Shadowhunters: “The Mortal Cup” Review

In the Freeform series, Clary describes her life leading up to her 18th birthday as “mundane” — the script’s overly tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that Shadowhunters call non-magical humans “mundanes.” But her life is actually pretty great; she’s just gotten into a prestigious art academy, she has a super cute best friend named Simon (Alberto Rosende) who’s obviously but silently in love with her, and she and her mother Jocelyn (Maxim Roy) live in a great apartment in Brooklyn. Clary’s life quickly gets more complicated when she gets thrust into a world she doesn’t understand after she witnesses a group of Shadowhunters, led by the cocky Jace Wayland (Dominic Sherwood), kill demons in a hip NYC club (Pandemonium, with the emphasis on the “demon”) and then her mother gets attacked and taken by Circle members.

This entire pilot hinges upon McNamara’s ability as Clary to ground these events, but she is the weakest link of the cast in its first episode. Clary is funny and sarcastic in Clare’s book, and though some of that spunky dialogue made its way into Ed Decter’s Shadowhunters script, McNamara execution of the lines often falls flat. Also lacking is any chemistry between her and Sherwood — something that could develop in coming episodes, but isn’t anything crackling enough to launch a thousand ‘ships, as it did in the source material.

Dominic Sherwood as Jace Wayland on Shadowhunters

Across the board the performances are weak in this pilot, and none of the actors are helped by the lackluster script. The two people who get out the most unscathed are Rosende and Emeraude Toubia, who plays Jace’s fellow Shadowhunter Isabelle Lightwood, as both of those actors are at least having fun in their roles. (Rosende also gets to sing, but fans of the franchise should roll their eyes over the use of “Forever Young.”) Other, more familiar faces like Isaiah Mustafah and Harry Shum, Jr., have little to do in this first episode. Much of the rest of the cast feels wooden in their performances, which isn’t helped by McG’s disappointing direction. The choppy editing blows through emotional story beats and doesn’t flow in a coherent way, making the plot difficult to follow even if you’re knowledgable of the source material.

This world is supposed to a fun one, and that fun is what Shadowhunters is seriously lacking. The concept of Clare’s novels is that there’s a secret gothic underbelly of demons and angels and warlocks and vampires hidden in plain sight in New York City. Here the fights are mediocrely executed, the club scenes and secret Shadowhunters lair feel dated and the demons, when we do see them, look like they belong in old Star Trek or Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes.

Katherine McNamara on Shadowhunters

The bonus of getting to tell an adaptation on television versus on the big screen is that you have more time to develop your characters and your story, and Shadowhunters completely wastes it. The series front-loads much of its exposition by flashing back to various time periods. While a visual medium benefits from showing rather than telling, much of this heavy-handed storytelling could have been saved for later instead of jammed into one hour. Worse, the over-stuffing of plot means that many of the details are glossed over and don’t have the impact they should have, and will need to be expanded upon in a meaningful way farther down the line to have a real resonance with the audience.

The best part about Shadowhunters’ first episode is the fact that there is better material ahead. Neither this pilot nor the film that came before have been able to nail the tone of what makes Clare’s novels so consumable and enjoyable. Shadowhunters needs to ditch its self-serious nature and have more fun with its storytelling if it hopes to connect and resonate with an audience. If the series works out its kinks and smooths out its performances, then it could grow into something worthy of its source material.