Distributor: Warner Home Video
Episodes: 22
Duration: 45 min (per episode)
The Originals: Season 3 (Blu-ray) – Series Review
The Originals is up to its third season already, which is some feat for a series that’s “based in part on the character Klaus from ‘The Vampire Diaries’ novels by L.J. Smith.” With a subject that is nearly as done to death as zombies are, The Originals still find a way to entertain and mix things up enough to keep the matter somewhat fresh. If you haven’t caught up on the matter, it pays off to first dive into the first two seasons before booting up the discs for season three.
The Originals: Season Three doesn’t give you the quick ‘what happened on’ to help you catch up on past events. This makes it so you really have to watch the previous seasons if you want to be up to speed on the events. This can be both bothersome and quite an effective way of keeping your audience engaged in the subject matter. Season three doesn’t really kick off things, it goes off to a meandering start. It doesn’t really go in guns blazing and tell you shit has hit the fan but slowly builds up to it. With 22 episodes to fill each lasting 45 minutes, this gives the producer some time to build in the suspence and intrigue involving the characters. Things don’t stay peaceful and soon ‘The Originals: Season Three’ is up to its blood gushing, gory ways of pure exhilirating action.
Putting the events on the timeline, makes it clear the events take place several months after the events of the previous season in which the fallout of the battle with the witch Dahlia have done nothing to heal the bond between the brothers Elijah Mikaelson (Daniel Gillies) and Klaus Mikaelson (Joseph Morgan). A flashback then warps the viewer back to 1002 A.D. To show the Mikealsons taking hostage a human by the name of Lucien (Andrew Lees). He doesn’t stay human forever and when the flashback ends, it’s clear that he has some roll in the events that have transpired. There’s a serial killer on the loose and Camille O’Connell (Leah Pipes), Vincent Griffith (Yusuf Gatewood) and Detective Will Kinney (Jason Dohring) are out to find out who’s doing the killing and why. The overarching plot is that Elijah and Klaus have to stop a prophecy from happening and destroying their family. Without spoiling too much, there’s quite some finality in this season. This doesn’t mean that there won’t be a fourth season as that is currently already in the works.
When it comes down to brass tacks, it has to be said that the acting is on par with the previous seasons. This is even the case when the writing sometimes messes up the pacing of the season. There are moments where you can almost look away for a whole five minutes and not have missed anything relevant only for a string of important events to race by, sometimes even blinking might make you miss a very crucial part of information, and the series doesn’t do flashbacks at least not in the ‘this happened in the last 30 minutes’ kind.
The scenes in the Christmas episode were the epitome of the messed up pacing. Halfway in the episode people are getting stabbed and it’s basically a brawling scene, the brakes are then thrown on and the pacing is thrown to a screeching halt to shoehorn in a ‘christmas’ scene’ where all is peaceful. Having a christmas episode is fine even if the thought of vampires and werewolves celebrating something as mundane as christmas when you have eternity is laughable. Just tossing in a quick christmas scene in between the fighting and the gore is probably the least practical way to portray peace and quiet between werewolves and vampires.
When talking about the lines the characters say, it’s something you’ll either love or hate. Some characters, like the older vampires, Klaus and Elijah talk in a very ‘oldish’ fashion. This makes it often that they don’t talk in a ‘direct manner’ as we are used to in modern day life. This isn’t so much an issue, but when it’s coupled with characters that haven’t been around for about a millenium, who don’t partake in the ‘olden speech’ it becomes jarring. There’s some real wit in the dialogues but the it’s often lost in the pompuous way the ‘Originals’ speak.
Even with 22 episodes each lasting 45 minutes, spread across several Blu-Ray discs, that’s not all you are getting when you purchase the season. There’s also the 2015 Comic-Con Panel, ‘Charles michael Davis in the Big Easy Come Visit Georgia’, unaired scenes and a gag reel.
Conclusion
If you are a fan of the series you’ll be thrilled to know that you can finally add season 3 to your collection, if you aren’t yet, then don’t just start watching with this season because you’ll have quite some questions which won’t really get answered properly. Best to view the previous season beforehand. The Originals: Season Three does its best to entertain and as far as vampire/werewolf series goes, it does so gender unbiased, so even men can enjoy the series because of the gory action and still be moved by the sometimes emotional and critical moments.
The Originals: Season 3 (Blu-ray) - Series Review,
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