For a service that seemingly built its brand on catering to what audiences proved they wanted, Netflix has a surprising number of fan-favorite skeletons in its closet. When looking at their mass grave, the one that hurts the most was their burying of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, the prequel show to Jim Henson‘s cult classic film, The Dark Crystal. It was a visually sprawling yet narratively tight epic that made the world of Thra feel more alive than ever before and could have been Netflix’s version of a Game of Thrones-type franchise, were it not for the harsh realities of getting the show made.
How Does ‘Age of Resistance’ Build Off ‘The Dark Crystal?’
Set some time before the film, the series follows three different protagonists as they all embark on their own journeys in the mystical world of Thra. The world is ruled by the Skeksis, large vulture-looking aliens who are essentially evil incarnate. Rian (Taron Egerton) is on a quest for revenge against the Skeksis after witnessing them use their all-powerful Crystal of Truth to kill his partner, Mira (Alicia Vikander), by draining her of her life essence, which the Skeksis plan on using to extend their lifespan for ultimate power. Brea (Anya Taylor-Joy) is a princess who finds a symbol in her castle that she feels she must investigate after becoming suspicious of how much fealty her family shows to the Skesis. Deet (Nathalie Emmanuel) is a member of an underground clan and is specifically chosen by the Sanctuary Tree to save Thra from the Crystal’s inevitable corruption of the world with its dark energy. She must prove herself as more capable than she ever thought possible. The winding paths these three take will show them vastly different sections of the world, allowing each to uncover new secrets and learn more about the history of the places they thought they knew.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes What Fantasy World Do You Belong To? Middle-earth · Grand Line · The Continent · Camp Half-Blood
Pick your magic, your crew, where you want to wake up and who you would rather be fighting, and we will tell you which world you actually belong in. Four are open to you: an ancient kingdom living through its last good age, an endless sea full of pirates, a continent that pays people to kill monsters, and a summer camp where the Greek gods are extremely real and mostly a nuisance.
💍Middle-earth(Rings of Power)
👒Grand Line(One Piece)
🐺The Continent(The Witcher)
🔱Camp Half-Blood(Percy Jackson)
01
What kind of power do you want? Every one of these worlds runs on a completely different sort of magic.
02
Who is travelling with you? Nobody gets through any of these stories entirely on their own.
03
Where do you want to wake up tomorrow? The best fantasy is usually just somewhere you would genuinely like to live.
04
How are you making a living out there? Even in fantasy somebody has to pay for the horse.
05
There is something in the woods. What do you do about it? All four of these worlds keep something unpleasant out there in the dark.
06
Who is the villain of your story? The enemy tells you far more about a world than the hero ever does.
07
What do you actually believe in out there? Every world hands its heroes one rule and asks them to hold onto it.
08
A thousand years from now, how are you remembered? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your world.
The Map Is Drawn Your World Is…
Four worlds and four completely different ideas of what a good life
looks like. This is where you belong, what it would ask of you, and what you would get back in
return.
The Rings of Power · Prime Video · Since 2022
Middle-earth
You belong somewhere old enough that the mountains have names and
somebody can still tell you who gave them. Middle-earth is for people who think the right
thing is worth doing even when it will not be finished in their lifetime.
This is the only world on the list where doing good is understood as a very long defeat,
fought anyway, by people who will never see how it ends.
You are drawn to grandeur, to white cities and deep forges and the sense that almost
everything you touch is older than your entire family line.
The Rings of Power is set in the last good age before it all goes wrong, which gives
every quiet scene in it a slightly unbearable weight.
You would take the hard road, and you would take it on foot.
One Piece · Manga since 1997 · Netflix 2023
The Grand Line
You want the sea, a crew, and absolutely nobody telling you where
you are allowed to go. The Grand Line is the world for people whose main ambition in life is
finding out what is over there.
One Piece has run for decades on one very simple engine, which is a group of people who
each want something impossible and have decided to go and get it together.
You collect people. Your ideal crew is a set of misfits who were each written off
somewhere else before you turned up and offered them a better idea.
The world is enormous and deliberately ridiculous, and the emotional gut punches land
harder because of that rather than in spite of it.
You would set sail knowing the map runs out, which is more or less the entire point of
it.
The Witcher · Netflix · Since 2019
The Continent
You would rather be feared and useful than liked and useless. The
Continent is a world where the monsters are the straightforward part of the job and the
people are where it all gets complicated.
Witchers get paid to do what nobody else will and resented for existing at all, which is
a trade most people would refuse and you would probably accept.
You have no real illusions about which side is the good one, largely because on the
Continent that question tends to have a disappointing answer.
The best of these stories are not about the fighting. They are about somebody with a
rigid code being repeatedly cornered into caring about people.
You would take the coin, finish the job properly, and be out of town before the story
got told wrong.
Percy Jackson · Disney+ · Since 2023
Camp Half-Blood
You want the myths to be real and loose in the actual world, and
you want to find out at about thirteen that you were never anywhere near as ordinary as
everybody kept telling you.
Percy Jackson takes the oldest stories we have and drops them into car parks and diners,
which makes the gods considerably funnier and a great deal worse.
You would be the kid every school gave up on, who turns out to have been built for
something nobody thought to test for.
The series is genuinely about friendship rather than destiny, and it says so out loud
every time a prophecy tries to get in the way.
Camp Half-Blood is the real fantasy here: a place where the thing that made you
difficult everywhere else is the thing that makes you belong.
The Special Effects and All-Star Cast Bring the World to Life
Deet on an adventure in The Dark Crystal Age of ResistanceImage via Netflix
Following in the spirit of its predecessor film, Age of Resistance brings all of its characters and creatures to life through the handcrafted muppets of the Jim Henson Creature Shop, each minutely detailed and expertly manipulated to feel full of life by their puppeteers. While the series benefits from extensive CGI, mostly for green-screen environments and touching up the characters, along with removing the wires and human operators, the bulk of the characters’ interactions are fully in-camera. Watching the show feels like the pinnacle of the magic that Jim Henson pursued his whole career, where the “special effects” that were the Muppets become so integrated into the real world that you forget they’re not humans. The effect is elevated by how textured Thra feels in its world design. If The Dark Crystal is a lovingly illustrated and cozy storybook, then Age of Resistance is an Avatar-esque thrill ride that gets your blood pumping and gives you the childish sense of wonder you thought you’d lost long ago.
The series also employs a cast that crosses every age and demographic range, proving how much everybody secretly wants to be a muppet. Alongside our main gelflings played by Egerton, Taylor-Joy, and Emmanuel, key supporting gelflings include the likes of Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Caitriona Balfe, Mark Strong, and Helena Bonham Carter. For the comic relief Skeksis, the show cast talented comedic actors like Awkwafina, Keegan-Michael Key, and Simon Pegg. It makes no sense how a prequel series for a cult film from the ’80s could pull such a jam-packed cast of top-tier talent, but that is the magic of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. It’s a miracle that the actors are all so funny, so earnest, and so gross without ever condescending to the traditional fairy tale material. The price for that miracle may have been too high, however, as it wasn’t enough to save the show from an ignominious demise.
Netflix Cancelled ‘Age of Resistance’ at the Peak of Its Success
The show officially aired on August 30, 2019, where it was met with rave reviews from critics and presumably a healthy viewership (Netflix didn’t release their viewer numbers at the time). The show’s creators were quoted saying they had multiple seasons’ worth of ideas and had a clear ending in mind that would “talk” to the original film. On September 19, 2020, it won the Emmy for Outstanding Children’s Program, and then the very next day, Netflix announced it was officially cancelled. While Netflix didn’t specify why they cancelled it, it was public knowledge that they always compared the cost of a show to how many people watched it and how many new subscribers came over after a show premiered. Since the show cost about $98 million, it’s plausible the show was too costly for Netflix to justify it.
Even if it brought Netflix a bona fide hit that gave them their much-desired mainstream accolades, the numbers seemingly didn’t make enough sense to justify a second season, which is a shame. It can’t be denied that the budget would have always been a problem, especially if Netflix allowed the Henson Company to make the show the way they had made Season 1. But it’s a risk they should have taken, given the prequel nature of the material and the fact the show had more seasons already planned; they had so much runway to use before being obligated to end the show when it caught up with the original film. The fans of this beloved world ended up losing, and the world was denied the truth about how to prevent it from succumbing to darkness. Maybe we’ll be luckier in another world, in another time.
The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance is available on Netflix in the U.S.
