Welcome back to Multiversity Comics’ Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts reviews. In the season finale there are hugs, more hugs, love at first sight, and doom. In fact, there’s so much, I more than doubled our usual number of thoughts.
“Beyond the Valley of the Dogs”
Written by Bill Wolkoff
Directed by Kalvin Lee and Young Ki Yoon
1. “Ten days ago”
Well, nine weeks for me. Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts has been an interesting experiment for me. I’m a natural binger. As soon as DVD season box sets started coming out, I stopped watching TV altogether. Even when a show is released weekly, like Disney+’s Mandalorian, I wait till the final episode is out and then watch it.
But, I didn’t want to write ten columns back to back, and I wasn’t letting myself watch a new episode until after I finished the write-up for the previous one, so I had to dip my toe back into a somewhat weekly viewing pattern again. And I gotta say, I did not miss it. Weekly viewing is way harder than I remember it being. Definitely not for me. In the middle of my Kipo viewing, I watched I Am Not Okay with This in one sitting and it was like settling into a warm bath. So. Much. Better.
And this title card saying “Ten days ago” really hit that home. It also served as a reminder that Netflix shows are made with bingeing in mind. Getting to this episode faster would’ve, I think, made it that much more intense and epic. The season would’ve felt more like a rollercoaster than a steady stroll.
2. The other burrow humans
This opening was a great way to open the final episode of the season. The writers have been keeping the fate of the burrow humans secret for a long time now, rarely letting us know more about their situation than Kipo knows, which has made for a great source of tension. Had we known all along that they had made it out safe and that Kipo was only ever chasing a guitar pick, those early episodes would’ve lacked tension, but by giving this information so late in the series, it increases the tension as Kipo heads to the new Clover, in the process exposing their settlement to Scarlemagne.
3. Fun with Mega Dogs
The latter half of the episode gets pretty heavy with drama, so it was nice to have this lighter moment in the first half with Pierre and the Mega Dogs. And since it’s the final episode, it was also a nice reminder of what fantastic action this series is capable of. Plus, I couldn’t stop grinning at the way Kipo was acting with Wolf.
4. Lio Oak
I really like the relationship between Lio and Kipo. Though Lio’s appearances in the show have been brief, he’s always been used economically to get in as much information and character as possible. Part of that comes from the way Kipo acts.
I said way back in the first episode that I liked how Kipo carried her father with her. Even when apart, bits of her identity are still tangled with his. It makes this moment where the two are reunited simultaneously familiar and new.
5. Welcome to Site B
We’ve seen bits of Kipo’s life in the Clover before, but we’ve been restricted largely to seeing Kipo and her father (and an imaginary version of her mother). The other residents haven’t made much of an impact till now. Of course Kipo has other friends—Asher, Dahlia, and Troy—and seeing her in her home environment emphasizes how much of an outsider Wolf, Benson, Dave, and Mandu are. We only got to meet these characters briefly, but I’m hoping we’ll be seeing a lot more of them in season two. They shake up the group dynamic, and it’d be interesting to see how burrow dwellers other than Kipo interact with the surface world.
6. Goodbye, Site B
Well, that didn’t last long. Look, it’s the season finale and things like this happen. We’re used to big action sequences and cliffhangers and such, but sometimes it feels like these shows are just going through the motions to hit the expected beats of a season ender. Given how many new characters were introduced in this episode, Kipo could’ve easily fallen into the trap of trying to cover too many characters than it can sustain, but it keeps the focus on its characters. There’s still all the action you’d expect from a finale, but all of it is character motivated. Every action scene in this episode tells us something about who our four leads are, what they’re afraid of, what they want, and what they need. This stuff is the heart of good story.
7. That transformation sequence
OK, transformation sequences can be fun (this is coming from someone that loves Beast Wars: Transformers), but I’ve never been fond of the Voltron or Sailor Moon–style transformations when everything just stops while the transformation happens. It looks impressive the first time, but it comes with diminishing returns each time it occurs. Worst of all, these sequences destroy tension, because whatever else is happening in the show, nothing can interrupt the transformation sequence.
And as much as I’ve enjoyed DreamWorks Animation’s Voltron: Legendary Defender and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, both have been guilty of tensionless transformation sequences where the story goes into limbo. And Kipo could’ve done the same… but it doesn’t. This is how you do a transformation sequence. The tension remains, the storytelling is a crucial part of the transformation, and yet it’s still visually impressive and fun. Time is elastic, yes, but it’s not non-existent. I’m glad to see Kipo deftly avoid a trap its sister shows have unfortunately fallen into. (Plus, awesome music.)
8. Benson ♡ Troy
I’m a total sucker for this sort of thing. This was hands down my favorite part of the season. That’s not to say it’s the best part, it’s just something that made me laugh a lot. And it only works because of the rest of the season. If you do something like this in the first episode, it usually sucks. However, if you get to know the characters first and then do something like this, it triggers confelicity like crazy.
9. Dave gets his moment
Dave’s been the character that’s probably frustrated me the most this season—not because he’s a bad character, but because he’s mainly been a tourist on this adventure, with only minimal investment in the other characters and their concerns. I’ve often felt like there were story beats he could’ve been a part of in ways that could’ve gotten more out of him, but instead he was sidelined for a quick joke. And I’ve got nothing wrong with jokes, I just don’t want them to be Dave’s entire identity. I want to see him being real sometimes.
This episode finally started to crack that wall, striking a nice balance between the needs of the humor in the show and of Dave’s development as a character. I really loved seeing him come to life. This is a great way to end the season for him, and it lays the groundwork for more to come in season two.
10. Hugo
So Lio and Scarlemagne know each other? And Scarlemagne seems to know a little about Kipo too. OK, cool. That makes things more complicated in the best possible way, all nice teasers for season two.
11. The fakeout finale
We know TV. We know finales. When Kipo is taken at the end of the episode, that would’ve been a perfectly functional cliffhanger for the season. But there’s something to be said about ending on a high note. Having a victorious Kipo come back in the last few seconds is an exhilarating moment. It doesn’t destroy any of the tension, but it also reminds us that as Kipo is a fun show and let’s us imagine how much more fun we’re going to have in season two.
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What did you think of this episode? Or better yet, what did you think of the season? Let me know in the comments.
