1x11 The Disenchantress

[8.0/10] I commented to a friend that I think Disenchantment works better as a light-ish fantasy drama than as a comedy that happens to have a swords and sorcery setting. Maybe it’s the serialization, maybe it’s the greater focus on character development, maybe it’s the hit-or-miss quality of the jokes.

Or maybe it’s the fact that the lore is the most interesting and exciting part of the series so far. And there’s so much of it in this one! “Disenchantress” is chock full of thrilling unveilings. We learn that the mysterious figures who watched Bean and sent Luci after her last season are her aunt and uncle. We learn that her mother is from a distant place called Maru, which seems more magically inclined and is built upon an underclass of grunts and goblins. (I got a big kick out of the pig goblin’s repeated, desultory grunt.) We learn that Elfo is in Heaven, but that they can potentially meet up with him in Hell. And we learn that Dagmar and her people were once mighty and powerful, and that they have a long overdue debt to hell.

And that’s just for starters! The most personally impactful reveal in the episode is that Dagmar’s family are, true to their platinum locks, more or less the Targaryens of Disenchantment, in the sense that “the gods flip a coin” to decide whether or not they’ll be normal folk or whether they’ll become paranoid and murderous. That turns some of these big lore drops into something personal for Bean, where she’s not just getting suspicious about her new, unfamiliar surroundings and what her new family’s deal is, but worried about whether the family curse has afflicted her.

The show uses that to deepen the villainousness of Dagmar and her accomplices when they gaslight her to make her think just that. When she uncovers a portrait of herself and goes to tell her mom, the proof has been whisked away, her scars are magically healed, and they make her think she’s crazy. It’s one of many subtle, quietly devastating signs that Dagmar doesn’t care about her daughter beyond Bean being a means to an end (a knife which is twisted when Dagmar straight up tells Bean that the only reason she gave birth to her was to fulfill a prophecy).

And that prophecy is a scary one that understandably unsettles Bean. The elderly people who frighten and worship her on the street give her the heebie jeebies. And the reveal that she is not just being reunited with her long lost mom, but brought into some sort of bizarre cult ritual to bring about an unspecified future is momentous but dastardly one.

Along the way, we get a surprisingly sweet friendship between her and Jerry, whose howling is oddly cute, and whose hammering turns out to be momentous. The reveal that he is, in fact, Bean’s uncle, who was essentially sacrificed in her place, makes things extra tragic and makes the lovable dullard that much more endearing.

Things go the exact opposite way with Dagmar, with Bean slowly but surely realizing who her mom really is, but being unable to kill her, both because of how much wanting her mom back has been a part of Bean’s psyche for so long, and because she doesn’t want to become the deranged murderers her Maru relatives are. This is all more dramatic than it is funny, but it’s good drama!

Still, there’s some solid comedy here. Jerry’s Ralph Wiggum-like antics are entertaining, and Dagmar’s “shhhh-shut up” twilight salutations are worth a laugh. Plus Elfo’s “bad phone connection” humor was an unexpectedly big guffaw for me. King Zog wandering around with the petrified residents of his kingdom wasn’t as funny, but had its moments, and it was probably a necessary check-in. The dynamic with his two little servants (were they just Akbar and Jeff? I can’t tell), was at least worth a chuckle, particularly the little guy’s big sigh. The humor isn’t as a good as the straight dramatics here, but it’s still solid.

Overall, this is a strong start to the season, which fills in some long-empty gaps in the show’s backstory, sets things on a path for more interesting adventures to come, and even forges some interesting new character dynamics in the process.