According to the Internet, Kirk Douglas once said that “in order to achieve anything, you must be brave enough to fail.” I don’t know if he actually said that, but it seems plausible enough, and it helps me get to my amendment: “in order to achieve anything, you can’t do some lazy bullshit.” Jupiter’s Legacy is, well, lazy bullshit. Likely the victim of the Netflix model – which sometimes seems to treat single seasons as pilots for continuations rather than contained narratives – Jupiter’s Legacy falls painfully short on nearly every measure despite having, I’d argue, one of the most compelling “quest” stories outside of traditional epic fantasy.
Jupiter’s Legacy is split into two major narratives: the first explores what happens when the values of a Justice League-esque union of graying superheroes are challenged by a younger order of supers and a violent conspiracy plot which takes the lives of several supers; the second takes us back to the Great Depression and the journey the original supers had to complete in order to gain their powers (and, thus, pass them on to their children). There are numerous side plots, most of which center on the children of the original supers dealing with what amounts to a series of problems with one’s parents. Most of this doesn’t really matter to the story, but it’s there to distract you…
Overall, Jupiter’s Legacy is a prime example of a wasted opportunity. The second major plot (the “quest” narrative) is the most compelling part of the story, but that is owed almost entirely to the fact that it is actually completed during the course of the season. Nearly nothing else receives the same treatment. Worse, the show decides to use the final episode to throw in an out-of-nowhere twist ending in a brutal cliffhanger we now know will never be resolved. None of the super kids find peace or a resolution to their problems – some, in fact, end up worse off or dead.
Much of this is frustrating for the viewer. While the “quest” narrative proceeds through the Great Depression, madness leading to grand and possibly cosmic discovery, and the resolution of tensions between most of the original supers, this is hamstrung by the story’s need to unveil grand mysteries in the present, part of which, upon the final reveal, completely undermines the “quest” story’s resolution. This wouldn’t be such a problem if the show were spread out over more space, but for reasons that are incomprehensible to me, we’re given eight episodes to resolve the kind of plot and character elements it takes most shows at least three seasons to address. Here, the writers (and actors) are forced forward as if they were hikers dumped in the middle of the desert. Find your way back to civilization, but you’ve only got water for three days! Good luck!
Set against this are a myriad of unearned character moments, most of them centered on the super children. Nearly all of them have significant baggage with regards to their parents, yet at no point does Jupiter’s Legacy show us where this baggage comes from. The original supers do have baggage of their own, but we’re given half an episode showing us why; that same courtesy is not afforded to the younger characters. We do get one scene with the Utopian teaching his kids a lesson about power and responsibility before shooting off to save someone, but I did not find this sufficient to rest an entire story in which one of your main super kids has such a contentious relationship with the Utopian (a.k.a. Her father) that it has led her to drug abuse and destructive behavior. We’re simply meant to accept it as “a thing that happens.” Naturally, the analogue here is the children of celebrities, but that level of detail is virtually absent from the show.
Even Jupiter’s Legacy’s central argument about whether super people should use lethal force is given weak treatment here. The question is compelling. As younger super people deal with increasingly more dangerous threats – or, at least, that’s what we’re told – and lose their lives, it creates a rift between and amongst the original supers, who have held on to a set of codes that includes “no killing” and “don’t get involved in politics.” Can you really maintain such rigid ideals in an increasingly gray world? The first season mostly punts the answer to your imagination even as specific characters offer answers of their own (often through action, thankfully). Yet, I can’t help but imagine what a story like this would be like if it could focus on that question from start to finish rather than telling other stories? There’s almost no real engagement here. People question it. The Utopian says “no, we gotta do it.” And that’s it. The question doesn’t get to breathe, and the show’s moral ethos seems to avoid having to suggest to us what the right answer might be
There’s this overwhelming sense that this was a show written entirely as an audience and Netflix enticement. “Watch me so we can justify continuing this story,” however, is hardly a recipe for strong narrative television. As much as I enjoyed the “quest” narrative, watching all of this unravel itself in the final episode with almost no substantial foreshadowing left me speechless in the end. Why hamstring your writers and actors in this way? Why play this game where you must get enough viewers to create more just to ensure that your story makes sense?
It’s unfortunate, to say the least, that a show with so much potential could flop so painfully. Now that we know a second season will never come, we’re left with a paint can spilled across the hardwood floor. A mess we can’t fix. A mess that can only be a mess and nothing more.
