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- Freeform
- Mar 17, 2020
- Freeform
- Mar 17, 2020
Summary In an alternative America where witches avoided the witch trials by agreeing to cooperate with the government, three young witches: Raelle (Taylor Hickson), Tally (Jessica Sutton) and Abigail (Ashley Nicole Williams) undergo combat magic training and fight a dangerous foe in this drama series created by Eliot Laurence.
Created By: Eliot Laurence
- Freeform
- Mar 17, 2020
- Freeform
- Mar 17, 2020
Summary In an alternative America where witches avoided the witch trials by agreeing to cooperate with the government, three young witches: Raelle (Taylor Hickson), Tally (Jessica Sutton) and Abigail (Ashley Nicole Williams) undergo combat magic training and fight a dangerous foe in this drama series created by Eliot Laurence.
Created By: Eliot Laurence
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Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 7 Critic Reviews
49
0% Positive
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
100% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 7 Critic Reviews
49
0% Positive
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
100% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
If the first season can clear up some of the confusion and expand the world beyond the recruits, we expect things to get very interesting.
Narrative bagginess swallows all the story’s oxygen and blows it out as stale air: It squanders precious opportunities to develop compelling antagonists—and that lack of complexity is even more unfortunate given that the three leads are so charismatic and well-cast.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 18 User Ratings
7.4
72% Positive
13 Ratings
13 Ratings
6% Mixed
1 Rating
1 Rating
22% Negative
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 18 User Ratings
7.4
72% Positive
13 Ratings
13 Ratings
6% Mixed
1 Rating
1 Rating
22% Negative
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
At its best, the series is wildly ambitious and gorgeously otherworldly, with flying drug trips, strength-enhancing orgies and brilliantly novel aesthetics, especially in its marriage between military chic and Goth motifs. But it is rarely at its best. Fort Salem leans early and heavily into its most familiar, least interesting storyline.
The types are all pretty obvious and plot turns are telegraphed well in advance, yet the show fails to clearly explain what is going on in this alternate America. The witchiness of the young women is even underplayed to a frustrating degree until late in the premiere episode.
Those more pertinent narratives are nearly crushed inside the margins by shoehorned subplots such as a mishandled suicide storyline, necromancy, and pretty much anything regarding the elder witches in their command station.
“Motherland” combines too many ideas in order to make one wildly confusing show that, despite its insistence otherwise, struggles to understand what “empowerment” actually means.
After six episodes (that’s how many Freeform made available to critics), the tone is still uneven and some of the reveals are hard to follow. Dialogue is occasionally clunky, frequently bordering on ridiculous.
Give it a shot. I did and it is starting to grow on me and now I'm looking forward to the next episode. It's got a lot of cool concepts about witchcraft and the alternate universe is well done. Some of it looks a little low budget and tacky (especially the color hues). But once you get past that it's a lot of fun.
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SEASON 1
[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]
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SEASON 1