You know how it’s generally annoying whenever a sighted actor plays a blind character? Now imagine an entire cast fumbling around, trying ever so hard not to make eye contact with anyone. See imagines a post-apocalyptic Earth where the ragtag survivors lost their vision (and contractions, apparently) to a virus generations ago, with the current population reverted to roughly Iron Age technology and Ice Age attire. The Blu-ray box set compiles all three seasons of the Apple TV+ series, allowing non-subscribers to “see” it for the first time.
Buy See: Complete Series Blu-rayJason Momoa leads the cast as a feral tribal chief named Baba Voss, stepfather to twins miraculously born with sight. His wife Maghra (Hera Hilmar) joined his tribe under mysterious circumstances, already with child but mum about the true father or her own origins. The opening episodes introduce the family, rapidly aging up the kids from infants to young adults even as the parents seem little changed. The tribe survives on the fringe of the wilderness, forever on the run from the army of the evil queen (Sylvia Hoeks) who wants the twins dead due to their sight, believing them to be witches.
Season One follows the family’s increasingly desperate attempts to escape from the ever-pursuing horde of evil Witchfinders led by fearsome warrior Tamacti Jun (Christian Camago). This gives the production team ample opportunity to showcase the awe-inspiring locations in British Columbia, and sets up a classic underdog story for audience engagement. With no other safe haven, the heroes take their sage’s (Alfre Woodard) advice to try to find a mythical sighted man who has left aid and clues on the trail, primarily because he’s the real father of the twins and wants them back. Turns out he’s a randy Johnny Appleseed, planting his seed in women in every village he visits in order to rebuild the technological world of the ancients with his sighted offspring.
Season Two introduces Baba Voss’s estranged brother, Edo Voss (Dave Bautista), and if you’re anticipating a massive throwdown between Momoa and Bautista, you’re in the right place. It also seemingly retcons Maghra’s rebel outsider status by revealing that she’s the queen’s sister, leading to her return to the seat of power. The Momoa/Bautista main event is worth the wait, even as it leads to some significant payroll savings with the season-ending departures of both Bautista and Woodard.
Season Three is mostly about the royal sisters, with each of them attempting to outplay the other in their battle for the throne. Furthering the Game of Thrones homage, there’s an incestuous relationship in the form of the evil queen bedding her sighted nephew in the hopes of birthing her own sighted baby. Yes, the crazy queen who proclaimed all sighted characters witches now sees them as the salvation of the world. The character alliances and motivations shift so frequently it’s difficult to keep track, with the writers seemingly abandoning logic in favor of cheap, empty conflicts.
The series seems to have been constructed on the basis of its high concept rather than any planned outcome. It lacks a strong creative stamp and sense of purpose, instead floundering from one uneven season to the next as the writers desperately throw nonsense against the wall in the hopes that something sticks. It also lacks levity, with everyone so deadly serious all the time that it’s just not much fun. As a result, the series unfortunately wears out its welcome long before the end of its 24 total episodes, or roughly one full season in classic network TV measurement. I watched the entire series, but was left completely unmoved by its conclusion, enjoying the stuntwork far more than the contrived mythology and shifting alliances.
Even when the plotting falters, Momoa brings visceral ferocity to his frequent battle scenes, making for some truly inspired gore as he blindly hacks through all comers. His fighting stance seems to get progressively lower as the episodes pass, with him practically crawling through fights by the end, which makes sense for a blind character but looks like murder on his back. I also enjoyed Camago’s performance, progressing from the evil queen’s diabolical prime hunter to Maghra’s wise, trusted consigliere. The twins just mope their way through the series, especially Archie Madekwe (Saltburn, Gran Turismo), and Hilmar and Woodard fail to make much of an impact with their bland characters. I disliked Hoeks, not because she was the primary antagonist, but because she made her character incredibly annoying, wound far too tight and adapting such a weird affect to her speaking voice that she eventually sounded like a parody of herself in a couple of mid-series episodes.
The Blu-ray box set crams six discs into one slightly enlarged case, with the resulting individual disc spindles being so flat they barely hold onto the discs. No bonus features are included, with the set a bare-bones affair solely intended to get the episodes out into the wild. The series is formatted in ultra widescreen 2.10:1 aspect ratio, primarily as a typical trick for saving on streaming bandwidth during its Apple TV+ run, but also put to good use here to give the untamed wilderness locations an even more epic feel. Sound is presented in the usual 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio standard, providing ample channel separation without the added environmental immersion of object-based audio.
I came, I saw, Momoa conquered, but the series is hampered by shaky, illogical writing, a cloudy endgame, a lousy villain, and a core concept that is better in theory than practice. It’s just inherently silly to have scores of blind characters engaging in hunts and battles, no matter how well adapted they may have become. The sight of warriors constantly bumbling around the wilderness provides the only humor in the series, even though it’s entirely unintended.
