Blood of Zeus
“A Champion's Challenge”, Season 3 Episode 8
What do I know about this series going into it?
Never heard of it. From the thumbnail and an unavoidable glimpse at the description it’s a gory animated show. Assuming it’s about Greek mythology, I’m somewhat familiar with it - though I’ve forgotten a lot since I was obsessed with it as a child.
Recap
A dark elf stands at a parapet, staring at a gargoyle on the ground below. He’s about to jump, but a man grabs his arm. “You can’t trust Cronos”, his friend says, calling the elf “Seraphim”. It’s not clear what the elf wants to do, or why jumping involves trusting Cronos, but whatever it is, it involves rescuing “her” - namely, a woman being held by Cronos’s henchmen.
As they debate it, Seraphim’s brother nods to another woman on the parapet. She nods back. He nods to her again. She, or possibly another woman, nods back. There’s a lot of nodding going on.
The woman who runs things on the parapet calls out to Cronos: Let’s settle this using the old ways: a contest of champions. Unusually, this isn’t a duel; it’s a two-on-two. If we win, Cronos needs to go away; if we lose, we’ll hand over “the torch” that Cronos seeks.
Cronos asks why he would ever agree to such a thing, but then agrees anyway. His excuse: he wants to rub it in Zeus’s face that he killed his son.
Cronos selects Typhon as his partner, and mocks the two opposing him for thinking demigods can defeat Titans. So - assuming Seraphim and his brother are the champions under discussion - the brother is probably Heracles, but that might be too obvious.
One of the women on the parapet takes Seraphim’s brother aside and apologizes for the fact that he is about to die. She had cut his thread - so she’s one of the Fates - because (at the time) she wanted to hurt Zeus. That means Maybe-Heracles will die soon. But it’s not irreversible! You can “change your mind” and the fates will weave the thread back together, enabling you to live a long life of happiness. She volunteers to replace him as champion in the fight if he decides this is what he wants. However, he declines the offer.1
After she leaves, another woman takes Maybe-Heracles aside. This one is an Amazonian, who is sworn never to be with a man - and yet she loves him. She cannot break her oath, and he cannot ask her to, but she agrees to be his shield-bearer in the fight.
The next day they meet Cronos and Typhon on the field of battle. The Amazonian introduces herself as Alexia, Seraphim as a half-giant, and Seraphim’s brother as Heron (so he’s not Heracles after all).
A random guy shows up and says he will be their shield-bearer too.
Cronos mocks them: As Titans, we don’t need shields or shield-bearers.
The fight begins. Heron’s magic sword charges up with lightning, as do his eyes. Seraphim spins his spear to create a windstorm. Neither seem to affect the Titans in the least. And I don’t mean they aren’t hurt; I mean they don’t even seem to notice.
Typhon breathes fire, and the good guys dodge. Heron tosses his sword to Seraphim, who uses it to slice Typhon’s leg.
Cronos impatiently shouts, “Enough!”2 He starts punching Heron over and over again, while Typhon breathes fire at Seraphim. The two of them are tossed around the battlefield like ragdolls - but there’s very little sense of them actually being damaged.
They take cover, and Seraphim asks if Heron has any ideas. He says “Maybe”, which is odd because in the discussion after the challenge was issued they mentioned several times that they had a plan. Was the plan just to swing your sword at them and hope Heron gives Seraphim his sword, over Seraphim’s objections, and steps out to face Typhon alone. Typhon breathes fire at him, but Heron reaches his hand out to to zap lightning at the fire, neutralizing it (?).
Meanwhile Seraphim connects the sword to his spear and does acrobatic leaps all over the place, wounding Cronos in the face.
As Typhon and Heron stand there, their energy beams of equal strength, we flash back to the beginning of the episode, when they mention they have a plan. Heron then implements the plan: he stops firing lightning and deliberately lets the flame wash over him. This is followed by flashbacks to the rest of the series, and Heron gives a voiceover about how you take love with you even into death. He runs forward through the flame, having focused his lightning into a protective ball around him rather than forward as a shield, and leaps into Typhon’s mouth. He explodes in lightning, dead - and Typhon’s head is blown off.
Cronos cannot believe that his (friend? brother?) is dead, and stops holding back. He throws Seraphim into a cliff face and punches him over and over.
But then somebody else flies down from above and attacks Cronos with electricity. I assume this is Zeus, but it doesn’t strictly matter, because hordes of other people show up: Atlanteans and monsters and gods, all teaming up to take Cronos down.
With Cronos on the ground, Probably-Zeus takes the time to explain how they defeated him. During the battle, Demeter stole Cronos’s bident when he wasn’t looking, replacing it with another. She gave the real one to Hermes, who ran to the underworld and used it to free the imprisoned gods.
But even though Cronos stopped fighting to patiently3 listen to the explanation, he still refuses to yield. So they attack him more, and eventually Seraphim throws his spear into Cronos’s forehead, killing him.
A narrator describes how this brought peace to the heavens and the earth. With Cronos gone, the rest of the gods continued their assault on the Titans, some of whom surrendered, and others of whom tried and failed to flee4.
A woman is praying in what looks like a wheat field, although the background makes it clear that this is in the underworld. She turns to find Heron wating there behind her. They embrace. He points out another man behind her again (in the direction she was originally looking) and she embraces him too, calling them both her sons.
Unresolved questions
The surprise attack at the end of the battle violated the sanctity of the contest of champions. Will there be metaphysical repercussions against the members of the alliance for this? Or is it simply that nobody will ever trust them to hold a contest of champions again?
Ratings
These ratings evaluate the finale-of-the-week from an angle that its writers never intended: how well it works as an individual episode watched in isolation. The analysis accompanying each rating is written from that point of view as well.
The ratings do not necessarily apply to the episode if it is watched in the proper context. And it should go without saying that none of them apply to the series as a whole, which I have not watched.
Story: 3/10. A single-threaded story with no subplots. The story wasn’t bad, just overly simple. For all that it lacked plot holes, it also lacked spice.
One thing did bother me a great deal, and I hinted at it above. Zeus and Heron’s other allies defeated Cronos essentially by cheating: ambushing him under the guise of honoring an ancient tradition of two-on-two battle. And this after they goaded him into it in the first place.
And then they had the gall to mock his overconfidence! I don’t know Cronos enough to know if this is an enduring character trait of his, but at least in this episode he had a sense of honor, respecting the rules, and playing fair. It’s hard to appreciate the “heroes” for defeating him through such an underhanded tactic.
Writing: 4/10. The writing was… fine. There were a few flaws, especially surrounding the “plan”. For example, between the issuing of the challenge and establishing the fact that they had a plan, there was no time to discuss said plan. And then Heron says he “maybe” has something in mind during the battle, when he was actually following his original plan all along (at least based on the tone of voice, he didn’t seem to be lying to Seraphim).
Over all, nothing really special, and slightly below average for television.
Production: 3/10. The animation was flawed, and well below what is expected in this day and age. The characters didn’t really feel alive on-screen; they barely moved, and when they did the movement felt artificial (for the worst example, see the scene in which Seraphim and Heron walk towards the battlefield). Facial expressions were minimal, and almost everybody looked alike. And the animators failed to communicate the no-holds-barred beatdown that the dialogue claimed Heron and Seraphim were receiving.
The soundtrack wasn’t bad, and the voice acting was okay; if not for them, I’d have graded the production even lower.
Characterization: 3/10. I got very little sense of anybody’s personality.
Accessibility: 10/10. This was one of the easiest-to-absorb finales I’ve watched so far. A very simple story, coupled with already having a basic familiarity with Greek myth, made for a perfectly straightforward outing. Other than taking a while to learn Heron’s name, there was nothing to be confused about.
Closure: 9/10. I do wonder whether the victory by cheating will have repercussions. And I’m skeptical of the claim that the victory over Cronos led to “peace, if you ignore the fact that we continued to hunt down and murder all our enemies down”. But the story ended in a perfectly logical place, with no dangling threads.
Do I want to watch the series now?
Nope. I like the idea of a gritty, no-holds-barred version of Greek mythology where gods’ heads literally explode. But the animation is bad, and the story is too simple; I need something to sink my teeth into.
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Why can’t they weave the thread back together regardless, enabling him to survive the fight?
Dude, the fight’s been going on for maybe fifteen seconds. You’re the god of time, show some freaking patience!
Oh, so suddenly you have patience?
A curious definition of the word “peace”.