My problem with witches

My feelings about the latest Marvel TV series Agatha All Along are mixed. On the one hand, I think it's a solid-quality product and much better than one had any reason to expect. The story hangs together, the acting is strong, and the characterisation good enough for the viewer to go "awww" when a character dies (there's a surprisingly high body count). There's a particularly well-crafted, timey-wimey (sorry, Doctor Who slang) episode which manages to give one of the characters a satisfying send-off. Unlike some commentators, I found the series stuck the landing, too. The flashback in the final episode, showing how Agatha really lost her son, was perhaps a bit lengthy, but delivered the emotional gut-punch needed.

On the other hand, there's the witch thing.

Now, to be clear, I don't disapprove of all fictional witches, as my fondness for Once Upon A Time can attest. Many, perhaps most, witches in popular culture I'm perfectly fine with. But there are some I have a really hard time with, and I find the premise that witches should naturally be seen as a great symbol of girl power supremely irritating. 

To over-simplify, witches in popular culture I've come across mostly fall into one, maybe two, of the following categories:

Fairy-tale witch: Often lives in the forest and is a menace to children, above all. Mostly very, very bad – there are good female magic-wielders in fairy tales, but they tend to be called something else, like "wise women". Her own boss.

Malleus Maleficarum witch: I'm not sure if she's the brain-child of learned men of the 17th century who was then enthusiastically adopted by the populace, or if it's the other way around. Has clear diabolical ties and flies away at certain times to certain places to celebrate Witches' Sabbaths, where she gets up to all sorts. Forms covens, but – how shall I put this? – not for obviously feminist purposes. Evil (duh).

Fantasy witch: Can also be called Harry Potter witch after one of the many fantasy franchises where she resides. Here, "witch" basically just means "female practitioner of magic", and there's nothing suspicious about the magic's origins. The fantasy witch can be good or bad, depending on her own choices, whom she chooses to hang out with and whether she uses "dark magic" (not the same as downright black magic) or not. Only forms covens when the plot demands some extra magic boost, but it's not a way of life.

New Age witch: Wants to be close to nature. Vaguely pagan – likes to talk about earth and moon goddesses. Forms covens for sisterly, female-bonding purposes. Paints herself as the victim of centuries of persecution, a victim status largely unearned (more on that in a bit). Harmless.

Of these categories, I have zero problems with the fairy-tale and fantasy witches, except I'd say bad habits such as snacking on children or cursing babies make them questionable as feminist icons. But as villainesses or redeemable anti-heroines they work very well. New Age witches I think are annoying, but I recognise they probably mean well. Malleus Maleficarum witches, however, I find downright disturbing, and if the witches in a story don't take steps to definitely distance themselves from the seriously occult I'm apt to tut-tut.

The problem with the witch lore in Agatha All Along is that it borrows freely from all four categories above. All right, to be fair, there's not much of the black-magic stuff, but there certainly seems to be a bit more hardcore things going on than, say, the everyday New Age witch would get up to. The witches in Agatha may not consort with demons (and we should be thankful for that), but occult imagery does not faze them, and the focus on covens gives out some creepy-cult vibes.

I'm willing to give Marvel witches the benefit of the doubt and categorise them as a mixture of fantasy and New Age witches. Marvel witch magic appears to be in itself morally neutral, and can be used for bad (Agatha) or good (the other witches) depending on who wields it. Ugh, do they have to spell it "magick", though?

Something that really gets my goat (no pun intended) is the way popular culture appropriates the horror of the Witch Trials. I've lost count of how many times it has been implied, in different fantasy franchises, that there actually were witches in Salem. Sure enough that's a theme in Agatha as well. 

Now, this may seem priggish, especially as I'm usually quite nonchalant about historical wrongdoings, but I can't help feeling this is a bit disrespectful to the innocent women (and men too, in surprising numbers, but mostly women) who were killed in olden times because they were accused of witchcraft. What was so horrifying about the Salem Witch Trials was that there were no witches. In real life, witches do not exist. In a fictional world were witches do exist, the most terrifying aspect of historical witch hunts – that they could strike down anyone, no matter how blameless – is lost, and we're left with a yet another lame persecuted-minority metaphor.

I mean, what's the better defence when accused of witchcraft? "There is no such thing as witches, and you're out of your mind", or "Look, I may have cursed, you know, the odd cow. But no demonic hanky-panky, I swear"? I rest my case. 

Lilia, one of Agatha's coven members and generally a good egg, gets irritated about "misconceptions" about witches. But it's hard to know what the "misconceptions" are when so many witch tropes turn out to be true. Not long before, Lilia herself doesn't want to exit a death-trap of a house through an oven as a friend of hers was killed that way. Cute. But if the Hansel and Gretel witch existed in this universe, did she eat children? And why would it be so out of the way for the good people of the MCU to believe that witches have extra nipples?

I did enjoy Agatha All Along, and for someone without my occult-wary hang-ups it's probably even more fun. But spare me the whole "feminist coven" rhetoric. A good witch is a witch who works alone.  

Neo-Victorian or just set in Victorian times?

Once again, a thorough analysis of why Dungeons and Dragons – Honor Among Thieves is so entertaining proves too challenging (look, just take it from me, it's a fun film). So once again I resort to books, more specifically two historical novels I've recently finished, both coincidentally set in Victorian England.

Or not so coincidentally, perhaps. It's no secret I'm a sucker for this time period as a fictional setting. As some sort of hook on which to hang my reflections, I'll try to look at whether these two novels are "neo-Victorian" or not.

I only became aware of the term neo-Victorian fairly recently, after having unknowingly been a fan of it for years. Definitions I've randomly come across while googling are "contemporary fiction that employs Victorian settings and/or styles to self-reflexively invoke the Victorian era for the present" and "creative narrative works set in the Victorian period, but written, interpreted or reproduced by more contemporary artists". So, a few of my favourite things, in other words. 

If I understand the term correctly, though, it doesn't merely refer to contemporary fictional works set in the Victorian era. It implies a fascination for and engagement with "real" Victorian fiction. James Benmore's Dodger trilogy and Fingersmith by Sarah Waters are clearly neo-Victorian. I've also heard novels like The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield being described as neo-Victorian, in spite of not being set in the period, simply because of their Victorian vibe.

So can a historical novel be set in Victorian England and yet not be neo-Victorian? I'd say yes – and I'd also claim that The Other Side of Mrs Wood by Lucy Barker is a pretty good example. It's set in 1870s London and features a famous medium, Mrs Wood, who is afraid her act is getting stale and as a means to staying relevant takes on a young, pretty protegée. Eventually, though, the girl turns out to be a rival rather than a help.

I liked the novel for its fascinating dive into the world of mediums and its new approach to why anyone half-decent would attempt such work knowing she's a fraud. Mrs Wood is well aware that she doesn't really commune with spirits, but she sees her job as consoling the grief-stricken – a sort of bereavement counselling – with some harmless tricks thrown in to keep the punters happy (and the cash flowing). She firmly draws the line at "full-spirit manifestations" which she considers too exploitative. The new girl has no such scruples. It's a point of view, though more than a little doubtful – can it ever be OK to pretend you're talking to a dear friend's dead twin brother in order to comfort him? And what if you're found out?

On the down side, I thought the book took a little too much time on each storybeat and was too generous with detailed descriptions when I just wanted it to get on with the story. Personally, I'd also have liked some genuine spookiness. The mediums in Mrs Wood never get anywhere close to having a real ghostly encounter. I prefer medium stories with a hint of the supernatural, a "what-if-there's-something-in-it-after-all" element. But that's just me.

The reason I wouldn't call the The Other Side of Mrs Wood neo-Victorian is that there are no references to the classic Victorian novel, and it mainly appears to be set in the 1870s because that's when people were crazy about mediums. The Secrets of Hartwood Hall by Katie Lumsden is another matter. The author sets out her stall right away in her bio: "Katie Lumsden read Jane Eyre at the age of thirteen and never looked back." Neo-Victorianism is afoot.

The novel delivers on its promise: there are clear echoes of Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in the plot. The characters themselves are fond of (to them) contemporary literature and read novels by Dickens and others, often when it's thematically relevant. But of course it's not the same story as Jane Eyre. Its heroine, Margaret Lennox, may be a governess, but she has other ideas of what constitutes happiness than Jane.

Lumsden, like Barker, pulls off getting the reader engaged in her protagonist. Margaret is likeable (most of the time) and her affection for Louis, the boy she's teaching, is especially touching. I found Hartwood Hall a very pleasant read and downright page-turning as it neared its climax. The conclusion, though, was a little disappointing, with the "neo" in neo-Victorian coming to the forefront. You could see contemporary preoccupations shining through even earlier. The villains of the tale are Oppressive Husbands and Margaret's love interest is a gentle gardener, younger than her and socially beneath her, an anti-Rochester if you will. He's sweet and all, but I caught myself thinking rebelliously: "Does he have to be such a beta male"?

The novel's twists, while not being exactly what I thought they would be, felt less like "wow, what a rug pull" and more like "OK, so we're doing this". What with the implied praise of "found family" (not that the term is used outright) at the end, I found the modern pieties a little trying, even if they're by no means objectionable in themselves. No matter. I had a good time, and I'll look out for Lumsden's (hopefully also neo-Victorian) next novel.

Pretentious TV entertainment

It's a sad truth (all right, I don't find it that sad) that it's easier to trash something than to gush over it. And so, once more following the path of least resistance, I forgo the chance to praise the unexpected enjoyability of the film Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves in favour of sinking my teeth into the Netflix mini-series The Perfect Couple.

Reviews of this whodunnit story, set in and around the idyllic coastal residence of an ultra-rich family, have good-naturedly described it as entertaining trash. If I remember correctly, one review even called it the modern equivalent of Lace. For my part, I didn't think it can hold a candle to the giddy slice of escapism that is Lace. Lace and Lace II knew what they were and didn't give themselves airs. 

The Perfect Couple, in contrast, is tiresomely pretentious. If it's just supposed to be light entertainment, why is the pace so languid? Why are there so many extreme close-ups? Why is the background music whoo-whoo-ing in the background in an abstract, non-hummable way? It feels like the series wants to be Big Little Lies very badly. I'm not saying Big Little Lies was a masterpiece, but it offered something unexpected which gave it some substance: far from always being at each other's throats, the yummy mummies did offer one another real friendship. The Perfect Couple is devoid of any such nuance. The wealthy suspects are horrible, the investigating police charmingly down-to-earth, the "normal" girl about to marry one of the sons of the super-rich family Sees Through The Façade etc. These aren't even entertaining clichés (though I liked the cops), and they're served up in a po-faced manner which makes you suspect that the series has ideas above its station.

I'm usually indulgent towards pronouncements like "TV series are the new novels". They're not: novels are the new novels. But it does television no harm to try to emulate the dramatic storytelling and vivid characterisation of, say, a Victorian page-turner. Except, the rising status of TV in the last few decades comes at a cost. The same artsy types who've made novel-reading an endurance sport have muscled in and suddenly want to tell us what is "quality" television and what is not. Anything too upbeat or watchable is sneered at, when entertainment (and perhaps some light instruction) was once TV's prime function. 

In that way, you really could say that TV series are "the new novel". Novels were once written mainly for entertainment too, then they became Something Fancier. Now TV has become Something Fancier, and along with the TV equivalent of Victorian ripping yarns have come the less welcome TV equivalent of those high-brow novels all the critics praise to the skies, but few of us ordinary mortals have actually read, because frankly they sound awful. That's exactly why the critics love them, I suspect. If they were too appealing, then there wouldn't be much cachet in having read them – or, in the case of TV series, having seen them.

What's this got to do with The Perfect Couple, you may ask? It may be a bit pretentious, but it's hardly trying to be a TV version of Ulysses. Well, my (largely unsubstantiated) theory is that some conceptions of "quality" television have trickled down to what could be called "middle-brow" programmes, and have had a detrimental effect on them. Pacy storytelling? Way too cheap. Witty dialogue? Good heavens, no, this isn't an ordinary cop show. Sexual tension? Problematic. Romance? Well and truly dead, darling.

You can still find pacy stories, snappy lines and romance on the telly, but you increasingly have to move to the cheerfully low-brow spectrum of TV in order to get your fix. So be it, then. Maybe it's about time I rewatched Lace?     

Novels that passed the travel test

I tend to underestimate how much time and effort goes into travel, though it's definitely worth it in the end. It's not only the time spent travelling: the week before you go is full of preparations, and the week after you return full of tasks you've put off while you were away, plus you have to readjust to everyday life. All of which is a roundabout excuse for me not having blogged for nearly a month.

Not feeling very analytical, I've decided to simply do a book version of the handy "films I saw in-flight" blogs one and two I resorted to in 2018. My travels didn't take me very far this time, so there were no in-flight films, but I did get some reading done. These novels passed the travel test of providing entertainment on airports, planes, trains, hotel rooms and even one or two buses – though some with more distinction than others.

Oxford Blood by Antonia Fraser I got this classic whodunnit from the Eighties for my birthday as 1) it takes place in the atmospheric surroundings of Oxford colleges 2) it's written by Fraser, a popular historian and thus a tried-and-tested author. As it turns out, it's more concerned with the English upper-crust than academic Oxford, but I didn't mind this, as I'm always up for stately-home-based intrigues. 

Fraser writes elegantly if a little distantly; I never felt I got under the skin of her glamorous TV journalist sleuth Jemima Shore. However, the remoteness had its advantages. Fraser keeping her distance to her heroine meant that Jemima didn't come across as too annoyingly opinionated, which could otherwise easily have been the case. It is sometimes hard to know the level of irony in the narrative's statements, though, or how much Jemima really cares for people close to her.

The Last Word by Elly Griffiths Griffiths is an example of an author who can sometimes make her opinions a little too plain through her characters – always allowing for the possibility that the opinions in question might just be the character's and not the author's. Having said that, I've found all the Griffiths novels I've read to be absolute page turners. I gobbled up this one, which features a likeable group of amateur sleuths last seen in the equally good The Post-Script Murders and, to a lesser extent, Detective Harbinder Kaur. 

Kaur has been the police presence in all the novels I've read so far by Griffiths, and I find her a little too chippy, though her very crankiness does make her less of a box-ticking exercise (she's a Sikh and a lesbian). As other characters apart from Kaur were also quite chippy in her latest outing Bleeding Heart Yard, I enjoyed that novel the least of the ones in the Kaur series. Therefore, I was happy with the amateur sleuth trio once again taking centre stage. Old-age pensioner Edwin, Amazonian Ukrainian carer and entrepreneur Natalka and her ex-monk boyfriend Benedict tend to be less judgemental than Kaur, if also a little more gullible. I also very much enjoy the theme of writers and writing which runs through most of the Kaur mysteries; this one takes place partly at a suitably creepy writers' retreat.

Last Tango in Aberystwyth by Malcolm Pryce I bought this one locally because I was in Wales and had dim recollections of quite liking the first instalment in the series. Of the novels I read, this was the one that didn't quite live up to my expectations, though it saw me through a two-hour train journey and an equally long flight quite nicely. 

As a pastiche of quip-filled PI yarns à la Raymond Chandler, set in an outlandish alternative-reality version of Wales where loose women wear stovepipe hats and gangster druids are in a turf war with Meals-on-Wheels matrons, Last Tango sounds like a comic read in the same inventive vein as Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next novels. But though there were many neat conceits in Last Tango and a few quips, it wasn't as funny as I'd thought it would be. Sometimes I didn't know if it was going for all-out seriousness or merely parodying philosophical passages in Chandler and others, but I believe it was mostly the former. The novel had a slightly melancholy air in spite of the absurdities going on which, if you're a true Chandler fan, you may see as a plus. I was expecting more high-jinks, though.

Jazzy Paris and not so jazzy married life

Sometimes, when you don't get a hundred percent into a novel, it's only fair to proclaim: "It's not you, it's me". Why on earth would someone without a solid interest in the home life of Ernest Hemingway (in this case me) read a book on Hemingway's first wife?

My excuse is a weak one: I was drawn to the title. I found Paula McLain's novel The Paris Wife, published as far back as 2011, in a well-stocked bookstore, remembered vaguely that it was well thought of, and bought it. The blurb promised that the setting would be "glamorous Jazz Age Paris", and that sounded exciting. It would also, I reasoned, be a way to learn a little more about an author I haven't read, though I really should have done. Although there's no language barrier to speak of, I'm scandalously ignorant about American classics. It will be remedied at some point, at least in Hemingway's case (and when it happens I'll be able to get at least one Nobel Prize-winner blog post out of it).

Is it a disadvantage to be pig-ignorant about Hemingway when you read this novel? At first I thought so, and felt slightly guilty for attempting it. It's not that I don't get why it was favourably received. McLain fights the corner of her protagonist, Hadley Richardson, very commendably and is good at showing, not telling. 

We're shown, not told, that Hadley is no victim but quite tough. She survives a bleak upbringing with some self-worth still intact; she can knock back liquor with the best (and worst) of them; she enjoys the bullfights her husband's obsessed with and isn't the least bit squeamish; she's physically strong and can even cross the Alps wearing the wrong kind of shoes. We're shown, not told, of Hemingway's faults, which aren't very endearing (but then he's very young at this time): he's spectacularly ungrateful to his benefactors and feels easily threatened, as when he scowls over a less-macho friend's fleeting success at amateur bull-fighting. Lastly, we're shown, not told, how the ménages-à-trois Hadley and Hemingway are surrounded with – which aren't very happy if scrutinised, especially not for the women – warp Hemingway's perception of what he can get away with while still hanging on to the wife he loves.

So why didn't I get fully into the first half and a bit of this novel? I think it was because it sometimes felt like a corrective narrative of something, and I didn't know anything about the story it was correcting. Also, though we do get to meet well-known Jazz-Age Paris dwellers, the focus – as I should have predicted – was on Hadley's and her Ernest's married life. It's convincingly described, but sometimes made me think about Goofy's novel about a man "who went around looking ordinary all day". Not because Hadley herself seems ordinary compared to her famous husband – another pitfall avoided by McLain – but because their domestic life feels rather mundane a large part of the time. This is, of course, less of a problem if you go into the story with a keen interest in all things Hemingway.

Once we finally get to the love triangle foreshadowed at the beginning of the novel, however, my pig-ignorance turned out to be a boon. Although Hadley warns the reader in the prologue: "This isn't a detective story – not hardly", I enjoyed trying to predict which Paris siren would be the one to make a serious play for Hemingway and threaten what appears to be a rock-solid marriage. If you already know a lot about Hemingway's life, then this part of the story doesn't become a mystery, which would have taken a lot of the fun out of it for me.

If you're a Hemingway fan, I think you'd like this novel in its entirety, not least because it throws some light on a wife who actually seems to have been the perfect match for him. If, like me, you know next to nothing about him, it's still a good read. Just don't expect too much razzle dazzle out of Paris.

What's new, Mickey Mouse? (As it turns out, not a lot)

After the announcements of the last weeks, from San Diego Comic-Con and Disney's very own D23 event, it's not an exaggeration to say that Disney is playing it safe. Extremely safe. Leaving aside the re-introduction of Robert Downey Jnr into the MCU – this time as high-profile villain Dr Doom (it could work) – we have a perfect avalanche of films in some way based on previous hits coming up from Disney and Pixar. We are getting prequels, sequels, and worst of all, live-action remakes of animated classics. Like many a commentator, I've been shaking my head and muttering about the death of creativity and the lack of original content.

Except –  maybe some of us, including me, are being just a little bit hypocritical? The other week, I saw a youtuber scoffing about the supposed "sequel fatigue" and pointing out how well sequels overall were doing at the box office. As he was talking about DreamWork's upcoming Shrek 5, I couldn't relate a hundred per cent (I have little interest in Shrek 5 unless Shrek and Fiona are made to face the consequences of callous pet-killing). Nevertheless, the youtuber was on to something. Because as much as I may groan over upcoming titles like Frozen III and Toy Story 5, I'm still going to watch them, aren't I?

Disney has had a rough couple of years, so I can see why they want to refill their coffers with safe bets. They may be well aware that people aren't over-enthusiastic about their upcoming animated projects. But we, the potential audience, don't have to be over-enthusiastic. We only have to be interested enough to buy a cinema ticket. I would guess – it's only a guess, mind – that this is what Disney's banking on. We can complain all we want about unoriginality, as long as we pay up.

There are some flaws in the reasoning, however. One is that Disney has created its own worst rival in Disney Plus. If people are only lukewarm about a film project, but nevertheless want to see it, they could simply wait until the film is available for streaming. Let's face it, if they're mouseheads (I don't know if it's a word, but I'm coining it) like me, they probably have Disney Plus anyway. All they need to do is wait. The studio has been lengthening the time it takes for their movies to reach Disney Plus, which is probably wise from a cinema point of view, but could hurt their streaming service in the long run. It's a bit of a bind.

Another purely commercial reason to keep experimenting with new stuff, instead of merely relying on tried-and-true franchises, is that both Disney and Pixar need to establish new franchises which they can milk in the future. Inside Out 2 has been a huge hit for Pixar, not least because it's seriously good (I'll come back to that). But there wouldn't be an Inside Out 2 if Pixar hadn't taken a chance on the first Inside Out many years back instead of simply churning out Toy Story sequels.

So I'm still a little worried about where the Mouse is heading long-term, even if they manage to consolidate their finances in the immediate future. A successful company always has to ask itself "what's next?" in order to stay in business. Even the most popular franchise reaches its sell-by date (I think Toy Story's already there, to be frank), and if Disney spends too little time developing new projects, they may find themselves in trouble again in a few years' time.

All the same, just because something is a sequel or a prequel doesn't mean it's bad. Look at Inside Out 2, a perfect delight of a film which managed to explain something I'd wondered since the first trailer: why Anxiety is its own emotion separate from Fear. I still think Inside Out 2 dodges the question of what puberty is really about; for all its faults, Turning Red was more honest about this. But hey, Riley is only thirteen in Inside Out 2. Maybe we'll get Love or Desire in Inside Out 3, which will surely be coming along at some point. And if overly cute Envy in Inside Out 2 grows up along with Riley to be less aspirational ("I want her hair") and more destructive ("I'll destroy her for being better than me"), then I'll not complain.

At the end of the day, for the audience, the big divide isn't between old franchises and new projects, but between high-quality and lower-quality films. Even easy-to-please customers like me cut up rough if we sense that we're being taken for granted. If the upcoming Disney and Pixar sequels and prequels seem tired and stale, they'll most likely underperform at the box office. If on the other hand the studios keep putting the effort into them that went into Inside Out 2, the Mouse should be fine. For now.

Is The Acolyte unfair to the Jedi?

OK. Star Wars time. Sort of.

The latest Disney + show in the Star Wars franchise, The Acolyte, has sparked a lot of controversy. For my part, I was lukewarm towards it. That in itself is not a good sign, given that I'm usually very easy to please when it comes to Star Wars content (I loved The Bad Batch earlier this year, for instance, but then that was genuinely good, wasn't it?). If I were to rank the live action Star Wars Disney + shows, The Acolyte would come in last, though it's a tough call – The Book of Boba Fett only just wins out because it has a Cad Bane cameo and some Mando. 

But that doesn't mean I hate The Acolyte. It had some muddled storytelling, and the characterisation was somewhat lacking; the series failed to make us care about the new characters it introduced, which is a pity, as we could do with some new blood in Star Wars stories. However, there were some good acting performances including a fetching villain. Though the writing didn't blow me away, I didn't find it groanworthy either. Also, for those who like lightsabre battles, the ones in The Acolyte were nicely choreographed. 

The Force witches (or "Thread" witches, I suppose, as it's what they call the Force) were irritating, though. Can someone tell me why witches and covens are such a thing nowadays in popular entertainment? I would have thought female magic wielders who want to be girl bosses would do well to stay away from covens, which tend to be about surrendering your power to someone else (or, in this case, to "the power of maaany").

But I digress. The main reason so many Star Wars fans took against this series, some before it even aired, was that they got the impression that it would tarnish the Jedi. Defenders of the series haven't helped its cause by highlighting the way it shows "the weaknesses of the Jedi" as one of its good points. For myself, I'm not fond of the Jedi, but I understand if long-term Star Wars fans don't care to see their childhood heroes trashed, and I acknowledge that there are unfair ways to criticise these famous lightsabre-wielding light-side users.

So, bearing in mind that I'm a bit of a Jedi sceptic, did I think The Acolyte was too hard on them? Well, yes and no. To start with, I wouldn't say that Jedi-bashing plays such a large part in the story as all that. 

The series takes place about 100 years before the Star Wars prequels and tells the tale of two sisters, twins (kinda-it's complicated) Osha and Mae. Hidden away on a faraway planet, they're about to be taken up in the coven of the aforementioned space witches when a group of Jedi enter the scene. Mae wants to become a witch, Osha wants to become a Jedi. Complications and conflicts ensue, which the two girls see different parts of, and it ends with the whole coven dead and their hideout burnt down. Osha, who blames Mae, is taken in by the Jedi. Mae, left behind and believed dead, blames the Jedi.

Sixteen years later, Mae resurfaces, trained by a mysterious (though not very) dark-side Force user, and starts to take out the Jedi she encountered all those years ago. Osha – who never managed to become a Jedi and has left the order – is first accused, but it quickly becomes clear (thankfully) that she's not the culprit, and she's roped in by her old master Sol to track down her long-lost sister and bring her to task. The identity of Mae's master is revealed soon enough, but the question remains what really happened sixteen years ago.

When we finally get the whole story, I for one could very well understand why the Jedi acted the way they did. Certainly, some of the group behaved badly, but you could argue that their more questionable decisions were motivated by non-Jedi-like emotions such as selfishness, fear and blind attachments. There's nothing in the telling of the Jedi vs witches conflict that directly contradicts the Jedi creed – in fact, it could be used as a cautionary tale on how dangerous it is for Jedi to give in to their emotions. Plus, the witches were certainly no blameless victims either. 

Where the series is unfair to the Jedi, in my view, is when it shows how the whole thing is covered up by cool and responsible-seeming members of the Order. Throughout the series, Jedi bigwig Vernestra seems surprisingly anxious about bad PR, as the Jedi Council is facing some opposition by the Senate, and is eager to gloss over as many past and present Jedi mistakes as she can. Now, my beef with the Jedi has to do with their forbidding personal attachments and generally being a bunch of self-righteous killjoys. But I have never seen them as shady or power hungry – isn't that more of a Sith thing? It was hard to believe in Jedi as responsibility-dodging politicos. Surely, owning up to your faults and taking the rap for it (which would probably be harsh and disproportionate) would be the true Jedi way?

Vernestra has a quarrel with a senator at the end of the series where the senator starts to address my own problems with the Jedi. He points out that they claim to be able to control an ungovernable force – by which he doesn't mean the Force itself but their own emotions – and predicts that one day one of these repressed warriors will snap and will be hard to stop. I'm with him on that one: all that emotion-repressing surely can't be healthy, and one would have thought that the hate and fear of the Dark Side could more easily be overcome by positive emotions such as love and friendship rather than sterile serenity. But as for the Jedi being a dangerous "cult", you could say the same about those annoying witches.