Netflix horror-fantasy Locke & Key soars right over the sophomore season slump
Locke & Key’s second season has more solid scares than a Disney Channel movie, but fewer than Stranger Things
TV Reviews Locke
Based on a series of graphic novels and overseen by Lost’s Carlton Cuse, Netflix’s Locke & Key is an ideal horror-ish series for tweens and their parents. With more solid scares than a Disney Channel movie, but falling short of Stranger Things, the series nestles into the Halloween month sweet spot between comforting and unsettling.
Season two upholds the high bar set by the series’ debut, in which the grieving Locke family—mother Nina (Darby Stanchfield), older son Tyler (Connor Jessup), daughter Kinsey (Emilia Jones), and young Bode (Jackson Robert Scott)—move to a small town in Massachusetts after the death of the family patriarch. The kids discover a series of magical keys in their giant new ancestral home, the appropriately named Keyhouse. Unfortunately, those keys come with an evil Big Bad named Dodge, who was once their dad’s friend, but has now been infected by the magical underground force that’s now guarded by the Omega Door. (Yes, that sentence sounds like a mad-lib for “horror-fantasy kids’ series.”)
So much happened in the first season, in fact, that the second takes some reconnecting and settling into, as the viewer slowly remembers what the “anywhere key” and the “ghost key” are. When we last left them, the Lockes and their friends thought they were expelling Dodge into the land beyond the Omega Door, but ended up getting rid of their dad’s old friend Ellie instead. As season two dawns, Dodge has taken the form of Kinsey’s boyfriend Gabe (Griffin Gluck), who has former mean girl Eden (Hallea Jones), now possessed by a demon, as a sidekick. Meanwhile, the kids’ beloved uncle Duncan (Aaron Ashmore) is having strange memory problems, and there’s a giant rat skull in the attic.
Locke & Key’s excellent cast established credible sibling chemistry in season one. The new season benefits greatly from Griffin Gluck’s performance as Gabe/Dodge, the new, duplicitous Big Bad, who can switch from besotted teenager to cold, calculating evil incarnate in a heartbeat. Part of the stoked suspense of the season is just watching the Lockes unknowingly hang around with such a monster, who is savvy enough to use their own keys against them. Hallea Jones’ Eden is a bit less thoughtful, a bit more bloodthirsty, which makes her demon responsible for some of the season’s most gruesome scenes. But there’s a sly sense of humor in recasting Eden as a demon; she wasn’t exactly the nicest person pre-transformation, so no one really notices much of a difference in her new demonic behavior.
Thanks to this pair of treasonous teenagers, Locke & Key deftly avoids the sophomore season slump, and actually builds on the suspense attached to the potential and menace in Keyhouse. The season only falters when it swerves into two unfortunate subplots. One involves the creation of the Omega Door itself, flashing back to the Lockes’ colonial blacksmithing ancestors (a fortunate talent to have if you’re looking to make magical keys).
Turns out the mystical force was first discovered in a showdown between the Lockes and the British Redcoats, to indicate how this good vs. evil clash first kicked off. It’s likely that the story would work just as well without this backstory explanation (it did in season one), so while these flashbacks to the 1770s aren’t jarring, exactly, they’re just not as compelling as the main narrative.
Much worse is the series’ decision to create a love interest for the Lockes’ now widowed mom, Nina. Darby Stanchfield did an admirable job last season as Nina wrestled with a drinking problem, understandable as her husband had been murdered and her kids had discovered a strange magical treasure trove. (This season underlines a premise that adults are destined to forget all about the magic, which is both convenient and clumsy.)
But in season two, Nina has a bickering meet-uncute with Josh (Brendan Hines), the new professor at the local high school, so it’s painfully obvious that the two are destined to get together. Unfortunately, their chemistry is mawkish at best, so the series’ impressive energy screeches to a halt whenever it wastes valuable screen time on the Nina-Josh relationship. The will-they/won’t-they pull between high-schoolers Kinsey and aspiring director Scot (Petrice Jones) is much more effective.
The best thing about Josh (outside of him having a cute daughter friend for Bode) is that he happens to possess a dollhouse-sized version of Keyhouse itself. Thanks to a miniature key that Bode finds, what happens in the dollhouse version also happens in the supersized real-life version of the house—which is great if you add a gummy bear to a dollhouse bedroom, not so great if a spider shows up. These kind of inspired action sequences show off what Locke & Key does so well, as you’re not likely to find them in most other tween series. And the show’s strong foundation of young actors and their burgeoning relationships maintain interest even when demons aren’t flooding the screen.
Locke & Key’s second season proves the show can reach greater, spookier heights as long it keeps the focus where it belongs: on the kids.
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lunenburg nova scotia represent!also, I really enjoyed season one, it was cheesy but fun and the cast is really good, so I’m excited for this!
Came here to ask if “Massachusetts” is any less obviously Canada in this season. Last season the failure of anyone to even attempt the correct accent took me out of the show, as well as the sloppiness of plot points unlikely to happen in Massachusetts, like a 19 year old walking into the liquor store and legally purchasing booze.
Absolutely not! The thickness of the Canadian accents is on full display this season, to a ridiculously entertaining degree (at least to me).
Why do they always gotta fuck with the story of the source material. Already compartmentalized into episodes? This was a story about teens… But not a YA story Is it too much to askto just let the series play out like it did in the books? Yeah it is? …Shit.
I didn’t think the first season had too much YA teen drama bullshit.
Too much since there was really none in the source material. This adaptation is CW level hot garbage. I didn’t like the first series, and I HOPED it would improve and hew closer to the comic… but no.
Re: Carlton Cuse, part of the J.J. Abrams gang. Expectation realized.
Eh I didn’t read the original comic so I don’t have anything to compare it with except the regular CW shows, which have WAY more teen drama bullshit.
Which part are your specifically angry about? Because the only “new” thing that pops out to me is the Nina/Josh thing. I very much remember them discussing the colonial blacksmith, and was in the key notes.Same with Scot and Kinsley’s romance, same with Dodge and Kinsley… So… what part are you saying “fucks with the source material” that makes you angry?
Not angry….. disappointed
So, I ask again, what are you disappointed in? Most of the teen drama/YA stuff that’s going on in the show, happened in the comic.
The showrunners wanted a season long arc where none existed in the source material and didn’t do it very well. The pacing and some of the character decisions made no sense on the tv series. I can’t really site any examples, I just found it frustrating. I was even more annoyed after I read the first graphic novel and found it was told in a more disconnected episodic format; the Dodge story didn’t stretch over the entire volume.
Well, in all fairness, the comic is laid out in a very odd way bouncing around in time and stuff as the volumes continue. Did you read the whole story? Because there is “seasonal” arcs in the comics… and Dodge’s story stretches the whole run.
It is nothing like the comic except in name and concept. Characterizations differ, story lines are significantly different, different plotlines, plot holes…
Everything in the show is either dumbed down or YAed up compared to the comic.Examples:They really missed the cruelty of the demons.If the Omega key is necessary to open the portal, how is Ellie able to push it open?For that matter, how is Ellie uninfected after spending time over there?The mom’s alcoholism is way more problematic in the comic, in the show it’s handled by a Very Special Episode.Ditto for everyone’s survivor’s guilt.Erin Voss got trapped in her head because a cleaning lady shook her shoulder and the key fell out. What, nobody else who knew keys was left? This was unexplained.etcetcetc
So most of your complaints about it basically boil down to things you find as plot holes in the show? Let me see if I can try to explain those away for you.Demons: agree, the demons haven’t really been used properly yet. But I think season 2 definitely made them more imposing since they actually got to kill people.Omega Key: Eden and the Teacher went down there and were trying to open the door, when the cave started to collapse, the door wasn’t fully opened or closed, so Ellie was able to use a small opening to get through. Which she closed behind her.Ellie: We don’t really know that Ellie was “unaffected” by her time over there, but as far as being possessed by demons. I would assume the demons have no use for Ellie if she’s in their world, because when the door opens they need a human host to infect so they can sustain themselves over in our world. There’s no need to possess Ellie since she wasn’t in our world at the time. (But my guess is next season we’re going to find that she was infected somehow or something happened to her over there)Drinking/Survivor Guilt: I disagree personally about this point. People process things differently and to judge that they aren’t grieving or reacting the way you’d expect is kind of a shitty thing to do to a person in real life, so not sure why it’d be any different in a show. Not to mention, Nina was shown struggling throughout the seasons, it’s not a Very Special Episode… if you pay attention, when Nina and the Teacher are getting close, they do discuss it. And again when the teacher is talking about why he’s looking for the portal and his wife, Nina brings it up when she was talking about Randell.Erin Voss: This happened roughly the same way in the comics. She was trapped in her own mind because Dodge used the head key on her, and it wasn’t until the Lockes saved her and replaced all her memories, that she was able to come “back”.Keys: You forget about the Rifle Rule… where once you become an “adult” you forget magic. When the head key was used on Erin, it was right after the performance of Randell and them doing the Tempest, right when they were starting to lose their memories. Not to mention, there’s so many keys out there that are constantly changing hands, it’s kinda tough to keep track of them all.I mean, the Lockes know about the Echo Key, but they have yet to even try to look for it, even though Lucas would know where it is. The Lockes lost the Anywhere key and immediately stopped looking for it (even though it’s caused them the most issues, Identity Key aside)
Thanks, but I still have to disagree on some of these. First, looking back, I realized I pointed out particular issues, but the overarching problem, that doesn’t fit neatly into bullet points, is the tone. It doesn’t match the tone of the comics, and suffers in comparison. I really wanted to like Locke and Key, but the TV show just isn’t as good.Now the bullet points:Omega Key: As a magic key built to lock the portal shut, you wouldn’t think a simple cave-in could bypass it. And if it did, doesn’t that mean the lock for the Omega key was broken, and thus the Omega key is now useless? (It might not be TV canon, but in the comics, the omega door can be opened with a normal key, but it just leads to a boring storage cave in that case.)Ellie: Let’s say the demons don’t need her in the portal. Did none of them notice she was escaping? That’s prime possession time! Also, indifferent demons doesn’t sound very demonic.
Drinking/Survivor Guilt: I agree that people process differently, but that’s not my complaint. The comics gives her alcoholism much more heft and depth than the TV show (she’s a drunken, dysfunctional mess). If that were the only change, it wouldn’t be such a big deal (like the choice to merge the characters of Jamal and Scot to cut down on the number of Kinsey’s suitors), but it’s again, another instance of watering down stronger, darker source material. (And what’s crazy is the original comic is already pretty well-suited for YA, it didn’t need this.)
Erin Voss: Timing-wise, if Erin was the last around, what you say makes sense, but if so, I must have missed that part (assuming they stated it). Even still, Dodge cruelly trapping Erin in her own head in the comics is way better than “oops, the key fell out”.This doesn’t even go into all the other silly issues:Why is Dodge in love/infatuated/whatever with Kinsey at all? This is YA/Twilight nonsense.Erin deciding to confront Dodge alone is dumb. Her lying about the Chain key is dumb. Does she not know about Eden? Did she not have a plan for Eden? Even if she caught Dodge, that might have tipped Eden off. For that matter, the maze didn’t seem that large in the overhead shot, being uninterrupted seems pretty unlikely. Confronting him alone is a horror-movie cliche.
Why do the demons ever appear demonic? They’re so much scarier looking like you and I.
Why does Gideon walk up to the portal and stretch his arms out? He can’t possibly be welcoming demons.
Eden’s mother adds what to the story? And as many commenters pointed out, the mom/teacher romance is completely irrelevant.There is one thing I think works better than the comics: the depiction of memory using the Head Key as a place you go into. Even if it was just for VFX budget reasons, it works, and as we see when they go into Eden’s head, it can be pretty cool.
I understand your complaints, I do. But I think you’re judging the entirety of Locke and Key (the show) on the entirety of Locke and Key (the book). Most of the book had smaller scarier moments. Especially because they were broken up into actual comics (or volumes depending on how you consumed it). And a ton of YA moments in the comic were actually cut out of the show. But again, I understand your complaint.A lot of the complaints about the bullet points are things we can’t know right now because we don’t know where they are going with the show.But bullet points:Omega Key: In the comics the door is made irrelevant because of a cave in. This is mostly because nobody is able to get into the key, thus no body for demons to take control of.Ellie: Again, we only saw her come out, it’s very possible she was turned into a demon either before she came through or after. Anything is currently possible. So passing judgement is a bit premature.Drinking: In the comics, it’s given an “extra special” comic… but it’s also something that wafts in and out. I wouldn’t be surprised, now that Nina knows about magic, that it’s going to help her not drink…. I’m pretty positive once she realizes the darkness that comes with magic (specifically that magic killed her husband). It’s going to come back.Erin: deciding to confront Dodge made sense to her, she didn’t know about Eden, so she thought she had the upper hand.Demons: Why would they appear demonic unless they have a reason to? They are trying to stay under the radar, and hiding your true face makes the most sense.Gideon/Eden’s Mom: Again, we can’t really know anything about that yet as they were teased more than anything. I’m sure when season 3 comes, they will be larger parts. My guess is Eden’s mom will hook up somehow with Gideon and take Eden’s place as a demon.But we’ll see when the next season comes out.
I don’t know, never read the GNs but there is a lot stupid (even for teens) drama and dumb bs. It started like the first episode, but then it got boring as hell, with the occasional, ok moment. Otherwise this season was Meh.
Remember, kids! Being possessed by demons and threatening people with violence and death is perfectly OKAY to watch. But no sex stuff. That’s BAD.
Tyler unknowingly had sex with Dodge last season. What are you mad about again? Not enough teen sex stuff?
…you do realize this is a show based on a comic book, right? Joe Hill wrote it. You know, the son of Stephen King? I understand there are massive changes to the source material, but the keys’ magic only working for kids – and the adults forgetting the keys entirely – is one of the biggest plot points in the comics. To change that would be to fundamentally change the show for the worse. But sure, let’s call it “convenient and clumsy”. Ffs…
Curious where the second season ends, in the big picture plot. Since many scenes I’ve seen in the trailer looked like they’re adapted straight out of the later books.
This show is bad…All people involved should be ashamed
I was VERY disappointed in this season.
– The woman who plays Dodge is hardly in it, which was really disappointing. Especially considering I felt that she was the stand out star of last season.
– Most of the season felt like a setup for the last 2-3 episodes
– Eden was massively underutilized.
– What was even the point of Josh Bennett?
– I disliked the character of Scot. He didn’t feel like a LI for Kinsey, she felt like an LI for him.
Let’s talk about the female characters for one second:
– Dodge: Existed for only a few moments throughout the entire series. Other than that was in the form of Gabe. It’s like they were afraid to have her as Dodge having emotional feelings for Kinsey.
– Jackie: Existed as angst for Tyler, and then killed in a moment to give him pathos.
– Nina: Constantly gaslit. Not in control of her own story.
– Erin: Eh, I’m not too upset with her storyline. She took her own destiny into her hands. She died, but it was basically on her terms.
– Eden: Sidekick to Gabe. Unceremoniously killed at the end to serve as a vehicle for the new villain.
– Kinsey: Says she’s in love with Gabe. Almost immediately wanting to get back together with Scot. If they had cut Scot, and had Kinsey overcome Gabe on her own, it would have felt like she had come to an emotional self-actualization. Now it feels like she got rid of Gabe to be with Scot.
Killing off Jackie (and then half the town) felt almost cringeworthy. None of it felt unavoidable, and the so called protagonists seemed almost unconcerned by it, or even their part in it.
C’mon man, mark your thread as a spoiler before going into details.
But do the kids continue to constantly do the most boneheaded thing possible to move the plot forward? S1 one felt like everything was rooted in plot, not character.
Yes they do. The series should have ended with this season, but of course it won’t.
Not just the kids. Everyone does very stupid things and there are more than a few points that don’t make sense.“Early Spoiler Warning”For example: A ghost is planning a move on the bad guy, but telegraphs this by constantly looking over said bad guy’s shoulder giving away the plan.
“End spoiler”
Like wtf… It was so dumb. I don’t really ask for much, but you have to have that little “Suspension of Disbelief”. Something like that would be acceptable for like a live play, where people a hundred feet away aren’t going to see a sweat drip, or a shift of the eyes, but this is a tv show.Lots and lots of dumb stuff.
I wonder if it was Netflix’s directive to water this series down for younger audiences… The first season was watchable but never grabbed me like the books, and this review placing it as having less solid scares than Stranger Things helped articulate some of my issues with it. The books aren’t all grim horror all the time, but the stuff that IS there is generally darker and scarier than something like Stranger Things. Season 1 just never felt dangerous or intense. Some of that might also be the difference between seeing the story drawn in a specific artistic style in the comics vs. filmed like a generic TV show.
This is one of the rare times I hope for a movie series or a new series. They come pretty quickly now, so maybe in ten years, some competent non-Abrams related producer will make a good adaptation.
Eden: Okay, that’s gotta be done by nowGabe: Chamberlin said the iron had to be free of impurities.Nope. No he didn’t. The scene played out less than an hour ago. He said NOTHING about impurities in the iron. He talked only of intention, and a drop of your blood.
STUPID SHOW!
As someone who didn’t read the source material, but did watch season 1:I’ll probably get around to watching this soon, but I’m a little hesitant. The visuals and concepts in S1 were really cool, but this show did the same “characters make ridiculously stupid choices that make no sense and do things that nobody should ever, ever do” stuff that happens in so many other shows/movies. I get that Kinsey removed her fear from her brain early in S1 so that kind of explains some of the stuff she did, but there were other things that still made no sense, even with that (I’m having a hard time remembering what exactly, but something about an awful “prank” that she pulled on Eden comes time mind. I don’t even remember what it was, just that it seemed really ‘off’).
Hey ALL,
Specifically for those that read the books. Can you help me to understand a few things. Various Spoilers will follow.Can anyone explain to me like, WTF, so many things?A big thing is the rarity of the “Whisper Metal”. Why didn’t they just take one of the multiple pieces they had and put it in the model house? Hell, why didn’t they get a gold ring, and do the same thing?Why are they telling everyone about the keys but making no attempt to fill in their mom, who is obviously suffering from her alcoholism and thinking she is going nuts? especially once they got the memory key?Why aren’t they visiting the old man ghost?Why does dodge have a hard on for Kinsey? Was that there the first season and I missed it?There was only an elevator to the vault. Why didn’t they hit the emergency stop button all elevator have in them?Once the adults got their memory back, shouldn’t they have, you know, been adults and start working with the kids so they didn’t do all the stupid shit they did.What was the point of Kinsey going in to fight Dodge? That was some grade AA stupid on Stupid.
Honestly, why didn’t all the kids die? The way this series is going, that would have been better.
I honestly really should have reread the entire plot of the first season because they were referring to things from season one throughout and I barely remembered shit.*Spoilers*
I agree with both sides in this. This season was both bad and good dumb and clever. The story with the mom’s love life was just from a completely different show…I was also kind of disappointed that she didn’t date Mutuku instead of coming up with Professor Whiteguy. Explaining that Gabe is still Gabe and that’s why he is in love with Kinsey was a good explanation, they should have put it earlier in the season. The Lockes completely forget about the ghost key, Bode never tells Kinsey her bf has been hanging around the house, in the final fight with the house falling Kinsey puts on the shadow crown and it is knocked off one second later…if she stood on the parapet or made the conversation one second longer the guys would have made it into the elevator…this is all standard plotting because they can’t find out Gabe is Dodge too soon but they needed to cover their tracks better, it was fucking lazy!I have never been a Kevin Durand fan, LOST, but his performance in this show so far is sub-dinner theater. I know they will bring Lodge back AGAIN somehow but I’m not super optimistic.
This show is a struggle. It has everything I would like but the characterisations and the acting are everything but natural. I am trying to put my mind in the same space as Gwen to understand how she believed the acting and the characters, but I cannot. It is a series that is uncomfortable to watch because I don’t like anyone, and this makes me see double the plot holes I usually see on a normal story.I love the setup though. But oh the characters. Specifically: the kid. The kids. And I have never had problems with kids in movies, even loving the ones in Jurassic Park.