Comedy
Wizards Beyond Waverly Place
‘Wizards Beyond Waverly Place’ is a fitting sequel series to Disney’s ‘Wizards of Waverly Place.’ And that can be a good or a bad thing.
“We’re not here to make the world a better place. We’re here to keep it from ending.”
So says Archie, an agent for perhaps the most clandestine outfit in the world. It’s called the Lazarus Project, and the power it wields dwarfs that of nuclear warheads and global pandemics. The organization—somehow—has the ability to reverse time itself. Like a video-game reset, the Lazarus Project embeds a save point every year—July 1, in fact. And if a “game over” event feels unavoidable, they give the world a hard restart.
Great system, right? But there’s a bug in the works. Several, actually. Because all this power is held by people—frail, fallible people.
Most folks don’t remember the world’s hard reboots, of course. Those that do were given that ability when they joined the Project. George, though, is different. He came by the ability naturally.
George a software developer, and when he woke up on July 1, 2022, the only thing he was worried about was securing a nice, fat loan for his life-changing app.
He got that loan, got his girlfriend (Sarah) pregnant, got married and, alas, got sick. Most of the world did, in fact. A pandemic was killing thousands of people every day in George’s home country of England. And just as he and Sarah made their way to an overflowing hospital, he …
… woke up. On July 1, 2022. And, unlike Sarah or anyone else he knew, George remembered.
Archie invited George into the Lazarus Project during that dreadful next go-round. And on the next reboot (the third, if you’re keeping track) he decided to sign up. He met some of the other members of this tight team and learned that the world had restarted at least 20 times in his life.
George also learned that some former agents had gone rogue—chief among them a guy named Rebrov who seems to be determined to end the world for good. George wonders what would possess a person to fight against a noble organization simply trying to keep the planet turning.
And then, when he experiences an unimaginable tragedy, he knows.
Archie told him that they’re not there to make the world a better place—just keep it from ending.
Now, George’s world feels like it has ended. But he also knows the secret to starting it again.
Don’t ask too many questions about this power to reboot the universe. When George starts asking a few of his own, Archie shuts him down. If he doesn’t have a doctorate in physics, she tells him, he wouldn’t understand.
But it is fair to question the show itself.
Make no mistake: The Lazarus Project (which originally aired on Britain’s Sky Max premium network) offers viewers a clever take on traditional time-traveling tropes, and it bolsters its sci-fi bona fides with plenty of action and characters you care about. The everyman George offers a great narrative entry point for us to access this strange, often terrifying world.
But Sky Max is sort of a British HBO. And that means that The Lazarus Project features plenty of HBO-like problems.
Granted, the show’s American home is TNT, a basic cable network. That means that even if Sky Max’s version of The Lazarus Project included explicit nudity, that nudity—at least most of it—wouldn’t make it stateside.
But violence? Blood? Harsh profanity, including the f-word? Yep, it’s all there, and The Lazarus Project contains plenty of the latter. Twelve-year-olds can watch this essentially R-rated show on their cable package or stream it online (the first episode was available for free on the TNT website). It’s a shame, because in other hands, this could’ve been a provocative thriller that the whole family could’ve enjoyed.
A real-life time-traveling agency wouldn’t reboot the world, of course, just to encourage the creators of a pretty interesting show to clean up its content. But that means that, for many families, The Lazarus Project might as well be dead.
George lives six months of his life. And then one day, he wakes up on July 1, 2022, for the second time—and no one believes that he’s been through it all before.
Well, one person does. George meets a stranger on the street who tells him that if it happens again, to go straight to a mysterious address. And when he indeed experiences July 1, 2022 for a third time, George goes to that address—and discovers that a reality that’s far weirder than he could’ve even imagined.
George and his girlfriend, Sarah, have a provocative conversation several times on July 1, and have sex on the evening of June 30 at least once, too. (We see explicit movements and the like, though the scene contains no nudity.) In one timeline, Sarah gets pregnant, and she and George marry. In another, she leaves him. In every timeline we’re privy to, another man has his eyes on her and sometimes does his best to encourage a breakup.
We hear dire warnings of how difficult it is, relationally, to time travel—including the toll it takes on relationships. “Not many happy marriages in Lazarus,” someone says to George.
A shootout leads to several fatalities. A man gets shot in the head, and we see the bloodied body in the street. Police cars crash with extraordinary force, presumably leading to some serious injury for those inside. Someone is hit by a dump truck.
A nuclear bomb goes off in one timeline. In several others, a massive pandemic kills millions. (News reports in Britain say that anywhere from 1,800 to 2,000 people are dying a day.) We see numerous sick people and an overflowing hospital. We hear about other world-ending events that the Lazarus Project reversed.
When members of the Lazarus Project save the world, they traditionally celebrate with “two-for-one cocktails and karaoke.” (We see a few tipsy associates belt out songs.) Characters drink wine, martinis and champagne. George knowingly gives a bit of terrible investing advice to the man who has a crush on his girlfriend/wife; the man subsequently loses much of his savings.
We hear the f-word at least a dozen times, twice paired with Jesus’ name. The s-word is uttered five times. There’s a use of “h—,” along with British profanities such as “bloody and “b-llocks.” We also hear repeated crude references to someone’s breasts. There’s an insinuation that George could stand to brush his teeth.
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.
‘Wizards Beyond Waverly Place’ is a fitting sequel series to Disney’s ‘Wizards of Waverly Place.’ And that can be a good or a bad thing.
Shape Island may charm little viewers and won’t bend their parents out of shape. But the show can also feel surprisingly flat.
Max’s newest release, Task, takes audiences to task with a slow-burn storyline involving graphic violence, nudity and crude language.
It’s fun, but the show is guilty of lack of restraint in the second degree—a senseless crime if ever there was one.
