"Samurai Jack" is back: Season 5, Episode 1 review

Coming back to TV like...

A nostalgia fever currently infects our popular culture. This isn't exactly an original insight, nor is it the first time I've written about it. It isn't even a critique necessarily specific to our time. But it would be hard to write about our current popular culture landscape without noting the long-gestating sequels to decades-old properties (e.g., The Force Awakens), the revivals of once-and-recently popular shows (e.g., Gilmore Girls), the remakes (e.g., everything), and the ostensibly original properties that draw heavily from past influences (e.g., Stranger Things).

Into this nostalgia-heavy popular culture landscape returns Samurai Jack. Samurai Jack, created by Genndy Tartakovsky (also of Dexter's Lab, Powerpuff Girls, and the hand-drawn Star Wars: The Clone Wars) originally aired on Cartoon Network from 2001-2004. The original series' intro tells you everything you need to know about the show:

But if you're too lazy to watch it, here's the short summary it provides (from the perspective of the show's main villain, no less!):

Long ago, in a distant land, I, Aku, the shape-shifting Master of Darkness, unleashed an unspeakable evil! But a foolish samurai warrior wielding a magic sword stepped forth to oppose me. Before the final blow was struck, I tore open a portal in time, and flung him into the future, where my evil is law. Now, the fool seeks to return to the past, and undo the future that is Aku. 

That was the template for the first four seasons of the show: Jack (Phil LeMarr*) roamed across a dystopian future (think Blade Runner crossed with Mad Max), defending the innocent, fighting Aku and his minions, and looking for a way to return to his own time. And from that relatively simple setup emerged what I have argued was the best animated series of the 2000s (if not of all time). I've written about the greatness of Samurai Jack elsewhere, but I would be remiss not  at least to mention some of the incredible storytelling that made the show what it was, so stop reading and watch this wordless black-and-white fight:



And this action sequence that plays out in less than one second after 20 minutes of buildup:



I've been with Samurai Jack from the beginning, when it premiered on Cartoon Network all the way back in 2001 (8-year-old Jack had great taste, and maybe a built-in bias for the show because of its title). So I was one of the many fans who was sad to see it go, who had hoped vainly for years for its return, and who was overjoyed when news emerged that it would finally come back (so overjoyed I spent the whole day leading up to the premiere re-watching old episodes). My excitement stemmed not merely from nostalgia, however. For, contrary to this review, Samurai Jack did not end its original arc. We may have learned that Jack would one day be worthy to enter a portal from which he was blocked in the show's original run,  but we did not learn whether he would enter it, or whether he would defeat Aku when he did. Thus, Samurai Jack's story demanded completion.

I'll be disappointed if the new season doesn't reference this in some way.

And so here we are, 13 years after the show's original run, with almost** all of the main on-and-off-screen talent returning to complete a show with a genuinely unfinished story (the best possible circumstances for any such revival). As an added bonus, the 10-episode final season returns not to Cartoon Network but to Adult Swim, allowing it to show real gore (instead of robot oil blood), engage in more mature themes, grow up with earliest fans, and generally let loose a bit more creatively without having to worry as much about the censors.

So, imagine this, but a pile of actual corpses instead of robots, and blood instead of oil. It could happen!

The Samurai Jack team have made a bold choice with this newfound freedom: to show a Jack who has lost his way. The review I referenced above claimed that Samurai Jack's arc had an implied completion, which is incorrect. It also claimed, concerning the character of Jack himself, that he "...was something of a blank screen. It’s not that he didn’t have a character, more that his resolute commitment to helping others, his insane competence, and above all, his silence, made it hard to latch on to him as something deeper or more complex than a cool, occasionally troubled hero." This is also incorrect. Maybe Jack didn't adhere to the overused and now surely cliché template of "anti-hero," or "flawed hero." But he struggled plenty in the original show, dealing with anger, loss, regret, selfishness, temptation, and, above all, failure. His resolution and persistence despite all of this was what made his character so great.

Yet the Jack we see at the beginning of season five is no longer that Jack, or at least not that Jack currently (one hopes). 50 years have passed since we last saw him, yet he does not age, a consequence of the time travel forced on him by Aku all those years ago. In this time, though he has gained a beard, armor, a motorcycle, an electrified scimitar, and a pistol, he has not only lost his resolve. He has lost his sword, the one weapon that can defeat Aku. Still, the Jack we see is just as bad-ass as ever, and the show's aesthetic remains startlingly consistent with its past: see, e.g., the battle against robot bugs to save a mother and daughter that opens the episode:


Or the fight with Scaramouche (Tom Kenny***), an Aku-favored assassin who powers his weapons with the music of a flute and his own voice****. Both sequences would have fit right into the original series. The difference is in Jack himself. Whereas his past self fought with righteous energy, the new Jack fights with a sort of exasperated ruthlessness (notably, he knew he was being lured into the battle with Scaramouche for some time, but chose not to seek it out immediately). It's a subtle difference, and it is, for the time being, just as effective in battle, but it's definitely not the same Jack.

Samurai Jack, looking a little different. 

This Jack has other problems, too. His past is literally haunting him: He now regularly experiences hallucinations of his mother, father, and the countless victims of Aku he has not yet saved. And now, some in the present hunt him. The Daughters of Aku, born in graphic, Rosemary's Baby-esque fashion and trained from birth***** to hunt Samurai Jack, are a combination of the Ringwraiths from Lord of the Rings and Jack himself (also trained from birth, but to kill Aku). There is, moreover, an ominous vision haunting Jack, in addition to his other hallucinations: an eerie, green-glowing warrior on horseback, whose very visage makes the typically fearless Jack scream in fear. And, of course, he still doesn't have his sword. All of this looks pretty bleak for Jack.

This setup is intriguing, but I hope the show doesn't forget that it was the glimpses of light, not the totality of the darkness, that made it so compelling; that Jack's persistence, not his failure, made him the hero who still stands out in today's surfeit of "complicated" protagonists. Nine episodes remain, though it's almost certain to feel like fewer than that, given how quickly this premiere went by for me. At any rate, I look forward to seeing how the long journey of Samurai Jack concludes. Whatever happens, though, the first episode of this last season has proven beyond any doubt that this is one revival our nostalgia-soaked popular culture actually needs.

*Phil LeMarr, aka, Static Shock, Hermes Conrad, Green Lantern (John Stewart), and many other roles. The world of cartoon voice-acting is tiny.
**Sadly, Mako, who has one of the greatest voices of all time, passed away between shows. Aku only has a few lines (spoken on a cell phone!) in this episode, but he has been replaced by Mako pupil Greg Baldwin, who has experience mimicking his teacher.
***Tom Kenny, aka SpongeBob, the Ice-King, the Mayor of Townsville, and countless other roles. At first I thought Scaramouche's voice sounded like Squilliam Fancyson, but that's Dee Bradley Baker, who I'm sure will show up at some point.
****Think Yondu from Guardians of the Galaxy.
*****Trained from birth by an Aku-worshipping priestess voiced by Tara Strong, aka Timmy Turner from The Fairly Oddparents. The world of cartoon voice acting is truly tiny.