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Shadowhunters

Credits

Cast

Network

Reviewer

Paul Asay
Kristin Smith

TV Series Review

Turning 18 is a pretty critical moment in many a life. It’s the age at which we make a bevy of critical decisions. Do I go to college or get a job at Chipotle? Is Betty Sue really the woman for me, or should I keep looking? And, perhaps most importantly, Am I ready to take up arms, draw strange runes on my body and fight demons in a shadowy, ill-defined contest between good and evil?

What? That last choice doesn’t sound familiar to you? Well, it would’ve sounded outlandish to Clary Fray too—right up until her 18th birthday.

Before that fateful event, Clary was your average New York hipster teen. She had absolutely no interest in creatures of the night or glowing swords. Oh, sure, she might draw an occasional demon, but that’s to be expected. She’s an artist, after all. Clary and her best friend, Simon, were working on a graphic novel before that fateful day, and what’s a graphic novel without a few demons? A rather boring graphic novel, Simon says.

But Clary is no mere Mugg—er, Mundane. She’s a Shadowhunter from a long line of Shadowhunters—half-angelic beings who wage eternal war against the forces of darkness. Clary’s mom tried to keep this dangerous secret from her as long as possible, but secrets—particularly secrets involving slavering denizens of hell—have a way of popping up in unexpected ways. So instead of blowing out 18 candles on a birthday cake, Clary watches a handful of demons get snuffed out at a nightclub. Now, whether she likes it or not, the girl has been drawn into the strange world of the Shadowhunters. A world in which she must learn how to survive and thrive. And so she does.

Same Story, Different Demon

Shadowhunters is based on Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments series. Anyone who read the books (or, for that matter, saw The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones in theaters in 2013) probably has a good idea how the series might go.

And even if you aren’t familiar with The Mortal Instruments, this might feel like well-trod ground anyway. It’s practically a requirement for teens (the fictional ones, anyway) to have some sort of secret power that draws them into a mysterious and vaguely sexy new world, after all.

Hey, if it worked for Harry Potter, Bella Thorne, Percy Jackson and all those brooders from The Vampire Diaries, why not once again for the Disney empire?

But does it work? That depends on your definition of work, I suppose.

Who Knows What Lurks in the Heart of this Show?

Shadowhunters is ridiculous. It’s at least partly aware of that fact—at least I hope so. Surely the writer who makes Clary say, “I’m miraculously healed, and all you (dramatic pause) stunning people have magical powers?” understands that she’s not writing for American Crime. But the show doesn’t help its credibility much with its awkward battle sequences, heartfelt-if-stilted confessions during moments of peril and its cheesy special effects.

It doesn’t help that most of the men on the show have only one emotive tool in their chests: That’s the aforementioned brood.

And it doesn’t help that no one seems quite sure how to pronounce the main bad guy’s name, despite the fact that they’ve been pretty well acquainted for ages now. (Valen-tine? Valen-tin?)

And it really doesn’t help discerning families that the show is obsessed with painting the night with a vibrantly hued occult brush. Like the CW’s long-running Supernatural, Shadowhunters is steeped in the concept of spiritual warfare. Its battlegrounds are filled with demons, witches, warlocks, vampires and who knows what else. And even though the Shadowhunters are half-angelic beings, God seems to be mostly out of the picture.

Not satisfied with covering this primetime confection with oodles of hinky spirituality and ladles of melted cheese, Freeform infuses plenty of other gratuitous content. The show calculates its casualties by the ton, and sometimes these deaths (or near-deaths) can be quite grotesque and bloody. And while some fluttering eyelashes are to be expected in a teen series like this, this series seems eager to push sexual boundaries (and features two prominent gay characters who exchange vows by the show’s end).

The whole package makes Shadowhunters feel vaguely insulting, actually. It’s a program that requires its viewers to follow a dizzying mythos (all the way up to the end of the series) but expects them to either miss or forgive its glaring weaknesses—which is, frankly, the whole show.

Episode Reviews

May 6, 2019: “All Good Things … Part 2”

In the series finale (barring an unexpected resurrection), Magnus and Alec plan their wedding; Clary saves the world from her demonic, murderous brother, Jonathan, but her heroics come at an eternal price.

In an effort to save an alternative realm, a shadowhunter attempts to kill a woman/wraith with arrows, but not before the shadowhunter is stabbed and nearly killed. A female shadowhunter annihilates a demonic woman by fire. (She, and her friends, are also set aflame.) A demonic being slaughters hundreds of men and women (and many of their bodies lie lifeless on the ground). Men and women are killed by fire, knives, swords and enchantment. There’s talk of demonic blood, spiritual engravings, finding “your god” and necromancy.

Heterosexual and homosexual couples flirt, slow dance, kiss, make out and lie in bed together, covered only by sheets. Women wear cleavage-baring tops. Two men drink cocktails. There’s one use of “h—.”

Feb. 25, 2019: “Lost Souls”

After an explosion transports Shadowhunter Clary into a different dimension with her half-demon brother, Jonathan, Clary attempts to find an escape. Meanwhile, Clary’s friends grieve her supposed death. Shadowhunter Alec Lightwood and his warlock boyfriend, Magnus Bane, work together to capture evil warlock Iris Rouse.

Creatures and humans are violently stabbed in the stomach and neck (we see blood pour from mouths and stomachs). Hand-to-hand combat takes place and people utilize dangerous weapons. Men and women reference torture, murder, electrocution, suffocation and suicide. A man contemplates stabbing himself. Deep, bloody engravings mark men and women alike. A man, consumed with grief, throws objects and smashes glass mirrors. A shirtless man is tortured and injected with an unknown substance.

Magic is used in multiple instances and people have the ability to time-travel, as well as transport into different dimensions. A woman discusses her encounters with “the queen of hell,” possession and demon blood. Potion bottles cover a table. Blood is poured into a vial to lure a vampire.

Two men flirt, allude to sex, and kiss on the cheek and the lips. A woman wears a cleavage-baring top. The word “h—” is heard twice and “b–ching” once.

Shadowhunters: Mar. 20, 2018 “On Infernal Ground.”

Lilith (A Greater Demon and the “mother of all warlocks”) sends a demon to possess specific people to become her “virtuous disciples.” Luke (Clary’s stepfather and a werewolf) and his mortal police partner, Ollie, track down the possessed man. Clary is now an official shadowhunter after having killed Valentine (her father). But both Clary and Jace (her beau) have a secret about Valentine’s death that must not be revealed.

“H—” is heard three times, “d—” twice and “a–” and “b—-” are each heard once. We see a naked woman covered in black and hidden in the shadows (although we don’t see any private body parts). There are multiple dead corpses covered in blood, and a man whose eyes and mouth are stitched closed.

Characters kiss (both a homosexual and heterosexual couple) and a man and woman lay in bed together, the man without a shirt and the woman in a tank top and underwear. Characters are shot, stabbed, maimed, possessed and have the ability to contort their bodies while possessed. Throats are slit and blood is spewed. Characters drink alcohol, fight with guns and swords and some are even branded like cattle.

Shadowhunters: March 6, 2017″By the Light of Dawn”

The villainous Valentine is on a quest to charge up something called the Soul Sword, a weapon that will kill all the denizens of the Underworld (vampires, werewolves, etc.) and separate that plane from the “real” world. But to power the thing up, he’ll need Clary to touch it (the angel blood in her system works as the sword’s “on” button). But she won’t do so willingly, so he kidnaps Clary’s BFF/boyfriend/vampire Simon, threatening to kill the guy if Clary won’t comply. (Given that Valentine plans to use the sword to kill all the vampires, this seems like less-than-an-ideal threat, but whatever.)

Clary resists until Valentine cuts open Simon’s throat. Blood spurts and pours down Simon’s front while Clary watches via smartphone. But because he’s a vampire, Valentine says that Clary still has 30 to 40 minutes before he turns to dust. (We see several more shots of Simon in this bloody, half-dead state.) Someone eventually gets to Simon and opens a vein on his/her own wrist (the male rescuer shapeshifts into a female form initially), and Simon thirstily bites into the wrist and nearly kills his would-be savior. A child “warlock” with air-vacuuming gills in her neck kills several folks by literally sucking the oxygen from the room. (They twitch and gasp on the ground before finally expiring.) Another bevy of underworldlings perishes in a climactic showdown, their corpses strewn across a temple-like building. Elsewhere, a werewolf in canine form attacks Valentine and is stabbed: The guy then turns back into his naked, human form (we see his bare side, though his genitals are obscured by his thigh), and he pulls a sharp piece of metal from his gut. Folks are skewered by swords and (oddly) blunt staffs. Someone’s thrown into an elevator.

Two gay characters share a passionate kiss and embrace, confessing their love for each other. A female shadowhunter asks her vampire beau to kiss her. He refuses, telling her that he’s not into sex—and wasn’t even before he turned. (He also rejects her offer to give him a “little bite for the road.”) A character named Jace, who for several episodes has assumed that he and Clary are brother and sister, is excited to learn they’re not. But he’s dismayed when he sees Clary and Simon kiss.

Characters say “d–n” once, “h—” twice and misuse God’s name three times. There’s talk of angels and demons and even a mention of Lucifer, though none of those references are theologically sound.

Shadowhunters: Jan. 12, 2016 “The Mortal Cup”

Clary learns of her super-secret powers, but only after her mother is kidnapped by the (presumably) evil Valentine Morgenstern. She must also decide who she’d rather hang with at present—the suave Shadowhunter Jace or her longtime bestie, Simon (who’s secretly in love with Clary).

An upset Valentine stabs an unruly underling in the neck, causing the goon’s skin to mottle while he chokes on regurgitated foam. A frenetic hand-to-hand brawl causes a woman to fall to her death from a window, conking her head on a fire escape on the way down. (We then see a pool of blood on the ground.) Several demons are stabbed and vanish in a spray of sparks—though some bodies, oddly, stick around. (Is it a plot point or a dearth of special effects money?) The demons often resemble regular people—having the ability to take on the form of whomever they touch—but in their true form they look far more demonic (and have frightening mouths that flap open like crabs). A slavering lake monster nearly eats a little girl. A woman drinks a potion that we think at first might have killed her.

Beyond all the witches, warlocks, etc., runes and supernatural objects (Tarot cards among them) abound. We hear about vampires and drinking blood. In flashback, a warlock takes away Clary’s memories.

We see a dead woman, her body draped only in a barely covering strip of satin. Other women dress in very revealing getups, showing off lots of leg, midriff and cleavage. A guy takes off his shirt rather gratuitously. It’s insinuated that a character is gay. A band is named, temporarily, “Champagne Enema.” Clary and her friends go to a bar, despite the fact that they’re all underage. Through conversation, we learn that Clary has a fake ID, and Simon is shown toting alcoholic drinks. Foul language includes “h—” (three or four times) and “p—ed.” God’s name is misused once or twice.

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paul-asay
Paul Asay

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

kristin-smith
Kristin Smith

Kristin Smith joined the Plugged In team in 2017. Formerly a Spanish and English teacher, Kristin loves reading literature and eating authentic Mexican tacos. She and her husband, Eddy, love raising their children Judah and Selah. Kristin also has a deep affection for coffee, music, her dog (Cali) and cat (Aslan).

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