The final Wolf Hall

There must be an end to milking Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy for blog posts. Even if I finally actually read The Mirror and the Light, instead of just listening to it as an audiobook, I can't possibly have more to say about Mantel's version of Thomas Cromwell after having blogged about Wolf Hall the novel – twice; Bring Up the Bodies – twice; the first series of the TV adaptation of the trilogy; the aforementioned audiobook version of The Mirror and the Light and now, finally, the second series of the TV adaptation. I guess it goes to show that in spite of my gripes – and I've had plenty – I do find this story fascinating.

The second series of Wolf Hall leaves me with two questions I can't quite answer. One, can I recommend this series or not? And two, why don't I like this version of Thomas Cromwell more?

To start with question one, Wolf Hall the TV series has a sharp script, is often mesmerising and contains stellar acting, especially from Mark Rylance as Cromwell and Damian Lewis as Henry VIII but also from just about everyone else. This time around I was especially taken with Harry Melling's Wriothesley. In the novels, Wriothesley was so fox-like his treachery seemed like a foregone conclusion, especially as Cromwell and co. kept jokingly referring to him as "Call Me Risley" or just "Call Me", even to his face. (My theory is that his name is actually pronounced Risley, and he simply tried to convey it in a polite manner.) Melling's Wriothesley, by contrast, suffers pure agony over his own betrayal. That's just one example of the acting quality on offer. I was properly hooked during both the first and last episode of the series, and even got a bit teary as Cromwell in his final speech apologised to his "master", meaning not Henry, as the crowd thought, but the late Cardinal Wolsey.

However, there were other times when the show's sedate pace got me restless. One Swedish journalist wondered, entertainingly, why she had spent twelve hours of her life (counting both series and all twelve episodes of Wolf Hall) watching Cromwell walking from one room to another between dialogues and thoughtful musings. "What's so magnetic about this?" she asked, and I know what she means. I felt the magnetism too, often enough – but not all the time. Sometimes, I just felt impatient with the high-brow-ness of it all. I have principal objections to TV drama that gives itself airs, and this series does. It reminds me most of all of a gigantic filmed play (though it doesn't come off quite as dusty as filmed plays tend to do).

In the end, though, I think I have to recommend the series, with reservations. It does tell an intriguing story with the help of first-class actors. What it doesn't manage to do, even with the help of Rylance's expressive face, is help me understand what Cromwell – the historical or the fictional version – is all about.   

Which leads me to question number two. Why don't I like Mantel's Cromwell more? The answer appears simple enough on the surface: because he's not a charismatic villain in this story. How can a Cromwell who always claims to do the right thing, and often believes it too, hope to compare in my villain-loving eyes to the charms of Danny Webb's weaselly courtier, or James Frain's Catholic-hating powerbroker? It's true that the smugness of Rylance's Cromwell riles me. Smugness is usually the fault of the other guys – the self-righteous ones, the heroes. A great villain can get away with anything, but you have to be a truly A-grade villain (better than Cromwell, certainly) to get away with self-righteousness.

But I think it goes deeper than that. After all three books and two series of television, I'm still not sure I know what makes Mantel's Cromwell tick. Mantel makes much of his devotion to Wolsey, but his actions don't always bear this supposed loyalty out. Yes, he punishes the Cardinal's lesser enemies, but he becomes quite pally with Suffolk, who filched some of Wolsey's land, and keeps serving Henry, who caused Wolsey's fall in the first place. There's even a scene in The Mirror and the Light where Cromwell is suddenly stricken with doubt as to whether he let his Cardinal down at the end. Whoa, buddy. Firstly, you should know whether you were false or not. Secondly, in this version of events, you killed people for being nasty to your beloved Cardinal. If there was any kind of doubt in your mind as to your own actions towards Wolsey, you should maybe have shown more generosity towards others.   

It doesn't help that I feel a certain disconnect between Mantel's Cromwell and the historical Cromwell who, I can't help suspecting, was probably a lot more straightforward. Did the real Cromwell ever give a monkey's about Wolsey? I'm not entirely convinced. 

Maybe, though, this ambiguousness is actually partly why the Wolf Hall trilogy fascinates me. On two levels, it's about achieving great things, but not what you set out to do. Cromwell (as Mantel describes him) wants to be a good servant to Wolsey and to facilitate religious reform; he achieves neither. Mantel, presumably, wanted to get under Thomas Cromwell's skin, but doesn't quite get there. However, it can be gripping to see them try.

The (too) many possibilities of the Multiverse

One of the first multiversal stories I encountered was a Donald Duck comic. The duck protagonist slid into a parallel world somehow, and had some trouble finding his way back home. I remember next to nothing about this adventure – I'm not even sure if its hero was Scrooge or Donald (I think it was Scrooge) – but I remember the "Ooooh, right" moment when he finally figured out what was going on, and how satisfying it was.

Scrooge (or Donald) suddenly remembered the name of the street where he was when everything started to get weird. It had a different name than it usually did. From this memory came the realisation that he was in a parallel universe, similar to his own but just that little bit off. A classic "what's wrong with this picture" tale, for which I'm always an absolute sucker.

This is the kind of multiversal shenanigans I enjoy the most. I like my Multiverse the way I like my time travel: with plenty of illustrations of how small decisions can change everything (no closed "it always happened" time loop, thank you). Or even a small change in circumstances, that works too. The classic romcom Sliding Doors, which is often brought up when discussing stories with what-if scenarios, hinges not on a momentous decision that the heroine makes, but whether she catches a particular train or not. When it comes to multiversal stories, I tend to get extra-nerdy or cod-philosophical: I don't just want to see a different reality, I want to know how it came to be different.

One of the reasons this kind of plot – the "if it hadn't been for if" story, to translate a Swedish (ungrammatical) phrase – appeals to me is that it's so easy to imagine how small changes could have had large consequences in my own life.  Surely it must the same for others too. What if I hadn't got that job? What if I'd chosen another major when studying, or even another university (maybe that's too wild a speculation)? What if I hadn't bonded with one of my besties in primary school? So many important things that happen to you in life seem to happen quite by chance, and could easily have gone another way altogether.

Or could they? Once they're down the rabbit hole of alternative realities, multiversal stories, like time travel stories, can explore "destiny or chance" questions too. It can be just as fascinating to see reality adjust itself in all sorts of improbable ways in order to turn out as it always was (in accordance with the "time as a rubber band" theory) as to see it go completely haywire because someone took another way home from work than usual. The Adjustment Bureau (the film, at least, I haven't read the story) plays with that feeling I think we've all had: that some things were just meant to happen somehow.

But hey, that's just the kind of multiverse stories I like. There are plenty of other kinds. And that, I think, is partly why projects like Marvel's Multiverse Saga have a struggle on their hands. Take the animated Marvel series What If. I happen to enjoy all its three seasons, but the YouTube discussions about the last season that I've seen have tended to be negative. 

Apart from the general consensus that season three wasn't as good as the two others, however, views differed wildly. The post-apocalyptic episode was the best one. The post-apocalyptic episode was the worst one. Seeing a megalomaniac version of Mysterio in it was cool. Seeing Mysterio in it made no sense whatsoever. The episode showing Howard the Duck and Darcy (Jane Foster's sidekick, very human) as a couple was fun and frothy. Or no, it was frankly disturbing. The Watcher intervening in events was no big deal. The Watcher intervening ruined his character. And so on. If the creators of What If watched the same vids as I did, they must have felt confused about where exactly they went wrong.

Quite simply, we tend to want different things from our multiverse stories. Some don't want the nerdy small-events-that-change-everything setup. They'd rather see the Multiverse used as a device for crossovers, mash-ups and different team-ups than we're accustomed to. Deadpool and Wolverine used the Multiverse like that: as an excuse for making meta-jokes about the "dying" Fox universe and its characters (Fox having been bought up by Disney). It had little to say about the importance of choices, but it was a blast. 

I enjoy crossovers too – when it comes to fictional worlds I'm really invested in, I can become obsessed with them. But much as I've come to appreciate the MCU, I'm not quite there yet. As it is, I'll have good time with a multiversal MCU crossover, but I will feel some regret over opportunities lost. When it comes to blending different characters in "what if X had the powers of Y" scenarios, I have no interest in that at all.

Finally, there are multiverse stories where the other worlds the protagonists encounter are completely different, in a "what if the world was ruled by bees?" or "what if we were all potatoes?" kind of way. That could be fun to watch, but it's not what I primarily want from the Multiverse. That, to my mind, is fantasy, which is a different genre. I'm sure there are plenty who'd disagree, however. The Multiverse can be multiple things to multiple potential fans – and that is exactly its problem.

Long John Silver in space

The post-Christmas-holiday blog post is always a hard one. Even writing about something as straightforward and enjoyable as Skeleton Crew is going to be a challenge. And yet it really shouldn't be difficult, because this was the perfect example of a show that decided, early on, what it wanted to be and then stuck with it, without over-complicating things. It wanted to be a coming-of-age story with adventures and pirates thrown in, and it succeeded. That the series was set in the Star Wars universe was a bonus, but didn't distract from the story it wanted to tell.

The finale, which streamed yesterday (at least here in Sweden), stuck the landing, although it was a safe landing rather than a spectacular one. Mysteries that had been hinted at throughout the show were not really resolved or resolved in an off-hand kind of way that far from blew your mind. In the end, though, it didn't matter that much. What Skeleton Crew focused on – its child protagonists, their experiences in an often hostile universe, and their relationship to one another and the enigmatic Jod – it did really well.

The premise is simple enough. A bunch of kids – hero-worshipping dreamer Wim, the timorous but loyal Neel, bossy would-be rebel Fern and her introvert tech-savvy friend KB – live a sheltered but stiflingly regulated life on the peaceful planet At Attin. One day they come across a hidden star ship and accidentally take off to the skies. There are all sorts of complications to coming home. The children learn that their supposedly boring planet is the stuff of legends and hidden away from the rest of the galaxy. The only help they get is from a rusty old pirate droid and a ragged Force-sensitive man called Jod Na Nawood. Wim thinks he's a Jedi. It turns out he's a pirate, but the question is just how hard-bitten he is.

Though the child actors are all excellent – a feat in itself – the favourite part of the series for me was, unsurprisingly, Jod, as played by Jude Law who once again excels in a pirate role. Skeleton Crew unashamedly borrows from a number of pirate yarns (the droid is called SM 33 as a nod to Captain Hook's sidekick Smee), and Jod is clearly closely modelled on Long John Silver in Treasure Island. 

This is good news, not only because Silver is a classy high-prestige villain. One of Silver's many fascinating traits is that you never find out whether he really cares a button for Jim Hawkins. Sentimentalist as I am, I would like to think that he does, and I have a fondness for adaptations where Silver is allowed to have a soft spot for the boy. Nevertheless, in the original novel, there's always an ulterior motive that can explain why Silver is being nice to Jim. You're left guessing if there is any true feeling behind it all, or if he's just being his manipulative self.

The same ambivalence is found in the character of Jod. Sometimes he seems to bond with the children, sometimes he's only looking out for number one. Almost everyone the children come across who also knows Jod warns them not to trust him. So, as with Silver, you're kept guessing. Even when you think you've figured him out, there's a trace of ambiguity left until the very end.

My second favourite thing in the series was SM 33, voiced with salty gusto by Nick Frost. At the beginning I thought he would turn against the kids at some point – starting a conversation with any kind of Smee with the line "I killed your Captain" didn't seem like a great idea – but the story takes another turn, and I didn't mind being wrong one bit. SM 33 has his dark moments, but they tend to be connected to his programming, while when he can get around it and do what he most wants to do, he's on the children's side. He probably never believed Fern was a captain-killer anyway.

I've heard the viewing figures for Skeleton Crew have not been great, which is a shame. Let's hope they improve in the coming weeks through word of mouth. This is fun and charming family viewing, and the palate cleanser the Star Wars franchise needs after the Acolyte misfire. Though I do realise that Star Wars can't always play it as safe as this.