The Dark Crystal: Age Of Resistance
1 the peeper beetle
Dan Jolin: Much like the original 1982 movie, Age Of Resistance admirably refuses to treat its family audience like delicate little flowers, serving up a squirming platter of creep-out moments, brutal violence and torture — like all the best classic fairy tales. The most memorable and distressing comes at the end of the second episode, when the Scientist (Mark Hamill) is punished for letting Rian (Taron Egerton) escape with the Essence. First, a skeletal cage is placed over his beaky head, in a disturbing echo of the Room 101 rat cage from Orwell’s 1984. Then a skittering bug is released onto the shrieking Scientist’s face.
Director Louis Leterrier pushes the PG rating as far as he can, even showing the nasty little Peeper Beetle gleefully prising the Skeksis’ eyelids open, before cutting to a final, POV shot of the pouncing insect, with the sound of ocular munching continuing over the black of the credits. This, apparently, was the “mildest” of three versions shot, according to executive producer Lisa Henson. Of course, it serves to explain why, in the movie, the Scientist has a cybernetic eye. And also possibly explains why Maudra Fara’s Fizzgig has an eye patch; perhaps the grizzly furball lost a fight with a Peeper Beetle in the wild.
2 SELADON’S SKEKSIS MAKEOVER
Dan Jolin: Before news of the Skeksis’ betrayal fully takes hold, the Gelfling seven tribes are susceptible to conflicting agendas. Though shocked by the murder of her mother, the All-maudra (Helena Bonham Carter), by the Skeksis General (Benedict Wong), eldest daughter Seladon (Gugu Mbatha-raw) resolves to take the throne and affirms her loyalty to the Lords of the Crystal, even denouncing her own mum as a traitor. Seladon expresses this resolution, striding into the throne room in an outfit that mirrors the Skeksis’ robes and carapace-like mantles. It is a truly disquieting transformation, undercutting the image of the Gelfling as universally noble and heroic. But not as upsetting as the scene that follows two episodes later, when in Episode 8, the Skeksis descend upon Seladon and spitefully disrobe her.
3 THE PUPPET SHOW
Dan Jolin: Exposition is always tricky. Too often, it’s clunkily handled: by a wodge of voiceover, a flashback, a reading from a dusty tome, or just a wise-old-man monologue. But when Age Of Resistance has to conduct its crucial, join-the-dots-withthe-movie history lesson during Episode 7, it finds a solution that’s borderline genius. It has its expository characters — in this case the Skeksis/mystic double act of The Heretic (Andy Samberg) and The Wanderer (Bill Hader) — perform it via “that most sacred and ancient of arts”: a puppet show (its announcement accompanied by comedic groans from the gathered-hero audience).
Not only is this all pleasingly meta, it’s also a towering artistic and technical achievement — The Jim Henson Company performers had to manipulate their puppets in such a way that they manipulate intricately designed miniature versions of themselves, with cutting-edge finger puppeteer Barnaby Dixon stepping in for the show’s centrepiece moment, in which a mini-gelfling hero attacks the Castle of the Crystal. It apparently took 150 people to pull off the complex scene — an astonishing amount of effort for three minutes of exposition.
4 THE VOICE CAST
Age Of Resistance’s voice pedigree is Dan Jolin: insane. There’s a bit of Game Of Thrones (Nathalie Emmanuel, Lena Headey, Natalie Dormer), some Harry Potter (Jason Isaacs), and a lot of US comedy (Andy Samberg, Bill Hader). Top marks to Simon Pegg, though, for that utterly spot-on Chamberlain impression. Mmm-mmm?
5 THE FINAL BATTLE
Amon Warmann: The age of resistance finally begins in earnest in the last episode of the season, which unites all seven Gelfling clans against the Skeksis in the battle at Stone-in-the-wood. It’s an ambitious sequence loaded with incident, including the resurrection of Aughra and Deet using the Darkening to kill skeklach, forcing the other Skeksis to retreat. Arguably the biggest reveal of the brutal skirmish comes when Rian stabs the Skeksis General with the Dual Glaive, a weapon which we soon come to learn has the lost shard of the Crystal of Truth as its hilt. In addition to being hugely important to the Skeksis’ ultimate defeat, Rian’s attack drained some of the General’s essence into the crystal. Given that the Darkening which Deet has been infected with can only be transferred and not destroyed, there’s a chance that the shard will be put to other uses before it’s reunited with the Crystal of Truth.
6 DEET’S FATE
Dan Jolin: The Gelflings’ victory comes at a terrible cost. Having set up optimistic Deet (Nathalie Emmanuel) as the sweetest and most likeable of the heroes, and planted the seeds of a romance between her and Rian, the finale ends with the poor Grottan seemingly consumed by the sinister, purpley power of the Darkening. This raises big questions for the next season. Either Deet’s salvation will form one of the main plot strands, with Rian no doubt desperate to track her down to find a way to de-darken (Lighten?) her. Or she will present an active threat as a potent new villain. We had a heavy hint at this in Episode 8 when she absorbed the power of the Sanctuary Tree and saw a vision of her future as a veiny, purple-eyed Dark Deet, crouched on the Skeksis throne. Though this also suggests she’ll hardly be an ally of the Skeksis. She already killed The Collector (Awkwafina), and with four more Skeksis to go before the movie’s chronology starts, she may now have a taste for lizard-thing blood.
7 THE GARTHIM
Amon Warmann: Age Of Resistance reveals the terrible truth behind the creation of the Crab-like creatures the Garthim. In the final moments of the season, the Skeksis Scientist combines the carcasses of two different species — the Gruenaks and the Arathim — to form the ruthless monsters, who will go on to become the Gelflings’ biggest threat in The Dark Crystal. The good guys suffer a lot of losses in the prequel series, and the fact that the Gruenaks had just begun to rebel against their Skeksis overlords after being forced into slavery makes their ultimate fate especially cruel. The introduction of the Garthim suggests we can expect to see characters like skekung — the Garthim master from the original movie — make an appearance in the near future, as they prepare for the war to come.