No one could have imagined that The Outpost would remain on our televisions for so long as to prosper and achieve in three successive seasons what the first one didn't do: capture half a million viewers and beat its own audience record in a context as unfavorable for TV shows as the summer holidays are, something which usually pushes the chains to reserve the best of their grills for the fall. But here is this medium production, which never intended much less to overshadow the giants Game of Thrones, Vikings or The Last Kingdom, conquering hearts year after year, and all thanks to some endearing characters and easily recognizable plots and which the public feels identified with now more than ever, centered on a middle age halfway between the fantastic and the apocalyptic, plagued by plagues and diseases caused by supernatural beings, which seems like a whole reinvention of the classic genre of heroes and adventures.
If Season 3 anticipated the covid age, Season 4 begins with themes that, although closer to the European Middle Ages, raise contemporary issues of vital importance, such as the skills that define a ruler, the irrelevance of blood to politically direct the destiny of the peoples, the convenience of banishing the old habits to choose more just and effective political systems, and everything related to family and bloodline. To sum up, The Outpost is reviewing aspects of medieval everyday life with a current look, and it does so with such magical solvency that this season promises to be more realistic than the previous ones and exceed all our expectations.
The first episode, which The CW premiered this Thursday, July 15, made its way through an atmosphere of solemn nostalgia, melancholy and uncertainty after the sacrifice made by Queen Rosmund to save the outpost inhabitants from a fate worse than death. Now, they pay homage to her absent, in a funeral ceremony officiated by Captain Spears, commander of the military guard of the outpost, who, after giving a speech of encouragement, hopes that Talon assumes her duty as a new sovereign since, otherwise, a new conflict would break out between Gallwood and the Blackbloods, unwilling to accept human leaders. Her imminent public rejection of the crown exasperates her friends, all of them, in another hand, scattered in their own affairs, as Wren is undergoing the physical changes corresponding to pregnancy for his race, Zed insists on doing with her what Garret with Talon, forcing her to occupy the religious throne that Yavalla left, Janzo continues to busy examining files and Falista mourning in loneliness Tobin's death in palace.
Everyone has been affected by Gwynn's death, but to a different degree and form. Zed, Janzo and Wren, who didn't maintain such close contact with the queen, aren't as sorry as Talon and Garret, and this is noticeable in the interpretations of the two leading actors, barely unable to catch the humor acid from Janzo and Zed when the brewer confirms Falista's royal ancestry and the dilemma of hiding this information in order to delegitimize it and have someone else take his place on the throne is faced on tab. Janzo makes laugh of Garret at the possibility that he might fancy himself an elected candidate. Jokes aside, the character of Falista is, at this point, crucial for the development of the plot, because her connection with the royal family confronts her with Talon, divides her allies and also encourages the theocrats of the Prime Order, Two and Three, take advantage of the political problem to bribe her.
Falista was introduced as a vehicular minor character in S3 that served to steer Gwynn away from Tobin and have Tobin marry her to her at Aegisfort in exchange for an army for Gallwood. The smug baroness, accustomed to gold and silk, didn't quite fit into this military base, especially when Gwynn declined Tobin's proposal for commander of the guard. However, accidentally obtaining her red kinj has made her evolve round the clock in just a few episodes. She is insecure and afraid of the world, she has a power with which to subdue those who disobey her and that makes her feel stronger and more independent. If previously Falista was aware that she needed a man by her side to handle it and obtain favor and influence through him, now she no longer needs anyone to achieve her purposes, which makes her an important character and, above all, as ambiguous as unpredictable.
The interest that Falista now arouses perhaps makes Talon pale slightly, since her story is that of an exiled woman who doesn't know her place in the world and who is not sure who she is or who she wants to become. Talon has gained confidence, but that doesn't mean that, deep down inside of her, she has stopped running away and shirking any kind of responsibility. Her friendship with Gwynn allowed her to serve her and set goals of her own but, once queen is died, she doesn't really know to whom she owes loyalty, because her heart is still divided among the survivors of her nation and the Gallwood citizens. Humans were the ones who condemned and persecuted the Blackbloods, so whatever her decisions, there will always be one side that may consider her a betrayer, which explains why she always prefers to stay out of politics. Unlike her friends, she knows the rules of the octor better than those that govern her world and she doesn't know how to use them in her favor.
Garret Spears, on the other hand, is the opposite of Talon in many respects. They both have feelings for each other, but for Garret duty has always come before love, which is embodied in that first divergence of opinions at the beginning of the chapter. Garret believes that the right thing to do is to do what Gwynn would have ordered, but Talon argues that she lacks that cultural and educational immersion that enables a king to decide on economy, law and order. Sadly, her stubbornness takes a toll on him, because if she declines, he is the only man in authority in Gallwood and while Garret was always a selfless man, more concerned with protecting the outcast and the vulnerable, Someone Has to Rule drift suggests the captain is also trying to tip the scales in his favor. In this world, people must put honor and family before love and personal desires, something Garret was born with but Talon doesn't understand. Gwynn was the connecting link between Garret and Talon, since they weren't just friends. Previously the captain and the queen had been lovers, and later circumstances prompted them and Talon to unite against the Prime Order for the good of the realm. Now that she is gone, the convergence of interests of both has timidly vanished. In a way, both Talon and Garret are in need of a greater purpose to entrust their lives to, but it remains to be seen whether such a prolonged absence of leadership doesn't position them on opposing sides in the long run.
Garret would be willing to lie about the legitimacy of Falista's throne to prevent a subsequent conflict within the village, but he wouldn't only do so for sheer convenience, but because of how much he loves and respects her. However, Talon observes the panorama from a very different perspective: he senses that the fascination for her person dominates the environment because, after all, one of the aspects of her that most captivated Garret was her impressive fighting skills. Then, Talon has the feeling that people only use her or ask for her help when they need it. She believes that the distance between herself and Gwynn is like a bottomless abyss, and only Wren, with whom she shares that circumstantial parallelism, is the one who makes her see during the walk along the river that she, as her father and as the queen, were people more concerned about others than about themselves, who on multiple occasions risked their lives in exchange for nothing. That intimate conversation is what motivates her to finally accept the crown, just when Two and Three are ahead of them.
Two hasn't given up in her efforts to conquer Gallwood, to which is now added another even more coveted incentive: the powerful Falista's red kinj. The naive baroness bows to her speech because her obsession with realm crown blinds her in such a way that she isn't aware that the theocrats are going to turn her into a mere puppet at the service of her whims. Two offers her without hesitation the resurrection of Tobin and the throne, and Falista is crowned by a hieratic and unrecognizable Tobin to the astonishment of those present, who wonder in amazement what kind of magic can work such a macabre miracle.
And, without magic, The Outpost doesn't exist. The series begins little by little to tie up loose ends in this episode, intertwining fuzzy and unexplained plots from previous seasons, such as the origin of the kinjs and the role of the dragman, or of the dragmans, to put it better, since the murderer who seeks revenge by mistake on Talon is nothing but the older sister of Ilyin, the dragman girl who originally accompanied Everit Dredd and who later fell victim to Rebb, Talon's blackblood nemesis. Apparently, the dragmans are women with supernatural powers (for example, reading minds) trained by monks in shrines like the one that was on the border with the grayskins and there's no doubt both the appearance of the new dragman and the awakening of the gods are bonded phenomena. We don't know what the dragmans protected, or what their secret is, but we do know that it must be something quite evil and terrible.
About the so-called "gods" we have found out or, at least, elaborated some hypotheses during the course of the chapter: if the Terakinj is the kinj of death and the reborn god who had it is Tera, it means that Vorta, Kurta, and the the rest of the kinjs that possess Two and Three, receive their name from the god to which they once belonged, which means that these omnipotent ancestral beings could be the creators of the kinjs and that the blackbloods who lived in the heyday of the city that lies under the walls of Gallwood, they were taken from them to prevent them from being used for evil purposes because of their uncompromising power. In fact, it's quite possible that these gods were the ancestors of the blackbloods and that the fact that the Lu Qiri no longer obey them is due to their power preventing them. This circumstance is something that will end up taking its toll on Talon, his allies and also Two and her henchmen, because at the first time in the series all the factions will find themselves defenseless against an enemy that exceeds their expectations. If we are correct, that would mean our friends would have to work together with the Prime Order to end this threat.
