Netflix’s ‘The Order:’ Season 2 Does Not Justify Its Existence
How a mediocre show became even worse
The second season of ‘The Order’ released last week on Netflix. I watched through the entire ten-episode run in a few days, and I have to say that I am disappointed. This isn’t new though. The first season of the show also disappointed me. Spoilers ahead.
The first season focuses on Jack Morton, a freshman at Belgrave University, who is focused on getting into the Hermetic Order of the Blue Rose. They are a secret society of magicians who gain riches and power from being members. Every year, ten students at the university are invited to join the Order, with a mere passage rate of 30%. The remaining seven students have their memories wiped after failure, to protect the secrecy of their society and magic.
Jack manages to pass the trials and is greeted by his father and the leader of the Order, Edward Coventry. This man is Jack’s true objective. He joined the Order out of a desire for vengeance on his father for being the cause of his mother’s suicide.
Following these events, Jack is then selected by a rivaling secret society within Belgrave, the Knights of Saint Christopher. A group of werewolves dedicated to justice, these knights hunt down the misuse of magic. Rather than the classic werewolf trope of being transmitted by a disease, werewolves are created when a special pelt binds to a host’s body. These pelts are normally stored in what’s called “hide lockers.” Jack’s subterfuge becomes supplemented by the Knights.
Unsurprisingly, it turns out Edward Coventry is straight-up evil and wants to rule the world. To do that, he needs the Vade Maecum, a special grimoire that allows magicians to use magic without sacrifice. Ironically though, a sacrifice is needed to use it. Edward needs to sacrifice his firstborn, who turns out to be Jack.
In the end, Jack defeats his father, but the remainder of the Order is now alerted to the fact that their enemy is aware of their secrets. Jack and his friends have their memories wiped, much like those who flunked the trials.
The reason why I laid out the most crucial elements of the plot of season 1 is because of how it compares to season 2. The acting may be rough, and the special effects suffer due to poor budget, but there is a storyline here that ties all the smaller plot elements together. The plot is driven forward because both the protagonist and antagonist want to kill each other. Jack wants revenge and Edward wants power. Simple but effective. Season 2 loses that singular vision and everything seems tacked on and contrived, not to mention character writing that made me want to turn my TV off.
The Plot Has No Focus
The first episode tries to set up a singular driving point for the rest of the second season. Once the Knights’ memories returned, Jack wants revenge on the Order for what’s been done to them. Their memories and their possessions have been tampered with. The problem is that this drive is dropped in the very next episode. Season 2 ends up not focusing on this thirst for vengeance but on multiple plots that flow into each other.
To take back what is theirs, the Knights summon a demon with a thieving specialty and use her to take the magical items back. They get this idea from a regular demon exorcism they perform every 27 years. This demon, named Ragwan, ends up taking one of the Knights into the demon realm with him after his defeat. The items go missing once more during the event, and Jack kills a member of a rival secret society, the Sons of Prometheus, trying to get them back.
With Lilith gone, the Knights deflate entirely, and become Order lackeys, doing whatever Vera tells them to do. We’re only four episodes in and the show doesn’t know what it wants with its characters. They shift from revenge to playing nice to save Lillith.
The Sons of Prometheus declare parlay after discovering Jack killed one of their members. To find out the truth, the Order agrees to their request. Blue Rose and the Sons almost kill each other, thinking the other stole from them, before a third plot thread is revealed. Another organization called Praxis staged the whole thing to destroy both societies and free magic from the clutches of the secretive and power-hungry.
Only in the ninth episode does the plot rev up, when events called “Tartarus Eruptions” start occurring because people are using magic without sacrifices. Praxis wants to create an eruption so large it will cause the apocalypse and recreate the world free of inequality.
This is very unlike the first season, where we know what we signed up for in the very first episode. Edward Coventry was going to die, or Jack was going to die trying. Here, it’s all over the place. We go from rogue magicians to demons, to rival societies, to Alyssa betraying the Order and becoming the villain.
Alyssa becoming the final villain of the season had decently good buildup, I’ll admit, but that’s only because it’s one of the leftover plot threads left behind by season 1. The issue I have is that season 1 ended a little too well with not enough lingering questions to properly set up a concise plot for season 2, so they had to create them on the fly.
What’s worse is that the demon thread from earlier in the season sticks around with no direct relevance to the Praxis plot at all. It even makes Alyssa a worse villain. The only relation ends up being that within the horde Praxis stole, Lillith’s hide locker is required to get her out of the Demon realm she’s trapped in. Alyssa makes a deal with Jack too easily, and it made me consider if I should have ever taken her seriously as a villain in the first place.
By the end, Jack proclaims that revenge isn’t the answer and Alyssa is killed by a werewolf, which is another 180 because her actions didn’t justify this kind of result. There was no buildup here. She just dies. I just felt like I was being yanked in a different direction every few episodes.
Questionable Feminism
There’s one line in the show that stuck with me days after I’ve finished viewing the second season. Alyssa is having her mind taken over by the Sons of Prometheus and Jack tells her this line:
“I want you to know I respect your agency as a woman, but fuck this bullshit!”
How ironic that the show gives Alyssa no agency whatsoever. She spends most of the season not being able to use her powers correctly, and when she finally comes into her own, she keeps fraternizing with Jack. In the end, despite joining Praxis and trying to become a better magician, she ends up with nothing. Jack convinces her not to take the justice she believes for the murder of her friend. She then dies for no reason at the hands of Midnight (using Gabrielle’s body).
What exactly did Alyssa, arguably the deuteragonist, gain this season? Nothing. She remained the same. Nothing about this is feminist, despite what the show tries to make you believe with her and Gabrielle constantly calling things ‘sexist.’ It’s just like social media activism. Calling things out online isn’t going to get anything done.
Gabrielle Dupres Does Not Earn Her Reward
There was no character I hated more in this entire show than Gabrielle, a fellow acolyte in the Order who constantly belittled every other character every time she was on screen. The writers tried to justify this behavior by giving her a “werewolf complex.” She wanted to be a part of the group and lashed out at everyone constantly.
This would have been fine if this aspect of her character had motivated Gabrielle to become a better person, and by so doing this character growth would be rewarded with her eventually binding to one of the hides. Wishful thinking on my part, because this never happens. Gabrielle gains the hide with no character growth. She was insufferable in the first season and she remains that way up until the final scene of the second season.
They even tried to spice it up a bit by having the hide control her mind. Midnight is just as cruel and mouthy as Gabrielle, which didn’t change anything. I’m not sure what the writers were going for here, because Gabrielle ended up being the most one-dimensional character in the entire show.
How is Jake Manley Still the Lead?
The other big lingering question I had while watching the season was how Jack’s actor, Jake Manley, kept his contract as the character despite a very clear distinction of acting ability between himself and his co-stars. All of the lines Jake delivers come off as very flat, almost like he doesn’t want to be there at all. It’s broken my suspension of disbelief several times.
Jack Morton as a character doesn’t have much going for him, but having a bad actor on top of that compounds the problem.
Final Thoughts
I only consider the genre this show is in to be its saving grace. The magic the characters perform is cool to watch, though the Tartarus Eruptions have awful visual effects. A few of the side characters are memorable, though Gabrielle is that way for the wrong reasons. The Order wrapped itself up very well at the end of season 1 and did not need a second season. Since this didn’t happen, it was almost like the show had to create the set up within the season itself, leading to a very disjointed experience. Unless you’re a big fan of SFF, I would not recommend it.
Originally published at facetsoffantasy.net.
