And just like that, Jupiter’s Legacy is over. A rollercoaster of quality over the course of 8 episodes and it’s all over. With one of the messiest messes that’s ever messed. Without further ado, let’s get into “How It All Ends.”
1. Like This???
So that was a really bad finale. Like a really unbelievably awful 35 minutes of television. So bad that I struggled to identify even one redeeming element of “How It All Ends.” From the opening frame through its final moments, the conclusion to Jupiter’s Legacy’s first season is an absolute trainwreck. It concludes 8 episodes of half baked storytelling and barely there world building with a symphony of nonsense and chaos. Almost every character arc is brought to an unsatisfying conclusion. Almost every subplot feels incomplete. This was Jupiter’s Legacy at rock bottom- an astonishing feat given how bad it’s been before. There is one thing that almost kind of works- seeing the early days of the Union.
2. Cell Block Tango
The vast majority of “ How It All Ends” takes place cutting between the super-prison where Blackstar is held and the Union’s headquarters where Walter is trying to escape not-Blackstars mind. Both of these threads are horrible. On the prison side, we get Sheldon reconsidering the Code after Blackstar beats up and threatens to kill Brandon but then not actually reconsidering anything because The Flare shows up to help. It’s a lackluster, paper thin plot that has nothing to offer. It’s characters end it in a similar place to where they started, just more. Its main priority seemed to be bathing characters in red lights and putting incoherent fight choreography on display. At the Union headquarters, we get more nonsense in the form of Walter’s brain prison fight with George. This fight leans a lot on Walter and George’s troubled history that we’ve seen exclusively through petty bickering so it hardly lands on an emotional level. George accuses Walter of turning the other heroes against him and Walter clearly still resents George but, like so many moments on this show, it would’ve been so much more effective to have seen this conflict than to hear about it. Their battle also fails to succeed at being cool. Early in the episode, we get some trippy mindscape visuals of Walter being stretched out and otherwise distorted in odd landscapes; that gets dropped in favor of a strange void where an extremely milquetoast fight happens. When Grace joins (with a cringe-inducing hint like a girl line), it feels like nothing, particularly because we’ve spent very little time exploring whatever connection she and Walter have. So once both of these fights manage to end without a bang, we’re left with nothing to show for it. Skyfox is a villain that the Union is ready to bring to justice? Old news. Brandon believes in the code but struggles with it in the heat of the moment? Super old news. Worst of all, there’s nary a good performance throughout this. From Josh Duhamel and the unbelievably forgettable Andrew Horton, that’s to be expected, at least to a certain extent. Neither has been particularly interesting at any point this season. But for Ben Daniels, Leslie Bibb, and Matt Lanter to betray me like this is shattering.
3. Cliffhangers All Over
The real name of the game for “How It All Ends” is ending things with intrigue. Now, I want to credit the show with giving us 2 cliffhangers that are good in theory and just one that absolutely doesn’t matter. Does that mean that there should be any faith that these could see followthrough of any quality? Of course not. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t nice to think about. The bad one, of course, is Sheldon worrying that he’s losing Brandon. This is a particularly nonsensical character decision because Brandon doesn’t kill Blackstar. If the fear is that Brandon is going to go the way of Chloe or worse, Skyfox, that doesn’t hold water when Brandon actively stopped himself from breaking the Code. So, yeah, F- on that one. The Chloe and Hutch plotline, which is really just a repeat of the cliffhanger from episode 3 is decently intriguing. Building a device to find and bring back Skyfox is clearly a Big Deal and Chloe being involved gives it all the more potential. The journey to get there is a weird post-hookup argument between Chloe and Hutch followed by a fight they have with guards in a vault (which is fine) and it really doesn’t feel like it does anything. C+. By far the most important development is Walter being the one who made the Blackstar clone and released the real Blackstar from his cell in pursuit of taking over the Union. It’s a twist that wasn’t hard to see coming but Walter’s potential for brutality is driven home when he murders his telepath daughter so she won’t reveal his plans. B+. Of course, we’ll never get to see what might’ve been and honestly, that’s a good thing. No matter its potential, it clearly would’ve sucked, even if it had fleeting high points.
4. The One Almost Good Thing
There is one singular aspect of “How It All Ends” that almost worked: the flashbacks. They finally got to the point that I’d been desperate to see— the early days of the Union. People reacting to their presence in the world and their own adjustment to their new roles is ripe with narrative and character potential. The episode hints at those things and that felt like a sliver of a bone was being thrown my way. In the end, though, we just get repetition of the same things we’ve been seeing and foreshadowing that feels out of place. Walter and George have a bad relationship and Walter makes a joke about wanting to take over the world. That’s the gist of the whole thing. It’s not good but it could’ve been and that’s something you just can’t say about any other part of the episode.
5. Post-Mortem
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that this week, Netflix scrapped its plans for a second season of Jupiter’s Legacy, instead opting to adapt Mark Millar’s “Super Criminals” and call this whole endeavor a superhero universe anthology. It’s a clever way to spin the recovery from a bellyflop like this series but it’s also a transparent way to cut their losses (and this series had a $200 million budget so they were big) and drop a show that wasn’t working. The big question is: could this show have been good? The answer isn’t clear. In my first review, I noted that Jupiter’s Legacy had very little to offer that other series weren’t doing better. It’s not clear that even the best version of the show we saw would’ve been capable of the focus, thrills, commentary, or fun that other properties deliver. Still, in a better world, one where the pacing and characterization were stronger and the scripts more refined, it may have been able to hold up as a smaller but loved alternative to these other shows. In the world we actually live in, it failed at all of these things. It was unclear whose story we were following, what that story was actually about (other than superheroes but kind of realistic), and why we should tune into the next episode. There were 1.5 good episodes and very few redeeming qualities among the bad ones. On a personal level, I was always rooting for Jupiter’s Legacy to get good. That brief shining moment midseason was such a relief as someone who wanted it to succeed. At this point, though, I’m more relieved that I won’t have to agonize over whether or not a series I’m watching might potentially at some point show a semblance of quality. Goodbye Jupiter’s Legacy, and good riddance.
