Mesoamerican epic awaits in series ‘Maya and the Three’
“Maya and the Three,” which recently premiered on Netflix, is a big, animated epic from Jorge R. Gutierrez, whose earlier works include the 2014 feature “The Book of Life” and the 2007 Nickelodeon series “El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera.” Fans of either will find themselves at home in this Mesoamerican epic, with its mix of folkloric motifs, comedy and anime-derived action.
Spread out over nine episodes, “Maya” is a sprawling affair with intricately worked out action and a digressive plot. To say it can be a little corny and sentimental is only to say it has heart; in any case, it worked on me visually and emotionally, as thoroughly on a second viewing as on the first.
As the tale begins, Maya (Zoe Saldana) is turning 15 and about to be officially crowned princess of the kingdom of Teca, as in Azteca. Although she is being groomed to be a diplomat like her mother (Sandra Equihua), Maya envies her brothers’ (all played by Gael Garcia Bernal) quests and adventures.
So she sneaks out at night to the “illegal bare-knuckle fighting pit” to take on an opponent 20 times her size.
Maya’s trip to the fighting pit wins her only a dislocated shoulder; the coronation goes ahead, attended by representatives of the story’s three other kingdoms. But it is interrupted by Zatz (Diego Luna), the
Prince of Bats, a good-looking kid up from the underworld who drops a bomb regarding Maya’s true parentage. The prince announces that he’s come to take her to her “rightful kingdom in the underworld,” where she will be sacrificed.
Things go their complicated way, with puzzles to solve and prophecies to interpret. After Maya’s excitable father fails to crush the forces of power-hungry Lord Mictlan, the God of War (Alfred Molina), the daughter journeys to the other kingdoms, picking up allies on the way. All are damaged in some way or have wreaked accidental destruction on their community or family and are living apart: From the Jungle Lands comes Chimi (Stephanie Beatriz), a gifted archer who decorates her pale face like a Day of the Dead figure and longs to apologize to the mother who died giving her birth; from the Caribbean-influenced Luna Island, Rico (Allen Maldonado), a street kid looked down upon for his “peasant magic;” and from the Golden Mountains, which might be meant to suggest the Andes, Picchu the soft-hearted barbarian (Gabriel Iglesias).
Gutierrez, who was born in Mexico City and grew up in Tijuana, has built a world from the anthropological, architectural, and mythological details of Mesoamerican civilizations.
There is something, not naive, exactly, about “Maya and the Three,” but a willingness to be off a little — to dare to be a little dumb on the one hand and heavy on the other. There are joking references to “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Jaws,” “Lord of the Rings,” Mr. T. and the Smiths; there is a Spanglish Batman joke. But the series is also full of death and darkness, and no less moving for being set in a world where death is not the end. Quite the opposite: the story bends toward transcendence — and gets there.