human.
And just when you thought we would pick up from the last episode, this episode throws us into the ship we saw in the first episode, where we get to spend more time with these characters and what happened, leaving Morrow to seal himself inside the control room. For how Morrow has been acting throughout these past episodes, this episode gives us some of his backstory, in which I feel humanises him. He had a child, and he was only on the ship as chief security officer, and he just wanted to do his job, but when you are surrounded by imbeciles and a person who decided to take the ship into their own hands under a promise that may not even happen, Morrow is pushed to make challenging decisions. However, with all the engineers, biologists and others on the ship who wind up getting picked off, one-by-one, by making human mistakes off the back of dumb ones anyway, it is not just the Xenomorph loose running rampant on the ship when the testing of these aliens go wrong, it's a combination of a lot of things, but having a Xenomorph loose defintely does not help.
What is interesting is that I do not really care for Zombies. I like Zombies in film, Zombies in TV shows, and to an extent, Zombies in gaming, but as for animation, I do not really care for it. I mean, it's cool and all, but maybe it's the context of this that does not necessarily grab me. Even the Marvel Zombies in the 'Marvel's What If...' series episode, or episodes (I cannot remember how many there were), those episodes were ok, just ok. You get to see some cool 'mash-ups' of characters or team-ups that you would not normally see in film, or we haven't yet seen in film. But with that said, this looks absolutely great!
I'm not sure what it is, and this could actually wind up being trash, but having the Red Guardian, Black Widow 2, Ms Marvel, Spider-Man (because, of course...), Shang-Chi and Blade (fused with Moon Knight, maybe) is absolutely crazy and I love it. I do not remember the last time I rewound and paused a trailer just to see something again and for clarity. The first was the arrow through the 'TV-MA' sign because I did in fact, blinked and missed it, but the tram part where a zombie (I thought the zombie was Bucky) reaches out to grab (I am assuming Ms. Marvel), the introduction of Blade Moon Knight (like, is that meant to be Blade? Oh wow, he has fangs, its Mahershala Ali's Blade, THAT'S INTERESTING), a Zombie Ant-Man getting sliced in half and one of the coolest shots of Spider-Man using his webbing to rip off all the heads of the Zombies, is an absolutely great frame. But the money shot (or moment) is the action scene they conclude with in the trailer, and that's Khonsu Blade (Moon Knight) fighting someone with a sword and absolutely slices and dices the zombie up in true Blade fashion, phenomenal. Sold! Give me more action like that, cool lines, great mash-ups and team-ups, and I'm good. I just hope it is any good, sorry, any great.
One of the streaming industry's most missed opportunities is to create or curve the trend in recent years. As technology evolves and people have a greater reach to almost all things across the world, our need for information has vastly expanded. Our need to consume everything all at once has gotten to an all-time high, and one could argue that it is still climbing. So, when streaming started to grow more popular and the success of Netflix and other similar models began to grow, "bingeing" was a thing people did to consume their favourite shows. Episodes after episodes, seasons after seasons. It was not too dissimilar to watching your favourite movie and watching the sequel afterwards, or getting together with your family and/or friends and spending the weekend watching the entirety of Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings. It became a culture, but when the pandemic hit, that was all we could do: binge. But when the pandemic was over, a show like 'WandaVision' taught us, that with great writing, scripting, directing and a good story, people will come back week after week after week after week and continue the conversation for a show for days and weeks, building a snowball of popularity when people caught on and wanted to become part of the "water cooler conversation" until the snowball eventually melts away. Also, the trend had changed. But this model is not new by any accounts, because we had seen it with older shows, and even newer shows and they labelled it, "event screening", something like a 'Game of Thrones' where everyone locked in, watched and couldnt stop talking abou it all week until the next episode, but streaming (not all), do not seem to get it. Because it is streaming, it does not mean the binge model is something that cannot be removed, and to introduces a weekly release model. And like most bingeing content, season one of Fallout came out, but disappeared like a fart in the wind. The only reason, I believe we are getting a second season, is due to the fact that, the story was interesting and very good (just like the computer game it is based on) and there may have been a staggered binge of the series meaning, if you knew about it you binged it, then maybe a week or so later, someone else binged it, so on and so forth. The problem with that is, you have small pockets of people talking about it, but the event or the hype dies; but on this occasion, it was prolonged, just for a little bit, as people spoke about how good the show actually was. The weekly format works and I hope that with this second season, Amazon decide to release it weekly because I really enjoyed the first season.
The first season focused on 3 characters, the Vault Dweller, A Ghoul and a deserter from the Brotherhood, a group of militia that polices the wasteland. The show ended with everyone converging at the end, defeating the big bad, only to end up heading to New Vegas, or at least, the Ghoul and the Vault dweller are heading there. This trailer gives us a little taster of some background story as to what has happened to Vegas, the world, and likely the Ghoul, who (as we know from the first season) had a storyline that involved his family. And the Vault dweller, having been sheltered from the outside all her life, accompanies the ghoul (or vice versa) on this road trip to find answers. We see more shots of the vault dwellers we met in season one or another vault entirely (since the game has a lot of vaults in the city at different towns). We see a man who may have played a part in destroying the world. We see the deserter, and it looks like he is also on a quest of his own. And lastly, the money shot at the end for those who have played the computer game, is a Death Claw, a creature with incredible reach, strength and speed, and usually means instant death when you see one, because they come charging at you with their long arms and talons. I hope they release this second season weekly, which will allow people to watch and talk about it, whereas the first season wouldn't allow it. The music is great, and the gore is still intact. The first season introduced us to a quirky world, and I sincerely hope they keep the same energy with this next season.
