Marvel’s Inhumans ran for eight episodes on ABC, from September 29 to November 10, 2017. It was created by Scott Buck. It is the only season the show got. That fact is the review in miniature.
The show wants to be a story about a royal family torn apart and scattered. What it actually is, is a story about a royal family that never convinces you it was worth putting back together.
Trailer, via Marvel Entertainment.
Black Bolt Says Nothing, and Neither Does the Show
Anson Mount plays Blackagar Boltagon, called Black Bolt. His power is that his voice destroys things, so he does not speak. This is the show’s best idea and its most wasted one. A silent king in a loud genre should be strange and unnerving. Mount has the face for it. The show gives him almost nothing to do with it.
The Royal Family of Inhumans is splintered by a military coup. They barely escape to Hawaii. That is the premise, and it is a good one — a deposed family dropped into a lush world full of ordinary people. The show keeps promising that these interactions will matter, that they may save the family and Earth itself. It never earns that promise.
Iwan Rheon plays Maximus Boltagon, the brother who takes the throne. Rheon was a genuinely frightening presence on Game of Thrones. Here he is asked to play a schemer with a grievance, and the writing gives him speeches instead of reasons. You can see him working. You can also see the script failing him.
Medusa Loses Her Hair, and the Show Loses Its Nerve
Serinda Swan plays Medusalith Amaquelin, called Medusa. Her power is her hair. In the first episode, it is cut off. The show treats this as a catastrophe, and it should be — a queen stripped of the one thing that makes her dangerous. But the loss lands as a plot beat rather than a wound. Swan plays the dignity well. The show does not know what to do with a Medusa who cannot fight.
Isabelle Cornish is Crystalia Amaquelin, called Crystal. Ken Leung is Karnak Mander-Azur, called Karnak. Eme Ikwuakor is Gorgon Petragon, called Gorgon. Sonya Balmores is Auran. Ellen Woglom is Louise, the human who gets pulled into all of it. That is the whole cast of note, and eight episodes is not enough time to give them all something to be.
The Hawaii setting is the show’s one real asset. Green, wet, alive — a world that looks nothing like the Inhuman city the family came from. The contrast should carry the season. Instead the show keeps cutting back to the same rooms and the same arguments.
A Coup, a King, and Eight Episodes That Never Breathe
The military coup that opens the story is the engine of everything. It should be the most interesting thing here: a brother who takes power because he believes he deserves it, a king who cannot argue back. Maximus has a case. The show almost lets him make it. Then it pulls back, because a villain with a point is harder to write than a villain with a plan.
After the Royal Family of Inhumans is splintered by a military coup, they barely escape to Hawaii where their surprising interactions with the lush world and humanity around them may prove to not only save them, but Earth itself.
That is the synopsis, and it is more coherent than the season. The show has the pieces. It has a silent king, a queen without her weapon, a usurper with a grudge, a scattered family, and a planet that may or may not be at stake. It has eight episodes to make you care. It does not.
The pacing is the real problem. Eight episodes is a short season, and it still feels padded. Storylines start and stop. Characters get separated and reunited without the separation meaning much. The show is listed as drama, sci-fi and fantasy, action and adventure. It is rarely any of those things with conviction.
The Score Is 5.8, and That Is Fair
TMDB’s audience score for Marvel’s Inhumans is 5.8 out of 10, across 793 votes. That number is not a mystery. It is the sound of a lot of people watching the same eight episodes and arriving at the same shrug.
The show is not a disaster. Mount is good. Rheon is good. The Hawaii footage is good. The premise is good. But good pieces do not make a good season, and this one never finds the thing that would hold them together. It is a show about a family that cannot communicate, made by a production that never quite learned how.
What matters here is not that Marvel’s Inhumans failed. Plenty of shows fail. What matters is how it failed — by taking a strange, specific idea and sanding it down until nothing about it was strange or specific anymore. Black Bolt’s silence is the clearest example. It is the one thing that makes this family different from every other royal family in the genre. The show treats it as a gimmick, then forgets it.
The Hawaii setting is the second example. A deposed royal family in a real place, among real people, is a story with texture. The show uses it as a backdrop and then retreats indoors.
What the Show Gets Right, and Why It Is Not Enough
The casting is not the problem. Mount, Rheon, Swan, Cornish, Leung, Ikwuakor, Balmores and Woglom are all capable. The problem is that the season gives most of them one note and asks them to hold it for eight hours.
The coup is not the problem either. A brother taking a throne from a brother who cannot speak is a clean, brutal idea. It should generate real heat. It generates a few good scenes and a lot of standing around.
The problem is that Marvel’s Inhumans never decides what it is. Is it a family drama about exile? A political story about a coup? A fish-out-of-water comedy about superhumans in Hawaii? It tries all three and commits to none. The result is a season that moves but never arrives.
Eight episodes. One season. A 5.8 from 793 voters. The math is not cruel. It is accurate.
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