Jupiter's Legacy S01- A review
The first Millarworld series is on Netflix and it looks glorious.
Credits: Steve Wilkie/Netflix
Jupiter’s Legacy is out on Netflix today and the show, just like the comic book series by Mark Millar and Frank Quitely is focused on the generational struggle and divide within the Union of Justice, and especially between its leader, the Utopian, played by Josh Duhamel and his son, Brandon, the Paragon, played by Andrew Horton in the series. Brandon’s main desire is to impress his father and to be worthy of his incredible legacy.
Brandon’s sister Chloe (played by Elena Kampouris) has an estranged relationship with the family and especially with her father, rejecting the whole concept of power and responsibility and seeing it as nothing more than an accident of birth, and not a good one.
As Mark Millar pointed out in an interview by Hanna Flint, published in the Guardian, there is a central question in the series and it is “What if Superman was your dad?”.
This question pushes parents’ expectations to a new level and, if you add on top of that, the fact that your mum is Wonder Woman, or specifically Miss Liberty, Grace Sampson, played by Leslie Bibb, well, you have all the ingredients for a complicated upbringing.
Then there is also the other prominent member of the Sampson family, Walter Sampson a.k.a Brainwave, Sheldon’s older brother, gifted with incredible telepathic powers, and genius-level intellect, the brain and the “Batman” of the trio.
Brainwave is played by English actor Ben Daniels, which we have previously seen on Netflix in the third season of The Crown, where he played the role of Anthony Armstrong Jones, Princess Margaret’s husband and 1st Earl of Snowdon.
The first season of the show shifts between the current timeline, which sees the “trinity” composed by the Utopian, Miss Liberty and Brainwave in their grey days and the time of the Great Depression, when this trinity and the rest of the first incarnation of the Union acquired their incredible powers.
Credits: Steve Wilkie/Netflix
The effects that the Great Depression had on the American working class are shown, alongside the widespread desperation in the society. When Sheldon, Grace, Walter, George (Sheldon’s playboy millionaire best friend played by Matt Lanter), Richard (David Julian Hirsh), a neonatal surgeon and finally Fitz (Mark Wade) acquired their powers, they were then hailed as heroes in their homeland and “helped America through the Great Depression, World War II, conflicts, scandals, and anything that was thrown at us.”
Decades later, the United States and the world are quite different. The current state of affairs is not yet explored in detail in this season, but there are references to the rise of the alt-right, political polarisation and rising inequality, a context that sounds all too familiar. The comic book series was published after the Great Recession and the impact of Lehman Brothers’ collapse and the show comes at a time of initial recovery from the crisis caused by the global pandemic. Millar’s work is as political and punctual as ever.
While the Utopian was not stuck in ice for decades, like Captain America, his outlook on the world did not change; he constantly refers to the Code, a series of practices that superheroes need to follow in order to distinguish themselves from supervillains.
Even if supervillains are trying to change the rules of the game, the Utopian does not see the need to update these values, while his wife Grace and brother Walter understand that at least a conversation on this front would be needed.
The other central question of the series could be put down as it follows “ If you have great powers and responsibilities, should not you do more to change the world for the better?”
Credits: Steve Wilkie/Netflix
In the present day, we can also find the successor to the mantle of Flare, Petra Small (Tenika Davis) who walks in the shoes of her father Fiz and Hutch Hutchens (Ian Quinlan), the only known son of George “Skyfox” Hutchens, the former best friend of Sheldon whose betrayal keeps on haunting him.
Credits: Steve Wilkie/Netflix
Credits: Steve Wilkie/Netflix
Credits: Steve Wilkie/Netflix
The work of Mark Millar has influenced the superhero cinema genre in an incredible and groundbreaking way, from the Ultimates and Civil War with the MCU’s Avengers to Old Man Logan’s with Fox’s Logan.
Now that the MCU has joined the world of series with WandaVision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier and that Amazon Prime has Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s The Boys and Robert Kirkman’s Invincible, Netflix is giving us our first taste of the Millarworld, and, personally, I am looking forward to seeing more of it.
Good for your eyes, good for your ears….some tips from me
‘I seek a kind person’: the Guardian ad that saved my Jewish father from the Nazis: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/may/06/guardian-200-ad-that-saved-jewish-father-from-nazis/ / Guardian Today in Focus: https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2021/may/06/how-jewish-parents-used-guardian-ads-to-save-their-childrens-lives-podcast
Am I British? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000vsrz
How Scottish independence stopped being scary: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/how-scottish-independence-stopped-being-scary/
The Battle for Hartlepool: Is Labour heading for disaster? https://www.owenjones.tv/video/the-battle-for-hartlepool-is-labour-heading-for-disaster/
Emma Dabiri: Marches and Instagram campaign won’t stop racism, we need to talk about class: https://www.standard.co.uk/insider/emma-dabiri-racism-white-ally-instagram-black-lives-matter-b932098.html
This is all for now, thanks for reading, please SHARE-LIKE-SUBSCRIBE and, if you have any feedback, my e-mail address is angeloboccatonews@gmail.com.