Willow has been a long time coming. The original 1988 fantasy film that the new show is based on, which starred Warwick Davis as wide-eyed Nelwyn sorcerer Willow Ufgood, never enjoyed the critical or commercial success of LucasFilm’s previous endeavour (a little saga called Star Wars). It was damned, too, by comparisons with The Princess Bride, which had come out just one year earlier. But Willow grew into a bona fide cult hit, an original fantasy epic that helped propel Val Kilmer to stardom, and retains a loyal affection among its now-adult fans, decades after its release. So when Disney announced it was pushing ahead with a long-gestating sequel, split into eight episodes on Disney Plus, it qualified, for many people, as Big News.
Willow (the series) picks up roughly a couple of decades after the events of Willow (the film). Elora, the baby MacGuffin around whom the movie’s plot revolved, has been raised in total anonymity for her own safety. Sorsha (Joanne Whalley) is now queen, with two children: the spirited warrior Kit (Ruby Cruz), and her twin brother Airk (Dempsey Bryk), the palace’s resident f***boy. After an assault on the palace leads to Airk being taken by demons, Kit leads a ragtag fellowship of heroes – including kitchen maid Dove (Ellie Bamber) and a swashbuckling thief (Amar Chadha-Patel) – to find Willow and get him to aid in Airk’s rescue.
