Locke & Key “Cliffhanger”

Well…that was a lot of fun, actually.

Knowing full well that Netflix has already renewed Locke & Key for a third season, I am mostly curious at this point just what will happen then because, well, this season finished off the original comic book’s storyline.  Anything from here, as near as I can make out, would be new material.  Granted, the show was already going in that general direction, adding some characters, changing others, and so forth.  Most prominently, perhaps, is how the TV version had Dodge use a key to make people evil when the comics had him use the omega door.  The way Tyler “saved” people was the same, and there were plenty of magic keys that the show didn’t use while there are probably some the show made up.  It doesn’t much matter.  The Dodge storyarc ended here, and if Netflix had not renewed it, the series could have easily just chopped the last minute or two off this episode and actually had a decent enough season finale.

Ellie back from the other side, restored to her usual face, and back with her son Rufus?  You got it!

Dodge exorcised from Lucas’s spirit?  Yup.  Is he a good again?  Yes, but he’s still dead.  He returns all the keys he had stolen, and that’s a sure sign that he’s human again…even if he is a ghost.

A nice, exciting final battle between the Lockes and their allies against Dodge, his demon people, and various stolen keys?  Yeah, and it was rather awesome.  Particularly when Duncan realized he had the power to command Dodge’s demon people since he, not Dodge, actually made the key.

Nina does some relevant?  OK, almost.  It’s mostly down to Bode using the Head Key to show Nina some pleasant memories and learning his mother would like to remember the magic.  There’s another key for that, and Bode knows it.

Just as Bode and Kinsey both know it when Tyler decides he wants to forget the magic.  Given what happened with Jackie, yeah, it fits.  Whether that means Tyler’s assumed return for season three means they’ll be tiptoeing around him instead of Nina remains to be seen.  Quite frankly, given Jackie’s sudden forgetting of the magic is arguably what led to her downfall, Tyler may have made a poor decision there.

Then again, the entire Locke family seems dismissive of what Eden can do on her own even as they know full well she is still possessed by the Whispering Iron.  And like Dodge’s general dismissal of her before when she was actually largely right about things, even if she was a little incompetent, she still has the Anywhere Key, and she is dumb enough to summon the ghost of that Captain Gideon to do her bidding…bidding that lasts about five seconds as he drops her down the well before heading off with the Anywhere Key because the bedraggled man in the 18th century British military uniform won’t stick out like a sore thumb.

So, really, this was a huge improvement over season one where there was far too much high school drama stuff for my taste, and instead actually went into what the effect of magic and these keys would have on the Lockes and the rest of the local community.  I have no idea what if anything Gideon will do for the next season, and I am looking forward to it.  What started as a fairly decent show only got better, and there’s more to see with a new antagonist with (hopefully) different goals than Dodge, and the fact that they may have been filming the third season concurrently with the second–a smart move given some of the actor’s ages and how much a sudden growth spurt could hit a couple of them as seen in the final season of Lost in Space–and I may not have a long time to wait.  Besides, this series seems inclined to make Kinsey the more heroic sibling, unlike Tyler arguably holding that position in the comics.  Both are important to the outcome, but I just felt like the comic showcased Tyler’s role more while the TV version went all-in on Kinsey’s role.

That said, what I do need now is something new for Mondays.  Stranger Things will be back at the end of May (and July…stupid breaks in season), but that’s still a few weeks away.  I need something short, something that may even allow me to cover all of the Stranger Things episodes without a break.

So, how about something different, like The Afterparty?

Sure, that may go better as a replacement for Only Murders in the Building, but I have a different situation involving that show’s timeslot replacement.  But more on that when the last write-up for that show (for now) comes out.