Darkblood, meanwhile, finds himself at loggerheads with Cecil, despite their common goal of figuring out if and why Nolan murdered the Guardians. Debbie is allowed to marinate in her doubts about Nolan, which stem from the investigation by Damien Darkblood (Clancy Brown), i.e.
Some of the show’s B-plots begin to feel interconnected, even though their actual overlap is yet to be revealed. Once Mark reaches the Red Planet, he even screws up his mission by looking at pictures of Amber on his phone instead of watching over the astronauts (which seems like it’ll have consequences in the long run, given what they bring back to Earth). Chief among them is his decision to chaperone NASA’s manned Mars voyage after his father turns down Cecil’s request.
It’s choices like these that define Mark’s story in this episode, dilemmas that center the tug-of-war between his superhero and civilian lives. It’s something he clearly wants to do, though he’s forced by his teammate Eve (Gillian Jacobs) to consider the gravity of that decision. Mark goes out with Amber (Zazie Beetz) for the first time, and he soon finds himself bumbling through conversations and skirting dangerously close to revealing his dual identity. Nolan and Debbie’s date isn’t the only one that takes center stage. That’s an eerie prospect, and it’s the first time the show has really felt like it’s responding to the existing superhero zeitgeist (specifically, Henry Cavill’s Superman). Unfortunately, the show doesn’t linger on this moment for too long, or on Debbie’s reaction to it, but at the very least, it sets up a dynamic where this Superman archetype can easily detach himself from humanity. What’s more, once Debbie reaffirms her trust in him, he sits back and lets the attack proceed, leaving one of the men investigating him, Cecil (Walton Goggins) to clean up the mess. He doesn’t like being the target of a murder investigation, not because he’s innocent, but because he wants Debbie to believe that he is. Nolan’s vacation to Rome is a trip down memory lane for him and Debbie, but it culminates in him demanding her trust and approval to satiate his troubled ego before he thwarts a dragon.
#SIDDHANT SERIAL EPISODE 1 SERIES#
But when his Viltrumite tendencies finally show, the series manages to create a dramatic beat more complicated, shocking, and darkly arresting than any of the gore in preceding entries. His facial animation allows him to wrestle emotionally between his colonial obligations and the life he’s made for himself on Earth, without the need to express this dilemma in words. Nolan’s affection, in the Amazon series, appears to be sincere from the get-go - something he only realizes several years into the comic - and the more time we spend with him here, the more we’re made both witness and accomplice to his deceptions. The show jumbles this chronology for a distinct narrative purpose: by delaying the reveal to Nolan’s family, we, the audience, are made privy to a rather difficult dilemma. Originally, Nolan’s betrayal was made known to Mark and Debbie not long after its reveal to readers in Volume 2, and it also involved the revelation that Nolan never truly loved Debbie at all. Where the first three episodes stuck to the comics’ initial plot, but replaced its satire with dreary, straight-faced violence, the show now pulls from a number of later volumes (for instance, Mark accompanying NASA astronauts to Mars).
The episode marks a few major departures from the comics in ways that finally work. Although, the motivation behind Nolan feeling irritable and off-kilter is particularly alluring.
The Graysons’ family dynamic is a welcome improvement, rife with both winking jabs, and arguments where Debbie finally points out when Nolan is being unreasonable or distracted, and she establishes, in no uncertain terms, that she has a life and identity outside of him. Even though Mark and Nolan spend much of the episode apart, the story is built around Nolan’s internal struggle to reconcile his actions - he murdered the Guardians of the Globe, presumably at the behest of his planet Viltrum - with his genuine love for Mark, and for his wife Debbie (Sandra Oh).
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