When Marvel Television was shut down and the production of Marvel TV series was shifted over to Kevin Feige’s Marvel Studios, just one live-action series was left behind, the horror-influenced Helstrom, based on the Marvel Comics character of Daimon Hellstrom (note the dropping of one L for the TV version). Helstrom seems to have been completed largely out of contractual obligation, and it debuts on Hulu with all of its Marvel branding stripped away. There’s no Marvel logo to open each episode, and there’s no possessive Marvel’s in the title as there has been for every other Marvel Television series.
The show itself also bears essentially no connection to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, either Feige’s version or the somewhat separate version overseen by former Marvel Television boss Jeph Loeb. Aside from a Roxxon sign in the background of one scene, there’s nothing in the five episodes available for review that connects Helstrom to any other Marvel screen properties, and the show’s characters also bear little resemblance to their comic book counterparts. Created by longtime Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. writer and producer Paul Zbyszewski (who also co-created the unaired Marvel’s Most Wanted), Helstrom is a generic, dull supernatural drama with a few names that may sound familiar to dedicated comics fans.
The main name, of course, is Helstrom, which refers here not only to Daimon (Tom Austen) but also to his sister Ana (Sydney Lemmon), their mother Victoria (Elizabeth Marvel) and their unnamed father, who is initially labeled a serial killer but soon revealed to be something more otherworldly than that. In the comics, Daimon and Ana (aka Satana, which is a much cooler name) are the children of the devil, or at least the children of one of the many rulers of Marvel’s various versions of Hell. Here, their father seems to be a demon of some sort who spent their childhood capturing and murdering innocent people, often forcing Ana to witness or participate.
The children were separated at a young age and are semi-estranged as adults, with Daimon living in Portland, Oregon, and working as an ethics professor and part-time exorcist, while Ana lives in San Francisco and runs a high-end antiquities brokerage. She also uses her supernatural powers to seek out and kill bad men, as a sort of wealthy, high-fashion female version of the Punisher. Victoria has been locked in a mental institution for years, stuck in an eternal internal battle with a demon that is possessing her body. Daimon visits his mother regularly and has a close connection with Dr. Louise Hastings (June Carryl), who runs the institution and is well-aware of Daimon’s demonic connections. Ana, however, hasn’t seen her brother or mother in years, but she’s drawn back in when she learns that a dangerous demon has escaped from its imprisonment in a crypt.
Like Marvel’s other live-action streaming series, Helstrom moves very slowly, putting its characters incrementally closer to the villain in each episode, while painstakingly doling out little bits of back story. The escaped demon still hasn’t fully revealed itself by halfway through the 10-episode season, and Daimon and Ana repeat the same family conflicts over and over again, arguing about what to do with their mother and about whether they can work together or not. Daimon also argues with apprentice nun Gabriella Rossetti (Ariana Guerra), who’s been assigned by the Vatican to keep an eye on him as he investigates demonic possession. Their dynamic recalls a network TV procedural about supernatural investigations, and Gabriella often feels like she’s just tagging along with the serialized story.
Although the show doesn’t play coy about the existence of actual demons, and it allows the Helstroms to use their powers early and often, it still doesn’t much resemble a superhero story, and aside from an occasional swear word and a bit of blood, it could be a mid-level CW supernatural drama about photogenic people going after standard-issue demons. Taking place in Portland isn’t an excuse for the uniformly gray color palette, which just adds to the lugubrious feel, to go with the sluggish pacing. The tone is somber and humorless, and Austen could compete with Iron Fist’s Finn Jones for the title of blandest Marvel leading man.
Luckily, Lemmon picks up the slack as Ana, a sarcastic, stylish antihero who is so much more charismatic than Daimon that it seems absurd for him to be the show’s main character. With her severe bob haircut and a fashion sense that Daimon compares to a Patrick Nagel poster, the tall, thin Ana is visually striking, and Lemmon imbues her with confidence and playful imperiousness. She’s also the most prominent LGBTQ character in any Marvel TV series to date, although romance and relationships aren’t exactly a priority for anyone on this show. It’s a shame that she never gets to go full Satana, instead stuck with Marvel’s preference for characters to play down their sillier comic-book elements.
Ana is fun to watch, but she’s not scary, and very little on the show rises above the level of mildly creepy, despite ample usage of horror-movie devices (there are a lot of dream fake-outs). Although it’s now been cut off from the MCU, Helstrom was originally intended to fit in with an abandoned Ghost Rider series, as well as with the larger world of Marvel TV, and it feels caught between that mainstream action-movie tone and its darker horror instincts. That leaves it in an uninspired middle ground, and it seems likely to end up as nothing more than a footnote in the history of the MCU.
Starring Tom Austen, Sydney Lemmon, Elizabeth Marvel, June Carryl, Robert Wisdom, Ariana Guerra and Alain Uy, the 10-episode first season of Helstrom premieres Oct. 16 on Hulu.