Welcome, welcome! Curious about the Dragon Age netflix show? Want to see more Thedas content set in the Tevinter Imperium? Ready to meet your new ‘Poor Little Meow Meow’? Then come and listen to what is known~
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Hey everyone! I wanted to get this out the door asap, like I said in my very quick intro slide, but one thing that accidentally made the cutting room floor was me talking about my feelings on the show, so I thought I would throw that here!
In short, I liked it! While some parts were rushed, I felt that was to be expected from a short series on Netflix. While I have heard complaints about the dialogue being ‘cringy’, for the most part it didn’t bother me, and overall I was impressed that the main story did one thing right that a number of DA tie-in’s don’t: Have the main part of the story be about interpersonal relationships. I’ve said this a dozen times, but to me, DA is about people and their struggles, and I was really invested in Miriam, Neb, and Rezaren’s past. As of posting this, it’s been about 4 months since its release, and I find myself still thinking about the climatic ritual- really loved that part. As of ‘The Ending’, my thoughts on THAT did survive the final edit, so please watch for those feelings, haha.
😂👌🏼 that pass code. Tassiaplz 😂
All great, but the fact all English speakers pronounce it " sirculus infinautus" still triggers my classics student ears
I loved this show when watching it, really felt like they truly respected and loved the series and the lore. Fairbank's death was probably the most rushed aspect for me, would've really loved to see him expanded on more and enjoy his character for a bit longer.
I honestly didn't expect to love Absolution as much as I do. And somehow almost all of the twists surprised me
As long as Meredith is Weird Now and not exactly the same I'm down with it. Maybe an evil and twisted version of Leliana as a Lyrium ghost? I love your theory of it being a Memory of our fave crazy templar. And if we don't get a season 2 im rioting, I'm suddenly attached to this new gang and i want them to get up to Shenanigans in Kirkwall.
I would argue you are underestimating just how far hypocrisy can go, also meridith could be like "hey there's gonna be a lot of dead bodies because of our crusade, might as we use them"
With the way that Netflop is going, I doubt there would be a S2, I would actually enjoy it more if they did a little spinoff game of the serie!
pd: I loved the serie and now I have even more trust issues with mages lol
God this show was trash
You know what is interesting? Knight Commander Meredith and Corypheus not only both returned after being defeated by one of our hero characters, they are also both visible in the artwork for Dragon Age Dreadwolf. The image where they are in the bottom with two yet unconfirmed-but-presumed bad guys upsidedown and the big multi-eyed wolf looming over the black city. If Meredith is back… and visible on that mural-like image.. Is Cory back as well, again?!
To be honest, I want Miriam and Qwydion to show up in Dreadwolf and even for Qwydion to be a romance option. I'd love for a season two to wrap up Hiras story so she doesn't have a reason to reappear
Your videos are great, and I hope they hit you up to help them keep the Lore straight with future animation projects.
BRINGING BACK ANDRASTE… oh I hope you're right because that would be SO cool
I hate how they did Fairbanks dirty and killed him off so easily.
At first, I thought Meredith flowed like water into another piece of red Lyruim…Like her essence moved elsewhere when the idol was extracted from her statue. This is just a theory, and I don't know if it's even close to the truth.
Been waiting for this, was not disappointed! Glad to have you back Ghil!
I loved your video, but still hated the show. There are unnecessary fight scenes instead of explanations of plot stuff (like WHY did the Tevinters put the dragon in the dungeon, if this animal is nearly sacred? What does the Inquisition need the Circulum for? How does the afterlife work in Thedas? etc.). Miriam is basically Fenris, Tassia is Cassandra, Rezaren is James from Team R in Pokemon. The Circulum is such an imbalanced artifact that it shouldn't be possible to exist in the first place. Rezaren is an idiot who somehow made it to high ranks after totally blowing his Harrowing – and in his first scene we see him turning a spirit of wisdom into a demon, which is very unprofessional for a trained magister. I was amused to hear Meredith in the ending – but I agree with you, it seems wrong to bring her back like that.
Though I really enjoyed how the monsters (demons, shades, dragon) are drawn, and even the used sound effects from the games, it was a bad show. I was hoping that the series on Dragon Age could be made anout the seven magisters who broke into the Golden City – but after watching Absolution I'm terrified to imagine how dreadful that show could be.
Very happy to see a video about this show! I feel like there has been so little discussion about it, and I have just… so many thoughts. To be honest, my thoughts are majority negative, and I came away from the show thinking it was mediocre and feeling disappointed. Unfortunately, as time has gone on, the taste has just soured and soured in my mouth, and I really do not like this show.
My biggest issues are a couple of weird lore discrepancies or things that bring up crazy lore implications. I feel like the most obvious is a portal to seemingly the afterlife. That's… a lot. And in order to use this ancient artifact, I get the sense Rezaren has done quite a bit of research, and I would really like to hear SOMETHING from him about what his research into the Circulum indicates or his own personal theories about death and the afterlife. It feels super weird to bring that into the story with so little commentary on its full implications from characters in the show.
My other lore gripe is everything about how this show treats blood magic. Firstly, in Inquisition, Dorian indicates that not all blood magic is frowned upon; using your own blood or the blood of a willing participant is not considered "blood magic" in Tevinter and is generally acceptable. So it's a bit odd that the templar in the show is threatening to turn in Rezaren for blood magic, even if he does no harm with it and isn't actually doing any sacrificing. For another thing, in both the first and the second game, you enter others' dreams and can communicate with them there. Both times it was an involved ritual intended to get rid of demons, but neither instance necessitates blood magic; for instance, in Redcliffe, the Circle mages are just as capable of sending someone to deal with Connor's demon as Jowan is, they just use nice clean lyrium instead of a human sacrifice. I would assume that a magister, given all the power and influence they have, would be able to call on resources and get some lyrium to make a dream phone call. Either way, it feels super weird to me that Rezaren's fall to magic is something that is relatively small and not an emergency. If he wanted to dream-contact someone in a dire situation he found himself in where he did not have access to other resources, I think it would have made much more sense and been much more compelling if he used blood magic then.
Even better, I would love if blood magic was more tempting to him because he is implied to actually be a rather weak mage. After all, he fully failed his Harrowing; he doesn't have the will and strength that is expected of him. Using blood magic to get an edge could make sense for a magister trying to match his peers without their raw ability. On the other hand, having that traumatic experience that resulted in losing his whole family due to his lack of willpower could also make him extra leery of blood magic, since blood mages are generally supposed to be more susceptible to possession and temptation than your average mage. Heck, maybe that's why he hasn't used any blood magic to this point–which would make him being on the Magisterium absolutely incredible, when you combine it with his apparent youth.
In all, I do also wish more was done with Rezaren. I hate that he only started acting evil after Miriam stated her opposition to him; it felt very, "The main character said she's opposed to my thing, so I guess I gotta act villainous now!" The idea of a character who loves someone but feels entitled to them is great in my mind, having been in that kind of relationship myself, but this just did not resonate and did not feel well-written. We have no indication that he himself was controlling or abusive before the events of the show; the flashbacks seem to show him as a wee lad treating the elves as equals, then at the Harrowing crawling to Neb's body before his own mother. We see how abusive and controlling his mother is, but not him; if the show really wants me to buy him as this abusive family member-type character, I would like to have seen that before his dream interaction with Miriam. I would have at least liked hints.
As it is, with how he's initially characterized, I would have liked a much more morally grey Rezaren, rather than this one that just became uncomplicatedly evil, and I think it would have been very Dragon Age-y for him to become a "party member," so to speak, so we could get more time and interaction with him. Maybe he really loves Miriam and also really sees it as her proper destiny to join him on his personal mission, and that speaks to a very deterministic philosophy that the show can explore. And he can get the chance to overcome his false beliefs and his upbringing–and if/when he fails to better himself, he becomes a truly tragic character. Much more compelling. Plus, in the dream, he offers Miriam a future of changing Tevinter for the better, and that ties into what I thought was going to be her character arc, since that is something that gets brought up repeatedly in the first few episodes: Miriam's unwillingness to fight for the greater good or a similar cause, in favor of her own needs and wants. It could be such an interesting dynamic!
The thing that bothers me most about Rezaren's treatment, though, is that Miriam is constantly fighting him, flinging things in his face (mostly unfairly–"How dare you not stand up to your evil controlling mom as a child," being one, and "How dare you not protect my brother in your most vulnerable moment of abject failure when you could not even protect yourself," being another), and just generally hating him, as if she has no fond memories of their time together. That could all be done really interestingly from a character and writing standpoint, in my opinion–one character in a relationship having such soured memories of her past that she cannot see anything good in it–but this show, again, is kinda mediocre and doesn't do much interesting with that idea. But that's not the real problem in my eyes. No, the real problem is that Miriam at the end reaches out to Hira and is ready to forgive her (conditionally, which is good). This feels very out of order to me. She's known Hira for a much shorter period of time, and Hira literally made a deal to sell her. But she is worthy of a second chance, while the brotherly dude with shared trauma who led with gentleness and reassurances gets none? It just feels weird to me. Maybe if we had more hints that he himself treated her poorly in their shared backstory, my attitude would change–actually, my attitude on most of the show would change–but as it is, we don't get that.
Yeah, those are my gripes with the show in a nutshell. I enjoyed the setup, and I thought it had some really intriguing ideas that could lead to something interesting. But at the end of the day, it felt weird, disjointed in spots, deeply flawed, and deeply disappointing. I think it really fell short of its potential. I know part of that is the short six episodes they had to work with, and from a certain standpoint, I think they did a good job; they picked a manageably sized piece of the larger story going on in the world and they told it in a pretty well-structured way. But there are just too many severe shortcomings and missed opportunities for me to like it personally.
Thanks for the video. It was nice to hear someone else discussing and breaking down some of the stuff in the show! I like the way you tie things to lore and build your theories, and I'm actually reassured with regards to DA's future by a lot of your thoughts and ideas. Consider me a new subscriber. 🙂
I like to think Fairbanks just bluffed his way into the city with a Tevinter coin he didn’t realise wasn’t currency, but the guard he payed off was just secretly a really avid coin collector, so he accepted it as a bribe lol
I had very low expectations but it turned out to be quite good, definitely hope we see more.
Though I assumed it would be more of a setup for D:ad than stand alone
And I remember when there was a fake description of the show on Polygon that "they'd end slavery in Tevinter" and I shared it with you as a comment in one video… But perhaps if the series continue, it would show them ending slavery? "Tevinter will burn"? I'm so confused about where that description came from though.
I love this series, I kinda wish we had more of the series, or that they did the series leading up to the other games of the past. True I do find it a bit fast-paced, but I get why. I now look forward to the future game now more than ever.
For what flaws it has I enjoyed it because it surprised me. I wasn't expecting it to feel so authentic to Dragon age and feature DA characters and the core story it tells is really good enough in it's own right even if I didn't feel like all the characters go good development.
One hundred percent agreed on just….THRIVING hearing Jean Gilpin again. God she's so good.
Watched it. I did like it 🙂
I think there's two possible reasons the Circulum was never used: Amelia Pavus was aware when she made it that the cost was essentially a life for a life (the blood needed to make it work would have been all of Miriam's if the dragon hadn't been there) and she didn't think the trade off was worth it. Or she knew that it DOESN'T bring back the actual dead, it just calls/imprints a spirit that mimics the dead, essentially making some kind of revenant or something.
I think the thing with Tassia gets at what you were talking about with Meredith in the video and what you've talked about as being a bit of a brand for Dragon Age overall which is people getting really close to a revelation and then snapping back and doubling down. Tassia had a revelation about Rezaren when she realized he was doing exactly what she was afraid he would do. But, his death actually prevented her from having to follow through on her oath to stop him if he ever crossed a line with blood magic, and so she was able to just grieve him and start to build an alternate narrative in which he was the victim. It's awful to watch as an outsider because you're yelling "Girl, no!" at the screen while she's having this moment over his corpse, but at the same rate, it's extremely believable when it comes to how humans process the emotional gutpunches.
The best part to me is how they portray Tevinter. From the ealier games they make it sound like Tevinter is this bizarre land where everyone is sacrificing each other on the street and there blood canals and all that. Yes you have the books and Dorian's dialogue, but it's nice to see that Tevinter is a more functional society, but just as corrupt.
Glad to hear you again hope you're doing well
I actually was hoping that the hypothetical wife of Fairbanks might be the NPC who you free from the Veridium mine. I think her name is Gertrude? She seems more even keeled and more suited to Fairbanks than the young and perhaps naive Clara.
Mer is alive? Da fuck?! Guess she'll be a big baddie alongside egghead?
Heads up the map link is broken (the part after .jpg needs to be removed)
I'm not going to lie, I was really excited for this show, and really, really wanted to like it, but I thought it was absolute crap. I felt like the main cast of characters were too much like a D&D group only staying together because their players want to keep playing the game.
There were even several times when Lacklon, very reasonably in my opinion, is about to say "fuck this shit I'm out" but changes his mind at the last minute. Lacklon and Qwydion have zero stakes in the story, and I don't feel their friendship to Miriam being strong enough to warrant their stay throughout the second half.
And Miriam herself is such an unlikeable character. She does 180s in morality, personality and opinion so many times in the scant 6 episodes, and does sooo much severe gaslighting (especially towards Lacklon, the poor guy didn't deserve the amount of shade and disengenuous guilt tripping she throws at him on the regular) and whinging, that it is insane to me that anyone both in world and in the audience still has a shred of affection for her.
Like, the whole plot could have just been resolved if she isn't a dick to Rezaren. Oh, and let me not even get started on Rezaren. He was my sole joy in the series for five episodes, I thought he was such a well written antagonist; all his actions are well justified, his goals and motivations are great, he's such a perfectly good morally grey character that I even thought it was out of place in a show so poorly written, while watching.
… And then he does a 180 and is all of a sudden pure evil, and then unceremoniously gets stabbed in the throat and killed off. Well, screw you too, then, show. It's like the writers said "shit, we wrote this guy to basically be a hero of his own story, and has so far done nothing fully condemnable, but we really need Miriam's slavery arc to have a triumphant ending… uhh, just make her offer him the very resolution he was basically begging her to go with from the start, that would have been an easy fix for every single problem in the show, and then make him refuse for no reason at all, so we can have a final boss fight!" Like, he's done nothign to her, his mother was the one beating her and being cruel, all we're told that Rezaren treating Miriam and Neb genuinely as siblings. But he's a tevinter magister so he has to be evil, of course. It's such wasted potential, making him do the evil flip instead of letting the writing stay true to his character and have him continue sticking to just wanting his adopted siblings back.
Neb really be like "Dude I'm tired, OKAY BYEEEEEE"
Meredith Did Nothing Wrong, and she will return in DA4 as a red lyrium ghost who commands a red lyrium titan. Mu hu ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaa!
But other than her cameo, Absolution sucked and didn't make sense.
Wasn't there a complete revamp of the story for the sequel to Inquisition at one point? Because I swear the leaked plot points we got originally for it was that there was a heist in Tevinter, and you'd be playing a member of the heist crew…is this what came of that original plot arc?
I can't personally like the Meredith thing, because Corypheus' ability to leap bodies/"stay alive after death" was briefly shown in the DA2 Legacy DLC when he gave that odd look to Larius before seemingly allowing himself to die. Then in Inquisition we see it in full as he erupts from a nearby blighted body. You have a whole video on how this seems to work with Flemeth, which backs it up further. Meredith however, practically melts into solid, pure lyrium, her giving out a huge death scream.
To give them credit, lyrium has been said to be able to store memories, as you pointed out with the obvious example of golems, also possibly the Leliana Lyrium Ghost theory. It just seems a huge difference to have kept herself intact in all that chaos as opposed to the purpose and precision of the other examples. It could indeed just be a case of holding onto enough of yourself, as with spirits entering the waking world and not being warped into demons. As you also said, blighted lyrium has been said to feel "angry", which yeah, sorta supports that the part of her holding on is her unbridled anger, which was practically all that was left by the end.
TL;DR Corypheus' "resurrection" was set up, shown in full and backed up by other cases. Meredith has a teeny tiny string of setup, with factors stacked against its likelihood.
I do agree her voice actor slaps hard though 😛 Voice acting alone isn't enough for me to want her character to return, but y'know, kudos.
Anyway, cheers for covering this. Was unsure about watching the series – still unsure, but leaning toward doing so now 🙂
Oh and side note, the Solas banter about bearded elves was Blackwall saying he'd never seen any, and Solas laughing and saying "You haven't seen many elves, then". So it's the opposite – he's not denying they exist, in fact he's surprised Blackwall hadn't seen any, suggesting it's potentially common. Or perhaps *was*, during Solas' time.
Absolution could easily have 12 episodes… Everything felt like a long but hushed movie. Not bad, but could be better with more time to establish how the world works. A theft at a Circle would show a lot about Thedas… it may have happened because of budget, but I honestly don't know.
I think Meredith was just grown back from a piece of her red lyrium, she was probably already turning into red lyrium before she become the statue and since red lyrium can grow I think someone just grown her back.
I enjoyed it a lot. My biggest point of concern going into it was the very anime vibes it gave off, but I got over that really quickly. I loved the subtle and not subtle nods and signs to various forms of abuse, and the mentality behind the victims and perpetrators. I'm hoping for at least a dozen more episodes if it maintains this quality
Boo. It was no Dawn of the Seeker. (ducks)
Just a quick comment on the elven beards thing. I’ve always kind of taken it to be a sign of interbreeding with humans. City Elves (who are more likely to have human genes as well as elven for ahem reasons) typically have different phenotypes than the Dalish. Their ears tend to be much tighter against the head and their bodies tend to be taller and broader than the Dalish. All that’s to say nothing of the difference between both and the ancient elves like (spoiler) Solas. So it’s not impossible for elves who have a lot of human genes to be able to grown facial hair where elves with more concentrated elven heritage might not be able to.
I assumed that the meredith angle was being set up for dreadwolf as compared to being in a season 2. I reckon all the stuff were getting right now is connected to it, like the missing comic atm.
Thanks Dragon Age. Now every time I see a mage I start feeling suspicious 🤨
I was actually baffled Fairbanks was in this. I guess his side quest is pointless in hindsight now…
Liked all the points, but I have to disagree on one:
At the very least, they're setting up the circlet for DA:DW, and I think we might end up with dueling baddies
I really enjoyed the show, but I found the dialogue a little lackluster overall. I felt pretty meh on what happened with Fairbanks, because I did really like him in the game. I think Hira is super interesting.