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This fifth season starts off with the fallout from season 4: new-Hexenbeast Juliette having killed Nick’s mother, tried to kill Nick, then herself been killed by Trubel. Only, in the best way of fantasy tales, Juliette isn’t as dead as she once was, having been taken by Hadrian’s Wall, the covert anti-Wessen organisation Trubel now works for. They have turned Juliette into Eve, a super-powerful emotionless Wessen killer with a strange taste in wigs. Meanwhile, Adelind and her new baby, Nick’s son (from when Adelind was disguised as Juliette), has become part of the good guy team, and Nick seems quite happy to change the target of his affections. And Black Claw, a powerful covert Wessen organisation, is out to take over the world, starting with Portland.
Yes, it’s getting complicated. And a bit of a mess. The overall season arc is the fight against Black Claw, but still with the monster-of-the-week detecting to do. When the stakes are low, fighting monsters one at a time seems fine; when the stakes have risen to world domination by Wessen, I would have thought a more joined-up response would be better. That’s what Hadrian’s Wall is for (although rather sparsely staffed), but Nick can’t just join them, for some reason. In fact, the monster-of-the-week is often the light relief from the darker background tone. And this time it’s Wu’s turn to misguidedly keep secrets from the others. Also, Hank now appears to be about the only normal human on the planet.
Two characters have massive plot-driven changes. Adelind becomes one of the good guys. Even when the humanising potion wears off and she’s got her hexenbiest powers again, despite dire warnings and fears of her turning bad, she stays the same. And Reynard’s change seems rather under-signalled: his flip to the Dark Side needed more motivation, which it would have been easy to provide, given his background. Then the Magic Stick is found, and forgotten for a few episodes, before becoming potentially, but not actually, decisive. Maybe next season?
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