WondLa Season 1 Thoughts
- Danny The UltraSonic Player
- 14 hours ago
- 6 min read
Making an animated adaptation of a book series is always a tricky thing. Because while it is a good idea-especially if the series is well liked by readers-there is also the fact that a lot of times producers/showrunners tend to have their own vision of what they think the story could be in animation. And sometimes it doesn't always go well with the diehard fans.
Yet with the trailer here, the presentation does seem very interesting.
For those who haven't read the books, the story begins with a girl named Eva who lives in an underground bunker called "Sanctuary". And it's there where we find that planet Earth has basically ended, and as such humanity has been driven underground, with Eva being one of them.
Fortunately Eva is not alone because she also has a robot caretaker called a Multi-Utility-Task-Helper-Robot (Muthr), who helps raise and educate her while they are staying underground. Naturally as Eva grows up she starts to get curious as all kids would and along with the usual antics Eva wonders when she can play with other kids quite like herself, which Muthr tells her she cannot do that yet. But then on Eva's sixth birthday Muthr provides her with a device called an Omni-Pod which guides her to a doorway that leads not to the surface but to a room called a "Dyna-Chamber" which contains a hologram of a man called Cadmus Pryde who not only is the one who built the bunker Eva and Muthr reside in but explains that the Earth is "sick" and needed time to recover. Luckily the bunker is only one of several where other kids reside and only when she passes the final assessment test Eva can then venture to the surface and see others her age. Needless to say Eva is more than motivated and begins her training in earnest the next day, which gives us a nice training montage which is made up of physical and mental training.
Ten years later, Eva celebrates her birthday with an eagerness to finally venture to the surface, but she is feeling anxious because for all her training/education, she is still not sure how to truly interact with people, and when she finally decides to explore the restricted area of "Sanctuary" she discovers the names of other kids but as she ventures deeper into the area and finds a crevice leading outside Eva notices a strange light coming from a distance. However, in trying to get said light's attention Eva ends up unknowingly garnering the attention of a mysterious yet deadly hunter and that's when things go crazy.
Running out of options and unable to hold off the attacker Muthr gives Eva supplies for her journey and encourages her to "trust in what you have been taught" before buying her time to escape, but even when Eva gets out of the bunker she finds herself on the edge of a cliff but not too long after that she encounters two characters: a water bear named Otto and a wondering alien named Rovender Kitt. From here on in, this is where the adventure begins.
For the rest of the season Eva spends time trying to figure out where she is and despite enlisting the help of Otto and Rovender - though the latter is extremely reluctant at first - Eva finds herself getting into ever more trouble than she wants. Fortunately thanks to her training and the help of her two new friends Eva does manage to come out of those pratfalls intact. Plus, when Muthr is found Eva is more than glad to have a familiar face with her as she tries to find this mysterious place called "WondLa" where she hopes the other kids she is looking for are there. Unfortunately the journey isn't an easy one since the one that attacked the bunker in the first episode is an alien Bounty Hunter named Besteel and essentially becomes the metaphorical shadow hanging over Eva and her group as he tries to track them down.
As the group continues their journey Eva starts to learn a bit more about the world she is in which is called "Orbona" and that humans - or "hoomans" as they are called - haven't been seen in a long time, and when the group travels to the remains of a city - a very familiar one at that - Eva realizes that the piece of paper she had found at the beginning was actually from the classic story The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and that the planet Orbona is in reality Earth, with aliens having claimed the planet as their own long ago.
Shortly after this Besteel finally catches up to them, and during the confrontation Eva calls the Dorcean Bounty Hunter a monster to which Besteel retorts:
"Monster? Look around. Your kind destroyed this planet, created this. Tell me hooman, who is the monster?"
At that moment it seems like Eva and her friends have no chance, but then using her ability to telepathically communicate with animals like with Otto, Eva manages to call on crab-like creatures called Sand Snipers for help, to which they do and Besteel ends up being dragged down into a crevice beneath the city.
Unfortunately Muthr is fatally damaged during the fight but in spite of that she manages to reveal to Eva that she made a choice not out of her programming but of her own accord, and that she ultimately was glad to be Eva's mother before she "dies". Eva and the others give Muthr a small funeral and a makeshift grave is made for her before another ship shows up, and this time it's a ship containing humans, with one of them being someone that Eva recognizes very well - Cadmus Pryde himself.
So, where to begin? In all, I like how Season 1 starts everything off because it takes the concept of “What happens after the world ends” and applies some familiar answers yet with quite a lot of twists, like humanity being directly responsible in some way for the current state of Earth. However, while they hid underground to wait for the planet to recover, visitors from outer space came along and staked a claim on the planet for a very long time. As a result, what you have is a world that has clearly been reborn into one that And even then, there’s still some answers that elude our main protagonist and her friends. While I never read the books, the way the story is told here isn't off-putting. And each of the characters feel real and there is something about them that the audience can latch on to. And part of that is a testament to the cast.
Speaking of which, let's talk about the voice cast. Starting with Jeanine Mason as Eva. What I like about her is that she nails the aspects of Eva where there is a touch of curiosity and naiveté, yet at the same token determination, tenacity, and unshakable loyalty/devotion to her friends and newfound family. Next up, Teri Hatcher as Muthr. Now as someone who had seen her as Lois Lane in "Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman" as a kid, as well as seeing her play a "Bond girl" in "Tomorrow Never Dies", as well as hearing her voice in "Coraline", Hatcher brought a really good balance of someone who at first is simply following what her programming dictates her to do, but as the season progresses the character also begins to undergo a change where she isn't just a simple caretaker for Eva but something more, and nowhere is this made clear than the scene where Muthr makes a last stand against Besteel. Next up is Gary Anthony Williams as Rovender Kitt. Now what I find interesting about what Williams brings to the role is a sense of world-weariness mixed in with great deal of knowledge about the world Eva finds herself in. There is also Brad Garret as Otto. While the character doesn't always say much, Otto is just so endearing to the audience with his naïveté and it's only through his telepathic connection to Eva that we're able to hear what Otto's thinking.
The look of the show is just something else. If you didn't know it was Earth you would almost think it was a completely different planet, but the design of it definitely helped bring the world created by Tony Diterlizzi to life in a much bigger way. Though from what little I've seen from the books, the source material is even more detailed.
Given that it's been a while since the show came out on Apple TV Plus, all three seasons are available. Personally I like what I've seen in the first season so I'll be definitely be checking out the rest of the show as well as the books, which is usually the other way around in my case - read the books first, then watch the TV/Movie adaptation - but in the case of WondLa I'll make an exception.
So if you like Sci-Fi Adventure with an Apocalyptic twist, and colorful characters you might want to journey with, check this show out!
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