*Premise spoilers.*
The second half of the two-part premiere comes in fast and funny, an endearing fish-out-of-water tale after the more straightforward sci-fi action of the first episode. A few of the jokes might get hammered a little too hard right out of the gate, but on the whole, this is a terrific episode that encapsulates all there is to love about 3Below.
Having fled the coup on Akiridion-5, Aja, Krel, and Varvatos just crashed their Mother Ship on the “dung heap” of planet Earth, specifically Arcadia Oaks. The ship, Mother, gets to work disguising both herself and her Akiridion charges so the locals won’t get suspicious. However, the ship is badly damaged, which forces the trio out into the world in search of critical replacement parts. Their kooky curiosity about Earth attracts some unwanted attention, and soon, the royals find themselves having to blend in at school.
There’s a lot to like here. We get some entertaining recurring jokes, like how Mother bases her Earth knowledge on radio transmissions that have reached deep space, so all of her info is decades out of date. To disguise the Akiridions, Mother transduces their native energy-based forms into human bodies that “people on the mud planet tend to ignore”: a girl, a Latino, and a senior citizen. This means that mighty warrior Varvatos is now in the body of a little old man with a walker, which thwarts some of his feats of strength and makes his rants about glorious death feel comically incongruous.
The montage of the kids and Varvatos exploring Arcadia is a hoot. Aja makes grass angels on a public lawn and investigates a vinyl record by licking it, and Varvatos faces off against an army of girl scouts trying to help him cross the street for a merit badge. They’re at their wildest and funniest when they’re just wandering around on their own, but once Aja and Krel get sent to school and Varvatos is left to his own devices, they’re put in more direct contact with humans—naturally, this just leads to even more fun.
But for all the jokes and silliness, this isn’t a frivolous episode. The king and queen were badly hurt during the coup, and they’ve been reduced down to their “life cores,” which Mother is barely able to keep in stasis, let alone regenerate, in her own damaged state. Aja and Krel are resilient, curious kids who are proactive in their own lives and fascinated by the new planet on which they find themselves, but they’re also scared teens who’ve just fled their home and are trying to figure things out in a strange place without their parents’ help. There are moments, especially near the end of the episode, where things get real. In these scenes, the emotions are as honest as the earlier comedy is ridiculous.
Our character of the week is Señor Uhl, Arcadia Oaks’ Spanish teacher and interim principal. Voiced by Fred Tatasciore, he’s one of many Trollhunters characters who carries over into 3Below in various capacities, and in my opinion, he really comes into his own in this series. On Trollhunters, a good chunk of his screentime is devoted to the gag of the Spanish teacher being Austrian, but here, he gets a lot more development and shading. He’s initially positioned as an obstacle for Aja and Krel, asking them questions they can’t answer and demanding they follow rules they’ve never heard of, but when it really counts, he demonstrates that, as odd and inexplicable as these kids are, he takes their education and care seriously.
Diego Luna is so much fun as Krel, people. Within five minutes of his debut on Trollhunters, I already loved him, but he’s simply a delight here. One of the tidbits offered about Krel on Trollhunters is that he loves music, and that starts in this episode. I love his reaction to hearing Earth music for the first time, involuntarily dancing around the Mother Ship that’s disguised herself as a “retro” home complete with a record player. At school, he adorably raises both his hands to ask questions in math class, adding, “Back home, I have four of them!”
These moments of unbridled enthusiasm are all the more enjoyable because, a lot of the time, Krel is kind of standoffish and skeptical. He quickly gets aggravated in his quest to find a new daxial array for the ship, because every human he talks to assumes it’s a band name, and he confidently addresses Señor Uhl as “school bureaucrat.”
Luna has some fantastic deadpan line readings as Krel coolly replies in situations that he clearly doesn’t understand. A couple of my favorites, both during an encounter with a police officer:
· The interaction starts over a misunderstanding about money, namely that Krel needs to pay for things he wants in shops. The officer asks, “Do you have money to pay for the record, kid?”, and Krel simply answers, “It would appear doubtful.”
· Later, the officer says, “Why aren’t you kids in school? You know what a school is, right?” Not missing a beat, Krel replies, “Let’s assume not.”
It’s hard to explain. The lines, while amusing, aren’t inherently fantastic on their own, but the way Luna delivers them makes them awesome. Even though Krel basically just has Luna’s voice (with maybe a little less of his natural huskiness,) he feels distinct very quickly. It’s not Luna I’m hearing. It’s Krel. Really nice work.
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