Ragnarok Season 1 Review: Thor faces his younger years…

You have to be a brave, brave, showrunner to bring Thor to the small screen, especially when you already have Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and Marvels ‘Thor’ and a plethora of Norse mythology across contemporary pop culture.

Through no fault of its own, the show from writer Adam Price and director Mogens Hagedorn is operating on the back foot from the very beginning, as anyone with even a passing interest in this mythology knows, but the duo pulls the show into our TV realm, and it is truly delightful but sometimes frustrating.

Netflix’s newest foreign language series, titled Ragnarok, springs from the backbone of Norse mythology and the series follows the lonesome teenager, Magne (David Stakston, he’s built like a god too, with an imposing physique that he doesn’t flaunt for fear of further ostracization, and resembling a more square-jawed Ansel Elgort), moving with his family and brother back to the town of Edda, a fictional location named for the Poetic Edda, the books believed to first tell the story of Ragnar and that’s when Magne begins exhibiting unusual skills.

A strange old lady called Wenche bestows powers upon Magne that seemingly ignite something deep inside him that awakens the power of Thor and gives him unwieldy strength and speed. An incident very early on in the show acts as a catalyst for this to kick into high gear and looks set to ignite the rest of the series into action after a rather expository-heavy and clunky opening.

In a nutshell, this all looks auspiciously interesting. I was reeled in right after I saw the trailer. Who would’ve thought that climate change and Norse mythology would work well together?

FINAL THOUGHTS:

While the show is back-dropped by the beauty of the Scandinavian Fjords, it seems like the perfect recipe for a six-part series. Unfortunately, Ragnarok drops the ball early on. Oh, we have action, fights, but unfortunately, we also have teen drama with love triangles, half-baked mysteries and a faint veil of Norse mythology painted over the show.

3/5 STARS