Dark Crystal Cancelled

Spoilers!

I’ll be honest: the main reason I got a new phone was its swanky camera, better rates from T-Mobile, and a reduced subscription to Netflix.

The main reason I wanted Netflix was The Jim Henson Company’s ‘The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance’.

This ambitious prequel to the Dark Crystal movie promised intriguing characters, plus gorgeous sets & props.

It won an Emmy.

A couple of days later the show was canceled in a management-level shakeup at Netflix.

I can’t help feel that people like me were a problem, too.

I stopped watching partway through the first (and for now, only) season, leaving the show behind after a blatant and entirely expected execution.

It wasn’t the All-Maudra’s death that threw me off; it was that I *wanted to kill all the main characters* because their cluelessness annoyed me so much. Taken as a race, the lovely Gelflings pretty much deserved to die for and from their stupidity and hubris.

The Skeksis are actually worse, because they *all* failed the Evil Overlord Orientation Test.

I’m already staring down the death-by-stupidity of the American Experiment, and I don’t have time for waffling allegories that don’t actually help me.

The show’s ambitious scope (which should have been fine, because we all know how I love ridiculous amounts of worldbuilding) also became a detriment. What I saw of the first season was character introduction and quest set-up, done much more slowly than it could have been.

And, well, there’s that whole matter of the series premise: the impending near-genocide of the Gelflings. If most of them are going to die, and I already don’t care about that, I have no business watching on.

This was the same calculus I applied to ‘Game if Thrones’, too.

I apologize to The Jim Henson Company, to the craftsmanship and puppetry that made this series stunningly beautiful. I hope the story goes on in some form.

It was ultimately not your failures, but mine.