Can't believe the insanely harsh reviews for this show. I found myself rooting for all of the paladins, hard to pick a favorite. And i loved Mila the Oracle! As far as the challenges go, it was a little confusing in collaborative challenges as to why one paladin would win over others. Could have been resolved with a Survivor style voting, or simply had more clear competition challenges, like escaping the snake man's rope cage.
The story was crafted enough make the challenges feel worthwhile, but I felt there was a little too much of the scripted story which seemed to remove some storytelling agency from the actions of the paladins. Very exciting when the paladins failed their challenge, and had to react to the consequences, like prisoners escaping.
Perhaps the occasional aside confessional with paladins to talk about what they're thinking and feeling would have been nice. This also would have been helpful for them to tell the audience about themselves, their interests, why they want to be the One True Hero.
Lastly I feel the final "boss battle" with Tavora was lackluster due to it being entirely reliant on CGI magic. This could have been fixed by making it a real challenge like a water cannon shootout/dunk tank - something the One True Hero could actually physically manipulate that would mechanically trigger a real trapdoor that indicates Tavora has been destroyed or trapped. Add some real pyro for spice. Pointing at each other and yelling, which the other paladins pretend they can see VFX that aren't there, was not compelling, and probably not fun for them to film either.
Hope it gets renewed and they learn from the mistakes of this season, because I think the concept is so fun and I know I would have loved to be one of the competing paladins.
The story was crafted enough make the challenges feel worthwhile, but I felt there was a little too much of the scripted story which seemed to remove some storytelling agency from the actions of the paladins. Very exciting when the paladins failed their challenge, and had to react to the consequences, like prisoners escaping.
Perhaps the occasional aside confessional with paladins to talk about what they're thinking and feeling would have been nice. This also would have been helpful for them to tell the audience about themselves, their interests, why they want to be the One True Hero.
Lastly I feel the final "boss battle" with Tavora was lackluster due to it being entirely reliant on CGI magic. This could have been fixed by making it a real challenge like a water cannon shootout/dunk tank - something the One True Hero could actually physically manipulate that would mechanically trigger a real trapdoor that indicates Tavora has been destroyed or trapped. Add some real pyro for spice. Pointing at each other and yelling, which the other paladins pretend they can see VFX that aren't there, was not compelling, and probably not fun for them to film either.
Hope it gets renewed and they learn from the mistakes of this season, because I think the concept is so fun and I know I would have loved to be one of the competing paladins.