Willow – Season 1 Episode 8 Recap, Review & Ending Explained

Children of the Wyrm

Episode 8 of Willow starts with Airk showing up, happy to see Kit and Elora. Airk encourages them to head off and meet the Crone, pointing out that she’s not as bad as they’ve been led to believe. In order for Airk to come back, he tells them they need to meet her. However, they soon learn that Airk has been drinking that strange liquid and seemingly brainwashed into this line of thinking.

What does Willow’s group decide to do?

Meanwhile, Graydon and the others each decide to jump down the waterfall too, heading inside the city. Graydon attempts to use his magic to open the door but it’s no good, the sandstorm rages through the city and turns Boorman into stone.

Eventually Kit and Elora take a bold step forward, heading through a portal the Crone has and finding themselves in a paradisiac world holding none other than Kit’s mother. She admits that she was wrong to deny Kit her freedom. At the same time, Airk attempts to convince Elora to see the dark side, offering her a goblet of that yellow water.

Does Madmartigan return?

Suddenly, the whole landscape changes as Madmartigan’s voice bleeds through. He admits he’s always with Kit and leaving was the hardest thing he’s ever done. He reveals that love is sacrifice and one has to be willing to give up what you want for what you believe in. This is the only way to save Elora. He claims Kit is better than he is and tells her she’s the shield that needs to protect Elora.

When Kit heads through the vision further, she finds Elora gone and the Crone in her place, claiming that the Great Awakening has begun. And just like that, Kit turns to stone!

We then cut to Elora and Airk getting married with the Crone serving as the witness. The Crone tells Elora that with this action, including the sacred kiss to bind them together, she can help save everything. However, just before kissing Elora chooses not to marry Airk and that she’s “not really into him” anymore. Suddenly, Willow shows up and begins using his magic, shattering the vision and freeing everyone from stone.

What happens during the big fight?

A big fight breaks out between the Crone’s minions and our big group, while Elora and the Crone square off. However, Graydon gets involved and attempts to use his magic but despite the passion and anger put into the spell, she destroys his wand and throws Graydon deep into a world outside that looks like Mordor. We’re led to believe he’s dead but hold that note.

Elora’s anger wells up and she no longer needs a wand, using her own hands to conjure spells… somehow. Heading into the courtyard, she comes face to face with the Crone, who both square off by using their hands for spells. What happened to wands? Why doesn’t Willow just use his hands? Anyway, Airk is in this and Kit tries to convince Airk to turn back to the light side. When he claims to be the King, Jade and Kit both start fighting against him.

How does Elora save the day?

Willow throws some words of encouragement telepathically to Elora as she uses her willpower and magic to destroy the Crone, making swift work of this foe and besting her. When the Crone collapses and tunes back into her previous form, Airk shows up and begins kissing her, which seemingly transfers the power to him.

Meanwhile, Jade uses the Lux on Kit which gives her a full suit of armour. Despite Jade being the better fighter and far more capable of using these skills, Kit instead serves as the shield and begins attacking her brother. The pair of them square off and now Kit is inexplicably better at fighting. Anyway, Kit manages to talk Airk around, promising never to leave him again and managing to awaken him again.

How does Willow end?

With Graydon dead, the others realize the fight is far from over. The Wyrm is still under and will be massing their forces. As the others walk away, they’ve seemingly saved the day. Or have they?

It turns out Graydon is still alive and he wakes up on the battlefield, that same vision that Willow has been seeing all season long. Elora is there and she reveals that this is the dawn of the next age. Her age. She needs someone to help her and sit beside her to lead the world into the light. She wants Graydon to be that guy. With a whole army behind her, including an Eborsisk, the episode comes to a close.


The Episode Review

So Willow bows out its final episode with a perfunctory ending, one that completely undermines the lore and ideas presented earlier in the season. Kit is apparently a shield but she’s now a better fighter than Jade and the others? I thought it had been established already that Jade is the better fighter and was training to be a knight? Wouldn’t it make more sense for her to fulfill her destiny and show how capable she is of protecting royalty?

As for the magic, it had been established this season that magic can be wielded through using a wand and they even spent a whole episode trying to get Elora’s wand back to cast a spell. But yet, in this episode she can just craft green force lightning like the Emperor from Star Wars like it was nothing? These sort of inconsistencies are frustrating from a worldbuilding perspective, and even worse the story just… ends.

We don’t see how anyone got back home, how they’re going to escape this City (which has been established in episode 7 to be nigh on impossible given Airk tried and ended up back where he started from). Furthermore, no one even bothers to go into that portal and check where Graydon is, despite literally walking through there 10 minutes before and ending up in a vision. They just write it off that he’s dead and walk away.

Willow has been a really poor series, with cheap production design and an even cheaper writing team at the helm for this. Whether there will be a second season is anyone’s guess but based on this showing, it definitely doesn’t deserve it.

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You can read our full season review for Willow here!

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5 thoughts on “Willow – Season 1 Episode 8 Recap, Review & Ending Explained”

  1. This review is awful. It’s almost like the reviewer did not watch any of the other episodes or simply refused to put two and two together.

    Yes, Jade starts out at the more capable fighter but it was always Kits destiny to fulfill the Madmartagans roles as Hand of the Queen. They admitted they were out in the vast sea for potentially months. Jade and Kit were training the whole time and it’s even applied she began beating Jade towards the end just like Elora began besting Willow.

    Earlier in the series Willow explained that wands and other magical artifacts are simply conduits, but the real magic is inside. He even states that a true master of magic wouldn’t need a conduit to cast spells.

    Elora and The Crone are exceptionally and naturally talented magic wielders. There is no reason to believe they would need a conduit to access their power.

    As far as Graydon goes he literally appeared to blow up right in front of their eyes. Elora also did check outside the doorway and all she saw was the giant Worm. The worm obviously used magic to fool them and keep Graydon as a backup plan.

    The crone even says this is always how it was meant to end. The Elora at the end in the vision was not the true Elora but The Worm misleading Graydon.

  2. Hot take Chelsea. Clearly the reviewers problem is they don’t understand magic? If I were 12 I could see this being an ok show, but I’m not and it isn’t. It’s paint by numbers fantasy with immersion breaking anachronism and very, very poor dialogue. At least Warwick Davis got some money. Good for him.

  3. I really agree with you: I have been following your reviews of the program since they began, although I had never decided to comment, but I consider that today it is necessary.
    I understand your point of view and I share it in its entirety, in fact, before knowing your page and starting to read you, I considered that I was the only weird one who did not think Willow was wonderful, much less a series that could be considered good at many aspects, but gods, thanks to fate I found you.
    I loved that part where you said that it was counterproductive and (too forced) for a woman to adopt roles that are mostly attributed to male characters, because that is not what a true (and sincere) inclusion of the Queer and related community in audiovisual products is about. Fantasy is not fantasy in most cases just because, Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings, (but the trilogy of the 2000s are sagas that come to mind to exemplify my point of view) Fantasy is a compendium of ideas, stories and events that at their best, even if it seems implausible to us, have a reasonable, justifiable and coherent explanation in their own worlds. I thought it was funny about the hunters who turned out to be hunters, or about the adolescent fire between the princess and the would-be knight.
    I think that the fact that the series is mostly on the shoulders of teenagers, who until now are in the process of self-discovery, takes away that tone of urgency and darkness that the film had and that they tried to give the series. Madmartigan and Willow were young, but that didn’t stop them from taking things with that seriousness and maturity when the dramatic tone required it. Those arrogant phrases that were 100% out of tune with the plot of the princess, the games between the cook and the other prince, added to a Willow who was trying to bring back that nostalgic point of the past is something that when mixed did not turn out so well, I have to admit it. Honestly, it seems unlikely to me that they would release a second season, I have not seen numbers or statistics, but I have seen reviews very similar to yours raving about the network, and I, as someone who saw the film in the late 2000s and Whoever had hopes (mostly nostalgic) placed on the series was more than disappointed.
    Anyway, sorry for the long comment and for any possible grammatical errors, English is not my native language and I am not used to using it to write comments with such complex ideas, but I sincerely hope that my comment is understandable. I wish you an excellent rest of the week and sincere congratulations for your work.

  4. I feel like people like you shouldn’t watch shows with magic in it. Very underwhelming and disappointing review.

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