【Foreign Archives】

Fantasy can Foreign Archivesbe political, or it can simply be an escape. Even escapist fantasy usually contains some message about war, love, heroism, corruption, or any other social or personal ill that can be easily packaged in a metaphor involving magic or dragons. It's odd to see a fantasy story that means almost nothing, or makes several attempts at declaring its point before deciding that wrapping the story up before getting there is a better use of its time.

The Letter for the King on Netflix is an odd fantasy series. It barely finishes its own exposition before dumping the audience into an occasionally fun but never examined tale of adventure. What does it have to say about war? It's bad, probably. Love? Eh. Heroism? It's fine! Anything beyond that is the audience's problem. The show's got a sword fight to choreograph.

It’s honestly impressive how much The Letter for the Kingjust assumes everyone is already on board with its characters, world, and stakes before it charges forward with the story. The show introduces its main character Tiuri, played by a very charming Amir Wilson (His Dark Materials), and sets him on a postal errand without once explaining why he or anything else going on is important. It has the energy of a series in which everything will get explained in the end in some fantastic, magical reveal, but forgot to write or shoot that part entirely.

That baffling, unfinished tone permeates most of The Letter for the Kingin a way that seems especially strange with the knowledge that the show is based on a book. The Letter for the King adds characters and subplots that don’t exist in Tonke Dragt’s original text and is content to admit it has absolutely no idea what to do with them. Tiuri’s new band of fellow proto-knights do add comic relief and a few touching moments of bonding, but with the exception of one character, they are never fleshed out enough to move beyond their tacked-on existence in the story.

One of the new characters only exists for a truly unfortunate “bury your gays” subplot, kissing his crush for the first time before getting stabbed to death in the final skirmish. That character didn’t need to exist, and adding queer representation to The Letter for the Kingsimply to walk right into the genre’s most trite and boring trope is weird. A lot of this show is straight up weird!

So much of The Letter for the King’s ongoing weirdness comes from its clear desire to update the book, which was written in 1965, for a modern audience that expects more representation in its fantasy. It’s a noble and likely needed endeavor, and one that could have made the show much better if anyone involved had understood why representation matters. The presence of children of color in fantasy is fine and often necessary, but justifying their existence with a layer of uneven fantasy racism is a choice that doesn’t serve anything happening on screen. Throwing in a plot about an arranged marriage for the queen of Tiuri’s kingdom is perhaps an excuse to engage more with its women characters, but the plot goes literally nowhere.

The main thrust of the story even deviates from the book in a way that was probably meant to be feminist, but is never, ever explained and amounts to nothing. The follow-through for almost every element of this show is null.

The Letter for the Kingdoes contain some interesting fantasy elements — the dark Prince Viridian is played well by Gijs Blom, and many of Tiuri’s adventures introduce him to settings and people that would be wonderful additions to the fantasy canon if the show had ever bothered to contextualize them. The closest analogy would be to imagine if Netflix’s other recent fantasy show, The Witcher, stopped its season one episode before resolving its season-long multiple timeline mystery. Just ended before telling anyone why any of Geralt’s actions meant anything and said “well, that’s the show.”

Look, not every story can have complete narrative consistency 100% of the time. Some of the issues with The Letter for the King’s plotting could be resolved with a Season 2 of the show, which seems unlikely despite a tease at the very end, but leaning on the possibility of people staying confused enough to tune in two years from now is a weak way of resolving a fantasy show’s first season. It might make for a fun background show if sword fights and magic are up your alley, but don’t look to The Letter for the Kingfor answers, coherent intrigue, or resolution. Just drop it in the mailbox and go.

The Letter for the King is streaming now on Netflix.