Season 2 Summation: W.I.T.C.H.
Jul. 27th, 2013 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akinoameIf season one of W.I.T.C.H. was an awkward preteen struggling through an identity crisis, season two had grown up and figured out who it wanted to be, although I won't pretend there weren't a few stumbling blocks along the way. I purposely set up the season summation so that I wouldn't be forced to compare and contrast two extremely different seasons in an Endpoint Analysis, the way I did with Ultimate Alien. Because the two seasons were written by entirely different staffs, they're practically two different shows entirely, and it's not fair to try to merge them. While the characters and story carry over, Greg Weisman and his crew essentially created a whole new story from the leftovers of the last. I won't pretend that this season was perfect, any more than I pretended Ryuki or Ultimate Alien was. But overall, it was extremely impressive.
The story follows the Guardians of the Veil, now seasoned and victorious from battling Phobos, as a mysterious new enemy from Yan Lin's past comes back to haunt them. The mistakes made by the previous Guardians and the Oracle have drastic consequences on the Guardians of today. Furthermore, with their powers intensified by the lowering of the Veil, they must take on the new responsibility of protecting the Infinite Dimensions—every world connected to Kandrakar. And as if those responsibilities weren't hard enough, in their civilian lives, they're being forced to face more grown-up troubles, and even the conflict of civilian and Guardian life.
As this is a character-driven plot, I'll break it down into the most important characters, as I did with Ryuki and I'll likely do with the rest of my reviews. Sadly, Elyon didn't make the cut; she's captured for more than half the series, so anything I talk about with her can easily be covered in Cornelia and Nerissa's sections. Similarly, Blunk is pretty much bound to the hip with Caleb, so I have to discuss him in Caleb's section. And, as is tradition since Ultimate Alien season 1, I included a personal soundtrack, or at the very least, a song quote that seems to fit their development.
And given that I have to talk about Caleb's origins, again, this has a trigger warning for rape.
Image note: Most of the images are mine, though anything from the episode "S is for Self" (which are the image of Matt and Shagon, the Will/Matt kiss, and the two shots of old Nerissa) are from whoresque at Livejournal, though I think that journal no longer exists.
"The Will to Love" by Wreck-55/Greg Weisman
Will Vandom (portrayed by Kelly Stables), the leader of the team, is fresh off her victory against Phobos in season one but must come to grips with a frustrating civilian life and a new enemy who's a little too similar to her for comfort. As expected for the leader, she has the most B-plots in the season, though there are really only three super-important ones.
The first is her frustration with her mother. It begins with her grades suffering due to her duties as a Guardian—Susan Vandom believes that her tanking performance is a sign that she hasn't adjusted to life in Heatherfield and tries to move her back to her old hometown, Fadden Hills. W.I.T.C.H. puts that plan on hold by promising to help her with her studies and showing just how much Will is loved and accepted in the community, but problems with her mother continue. In H, Will discovers that her mother has secretly been dating Dean Collins, her history teacher. This rankles her deeply, since the idea of her mom and her teacher dating not only squicks her out, but her mom constantly lies to her about it—whether by not being honest about the relationship in H or using a mother-daughter day out in K to meet up with her boyfriend. And this conflict is one I really like—I groaned throughout the arguments in season one because I couldn't sympathize with Will; I'm old enough that I had more of her mother's perspective. But here, I feel that Will was completely justified in her anger simply because her mother was lying to her and not thinking of her feelings on the matter. It was something that had made Will uncomfortable, and if you're a parent who's dating someone that makes your child feel uncomfortable, you need to solve that problem fast. This actually returned with Will's father in Q, when he dropped the bombshell on her that he was getting married to a woman she'd never met. This, in turn, led Will to suspect Serina Sanchez was actually Nerissa in disguise, but that's Will's default reaction anyway. But by the end of the season, Will manages to make peace with both of her parents and accept their new loves: Dean for saving her mother and Serina for being a nice woman who was really interested in getting to know her.
To make matters more frustrating for Will, she'd suddenly gotten a bunch of new powers, and they were making her look crazy to everybody not in the know. In the first season, Will had the fewest powers out of the bunch—only the same flight and enhanced strength and speed that the other girls had, but without any elemental abilities. Maybe the intent was that because she held the Heart of Kandrakar, it balanced everything out, since the Heart was demonstrating more new powers every week than Silver Age Superman, but Will was definitely short-changed in the bargain. What made her special? What made her worthy of being the leader? When the Veil was lowered, Will's powers finally awakened—quintessence, the fifth element. It first manifested with her hearing electronic appliances talking, which seems to tie into quintessence's ability to bring things to life. This got her in trouble in school, with things like her calculator talking to her in class and giving her answers during her tests. Or annoying things like her phone, voiced by the amazing Steve Blum, being a nagging pain in the ass. But in battle, it allowed her to bring objects to life to fight for her, such as swords. With her powers still developing, it was only about as useful as telekinesis and mostly was limited to metallic objects, but it helped quite a bit as long as Nerissa wasn't doing the same thing back to her. The Heart also allowed her to open folds to other worlds, and she was the first one to use the power of "teletransportation"—which is just a fancy way of saying teleporting, though she rarely used it because of how draining it was and how bad her aim at both that and folding were. But in episode D, the most battle-ready portion of her powers developed, with her ability to generate lightning. This pretty much became her signature attack—throw lightning at the problem. But as it turned out, these were the same powers as Nerissa's, and toward the end of the season, particularly in V, there were questions over whether Will was destined to the same dark fate that befell her predecessor. Unfortunately, this wasn't well explored, much the same as the revelation in Q that she was a swimmer hoping to make it to the Olympics. I really wish they'd built on it for more than two episodes. Seriously, when did she become an athlete at the school? That's another time commitment she has to juggle, in addition to still needing Taranee's tutoring to keep her grades up, and argh.
As Will's powers grew, she became more and more of a leader, and her plans were getting better. True, she still did dumb stuff like sending Blunk to spy on Serina because she thought she might be Nerissa, but she began outthinking Nerissa and Phobos and planning within plans. When Nerissa became too powerful for them to defeat, she realized that Phobos was the only one who could take the Heart of Meridian away from her. But Phobos was a predictable little twat who'd just betray them the first chance he got, so she had Hay Lin plant the seeds of distrust in Raythor that eventually led to him abandoning his loyalties to Phobos and siding with the more honorable Guardians to bring him down. Raythor convinced Phobos to attack Kandrakar, which would have stripped him of his power because of his broken oath with the Guardians, except that it turned out Cedric had figured things out and betrayed Phobos then. Kind of hard to predict. And on top of planning on par with David Xanatos, Will's passion and resolve really took root, making her a much more mature and effective leader. This passion was beautifully explored in H, when she realized that the naïve and desperate altermere of herself was a living being who just wanted to live, and she tried to give her a second chance when Will 2 sacrificed herself to save her. Will's love took center stage there, and honestly, I feel like that was her greatest strength—the will to love.
Which leads us to the third subplot, one that I think was the biggest of all of them: her relationship with Matt. I'll cover more of it in Matt's section, since it's pretty much the heart of his character, but season two really turned a cute teenage romance into one hell of a love story. As a warrior and a leader, Will wanted to protect Matt from the danger she faced every day, and she tried to keep him out of battles. But he proved he was willing to stay by her side, both at home and in battle. And this led Nerissa to target him to get to her. Will had to fight the dangerous Shagon, who taunted her with hints that he'd kidnapped and harmed Matt somehow, and who glamoured himself as Matt to keep his friends and family from wondering where he was, all while keeping an eye on the Guardians for Nerissa. Will played into his hands easily, since he knew exactly how to set her off and make her hate him. But she was also sharp enough to pick up on how he never finished her off, knowing that as a Nerissa creation, he had to be too smart to simply let her live for the fun of feeding off her multiple times. She realized he had some mercy in him—enough mercy that he couldn't have hurt Matt—and that gave her the edge over him. She still hated him, yes, but he couldn't incite that fury in her anymore—not until episode S. Because some part of her wanted to believe that maybe there was some good in him, he was able to convince her that he wanted to help her save Matt, all the while leading her into a trap to finish her off for good. This infuriated her more, feeding him again, but when she heard him sing Matt's love song to her, she realized that Shagon was simply Matt trapped by a spell. Her hatred for Shagon melted away completely, and she was only able to love Matt and help him break free. As he continued to fight by her side with his new powers, she still was a little protective of him, but she finally had to ask him to trust her to fight alone in the final battle while he kept civilians safely oblivious to the danger around them. In the end, it was his voice she heard first, calling her back to herself, and she was able to lead the others back.
"Just Words" by Emma Lahana
Irma Lair (portrayed by Candi Milo) was probably my favorite character in the first season, but I think the second season took her strengths and twisted them into a weakness. I loved that she spoke what was on her mind and didn't worry about what other people thought of her. In season two, this turned into a problem for her, with her inadvertently coming off as cruel to her friends.
But first, we'll talk about her expansion pack powers. She wound up with two new powers after the Veil fell: the ability to turn clothing pink, which really didn't do a whole lot other than help Cornelia cheat on Caleb in F; and the ability to telepathically compel people to do what she wanted—something that fits with such a strong-willed character. Her will was even strong enough that she compelled Cassidy to break free from Nerissa's thrall, though it was a shame that she didn't get to interact much with her predecessor. Irma was one of the most vocal characters about Will edging closer to Nerissa-dom, so not having the fear that history could repeat itself and another deadly conflict breaking out between the Guardians of quintessence and water was a big missed opportunity.
Irma's problem with words was actually foreshadowed in episode E, when in her and Cornelia's shared nightmare, a microphone steals her voice ala Ursula when she starts insulting Martin Tubbs. The voice ends up going to Tracker, one of their adversaries. A couple of episodes later in G, she starts yelling insults at Blunk in aggravation, pretty much breaking the little guy's heart, even though he's trying to help her and save her life. But it comes to a head in L, when she humiliates Martin and calls him a loser to his face, only for everything she said to be broadcast all over the school. This draws Ember to her like a magnet, since she feeds off her pain and misery. Even when she tries to apologize to Martin, he points out that her efforts are hollow—she's only trying to make herself feel better, rather than truly worrying about his feelings. The only way she can apologize is to get on the air and give a raw, heartfelt admission that she needs him in her life as her friend, and it's only then that he can forgive her. This actually jumpstarts a really amazing friendship between the two, and it lasts for the rest of the season. They end up being closer after L and Irma admits that she likes Martin as a friend, and Martin lays off some of the flirting.
I really like Irma and Martin's friendship. It would be easy to ship them, but I think that that friendship is more important. It's rare to have a boy-girl relationship that remains platonic, even if he's got a crush on her. Irma's guilt over what she said to him continues into O, where she officially makes him her second-in-command, and for all she furiously blows up at everyone else—the other Guardians and the rest of K-SHIP alike—she can't bring herself to yell at him. He has to actually convince her to treat him the same as everybody else, that their friendship is too strong for him to be truly hurt by what she says, now that he knows what she really feels. But all the same, when she crosses the line, he makes it clear to her he won't stand by and allow her to order around the others like slaves. Making matters worse, Irma's own pride kept her from apologizing to them and begging them to help her—something that I think really does fit with the characterization shown, given how hard it was for her to make a sincere apology to Martin in L and the way she just has to have a sarcastic retort to everybody. But ultimately, Irma's friendship is her greatest strength, since she will never fail to stand by and support the people she cares about.
"Symphony" by Marié Digby
Taranee Cook (portrayed by Kittie) pretty much embodies the teenage desire to make something new of yourself. Beginning in A, Taranee worried about her shy, wallflower nature, and she was afraid that she would just fade into the background now that the adventure seemed to be over. So she began taking risks and breaking rules to try to step out more.
Now while she gave up on breaking school rules, Taranee did continue to challenge her mother's authority, particularly regarding rules she thought were stupid, definitely breaking out of the "good girl" stereotype she was afraid she was stuck in while still being a good girl. This mainly comes with her relationship with her boyfriend, Nigel Ashcroft, the bassist of Wreck-55 and new friend of school troublemaker Uriah Dunn. When Nigel got in trouble with the principal, Judge Cook wrote him off as a punk and forbade her daughter from seeing him. Not wanting his girlfriend to get in trouble on his account, Nigel went along with it. But Taranee didn't like that her mom had passed judgment without getting to know him, and so she continued to see him in secret until she managed to get her to see that he was one of the good guys and that she too was worth trusting.
Taranee's boldness continued against her enemies, with her becoming more outspoken in battle and more willing to just set things on fire when she was angry—a massive change from the girl who was afraid of her powers when she first got them. She got more easily frustrated, particularly with the obstinate and prideful Kadma, since her whole personality rankled her—Taranee herself was trying to struggle with admitting her flaws, and Kadma just couldn't admit her own mistakes. Her temper made it hard for her to fight against Khor, who fed off the brilliant flashes of anger and rage she let off, but she finally managed to overcome him in P by fighting smart and letting go of her anger during the battle to outsmart him.
And fortunately, Taranee's intelligence continued to be one of her strongest assets. For all her newfound boldness made her impatient with people, it also made her more willing to jump on research when something was bothering her. In C, she realized that their new powers and the increase in the potency of their elemental powers had something to do with the lowering of the Veil in Kandrakar. In E, she was the only one to realize that because she was fighting in a nightmare, she had the ability to take control of her dream. That let her wake up, and she telepathically ordered everyone else to wake up before their dreams could turn deadly. By looking up lucid dreaming, she managed to find a way to defeat Nerissa—by knowing that they were dreaming and using whatever powers her dreams could give her—using the Dragon of Fire and becoming the embodiment of her element in order to fight without limit. Because Nerissa's use of the word "quintessence" bothered her, she researched it and the legend of the Four Dragons and discovered that Xin Jing had the element of quintessence, the power of electricity and the ability to bring things to life, which had been passed down to Will. And with that intelligence and her new power of telepathy, the prisoners of Phobos's Magic Stick were able to contact her, first warning her to save Caleb and Blunk ahead of schedule, then giving her the plan to save the day. But what's interesting is that Taranee only managed this when she managed to set her emotions aside and zen out, which she also got the others to do when they lost their memories in Z. It didn't take her boldness, it didn't take her cleverness—it just took the calmness she always seemed afraid to show.
"Vanity" by Yuki Kajiura
Cornelia Hale (portrayed by Christel Khalil) continues one of the greatest character developments of them all. What was once a shallow, fashion-obsessed drama queen really developed into a fantastic character. Yes, she's still got one hell of an ego and attitude, but this season, she becomes much less afraid of showing her true self: the caring, supportive young woman who is always there for the people she loves.
It begins with Caleb, particularly because they break up in the first episode of the season. I really, really love that breakup, and I've gushed about it at length. Their relationship actually wasn't very well built up in season one—there were just a bare handful of comments about them liking each other and not a whole lot of development between them before they got together in the finale. So honestly, their breakup really shouldn't have all the emotional impact it did. What made it work was the development along the way.
Cornelia is and always has been a person who puts her heart first. It doesn't matter what her duty is; she will drop it if it conflicts with her heart's desire. And for that reason, I find her a pretty admirable character. But I won't deny that it's immature, and this season tries to get her to balance both sides of her heart and become more of a warrior. She couldn't accept Caleb's need to fulfill his duty to Queen Elyon and Meridian rather than stay with her on Earth in peace and love, so she broke up with him. Being extremely stubborn, she refused to give an inch to him, always trying to find a way to one-up him. Unfortunately, the increased potency in her powers left her a little afraid of losing control, and she couldn't admit that she needed him to calm her down and remind her that she could use them without fear. Plus, adding telekinesis to the mix gave her more that she could lord over him. But with the third power of maintaining an older teenage form, she decided to start dating Taranee's brother, Peter, which pissed the rest of the team off and led to them deciding they needed to hook Cornelia and Caleb back up. It was only when Cornelia saw Caleb eating a piece of humble pie and humiliating himself for her that she was able to swallow her own pride and try again with him. Except that he saw her kiss Peter and refused to talk to her. She realized how much she really loved him when she thought he'd died in an attack. When he reappeared and called her out on her behavior, she admitted to him that she'd broken up with Peter and realized who her heart truly belonged to. She stopped assuming he'll know things and began communicating with him more, putting them on equal ground as a couple and really making her happy about their relationship throughout the series. She's protective enough that, when she heard that Nerissa is Caleb's mother and has captured him, she swore that she was going to save him no matter what, though she let Julian and Blunk go in there instead while she fought off the bad guys. She even tried to support him when he was filled with self-loathing over the truth of his bloodline, but Julian convinced her to let him have some time alone to deal.
But probably more important is Cornelia's relationship with her little sister, Lillian. Throughout the series, she's just been annoyed with her and blew her off to be with her friends—the kind of thing older sisters do. But in U, she learned that Lillian was the Heart of Earth, the mystic source of the world's magic, and that she herself had been chosen as a Guardian because of her relationship to the Heart of Earth. Knowing that Nerissa was going to attack, she wasn't going to have any of that and went to face her and protect her sister. Unfortunately, her typical attitude around Lillian made it harder for her to win her trust, and she had to be convinced by Napoleon and Matt to make amends. She began telling her a story, and while Lillian doubted that Cornelia would ever try to protect her, she realized that the little Heart looked up to her enough that she trusted her judgment whether or not she should give up her powers to Matt, Napoleon, and Huggles. Once Lillian's power had been transferred to the Regents and the little girl was safe and asleep, Cornelia promised to protect her forever and to never let anything divide them again. Maybe because there's not a whole lot left in the show afterward, but Cornelia did seem quite a bit nicer to her sister, and after taking Lillian and Chris trick-or-treating in W, Irma had to reassure her that she dropped both of them off at home before joining the battle, with Cornelia considerably worried about her little sister's safety in the midst of the battle.
All of this continued on her protectiveness of Elyon from season one, which continued in the background of season two—there was always that need to save Elyon from the Magic Stick, but Cornelia learned better to prioritize her duty to stop Nerissa (and then Phobos) over trying to save someone she loved. Still, those people are more precious to them than she can ever say, and she'll do whatever it takes to keep them safe.
"Days Will Pass" by Eyeshine
Hay Lin (portrayed by Liza del Mundo) continued to be a very difficult character for me, though I will say that season two did a better job of developing her. However, I feel like the writers' idea of developing her came down to a desperate effort to just pile on the despair and see if her hope could shine through.
Her character arc started a little late, with two incidents in J: first, her encountering cute new boy Eric Lyndon—and I'll avoid complaining about their relationship again, since I already covered that in-depth—and totally failing to be recognized because of her accidental use of her new power of invisibility, and her stress over trying to coordinate with the team split up over summer vacation. Because of her grandmother having to draw from her power in order to teleport everyone in one place, it left her almost too drained to defeat an escaped Phobos, and she was down on herself for how difficult a time she'd had. Her self-confidence really tanked around Eric too, since he was popular enough with girls and she was worried he didn't notice her existence. This left her easy prey for Tridart, who fed off despair, and he attacked her repeatedly throughout the Knights of Destruction arc. Even when she and Eric hooked up, she didn't have much confidence in herself or their relationship; when she got braces and he didn't seem to notice them, she thought he'd lost interest in her, only to discover he was under Nerissa's love spell.
But the biggest part of Hay Lin's development came with her grandmother. When Nerissa had enthralled the rest of the previous generation of Guardians, Hay Lin was desperate to keep her from being captured and brainwashed too. Unknown to Hay Lin, though, Nerissa couldn't exploit any flaws in Yan Lin's character, and thus created a more flawed altermere, Mera, who would bend to her will. Mera fell, and Hay Lin was devastated by her grandmother's apparent betrayal. This coupled with her relationship problems with Eric, sent her into a deep depression no one could break her out of. It finally took Nerissa herself to save her—Hay Lin realized that the only way Nerissa had survived this long was by abandoning hope and just doing what she needed to. She recovered somewhat throughout the rest of the series, telling her family that her grandmother had a family emergency in China and couldn't contact them, but she'd lost a lot of her innocence. Her hope was gone. For an art contest focusing on the theme of "My Xanadu," she couldn't envision paradise because of all the despair she'd seen. Finally, however, she rediscovered her hope, painting the darkness of the conquered Meridian with the light of the Guardians coming to save it. That redefined paradise for her—the hope that a new day will dawn. But her hope truly returned when Taranee revealed that Yan Lin had never betrayed her and had been captured all along; Mera, who had joined Nerissa, still loved her and was good now, and Hay Lin lovingly accepted her new great-aunt.
But the difficulty of maintaining hope continued for Hay Lin even in the finale, when without her memories, she was crying from despair. It wasn't her own hope that brought her out of it—it was her friends' presence and determination to help her. Ultimately, Hay Lin's hope isn't a quality in a vacuum—it's something that depends on and feeds on her loved ones' love and belief in her, and that's how she manages to conquer the darkness.
"I Believe in You" by Vertical Horizon
Caleb (portrayed by Greg Cipes) and Blunk (portrayed by Steve Blum) continued to be wonderful characters in this series. There's actually not a lot of development to discuss with Blunk on his own, if only because he really did complete his character arc in season one. But his loyalty to his friends, and especially to Caleb, pretty much requires him to share space with Caleb's section. He's come a long way from the cowardly scavenger he'd originally been, and he proves time and time again to be a true hero and a truer friend.
Speaking of heroes, Caleb is well-regarded among his people as a leader and a hero for helping save Meridian from Phobos and put Elyon on the throne. But this season really seemed to challenge his sense of his qualifications to be a hero. It started with his breakup with Cornelia—in a lot of ways, he's both more mature than he should be and far too immature. As a warrior, he displays wisdom, courage, and leadership expected from men far older than seventeen. But when it comes to dealing with people his own age? His lack of a childhood is painfully evident. He and Cornelia broke up because he decided to stay on Meridian to serve Elyon rather than return to Earth with his girlfriend. He didn't fight for her and joined in on the immature sniping they got into, to the point that they actually couldn't work together on a team anymore. To be fair to him, he did try—he returned to Earth with Elyon for the rest of the school year, but Cornelia pointed out that he did it for the wrong reason; he was there for Elyon, not for Cornelia. But honestly, it did take Elyon to get them back together, if only because she convinced him to make a fool of himself on the ice to successfully win her back. But he was heartbroken when he saw her in her older form kissing Peter, and he was all business with her from then on. It wasn't until she admitted that she broke up with Peter and realized how much she loved Caleb when she saw him falling on the ice that they could hook back up and remain on much more equal ground, not hiding their true feelings from pride.
Caleb ended up doing better socially, mostly thanks to hanging out with the girls and befriending Matt, whom he took under his wing and taught to fight. But any chance of a relatively normal life for him was thrown out the window when Nerissa trapped Elyon in the Heart of Meridian; then as Mage, she left him high and dry for weeks pretending that using Blunk's tonga tooth—a gift from the Oracle that allowed them to travel dimensions—would kill him. And here's where his and Blunk's friendship really stood out. Caleb took Blunk with him to retrieve the tooth, and after talking Mage into letting them use it, he planned to sacrifice himself to open the fold while Blunk passed through and warned the Guardians. Blunk was distraught with the plan and when Caleb was rendered unconscious on Mt. Thanos, but they made it through safely and were picked up by Yan Lin. Blunk also supported his buddy when Caleb came to him for a favor—to fold again to Mt. Thanos, though he refused to explain why. Caleb tried to go on alone, shutting Blunk out, but Blunk wasn't taking his crap and followed him anyway, where he found out the devastating secret that had shattered Caleb's life.
In episode O, Julian was shaken by the revelation that Nerissa had been posing as the Mage. When he went to the waterfall where Caleb had presumably been conceived, he found a grave that put the real Mage's death at eighteen years prior. Unfortunately, their child was seventeen years old, meaning that the woman Julian had romanced was Nerissa all along. The knowledge burned at Caleb, and he tried to settle things with his mother alone, but fortunately Blunk had followed him and retrieved Julian and the Guardians to save him. Nerissa tried to tempt Caleb to join her, but his devastation and his sense of duty kept her from breaking into his soul. He tried to steal the Heart back but failed, enraging her for taking what she would have given him as his birthright. It pained him greatly to know his true origins, that he'd been born from evil in order to win against Phobos, and to some degree, he never really recovered from it. While he did accept that Nerissa was his mother, he could never treat her with any love, only contempt for everything she'd done. It's a shame that they didn't spend more time on this traumatic revelation. It comes up again, yeah, but there was a great chance for character building. For example, look later at Young Justice and how Artemis struggles with being the daughter of Sportsmaster and sister of Cheshire, how Conner deals with not only being a clone of Superman but also of Luthor, and how M'gann deals with being a White Martian. But I'll get back to Artemis, Conner, and M'gann later.
At the very least, Caleb had a new family now, with his father and his friends, and his light hadn't completely gone out. He was still in love with Cornelia and as affectionate with her as ever. And as for Blunk, when the Passling bravely jumped onto Miranda's back to stop her from destroying the Aurameres, he joined his friend in the fun. Even so, when Nerissa was trapped in the cracked gem, Julian kept it as both he and Caleb struggled to come to terms with everything she'd done.
"The Demon in Me" by Wreck-55/Jon and Greg Weisman
Matt Olsen (portrayed by Jason Marsden) turned out to be a surprisingly good character this season. There are two tropes that really annoy me when it comes to the superhero's love interest: the satellite love interest and especially the obstructive love interest. Both of these were present with Dana Tan in Batman Beyond, who I like to use as a counterpoint whenever it comes to Matt. Dana really wasn't a character herself—she existed to be Terry McGinnis's girlfriend. But what really got on my nerves about Dana as the show went on was how she kept existing as an obstacle to Terry's work as Batman or even his own happiness as a civilian. I had the same problem with Julie Yamamoto in Ben 10: Ultimate Alien season 2. Suddenly, the hero can't do anything right. Never mind that he just saved the world, he had to cancel a date. He's not there twenty-four/seven. She just tears into him, and you wonder why they don't just dump each other and go on with their livesshut up, I know what happens with Julie in Omniverse. I'm still mad about the character derailment in UA.
But from day one of season two, Matt defied the obstructive love interest trope. Continuing from the final two episodes of season one, he was very interested in Will's double life and tried to be there for her. Now, yes, this does make him a bit of a satellite love interest—he tries to learn to fight and everything so that he can help her. But over time, he began to take on more of his own character. Even he admitted in D that he wanted to feel a little dangerous, and that was part of the reason why he asked Caleb to teach him to fight. In fact, he was able to assist the team in battle in G and K, although Nerissa's forces get the better of him both times. Still, he didn't let this discourage him, which pretty much brings us to the major course of his development, Shagon.
In L, Nerissa kidnapped him and his pet dormouse, Mr. Huggles, and used quintessence to awaken their hatred and anger respectively. As Khor, Huggles retained his loyalty to Matt over anybody else, and even Shagon cared deeply for his pet. And Shagon is one hell of an interesting character in himself. He was a portion of Matt's personality—his hatred—brought to life and then plugged back into him as a dominant persona, pretty much the "demon" in him. The two of them were in constant conflict, with Shagon trying to destroy Matt completely and have total control over their mind and body, but Matt tried to work with him, all the while undermining him. He understood that Shagon was part of him, and he'd get nowhere by hating him—he was psychologically healthy enough not to hate himself, barring Shagon's little slip-up in M, and he knew that Shagon would just feed off that hatred anyway. For a long time, Shagon was winning the war in their mind. He was taunting Will on the outside, feeding off her hatred. He was committing atrocities under Nerissa's command. But Matt's love for Will was keeping him going, and he managed to convince Shagon to give him just enough control over their body to keep Nerissa from getting suspicious, a kind of Lima syndrome, almost. It wasn't until Matt almost got a message to Will that Shagon realized how strong he'd really gotten, and he devised to kill Will in order to kill Matt. But Matt realized that his real weapon is love, and he managed to get that message out to Will, whose love for him, in turn, allowed him to destroy Shagon. Matt thanks Will for saving him and sang his love song for her during the Battle of the Bands after Nerissa stripped him and Huggles of their powers.
In the short time remaining in the series, Matt felt like a much more open character, relying less on Will for characterization. He was the one who tries to offer support to Hay Lin in T, reminding her of just how hard it is to fight against Nerissa's control, while still loving the people you're forced to fight, and protecting Eric when Hay Lin rescued him. In U, he took on a brotherly role to Lillian when Cornelia had him babysit so she could head to Kandrakar, and he's sweet enough to her to continue to call her Princess in the finale, just because in the story Cornelia had told, he was her knight. This connection to Lillian was really why Cornelia knew she would trust him, Huggles, and Napoleon with her powers until she was old enough to control them herself. As a Regent of Earth, Matt regained Shagon's form and powers, but he no longer had the evil split personality inside his mind—although I will say that the art always made his transformation look as painful as the first time. This power allowed him to fight by Will's side as her equal, just what he wanted all along.
But his character arc comes to a complete circle in the finale, when Will asked him not to join her in battle, much to his disappointment. Instead, she asked him to use his power to create a glamour zone around the city so that the people of Earth would not learn of the magical world they'd been blind to, and to prevent civilians from entering the battlefield. While he did his duty, he promised to be there for her when things went bad, and when she became trapped in her elemental form, he was there with the others to try to wake her up. It was his voice that gets through first, and Will woke up to see him over her, relieved and swearing they're not trying that again.
Matt is possibly the greatest success of season two of W.I.T.C.H.: They take an underdeveloped love interest from the comicshut up, I know about his later development; it wasn't known when the season was created, give him an actual character arc, and make him into a heroic character who stands by his friends and the woman he loves. He's one of the best developed characters of the series, and it's amazing to see how far he's come.
"Deciding So Blindly" by Eyeshine
Nerissa (portrayed by Kath Soucie in her true forms, BJ Ward as Mage, and Candi Milo as Trill) is our villain this season, and what a villain she is! Let me say, I love her design. It's amazing. Her comic design isn't terribly impressive, given they just go with "ugly old hag" as a template. The cartoon version? Looks like a snake made human. Her wrinkled and haggard appearance looks like snakeskin, her eyes have snakelike pupils, and she's got fangs. She looks old, yes. She's got long grey hair and is a little hunched over and walks with a staff. But she also looks like a total badass who's seen plenty of action—her left arm is either mechanical or magical, made entirely of metal, and she's got a scar over one eye. You know looking at her, she's going to hand you your ass. But even more impressively, she's a complex and fascinating character, one you want to feel sorry for while also being frustratingly unsympathetic.
Nerissa was the former bearer of the Heart of Kandrakar and Guardian of the element quintessence. But when the Oracle feared its power was corrupting her, he took the Heart away from her and gave it to her closest friend, Cassidy, in order to save her soul. And yeah, we have that running problem that a heart cannot be taken by force, but the animation shows that the Oracle gave Weira's jewel to Cassidy, and we know that the jewel can absorb power. Now, yes, this could have been an animation error. But it makes too much sense—Nerissa knew too much about the effects of that jewel and how easily it could be given away. It doesn't matter if it's the same jewel or related to Weira's; it makes perfect sense for Nerissa to set her plan in motion by giving the jewel to Weira for her crown (or suggesting to Phobos that he give it to her), rob her of her power, allow Phobos to take over, and then plot to overthrow him so she can take the Heart of Meridian from the then-missing Elyon.
Though Oracle hoped giving the Heart to Cassidy would stop Nerissa from obsessing over it, she'd gotten enough of a taste of it that it was clearly an addiction. And so, she and Cassidy met alone on the summit of Mt. Thanos. Nerissa tried to convince Cassidy to give the Heart back to her, but Cassidy wouldn't, too worried about her friend's mental state. During the argument, Nerissa lost her temper and blasted Cassidy with quintessence...which threw her off the mountainside and left her unable to fly herself to safety. The animation shows a horrified expression on Nerissa's face, implying that she didn't mean to kill her. But whatever the intent, that was the result. Nerissa killed her closest friend.
And here is where I begin talking about the most troubling part of my analysis, something I struggled with even while I was writing the reviews for Ryuki. There, I'd run into the trouble of wondering if its main villain was sympathetic or not, and here again, I found myself running into the same question. It actually got to the point that I went to Greg Weisman's Q&A and asked for his take. And here's what he thought:
Ultimately, I think he's right. Nerissa is, by all means, not a sympathetic character. She killed Cassidy. She raped Julian. She used him and Caleb. She used the Guardians, the Rebellion, Elyon, the Knights of Vengeance, the Knights of Destruction, Phobos, her old teammates, and everyone else. She attacked four worlds and claimed the Hearts of two. She endangered innocent civilians on all of those worlds, just to get what she wanted.
But she deeply loves Cassidy and regrets killing her. She wants Julian and Caleb to love her. She thinks she's a crusader for good, doing what needs to be done in order to unite the worlds and end war forever.
And she also wants power.
And she doesn't understand what love is.
She is all of these at once, and that's what makes her so damn fascinating. She's a pathetic, sad egotist. She doesn't understand that friendship is more important than power, and that you can't make someone love you. And that's what makes you feel for her. She simultaneously does horrible things with a depressingly human edge. For example, the Knights of Destruction, who are pretty much the W.I.T.C.H. versions of the Psycho Rangers. Down the line, I'll get to Power Rangers in Space, but in the later episodes, Astronema introduced an evil counterpart team to the Power Rangers called the Psycho Rangers. They knew all of the Rangers' moves and could fight them perfectly, but they were never meant to defeat them. No, they were tied into the powers of Astronema's boss, Dark Specter, who she was quietly trying to kill that arc so she would be in charge. Similarly, Nerissa never intended for the KoD to destroy the Guardians. Their purpose was to feed on the Guardians' negative emotions and become stronger—strong enough for her to eventually drain in order to restore her own powers, as well as those of her former teammates. Pretty evil, right? Well, take a look at their forms: Shagon and Tridart are both fallen angels, and Ember is a devil. Shagon and Khor had been Matt and Huggles, who were loved ones of Will, her enemy. Beloved people became Hatred and Anger. Tridart and Ember were created from Mt. Thanos itself, which had been her prison for decades and the scene of her crime, where she killed Cassidy. It sounds like a serial killer's memento, but at the same time, Nerissa was only imprisoned on Mt. Thanos because the Oracle didn't want her to run away from her crime and forced her to face her guilt day after day.
Nerissa is someone who can be imprisoned by a dream of her taking over the worlds...and creating peace and being loved by her family. If Matt was the best developed heroic character of the show, Nerissa by far is the best developed villainous character, if only by being so horrifyingly human. She does too much to make herself sympathetic, but there's still that deep complexity of humanity within her, the sense that maybe anybody could turn out like that. It's just how you should make a villain.
But for all I love this series and these characters, I can see the flaws. Around Q, a major problem becomes apparent, something that is glaring to me right after reviewing Ryuki. I hate to compare two different shows or writers because it's like comparing apples and oranges, but honestly, apples and oranges are both fruit, and they make a damn good juice that we can easily drink with breakfast. The writer of Ryuki, Yasuko Kobayashi, is very similar in style to Greg Weisman: she enjoys tangled plots that are difficult to decipher with villains with sympathetic motivations, and she really does a damn good job developing her characters. Its villain, Shiro Kanzaki, whom I glossed over earlier, was a man who just wanted to save his younger sister from death, but he became utterly unforgivable by sacrificing countless people in the attempt to give her more than just thirteen extra years to live. But on the flip side, the heroic characters were fantastically developed: Yui, Kanzaki's sister, had to decide early on to get more involved and try to find out what her beloved brother was up to, even as it broke her heart, and she finally openly defied him and convinced him to stop, accepting her death. Ren, our second main Rider, started off extremely cold and driven by the intense desire to save the woman he loved, but he had to cope with his inability to kill and his growing friendship with the others and how much he really did care, finally being left as the only one among his friends alive and having to face that conflict of who he cared about more before deciding to hold to his promise and save his fiancée. Kitaoka, introduced a little later, became a pretty damn strong character as he started as this amoral asshole who was only interested in saving himself, before he began to realize that he'd lived a good life with good friends and was okay with dying, and finally realizing on his deathbed that he had to atone for his sins and finish the mess he'd started. And finally, our title character, Shinji, joined the Rider War reluctantly, only interested in saving innocent people from Monsters and then realizing he needed to save the Riders themselves from fighting. He had to cope with learning what everyone was fighting for, what the Rider War was supposed to do, and the pain of losing his friends and the conflict of saving one of them by fighting the other. Finally, he realized that his motivation had never changed at all: he still wanted to save everyone by sealing off the parallel world they fought, died, and wished in, even if it meant pain for his friends.
The heroes of Ryuki were far better developed than its villain. And so is the case of pretty much all of Kobayashi's shows, to the point that sometimes, I find her villains underdeveloped. With Weisman, he does a much better job writing the villains and ensuring they're as complex and developed as his heroes, but in W.I.T.C.H., they really fall by the wayside. Sure, Will, Taranee, Cornelia, and Caleb are much better developed than they were in the first season, but Irma loses some of her strengths, and Hay Lin only gets development when the writers decide to depress her. And with the exception of Matt, none of the heroes really has a character arc—following motivation and development from point A (wanting to help Will) through trials and tribulations (learning to fight, being outclassed, being captured and turned into/possessed by Shagon, being freed and becoming a Regent) to point Z (having to let Will fight without him and then rely only on his and her own hearts to lead her back to him).
Contrast the later series Young Justice. Ever since it premiered in late 2010, I resisted the urge to review it. While I love it, most of my reviews really serve the purpose of redeeming a series that gets what I feel is undeserved flack: W.I.T.C.H., Kamen Rider Decade, Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters. Power Rangers Lost Galaxy was to redeem itself in my eyes, and Kamen Rider Ryuki was an attempt to demystify a series that, while liked, left a lot of fans confused. Young Justice, frankly, doesn't need my help to make it more beloved—though, admittedly, I can say the same about my upcoming reviews of Power Rangers in Space and RPM. Sure, there are problems: They really could have fleshed out quite a few of the characters, notably Rocket and Wonder Girl. But by the end of season 1, every member of the original team had gotten fully developed to a satisfying conclusion. So here it is, my Young Justice nano-review:
Team leader Kaldur'ahm/Aqualad got a lot of flack early on for seeming too serene, but we learned that he was struggling with a crush on a girl he'd left behind in Atlantis. This girl, Tula, ended up dating his best friend, Garth, and Kaldur had to accept it. He had to struggle with the suspicion that one of his teammates was a mole, and when he revealed this investigation to them, they gave him hell for it until he proved that he never once believed that it could be any of them. He led the team to victory against the Justice League, and five years later, it was impossible to believe that he'd betrayed them to join the villains of the Light, following the revelation that his biological father was the villain Black Manta, and the death of Tula, now Aquagirl. But Kaldur's betrayal was all part of a complex scheme by him and Nightwing to infiltrate the Light and find out who its new partner was, then bring it down from the inside. He risked his life and sanity to keep his cover and protect his friends, finally rejoining the team after utterly destroying the Light's plans.
Second-in-command Dick Grayson, Robin and later Nightwing, was the natural choice to lead the team, as despite being the youngest, he had the most experience as a hero. But he had a tendency to be a loner in battle, expecting people to just "get" what he was doing, the way Batman did, and he failed to inspire the team. He was a genius at hacking and a little troll, which made him great as a wild card on the team, and as he grew into Nightwing, he matured greatly. This is what led him and Kaldur to plan a fake betrayal, with Nightwing leading the team now and getting intelligence from Kaldur, even in the heat of battle. But guilt plagued him the deeper the plot became—he had to bring Artemis in on it and her boyfriend, Wally, fake her death, deal with the fallout, have Wally second-guess Kaldur's loyalty and his judgment, and make questionable calls like letting the unstable Arsenal serve on a covert team or firing him in public, particularly in front of people he'd just saved. It was perfectly understandable when he quit the team at the end of the season, having lost some of his integrity, mostly all of his remaining innocence, and his best friend.
Wally West, Kid Flash, might not have had the full arcs that the others enjoyed, but his was a process of growth. He thought he knew more than he did, he flirted with a girl he had no chance with and who had no interest in him, mocked the girl he really had a crush on, and reeled from the shock that his friend, Roy Harper/Speedy, had quit because he was tired of being treated as a sidekick, only to be replaced by new archer Artemis. He had to learn that magic really existed, deal with the death of a man who sacrificed his afterlife to let him escape being possessed by a magical god, and spend his birthday not fighting the good fight, but racing against time to save a little girl, who happened to be the leader of another country that would fall in the Light's hands if she didn't survive. At that point, he grew up, became more accepting of his friends' secrets, and eventually let himself fall in love with the only person capable of calling him out on his bullshit to his face. He retired from heroics, out of frustration that he could never be as good as his mentor, and came out of retirement to help his family. He had to say goodbye to his girlfriend as she left on a deep-cover assignment with Kaldur, worried about her safety and Kaldur's loyalty and his best friend's judgment, and he joined her in battle when it came down to the end of the world, and he ran alongside his family to save everything, knowing he didn't stand a chance because he wasn't fast enough, and he died to save the world.
Conner Kent/Superboy was a clone of Superman and Lex Luthor, meant to replace Superman should the Light feel it necessary. But Kaldur, Robin, and Wally broke him out before they could program anything more than a shutdown phrase, and Kaldur inspired him to join them and try to meet Superman. Superman didn't accept him at first, disturbed at how he'd been cloned, and Conner had to put up with his own anger and frustration, and his need to be accepted and wanted led him to adopt other oddities like the overgrown wolf he called Wolf, and the New Genesis AI sphere/transport "Sphere" (he also was terrible at naming things). His team was his family, even when Superman finally accepted him as a little brother. The person he was closest to was M'gann, whose secret he learned before they began dating and kept because he wanted her to be comfortable enough to tell him. Despite this, he broke up with her at some point during the five-year timeskip because he was disturbed with how readily she used her powers to break their enemies' minds, and when he felt her trying to erase his memories of their fight, he couldn't bear to be with her anymore. Only after she learned the consequences of what she'd done and confessed what she learned about Kaldur to him, could he open up to her again. He was once again the confidant, assuring her then-boyfriend, La'gann, that she was safe after being kidnapped by Kaldur's forces and it was all part of the plan and if Nightwing could have told them earlier, he would have, but in private, he told Nightwing just how pissed he really was. He'd gained control over his temper and passions, and only after he and M'gann had matured could they truly have a healthy relationship.
M'gann M'orzz/Miss Martian was a White Martian, a member of a race with horrible discrimination against them, who pretended she was Green and went to Earth as a stowaway in her Uncle J'onn J'onzz's ship. She'd grown up watching Earth reruns and fallen in love with a short-lived sitcom called Hello Megan, whose ditzy protagonist always had everything go well for her—she then patterned her appearance after the actress, Marie Logan. She was so eager to make people happy, even if she was a bit clumsy, all the while hiding the secret of how lonely and hurt she really was. She fell in love with Conner at first sight, though he didn't seem to even notice her, and even after they began dating, she was terrified that he and the others would reject her if they knew what she really looked like. She saved the life of Marie Logan's son, Garfield, and the Logan family adopted her when they heard how Hello Megan had helped her through a difficult and lonely childhood and her body image issues. She had to cope with the Light knowing her secret and blackmailing her. When she was finally able to come clean to everyone, learning that they still accepted her and loved her no matter what she looked like, the Light lost their ability to control her, so they killed her adoptive mother in revenge. During the five-year timeskip, M'gann took in her adoptive brother, who'd developed powers like hers, and she began to use her strong telepathy against the bad guys more aggressively, shattering their minds and disturbing Conner, leading to a fight. She tried to erase his memories of the fight to ease the tension between them, but he broke up with her, hurt that she would use that power against him—with language similar to rape, to be brutally honest. When Artemis was apparently killed by Kaldur, she used her powers against him, only to learn the truth, which left her afraid to use her powers again. Artemis had to kidnap her to get her to fix the damage, and the both of them found a way to save her from the Light, where she had to break up with her rebound boyfriend and eventually got back together with Conner, the only one who really understood her and accepted her all the way through.
Artemis Crock, however, was the gem of the pack. She'd been born in a family of villains and wanted to be a hero, and this conflict was her greatest secret. Her reformed mother had dreams for her to turn out better, but Artemis hated how much everyone seemed to think that her destiny was set and she had to become a villain. Her father tried to control her, and she went out of her way to hide her bloodline, causing conflict with the team with her suspicious behavior, the warning of a mole, and how she seemed to be letting Sportsmaster and Cheshire go. Their trump card was lost when she finally confessed everything to the team, having long since proven her loyalty over her fear, and after she got past her fears of rejection and sarcasm battle with Wally, they began dating. She even retired alongside him, ready to build a new life. But when Nightwing and Kaldur needed her, she put her life on the line for the risky deep-cover mission, only asking that they tell Wally too. She had to cope with the pain of losing her hard-won identity of Artemis and fighting as the villainess Tigress, fighting not to become the mask. When Kaldur's mind was broken, the young woman who'd once been so afraid she couldn't function suddenly became the leader of the mission, protecting his secrets and his life so thoroughly that the Light believed her to be his lover, and bringing in M'gann to save his mind and protecting him. Her father and sister turned out to care about her much more than she'd thought and tried to avenge her death—she arranged for them to learn the truth and rescue M'gann, all while she and Kaldur continued to look loyal to the Light. She faked her death once more when they blew the Light's plan and revealed it to their partner, and she gladly rejoined the team as Artemis, alongside Kid Flash. But when he fell in the final battle, she reverted to Tigress's identity, training his nephew and protégé, Bart Allen, as she tried to make a new identity of her own.
There's much more I can go on: Roy Harper/Red Arrow, the frustrated and suspicious young man who searched for a mole within the team only to learn that he himself was the mole, another one of Cadmus's clones; Roy Harper/Arsenal, the frustrated original who couldn't stand how he'd been replaced (though blaming his partner rather than his clone for what had happened) and who was so traumatized by his past that he always put his own life first, ahead of anyone else; Jaime Reyes/Blue Beetle, a new hero who learned he was destined to become a villain and bring about the end of humanity, who doomed himself because of his fear of this future and his lack of trust of his symbiotic scarab partner; and Bart Allen/Impulse/Kid Flash II, a young man from a ruined future who pretended to be a moron in order to hide his true motives to prevent that future, who befriended Jaime and warned him of that future and did everything to save him, and who was so proud to be recognized by his Uncle Wally and promised to become the next Kid Flash, only to have to take up his mantle in mourning and try to live up to a legacy. The point is that Young Justice did what W.I.T.C.H. forgot: It focused on the heroes. Even when we were trying to figure out who the Light was and what they were up to, we spent our time learning about the heroes and what motivated them, what made them who they were.
This is what's lacking in W.I.T.C.H. We spend half the series not even knowing Nerissa's name, let alone what she wants. We're led to believe she wants revenge, which is anathema to a good Weisman character—as Xanatos and Luthor put it, he believes that revenge is "a sucker's game." We don't get the time we should to devoting how Nerissa was corrupted and how history could repeat itself with Will or any of the other Guardians. By the time we get to it, it's impossible to believe that Will would turn because there's simply not enough time. True, Ben 10: Ultimate Alien pulled off a sudden turn in Kevin Levin's alignment toward the end of season 1, but they'd justified it by having the explanation that he'd once been evil because of how his powers worked, so when he used them in a last-ditch effort to save the universe, it was a tragic, heroic fall from grace (I could go on about how they should have revealed this about his powers in season 1 of Alien Force instead, but I'm stopping myself now before I reiterate my analyses of Ben 10). We're denied that with Will, instead getting the return of Phobos. And even if you defy that route for Will, the possibilities of what she could turn into (ala Jaime) are introduced too late for this to come off as a strong development choice (as with Conner, Artemis, and M'gann, who clearly had secrets that the fandom already knew, or with Kaldur, who seemed to turn only to be lying).
Still, despite these flaws, W.I.T.C.H. season two is a hell of a good series, more than making up for the flaws of season 1 and the comic, and absolutely a fantastic entry on Greg Weisman's résumé.
The story follows the Guardians of the Veil, now seasoned and victorious from battling Phobos, as a mysterious new enemy from Yan Lin's past comes back to haunt them. The mistakes made by the previous Guardians and the Oracle have drastic consequences on the Guardians of today. Furthermore, with their powers intensified by the lowering of the Veil, they must take on the new responsibility of protecting the Infinite Dimensions—every world connected to Kandrakar. And as if those responsibilities weren't hard enough, in their civilian lives, they're being forced to face more grown-up troubles, and even the conflict of civilian and Guardian life.
As this is a character-driven plot, I'll break it down into the most important characters, as I did with Ryuki and I'll likely do with the rest of my reviews. Sadly, Elyon didn't make the cut; she's captured for more than half the series, so anything I talk about with her can easily be covered in Cornelia and Nerissa's sections. Similarly, Blunk is pretty much bound to the hip with Caleb, so I have to discuss him in Caleb's section. And, as is tradition since Ultimate Alien season 1, I included a personal soundtrack, or at the very least, a song quote that seems to fit their development.
And given that I have to talk about Caleb's origins, again, this has a trigger warning for rape.
Image note: Most of the images are mine, though anything from the episode "S is for Self" (which are the image of Matt and Shagon, the Will/Matt kiss, and the two shots of old Nerissa) are from whoresque at Livejournal, though I think that journal no longer exists.
"The Will to Love" by Wreck-55/Greg Weisman
Will Vandom (portrayed by Kelly Stables), the leader of the team, is fresh off her victory against Phobos in season one but must come to grips with a frustrating civilian life and a new enemy who's a little too similar to her for comfort. As expected for the leader, she has the most B-plots in the season, though there are really only three super-important ones.
The first is her frustration with her mother. It begins with her grades suffering due to her duties as a Guardian—Susan Vandom believes that her tanking performance is a sign that she hasn't adjusted to life in Heatherfield and tries to move her back to her old hometown, Fadden Hills. W.I.T.C.H. puts that plan on hold by promising to help her with her studies and showing just how much Will is loved and accepted in the community, but problems with her mother continue. In H, Will discovers that her mother has secretly been dating Dean Collins, her history teacher. This rankles her deeply, since the idea of her mom and her teacher dating not only squicks her out, but her mom constantly lies to her about it—whether by not being honest about the relationship in H or using a mother-daughter day out in K to meet up with her boyfriend. And this conflict is one I really like—I groaned throughout the arguments in season one because I couldn't sympathize with Will; I'm old enough that I had more of her mother's perspective. But here, I feel that Will was completely justified in her anger simply because her mother was lying to her and not thinking of her feelings on the matter. It was something that had made Will uncomfortable, and if you're a parent who's dating someone that makes your child feel uncomfortable, you need to solve that problem fast. This actually returned with Will's father in Q, when he dropped the bombshell on her that he was getting married to a woman she'd never met. This, in turn, led Will to suspect Serina Sanchez was actually Nerissa in disguise, but that's Will's default reaction anyway. But by the end of the season, Will manages to make peace with both of her parents and accept their new loves: Dean for saving her mother and Serina for being a nice woman who was really interested in getting to know her.
To make matters more frustrating for Will, she'd suddenly gotten a bunch of new powers, and they were making her look crazy to everybody not in the know. In the first season, Will had the fewest powers out of the bunch—only the same flight and enhanced strength and speed that the other girls had, but without any elemental abilities. Maybe the intent was that because she held the Heart of Kandrakar, it balanced everything out, since the Heart was demonstrating more new powers every week than Silver Age Superman, but Will was definitely short-changed in the bargain. What made her special? What made her worthy of being the leader? When the Veil was lowered, Will's powers finally awakened—quintessence, the fifth element. It first manifested with her hearing electronic appliances talking, which seems to tie into quintessence's ability to bring things to life. This got her in trouble in school, with things like her calculator talking to her in class and giving her answers during her tests. Or annoying things like her phone, voiced by the amazing Steve Blum, being a nagging pain in the ass. But in battle, it allowed her to bring objects to life to fight for her, such as swords. With her powers still developing, it was only about as useful as telekinesis and mostly was limited to metallic objects, but it helped quite a bit as long as Nerissa wasn't doing the same thing back to her. The Heart also allowed her to open folds to other worlds, and she was the first one to use the power of "teletransportation"—which is just a fancy way of saying teleporting, though she rarely used it because of how draining it was and how bad her aim at both that and folding were. But in episode D, the most battle-ready portion of her powers developed, with her ability to generate lightning. This pretty much became her signature attack—throw lightning at the problem. But as it turned out, these were the same powers as Nerissa's, and toward the end of the season, particularly in V, there were questions over whether Will was destined to the same dark fate that befell her predecessor. Unfortunately, this wasn't well explored, much the same as the revelation in Q that she was a swimmer hoping to make it to the Olympics. I really wish they'd built on it for more than two episodes. Seriously, when did she become an athlete at the school? That's another time commitment she has to juggle, in addition to still needing Taranee's tutoring to keep her grades up, and argh.
As Will's powers grew, she became more and more of a leader, and her plans were getting better. True, she still did dumb stuff like sending Blunk to spy on Serina because she thought she might be Nerissa, but she began outthinking Nerissa and Phobos and planning within plans. When Nerissa became too powerful for them to defeat, she realized that Phobos was the only one who could take the Heart of Meridian away from her. But Phobos was a predictable little twat who'd just betray them the first chance he got, so she had Hay Lin plant the seeds of distrust in Raythor that eventually led to him abandoning his loyalties to Phobos and siding with the more honorable Guardians to bring him down. Raythor convinced Phobos to attack Kandrakar, which would have stripped him of his power because of his broken oath with the Guardians, except that it turned out Cedric had figured things out and betrayed Phobos then. Kind of hard to predict. And on top of planning on par with David Xanatos, Will's passion and resolve really took root, making her a much more mature and effective leader. This passion was beautifully explored in H, when she realized that the naïve and desperate altermere of herself was a living being who just wanted to live, and she tried to give her a second chance when Will 2 sacrificed herself to save her. Will's love took center stage there, and honestly, I feel like that was her greatest strength—the will to love.
Which leads us to the third subplot, one that I think was the biggest of all of them: her relationship with Matt. I'll cover more of it in Matt's section, since it's pretty much the heart of his character, but season two really turned a cute teenage romance into one hell of a love story. As a warrior and a leader, Will wanted to protect Matt from the danger she faced every day, and she tried to keep him out of battles. But he proved he was willing to stay by her side, both at home and in battle. And this led Nerissa to target him to get to her. Will had to fight the dangerous Shagon, who taunted her with hints that he'd kidnapped and harmed Matt somehow, and who glamoured himself as Matt to keep his friends and family from wondering where he was, all while keeping an eye on the Guardians for Nerissa. Will played into his hands easily, since he knew exactly how to set her off and make her hate him. But she was also sharp enough to pick up on how he never finished her off, knowing that as a Nerissa creation, he had to be too smart to simply let her live for the fun of feeding off her multiple times. She realized he had some mercy in him—enough mercy that he couldn't have hurt Matt—and that gave her the edge over him. She still hated him, yes, but he couldn't incite that fury in her anymore—not until episode S. Because some part of her wanted to believe that maybe there was some good in him, he was able to convince her that he wanted to help her save Matt, all the while leading her into a trap to finish her off for good. This infuriated her more, feeding him again, but when she heard him sing Matt's love song to her, she realized that Shagon was simply Matt trapped by a spell. Her hatred for Shagon melted away completely, and she was only able to love Matt and help him break free. As he continued to fight by her side with his new powers, she still was a little protective of him, but she finally had to ask him to trust her to fight alone in the final battle while he kept civilians safely oblivious to the danger around them. In the end, it was his voice she heard first, calling her back to herself, and she was able to lead the others back.
"Just Words" by Emma Lahana
Irma Lair (portrayed by Candi Milo) was probably my favorite character in the first season, but I think the second season took her strengths and twisted them into a weakness. I loved that she spoke what was on her mind and didn't worry about what other people thought of her. In season two, this turned into a problem for her, with her inadvertently coming off as cruel to her friends.
But first, we'll talk about her expansion pack powers. She wound up with two new powers after the Veil fell: the ability to turn clothing pink, which really didn't do a whole lot other than help Cornelia cheat on Caleb in F; and the ability to telepathically compel people to do what she wanted—something that fits with such a strong-willed character. Her will was even strong enough that she compelled Cassidy to break free from Nerissa's thrall, though it was a shame that she didn't get to interact much with her predecessor. Irma was one of the most vocal characters about Will edging closer to Nerissa-dom, so not having the fear that history could repeat itself and another deadly conflict breaking out between the Guardians of quintessence and water was a big missed opportunity.
Irma's problem with words was actually foreshadowed in episode E, when in her and Cornelia's shared nightmare, a microphone steals her voice ala Ursula when she starts insulting Martin Tubbs. The voice ends up going to Tracker, one of their adversaries. A couple of episodes later in G, she starts yelling insults at Blunk in aggravation, pretty much breaking the little guy's heart, even though he's trying to help her and save her life. But it comes to a head in L, when she humiliates Martin and calls him a loser to his face, only for everything she said to be broadcast all over the school. This draws Ember to her like a magnet, since she feeds off her pain and misery. Even when she tries to apologize to Martin, he points out that her efforts are hollow—she's only trying to make herself feel better, rather than truly worrying about his feelings. The only way she can apologize is to get on the air and give a raw, heartfelt admission that she needs him in her life as her friend, and it's only then that he can forgive her. This actually jumpstarts a really amazing friendship between the two, and it lasts for the rest of the season. They end up being closer after L and Irma admits that she likes Martin as a friend, and Martin lays off some of the flirting.
I really like Irma and Martin's friendship. It would be easy to ship them, but I think that that friendship is more important. It's rare to have a boy-girl relationship that remains platonic, even if he's got a crush on her. Irma's guilt over what she said to him continues into O, where she officially makes him her second-in-command, and for all she furiously blows up at everyone else—the other Guardians and the rest of K-SHIP alike—she can't bring herself to yell at him. He has to actually convince her to treat him the same as everybody else, that their friendship is too strong for him to be truly hurt by what she says, now that he knows what she really feels. But all the same, when she crosses the line, he makes it clear to her he won't stand by and allow her to order around the others like slaves. Making matters worse, Irma's own pride kept her from apologizing to them and begging them to help her—something that I think really does fit with the characterization shown, given how hard it was for her to make a sincere apology to Martin in L and the way she just has to have a sarcastic retort to everybody. But ultimately, Irma's friendship is her greatest strength, since she will never fail to stand by and support the people she cares about.
"Symphony" by Marié Digby
Taranee Cook (portrayed by Kittie) pretty much embodies the teenage desire to make something new of yourself. Beginning in A, Taranee worried about her shy, wallflower nature, and she was afraid that she would just fade into the background now that the adventure seemed to be over. So she began taking risks and breaking rules to try to step out more.
Now while she gave up on breaking school rules, Taranee did continue to challenge her mother's authority, particularly regarding rules she thought were stupid, definitely breaking out of the "good girl" stereotype she was afraid she was stuck in while still being a good girl. This mainly comes with her relationship with her boyfriend, Nigel Ashcroft, the bassist of Wreck-55 and new friend of school troublemaker Uriah Dunn. When Nigel got in trouble with the principal, Judge Cook wrote him off as a punk and forbade her daughter from seeing him. Not wanting his girlfriend to get in trouble on his account, Nigel went along with it. But Taranee didn't like that her mom had passed judgment without getting to know him, and so she continued to see him in secret until she managed to get her to see that he was one of the good guys and that she too was worth trusting.
Taranee's boldness continued against her enemies, with her becoming more outspoken in battle and more willing to just set things on fire when she was angry—a massive change from the girl who was afraid of her powers when she first got them. She got more easily frustrated, particularly with the obstinate and prideful Kadma, since her whole personality rankled her—Taranee herself was trying to struggle with admitting her flaws, and Kadma just couldn't admit her own mistakes. Her temper made it hard for her to fight against Khor, who fed off the brilliant flashes of anger and rage she let off, but she finally managed to overcome him in P by fighting smart and letting go of her anger during the battle to outsmart him.
And fortunately, Taranee's intelligence continued to be one of her strongest assets. For all her newfound boldness made her impatient with people, it also made her more willing to jump on research when something was bothering her. In C, she realized that their new powers and the increase in the potency of their elemental powers had something to do with the lowering of the Veil in Kandrakar. In E, she was the only one to realize that because she was fighting in a nightmare, she had the ability to take control of her dream. That let her wake up, and she telepathically ordered everyone else to wake up before their dreams could turn deadly. By looking up lucid dreaming, she managed to find a way to defeat Nerissa—by knowing that they were dreaming and using whatever powers her dreams could give her—using the Dragon of Fire and becoming the embodiment of her element in order to fight without limit. Because Nerissa's use of the word "quintessence" bothered her, she researched it and the legend of the Four Dragons and discovered that Xin Jing had the element of quintessence, the power of electricity and the ability to bring things to life, which had been passed down to Will. And with that intelligence and her new power of telepathy, the prisoners of Phobos's Magic Stick were able to contact her, first warning her to save Caleb and Blunk ahead of schedule, then giving her the plan to save the day. But what's interesting is that Taranee only managed this when she managed to set her emotions aside and zen out, which she also got the others to do when they lost their memories in Z. It didn't take her boldness, it didn't take her cleverness—it just took the calmness she always seemed afraid to show.
"Vanity" by Yuki Kajiura
Cornelia Hale (portrayed by Christel Khalil) continues one of the greatest character developments of them all. What was once a shallow, fashion-obsessed drama queen really developed into a fantastic character. Yes, she's still got one hell of an ego and attitude, but this season, she becomes much less afraid of showing her true self: the caring, supportive young woman who is always there for the people she loves.
It begins with Caleb, particularly because they break up in the first episode of the season. I really, really love that breakup, and I've gushed about it at length. Their relationship actually wasn't very well built up in season one—there were just a bare handful of comments about them liking each other and not a whole lot of development between them before they got together in the finale. So honestly, their breakup really shouldn't have all the emotional impact it did. What made it work was the development along the way.
Cornelia is and always has been a person who puts her heart first. It doesn't matter what her duty is; she will drop it if it conflicts with her heart's desire. And for that reason, I find her a pretty admirable character. But I won't deny that it's immature, and this season tries to get her to balance both sides of her heart and become more of a warrior. She couldn't accept Caleb's need to fulfill his duty to Queen Elyon and Meridian rather than stay with her on Earth in peace and love, so she broke up with him. Being extremely stubborn, she refused to give an inch to him, always trying to find a way to one-up him. Unfortunately, the increased potency in her powers left her a little afraid of losing control, and she couldn't admit that she needed him to calm her down and remind her that she could use them without fear. Plus, adding telekinesis to the mix gave her more that she could lord over him. But with the third power of maintaining an older teenage form, she decided to start dating Taranee's brother, Peter, which pissed the rest of the team off and led to them deciding they needed to hook Cornelia and Caleb back up. It was only when Cornelia saw Caleb eating a piece of humble pie and humiliating himself for her that she was able to swallow her own pride and try again with him. Except that he saw her kiss Peter and refused to talk to her. She realized how much she really loved him when she thought he'd died in an attack. When he reappeared and called her out on her behavior, she admitted to him that she'd broken up with Peter and realized who her heart truly belonged to. She stopped assuming he'll know things and began communicating with him more, putting them on equal ground as a couple and really making her happy about their relationship throughout the series. She's protective enough that, when she heard that Nerissa is Caleb's mother and has captured him, she swore that she was going to save him no matter what, though she let Julian and Blunk go in there instead while she fought off the bad guys. She even tried to support him when he was filled with self-loathing over the truth of his bloodline, but Julian convinced her to let him have some time alone to deal.
But probably more important is Cornelia's relationship with her little sister, Lillian. Throughout the series, she's just been annoyed with her and blew her off to be with her friends—the kind of thing older sisters do. But in U, she learned that Lillian was the Heart of Earth, the mystic source of the world's magic, and that she herself had been chosen as a Guardian because of her relationship to the Heart of Earth. Knowing that Nerissa was going to attack, she wasn't going to have any of that and went to face her and protect her sister. Unfortunately, her typical attitude around Lillian made it harder for her to win her trust, and she had to be convinced by Napoleon and Matt to make amends. She began telling her a story, and while Lillian doubted that Cornelia would ever try to protect her, she realized that the little Heart looked up to her enough that she trusted her judgment whether or not she should give up her powers to Matt, Napoleon, and Huggles. Once Lillian's power had been transferred to the Regents and the little girl was safe and asleep, Cornelia promised to protect her forever and to never let anything divide them again. Maybe because there's not a whole lot left in the show afterward, but Cornelia did seem quite a bit nicer to her sister, and after taking Lillian and Chris trick-or-treating in W, Irma had to reassure her that she dropped both of them off at home before joining the battle, with Cornelia considerably worried about her little sister's safety in the midst of the battle.
All of this continued on her protectiveness of Elyon from season one, which continued in the background of season two—there was always that need to save Elyon from the Magic Stick, but Cornelia learned better to prioritize her duty to stop Nerissa (and then Phobos) over trying to save someone she loved. Still, those people are more precious to them than she can ever say, and she'll do whatever it takes to keep them safe.
"Days Will Pass" by Eyeshine
Hay Lin (portrayed by Liza del Mundo) continued to be a very difficult character for me, though I will say that season two did a better job of developing her. However, I feel like the writers' idea of developing her came down to a desperate effort to just pile on the despair and see if her hope could shine through.
Her character arc started a little late, with two incidents in J: first, her encountering cute new boy Eric Lyndon—and I'll avoid complaining about their relationship again, since I already covered that in-depth—and totally failing to be recognized because of her accidental use of her new power of invisibility, and her stress over trying to coordinate with the team split up over summer vacation. Because of her grandmother having to draw from her power in order to teleport everyone in one place, it left her almost too drained to defeat an escaped Phobos, and she was down on herself for how difficult a time she'd had. Her self-confidence really tanked around Eric too, since he was popular enough with girls and she was worried he didn't notice her existence. This left her easy prey for Tridart, who fed off despair, and he attacked her repeatedly throughout the Knights of Destruction arc. Even when she and Eric hooked up, she didn't have much confidence in herself or their relationship; when she got braces and he didn't seem to notice them, she thought he'd lost interest in her, only to discover he was under Nerissa's love spell.
But the biggest part of Hay Lin's development came with her grandmother. When Nerissa had enthralled the rest of the previous generation of Guardians, Hay Lin was desperate to keep her from being captured and brainwashed too. Unknown to Hay Lin, though, Nerissa couldn't exploit any flaws in Yan Lin's character, and thus created a more flawed altermere, Mera, who would bend to her will. Mera fell, and Hay Lin was devastated by her grandmother's apparent betrayal. This coupled with her relationship problems with Eric, sent her into a deep depression no one could break her out of. It finally took Nerissa herself to save her—Hay Lin realized that the only way Nerissa had survived this long was by abandoning hope and just doing what she needed to. She recovered somewhat throughout the rest of the series, telling her family that her grandmother had a family emergency in China and couldn't contact them, but she'd lost a lot of her innocence. Her hope was gone. For an art contest focusing on the theme of "My Xanadu," she couldn't envision paradise because of all the despair she'd seen. Finally, however, she rediscovered her hope, painting the darkness of the conquered Meridian with the light of the Guardians coming to save it. That redefined paradise for her—the hope that a new day will dawn. But her hope truly returned when Taranee revealed that Yan Lin had never betrayed her and had been captured all along; Mera, who had joined Nerissa, still loved her and was good now, and Hay Lin lovingly accepted her new great-aunt.
But the difficulty of maintaining hope continued for Hay Lin even in the finale, when without her memories, she was crying from despair. It wasn't her own hope that brought her out of it—it was her friends' presence and determination to help her. Ultimately, Hay Lin's hope isn't a quality in a vacuum—it's something that depends on and feeds on her loved ones' love and belief in her, and that's how she manages to conquer the darkness.
"I Believe in You" by Vertical Horizon
Caleb (portrayed by Greg Cipes) and Blunk (portrayed by Steve Blum) continued to be wonderful characters in this series. There's actually not a lot of development to discuss with Blunk on his own, if only because he really did complete his character arc in season one. But his loyalty to his friends, and especially to Caleb, pretty much requires him to share space with Caleb's section. He's come a long way from the cowardly scavenger he'd originally been, and he proves time and time again to be a true hero and a truer friend.
Speaking of heroes, Caleb is well-regarded among his people as a leader and a hero for helping save Meridian from Phobos and put Elyon on the throne. But this season really seemed to challenge his sense of his qualifications to be a hero. It started with his breakup with Cornelia—in a lot of ways, he's both more mature than he should be and far too immature. As a warrior, he displays wisdom, courage, and leadership expected from men far older than seventeen. But when it comes to dealing with people his own age? His lack of a childhood is painfully evident. He and Cornelia broke up because he decided to stay on Meridian to serve Elyon rather than return to Earth with his girlfriend. He didn't fight for her and joined in on the immature sniping they got into, to the point that they actually couldn't work together on a team anymore. To be fair to him, he did try—he returned to Earth with Elyon for the rest of the school year, but Cornelia pointed out that he did it for the wrong reason; he was there for Elyon, not for Cornelia. But honestly, it did take Elyon to get them back together, if only because she convinced him to make a fool of himself on the ice to successfully win her back. But he was heartbroken when he saw her in her older form kissing Peter, and he was all business with her from then on. It wasn't until she admitted that she broke up with Peter and realized how much she loved Caleb when she saw him falling on the ice that they could hook back up and remain on much more equal ground, not hiding their true feelings from pride.
Caleb ended up doing better socially, mostly thanks to hanging out with the girls and befriending Matt, whom he took under his wing and taught to fight. But any chance of a relatively normal life for him was thrown out the window when Nerissa trapped Elyon in the Heart of Meridian; then as Mage, she left him high and dry for weeks pretending that using Blunk's tonga tooth—a gift from the Oracle that allowed them to travel dimensions—would kill him. And here's where his and Blunk's friendship really stood out. Caleb took Blunk with him to retrieve the tooth, and after talking Mage into letting them use it, he planned to sacrifice himself to open the fold while Blunk passed through and warned the Guardians. Blunk was distraught with the plan and when Caleb was rendered unconscious on Mt. Thanos, but they made it through safely and were picked up by Yan Lin. Blunk also supported his buddy when Caleb came to him for a favor—to fold again to Mt. Thanos, though he refused to explain why. Caleb tried to go on alone, shutting Blunk out, but Blunk wasn't taking his crap and followed him anyway, where he found out the devastating secret that had shattered Caleb's life.
In episode O, Julian was shaken by the revelation that Nerissa had been posing as the Mage. When he went to the waterfall where Caleb had presumably been conceived, he found a grave that put the real Mage's death at eighteen years prior. Unfortunately, their child was seventeen years old, meaning that the woman Julian had romanced was Nerissa all along. The knowledge burned at Caleb, and he tried to settle things with his mother alone, but fortunately Blunk had followed him and retrieved Julian and the Guardians to save him. Nerissa tried to tempt Caleb to join her, but his devastation and his sense of duty kept her from breaking into his soul. He tried to steal the Heart back but failed, enraging her for taking what she would have given him as his birthright. It pained him greatly to know his true origins, that he'd been born from evil in order to win against Phobos, and to some degree, he never really recovered from it. While he did accept that Nerissa was his mother, he could never treat her with any love, only contempt for everything she'd done. It's a shame that they didn't spend more time on this traumatic revelation. It comes up again, yeah, but there was a great chance for character building. For example, look later at Young Justice and how Artemis struggles with being the daughter of Sportsmaster and sister of Cheshire, how Conner deals with not only being a clone of Superman but also of Luthor, and how M'gann deals with being a White Martian. But I'll get back to Artemis, Conner, and M'gann later.
At the very least, Caleb had a new family now, with his father and his friends, and his light hadn't completely gone out. He was still in love with Cornelia and as affectionate with her as ever. And as for Blunk, when the Passling bravely jumped onto Miranda's back to stop her from destroying the Aurameres, he joined his friend in the fun. Even so, when Nerissa was trapped in the cracked gem, Julian kept it as both he and Caleb struggled to come to terms with everything she'd done.
"The Demon in Me" by Wreck-55/Jon and Greg Weisman
Matt Olsen (portrayed by Jason Marsden) turned out to be a surprisingly good character this season. There are two tropes that really annoy me when it comes to the superhero's love interest: the satellite love interest and especially the obstructive love interest. Both of these were present with Dana Tan in Batman Beyond, who I like to use as a counterpoint whenever it comes to Matt. Dana really wasn't a character herself—she existed to be Terry McGinnis's girlfriend. But what really got on my nerves about Dana as the show went on was how she kept existing as an obstacle to Terry's work as Batman or even his own happiness as a civilian. I had the same problem with Julie Yamamoto in Ben 10: Ultimate Alien season 2. Suddenly, the hero can't do anything right. Never mind that he just saved the world, he had to cancel a date. He's not there twenty-four/seven. She just tears into him, and you wonder why they don't just dump each other and go on with their lives
But from day one of season two, Matt defied the obstructive love interest trope. Continuing from the final two episodes of season one, he was very interested in Will's double life and tried to be there for her. Now, yes, this does make him a bit of a satellite love interest—he tries to learn to fight and everything so that he can help her. But over time, he began to take on more of his own character. Even he admitted in D that he wanted to feel a little dangerous, and that was part of the reason why he asked Caleb to teach him to fight. In fact, he was able to assist the team in battle in G and K, although Nerissa's forces get the better of him both times. Still, he didn't let this discourage him, which pretty much brings us to the major course of his development, Shagon.
In L, Nerissa kidnapped him and his pet dormouse, Mr. Huggles, and used quintessence to awaken their hatred and anger respectively. As Khor, Huggles retained his loyalty to Matt over anybody else, and even Shagon cared deeply for his pet. And Shagon is one hell of an interesting character in himself. He was a portion of Matt's personality—his hatred—brought to life and then plugged back into him as a dominant persona, pretty much the "demon" in him. The two of them were in constant conflict, with Shagon trying to destroy Matt completely and have total control over their mind and body, but Matt tried to work with him, all the while undermining him. He understood that Shagon was part of him, and he'd get nowhere by hating him—he was psychologically healthy enough not to hate himself, barring Shagon's little slip-up in M, and he knew that Shagon would just feed off that hatred anyway. For a long time, Shagon was winning the war in their mind. He was taunting Will on the outside, feeding off her hatred. He was committing atrocities under Nerissa's command. But Matt's love for Will was keeping him going, and he managed to convince Shagon to give him just enough control over their body to keep Nerissa from getting suspicious, a kind of Lima syndrome, almost. It wasn't until Matt almost got a message to Will that Shagon realized how strong he'd really gotten, and he devised to kill Will in order to kill Matt. But Matt realized that his real weapon is love, and he managed to get that message out to Will, whose love for him, in turn, allowed him to destroy Shagon. Matt thanks Will for saving him and sang his love song for her during the Battle of the Bands after Nerissa stripped him and Huggles of their powers.
In the short time remaining in the series, Matt felt like a much more open character, relying less on Will for characterization. He was the one who tries to offer support to Hay Lin in T, reminding her of just how hard it is to fight against Nerissa's control, while still loving the people you're forced to fight, and protecting Eric when Hay Lin rescued him. In U, he took on a brotherly role to Lillian when Cornelia had him babysit so she could head to Kandrakar, and he's sweet enough to her to continue to call her Princess in the finale, just because in the story Cornelia had told, he was her knight. This connection to Lillian was really why Cornelia knew she would trust him, Huggles, and Napoleon with her powers until she was old enough to control them herself. As a Regent of Earth, Matt regained Shagon's form and powers, but he no longer had the evil split personality inside his mind—although I will say that the art always made his transformation look as painful as the first time. This power allowed him to fight by Will's side as her equal, just what he wanted all along.
But his character arc comes to a complete circle in the finale, when Will asked him not to join her in battle, much to his disappointment. Instead, she asked him to use his power to create a glamour zone around the city so that the people of Earth would not learn of the magical world they'd been blind to, and to prevent civilians from entering the battlefield. While he did his duty, he promised to be there for her when things went bad, and when she became trapped in her elemental form, he was there with the others to try to wake her up. It was his voice that gets through first, and Will woke up to see him over her, relieved and swearing they're not trying that again.
Matt is possibly the greatest success of season two of W.I.T.C.H.: They take an underdeveloped love interest from the comic
"Deciding So Blindly" by Eyeshine
Nerissa (portrayed by Kath Soucie in her true forms, BJ Ward as Mage, and Candi Milo as Trill) is our villain this season, and what a villain she is! Let me say, I love her design. It's amazing. Her comic design isn't terribly impressive, given they just go with "ugly old hag" as a template. The cartoon version? Looks like a snake made human. Her wrinkled and haggard appearance looks like snakeskin, her eyes have snakelike pupils, and she's got fangs. She looks old, yes. She's got long grey hair and is a little hunched over and walks with a staff. But she also looks like a total badass who's seen plenty of action—her left arm is either mechanical or magical, made entirely of metal, and she's got a scar over one eye. You know looking at her, she's going to hand you your ass. But even more impressively, she's a complex and fascinating character, one you want to feel sorry for while also being frustratingly unsympathetic.
Nerissa was the former bearer of the Heart of Kandrakar and Guardian of the element quintessence. But when the Oracle feared its power was corrupting her, he took the Heart away from her and gave it to her closest friend, Cassidy, in order to save her soul. And yeah, we have that running problem that a heart cannot be taken by force, but the animation shows that the Oracle gave Weira's jewel to Cassidy, and we know that the jewel can absorb power. Now, yes, this could have been an animation error. But it makes too much sense—Nerissa knew too much about the effects of that jewel and how easily it could be given away. It doesn't matter if it's the same jewel or related to Weira's; it makes perfect sense for Nerissa to set her plan in motion by giving the jewel to Weira for her crown (or suggesting to Phobos that he give it to her), rob her of her power, allow Phobos to take over, and then plot to overthrow him so she can take the Heart of Meridian from the then-missing Elyon.
Though Oracle hoped giving the Heart to Cassidy would stop Nerissa from obsessing over it, she'd gotten enough of a taste of it that it was clearly an addiction. And so, she and Cassidy met alone on the summit of Mt. Thanos. Nerissa tried to convince Cassidy to give the Heart back to her, but Cassidy wouldn't, too worried about her friend's mental state. During the argument, Nerissa lost her temper and blasted Cassidy with quintessence...which threw her off the mountainside and left her unable to fly herself to safety. The animation shows a horrified expression on Nerissa's face, implying that she didn't mean to kill her. But whatever the intent, that was the result. Nerissa killed her closest friend.
And here is where I begin talking about the most troubling part of my analysis, something I struggled with even while I was writing the reviews for Ryuki. There, I'd run into the trouble of wondering if its main villain was sympathetic or not, and here again, I found myself running into the same question. It actually got to the point that I went to Greg Weisman's Q&A and asked for his take. And here's what he thought:
That she's complex, interesting and fascinating with the tragic flaw of most great villains. Plus she loved and mourned Cassidy. And in her twisted way, loved Caleb and Julian too. And that makes her at least a little sympathetic. Though, of course, the fact that she killed Cassidy and used her, Caleb AND Julian also undercuts that sympathy more than a little.
Ultimately, I think he's right. Nerissa is, by all means, not a sympathetic character. She killed Cassidy. She raped Julian. She used him and Caleb. She used the Guardians, the Rebellion, Elyon, the Knights of Vengeance, the Knights of Destruction, Phobos, her old teammates, and everyone else. She attacked four worlds and claimed the Hearts of two. She endangered innocent civilians on all of those worlds, just to get what she wanted.
But she deeply loves Cassidy and regrets killing her. She wants Julian and Caleb to love her. She thinks she's a crusader for good, doing what needs to be done in order to unite the worlds and end war forever.
And she also wants power.
And she doesn't understand what love is.
She is all of these at once, and that's what makes her so damn fascinating. She's a pathetic, sad egotist. She doesn't understand that friendship is more important than power, and that you can't make someone love you. And that's what makes you feel for her. She simultaneously does horrible things with a depressingly human edge. For example, the Knights of Destruction, who are pretty much the W.I.T.C.H. versions of the Psycho Rangers. Down the line, I'll get to Power Rangers in Space, but in the later episodes, Astronema introduced an evil counterpart team to the Power Rangers called the Psycho Rangers. They knew all of the Rangers' moves and could fight them perfectly, but they were never meant to defeat them. No, they were tied into the powers of Astronema's boss, Dark Specter, who she was quietly trying to kill that arc so she would be in charge. Similarly, Nerissa never intended for the KoD to destroy the Guardians. Their purpose was to feed on the Guardians' negative emotions and become stronger—strong enough for her to eventually drain in order to restore her own powers, as well as those of her former teammates. Pretty evil, right? Well, take a look at their forms: Shagon and Tridart are both fallen angels, and Ember is a devil. Shagon and Khor had been Matt and Huggles, who were loved ones of Will, her enemy. Beloved people became Hatred and Anger. Tridart and Ember were created from Mt. Thanos itself, which had been her prison for decades and the scene of her crime, where she killed Cassidy. It sounds like a serial killer's memento, but at the same time, Nerissa was only imprisoned on Mt. Thanos because the Oracle didn't want her to run away from her crime and forced her to face her guilt day after day.
Nerissa is someone who can be imprisoned by a dream of her taking over the worlds...and creating peace and being loved by her family. If Matt was the best developed heroic character of the show, Nerissa by far is the best developed villainous character, if only by being so horrifyingly human. She does too much to make herself sympathetic, but there's still that deep complexity of humanity within her, the sense that maybe anybody could turn out like that. It's just how you should make a villain.
But for all I love this series and these characters, I can see the flaws. Around Q, a major problem becomes apparent, something that is glaring to me right after reviewing Ryuki. I hate to compare two different shows or writers because it's like comparing apples and oranges, but honestly, apples and oranges are both fruit, and they make a damn good juice that we can easily drink with breakfast. The writer of Ryuki, Yasuko Kobayashi, is very similar in style to Greg Weisman: she enjoys tangled plots that are difficult to decipher with villains with sympathetic motivations, and she really does a damn good job developing her characters. Its villain, Shiro Kanzaki, whom I glossed over earlier, was a man who just wanted to save his younger sister from death, but he became utterly unforgivable by sacrificing countless people in the attempt to give her more than just thirteen extra years to live. But on the flip side, the heroic characters were fantastically developed: Yui, Kanzaki's sister, had to decide early on to get more involved and try to find out what her beloved brother was up to, even as it broke her heart, and she finally openly defied him and convinced him to stop, accepting her death. Ren, our second main Rider, started off extremely cold and driven by the intense desire to save the woman he loved, but he had to cope with his inability to kill and his growing friendship with the others and how much he really did care, finally being left as the only one among his friends alive and having to face that conflict of who he cared about more before deciding to hold to his promise and save his fiancée. Kitaoka, introduced a little later, became a pretty damn strong character as he started as this amoral asshole who was only interested in saving himself, before he began to realize that he'd lived a good life with good friends and was okay with dying, and finally realizing on his deathbed that he had to atone for his sins and finish the mess he'd started. And finally, our title character, Shinji, joined the Rider War reluctantly, only interested in saving innocent people from Monsters and then realizing he needed to save the Riders themselves from fighting. He had to cope with learning what everyone was fighting for, what the Rider War was supposed to do, and the pain of losing his friends and the conflict of saving one of them by fighting the other. Finally, he realized that his motivation had never changed at all: he still wanted to save everyone by sealing off the parallel world they fought, died, and wished in, even if it meant pain for his friends.
The heroes of Ryuki were far better developed than its villain. And so is the case of pretty much all of Kobayashi's shows, to the point that sometimes, I find her villains underdeveloped. With Weisman, he does a much better job writing the villains and ensuring they're as complex and developed as his heroes, but in W.I.T.C.H., they really fall by the wayside. Sure, Will, Taranee, Cornelia, and Caleb are much better developed than they were in the first season, but Irma loses some of her strengths, and Hay Lin only gets development when the writers decide to depress her. And with the exception of Matt, none of the heroes really has a character arc—following motivation and development from point A (wanting to help Will) through trials and tribulations (learning to fight, being outclassed, being captured and turned into/possessed by Shagon, being freed and becoming a Regent) to point Z (having to let Will fight without him and then rely only on his and her own hearts to lead her back to him).
Contrast the later series Young Justice. Ever since it premiered in late 2010, I resisted the urge to review it. While I love it, most of my reviews really serve the purpose of redeeming a series that gets what I feel is undeserved flack: W.I.T.C.H., Kamen Rider Decade, Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters. Power Rangers Lost Galaxy was to redeem itself in my eyes, and Kamen Rider Ryuki was an attempt to demystify a series that, while liked, left a lot of fans confused. Young Justice, frankly, doesn't need my help to make it more beloved—though, admittedly, I can say the same about my upcoming reviews of Power Rangers in Space and RPM. Sure, there are problems: They really could have fleshed out quite a few of the characters, notably Rocket and Wonder Girl. But by the end of season 1, every member of the original team had gotten fully developed to a satisfying conclusion. So here it is, my Young Justice nano-review:
Team leader Kaldur'ahm/Aqualad got a lot of flack early on for seeming too serene, but we learned that he was struggling with a crush on a girl he'd left behind in Atlantis. This girl, Tula, ended up dating his best friend, Garth, and Kaldur had to accept it. He had to struggle with the suspicion that one of his teammates was a mole, and when he revealed this investigation to them, they gave him hell for it until he proved that he never once believed that it could be any of them. He led the team to victory against the Justice League, and five years later, it was impossible to believe that he'd betrayed them to join the villains of the Light, following the revelation that his biological father was the villain Black Manta, and the death of Tula, now Aquagirl. But Kaldur's betrayal was all part of a complex scheme by him and Nightwing to infiltrate the Light and find out who its new partner was, then bring it down from the inside. He risked his life and sanity to keep his cover and protect his friends, finally rejoining the team after utterly destroying the Light's plans.
Second-in-command Dick Grayson, Robin and later Nightwing, was the natural choice to lead the team, as despite being the youngest, he had the most experience as a hero. But he had a tendency to be a loner in battle, expecting people to just "get" what he was doing, the way Batman did, and he failed to inspire the team. He was a genius at hacking and a little troll, which made him great as a wild card on the team, and as he grew into Nightwing, he matured greatly. This is what led him and Kaldur to plan a fake betrayal, with Nightwing leading the team now and getting intelligence from Kaldur, even in the heat of battle. But guilt plagued him the deeper the plot became—he had to bring Artemis in on it and her boyfriend, Wally, fake her death, deal with the fallout, have Wally second-guess Kaldur's loyalty and his judgment, and make questionable calls like letting the unstable Arsenal serve on a covert team or firing him in public, particularly in front of people he'd just saved. It was perfectly understandable when he quit the team at the end of the season, having lost some of his integrity, mostly all of his remaining innocence, and his best friend.
Wally West, Kid Flash, might not have had the full arcs that the others enjoyed, but his was a process of growth. He thought he knew more than he did, he flirted with a girl he had no chance with and who had no interest in him, mocked the girl he really had a crush on, and reeled from the shock that his friend, Roy Harper/Speedy, had quit because he was tired of being treated as a sidekick, only to be replaced by new archer Artemis. He had to learn that magic really existed, deal with the death of a man who sacrificed his afterlife to let him escape being possessed by a magical god, and spend his birthday not fighting the good fight, but racing against time to save a little girl, who happened to be the leader of another country that would fall in the Light's hands if she didn't survive. At that point, he grew up, became more accepting of his friends' secrets, and eventually let himself fall in love with the only person capable of calling him out on his bullshit to his face. He retired from heroics, out of frustration that he could never be as good as his mentor, and came out of retirement to help his family. He had to say goodbye to his girlfriend as she left on a deep-cover assignment with Kaldur, worried about her safety and Kaldur's loyalty and his best friend's judgment, and he joined her in battle when it came down to the end of the world, and he ran alongside his family to save everything, knowing he didn't stand a chance because he wasn't fast enough, and he died to save the world.
Conner Kent/Superboy was a clone of Superman and Lex Luthor, meant to replace Superman should the Light feel it necessary. But Kaldur, Robin, and Wally broke him out before they could program anything more than a shutdown phrase, and Kaldur inspired him to join them and try to meet Superman. Superman didn't accept him at first, disturbed at how he'd been cloned, and Conner had to put up with his own anger and frustration, and his need to be accepted and wanted led him to adopt other oddities like the overgrown wolf he called Wolf, and the New Genesis AI sphere/transport "Sphere" (he also was terrible at naming things). His team was his family, even when Superman finally accepted him as a little brother. The person he was closest to was M'gann, whose secret he learned before they began dating and kept because he wanted her to be comfortable enough to tell him. Despite this, he broke up with her at some point during the five-year timeskip because he was disturbed with how readily she used her powers to break their enemies' minds, and when he felt her trying to erase his memories of their fight, he couldn't bear to be with her anymore. Only after she learned the consequences of what she'd done and confessed what she learned about Kaldur to him, could he open up to her again. He was once again the confidant, assuring her then-boyfriend, La'gann, that she was safe after being kidnapped by Kaldur's forces and it was all part of the plan and if Nightwing could have told them earlier, he would have, but in private, he told Nightwing just how pissed he really was. He'd gained control over his temper and passions, and only after he and M'gann had matured could they truly have a healthy relationship.
M'gann M'orzz/Miss Martian was a White Martian, a member of a race with horrible discrimination against them, who pretended she was Green and went to Earth as a stowaway in her Uncle J'onn J'onzz's ship. She'd grown up watching Earth reruns and fallen in love with a short-lived sitcom called Hello Megan, whose ditzy protagonist always had everything go well for her—she then patterned her appearance after the actress, Marie Logan. She was so eager to make people happy, even if she was a bit clumsy, all the while hiding the secret of how lonely and hurt she really was. She fell in love with Conner at first sight, though he didn't seem to even notice her, and even after they began dating, she was terrified that he and the others would reject her if they knew what she really looked like. She saved the life of Marie Logan's son, Garfield, and the Logan family adopted her when they heard how Hello Megan had helped her through a difficult and lonely childhood and her body image issues. She had to cope with the Light knowing her secret and blackmailing her. When she was finally able to come clean to everyone, learning that they still accepted her and loved her no matter what she looked like, the Light lost their ability to control her, so they killed her adoptive mother in revenge. During the five-year timeskip, M'gann took in her adoptive brother, who'd developed powers like hers, and she began to use her strong telepathy against the bad guys more aggressively, shattering their minds and disturbing Conner, leading to a fight. She tried to erase his memories of the fight to ease the tension between them, but he broke up with her, hurt that she would use that power against him—with language similar to rape, to be brutally honest. When Artemis was apparently killed by Kaldur, she used her powers against him, only to learn the truth, which left her afraid to use her powers again. Artemis had to kidnap her to get her to fix the damage, and the both of them found a way to save her from the Light, where she had to break up with her rebound boyfriend and eventually got back together with Conner, the only one who really understood her and accepted her all the way through.
Artemis Crock, however, was the gem of the pack. She'd been born in a family of villains and wanted to be a hero, and this conflict was her greatest secret. Her reformed mother had dreams for her to turn out better, but Artemis hated how much everyone seemed to think that her destiny was set and she had to become a villain. Her father tried to control her, and she went out of her way to hide her bloodline, causing conflict with the team with her suspicious behavior, the warning of a mole, and how she seemed to be letting Sportsmaster and Cheshire go. Their trump card was lost when she finally confessed everything to the team, having long since proven her loyalty over her fear, and after she got past her fears of rejection and sarcasm battle with Wally, they began dating. She even retired alongside him, ready to build a new life. But when Nightwing and Kaldur needed her, she put her life on the line for the risky deep-cover mission, only asking that they tell Wally too. She had to cope with the pain of losing her hard-won identity of Artemis and fighting as the villainess Tigress, fighting not to become the mask. When Kaldur's mind was broken, the young woman who'd once been so afraid she couldn't function suddenly became the leader of the mission, protecting his secrets and his life so thoroughly that the Light believed her to be his lover, and bringing in M'gann to save his mind and protecting him. Her father and sister turned out to care about her much more than she'd thought and tried to avenge her death—she arranged for them to learn the truth and rescue M'gann, all while she and Kaldur continued to look loyal to the Light. She faked her death once more when they blew the Light's plan and revealed it to their partner, and she gladly rejoined the team as Artemis, alongside Kid Flash. But when he fell in the final battle, she reverted to Tigress's identity, training his nephew and protégé, Bart Allen, as she tried to make a new identity of her own.
There's much more I can go on: Roy Harper/Red Arrow, the frustrated and suspicious young man who searched for a mole within the team only to learn that he himself was the mole, another one of Cadmus's clones; Roy Harper/Arsenal, the frustrated original who couldn't stand how he'd been replaced (though blaming his partner rather than his clone for what had happened) and who was so traumatized by his past that he always put his own life first, ahead of anyone else; Jaime Reyes/Blue Beetle, a new hero who learned he was destined to become a villain and bring about the end of humanity, who doomed himself because of his fear of this future and his lack of trust of his symbiotic scarab partner; and Bart Allen/Impulse/Kid Flash II, a young man from a ruined future who pretended to be a moron in order to hide his true motives to prevent that future, who befriended Jaime and warned him of that future and did everything to save him, and who was so proud to be recognized by his Uncle Wally and promised to become the next Kid Flash, only to have to take up his mantle in mourning and try to live up to a legacy. The point is that Young Justice did what W.I.T.C.H. forgot: It focused on the heroes. Even when we were trying to figure out who the Light was and what they were up to, we spent our time learning about the heroes and what motivated them, what made them who they were.
This is what's lacking in W.I.T.C.H. We spend half the series not even knowing Nerissa's name, let alone what she wants. We're led to believe she wants revenge, which is anathema to a good Weisman character—as Xanatos and Luthor put it, he believes that revenge is "a sucker's game." We don't get the time we should to devoting how Nerissa was corrupted and how history could repeat itself with Will or any of the other Guardians. By the time we get to it, it's impossible to believe that Will would turn because there's simply not enough time. True, Ben 10: Ultimate Alien pulled off a sudden turn in Kevin Levin's alignment toward the end of season 1, but they'd justified it by having the explanation that he'd once been evil because of how his powers worked, so when he used them in a last-ditch effort to save the universe, it was a tragic, heroic fall from grace (I could go on about how they should have revealed this about his powers in season 1 of Alien Force instead, but I'm stopping myself now before I reiterate my analyses of Ben 10). We're denied that with Will, instead getting the return of Phobos. And even if you defy that route for Will, the possibilities of what she could turn into (ala Jaime) are introduced too late for this to come off as a strong development choice (as with Conner, Artemis, and M'gann, who clearly had secrets that the fandom already knew, or with Kaldur, who seemed to turn only to be lying).
Still, despite these flaws, W.I.T.C.H. season two is a hell of a good series, more than making up for the flaws of season 1 and the comic, and absolutely a fantastic entry on Greg Weisman's résumé.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-04-08 12:29 am (UTC)Again, I did like how Caleb and Nerissa were handled overall, but I personally would have liked a little more exploration. This season had far less filler than the previous one, but it did take a bit longer than it needed to to introduce Nerissa, and if they'd pushed her introduction earlier, I think there could have been some more room to build on the overall family trauma.