2017 has certainly been an interesting year for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, particularly the TV division. On one hand, you've got the fourth season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which hit to new heights of greatness thanks to the addition of Ghost Rider and a surprisingly timely Agents of HYDRA storyline. Defenders, the crossover series between all four Netflix shows, was a mixed bag overall, but it's unlikely that you'd find anyone who would declare it outright awful. And then you've got Iron Fist and Inhumans, two shows that everyone seemed to know right out of the gate that they would dislike, if not outright hate.
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Inhumans specifically, seemed doomed from the start to be tarred and feathered. Even in the comics, the characters have never really been all that popular, with recent attempts by Marvel to boost their importance failing in part because that meant the X-Men and Fantastic Four were severely downplayed. The property's demotion from movie to television series was widely publicized, and the show itself just didn't look good. From the costumes and the writing to the SFX for Medusa's hair, this show was just primed for failure from the beginning, and that's not even getting into the IMAX premiere of the first two episodes, which went... poorly, to put it lightly. Many fans were, frankly, hoping that the show would just be an outright disaster from top to bottom, physical proof that the Inhumans were forever a failure and couldn't be redeemed. But now that the series has officially wrapped its eight-episode season (series?) run, well -- as a show, it's not great... but also not terrible.
In case you haven't been keeping up with the show -- which, judging by the ratings, is pretty likely -- Inhumans is a spinoff, of sorts, of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. They're the superpowered descendants of genetically engineered humans from the Stone Age who've spent their whole lives living on the Moon. As the series opens, members of the Royal Family -- King Black Bolt (Anson Mount), Queen Medusa (Serinda Swan), operatives Triton (Mike Moh) and Gorgon (Eme Ikwuakor), giant teleporting dog Lockjaw (Lockjaw), princess Crystal (Isabelle Cornish) and seer Karnak (Ken Leung) -- have been going to Earth to round up blooming Inhumans to protect them from distrustful humans. Everything is largely fine until Maximus, the non-powered brother of Black Bolt, stages a coup, during which the various members of the Royal Family find themselves scattered all around Hawaii and have to reunite to get home.
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Let it be said that the idea of the Royal Family stuck on Earth, each with their own hangups that leave their extravagant powers diminished or weakened, does have good story potential on a conceptual level. Not only does it allow for some fun "fish out of water" gags, it also allows for some critique of the entire problematic eugenicist tones that have plagued the Inhumans for decades. If these characters are going to be vital to the MCU going forward -- or at the very least, the TV corner of the MCU -- then that whole aspect of their character simply cannot be ignored.
Unfortunately, the show squandered virtually all of that potential.
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The royal family's subjects come off more like pissed off retail workers than people forced into a weird slave system because of circumstances beyond their control. Meanwhile, you have the human perspective via Ellen Woglom's Louise, a scientist constantly fascinated by everything related to the characters that she gets to soak up. When she first meets Medusa after our Queen has had her magic hair shaved off, she's quick to ask about their culture and point out the messed up nature of their entire society.
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This view of Atillan isn't murky because the Royal Family are our primary protagonists; it's murky because the show never gives a non-Royal longer than 90 seconds to air their grievance with the way things are run. And the murkiness applies to the Inhumans apparent view of Earth as well; on multiple occasions, members of the Royal Family or the lower castes will use modern human slang and have something of an idea of what human technology such as a NASA rover is. But other times, the "mysteries" of modern humanity just seems to elude them. The show never sticks with whether they're on the same level as humans -- give or take a pretty racist caste system -- or if they're hopelessly naive about the world of 2017. What could be charming fish out of water moments a la Thor just happen without any rhyme or reason.
Reason, in this case, also extends to the main characters on the show. Medusa gets something of a character arc, but she, Karnak and Black Bolt are the only members of the Royal Family who have any semblance of one. Crystal and Gorgon are in every episode, sure, but you could excise them from the plot and not much would change. Serinda Swan, Ken Leung and Anson Mount do the best they can with what they're given, all things considered, with Swan and Leung in particular pulling everything they can with the material on hand.
Alas, as beloved as Iwan Rheon is, the big problem with Maximus ultimately is that a lot of his stuff would be much more interesting if Loki weren't such a defining presence for the MCU. His big plan isn't revealed until the penultimate episode of the season, and when it is, it's honestly not worth the previous six episodes of secrecy.
It also doesn't help that, for a show about aliens and their secret society on the moon, Inhumans doesn't do a good job at looking very, well, alien. That the show began airing two months prior to Thor: Ragnarok and that movie's marketing push certainly didn't do the show any favors. In fact, Ragnarok ends up doing this show no favors in more ways than one, as the finale even feels like a less ambitious retread of the film's ending. There are cool effects at some points, to be fair -- Lockjaw's teleportation is rather neat, as is Karnak using formulas to figure out how he should plan his next move. But then you see something like Medusa's hair or Crystal using her powers, and you realize that the show's scope is very much outside of its actual budget. Never is there a real moment where the effects manage to completely wow, like Ghost Rider transforming in S.H.I.E.L.D., or Daisy bursting out of her Terrigen cocoon, which is a shame considering the standards this show has to live up to.
At the end of the day, though, the biggest failing with Inhumans is that for a show about family, there's actually very little of it to go around. Whenever the show tries for a big emotional moment between members of the Royal Family, it falls flat because we don't really see what these people are like as a family. The show takes itself too seriously in this regard, and a dynamic that should feel as warm as it conceivably is in Agents of SHIELD or the Fast & Furious films is as cold as the vacuum of space. Karnak's dynamic with Gorgon doesn't feel earned because what little we see of it is just him constantly insulting his brawnier cousin. Medusa and Crystal feel less like sisters and more like college roommates who barely talk to one another. Mount and Swan have some spark of love between them as Bolt and Medusa, but that's less from the script and more from how he emotes and she reacts. Even the end dynamic between Maximus and Bolt feels incredibly hollow, and the resulting emotional reveal fizzles out with a whimper.
Is Inhumans an awful show? No, it's just mediocre. There are some that will manage to find things to like in the show, as they were able to with Iron Fist. It's a show with ambition and some good ideas on hand, but lacks either the execution or ambition to successfully pull them off. On the slim chance that we get a second season with these characters, like the Royal Family, the ones behind the show need to evolve and grow, or else the series -- and the entire Inhumans concept in the MCU -- could find itself going extinct.