Swamp Thing series premiere recap: Pilot

Luke Lucas

DC Universe’s Swamp Thing premiered on the streaming service Friday. It was heavy on exposition, light on Swamp Thing. We’ve got the recap.

If you’ve seen any of the trailers for Swamp Thing, you’ve seen the first five minutes of the pilot episode. The series premiere was written by Gary Dauberman (IT) and Mark Verheiden (Ash vs Evil Dead). It was directed by Len Wiseman (Lucifer). This is a dream team of horror contemporaries that had a lot of fans looking forward to what DC Universe was going to do with Swamp Thing. That’s what makes the pilot so disappointing to me.

Name, Rank, and Serial Number

Dauberman’s IT screenplay had some of the most realistic adolescent dialogue in any genre of movie in the last ten years. Verheiden wrote the “Family” episode of Ash vs Evil Dead. It was the season three premiere and introduced Ash Williams’ (Bruce Campbell) daughter Brandy Barr (Arielle Carver-O’Neill). In a script with a lot of moving parts, the episode was funny, scary, and set the arc for the season.

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None of that happens in Swamp Thing. Each scene features characters walking around and functioning like an old school RPG. A character walks up to another character. That character explains who they are, why they are important to the other character, and their connection to the story. No lie. This happens repeatedly throughout the pilot.

In the opening scene of Swamp Thing, CDC operative Harlan Edwards (Leonardo Nam) is in the Republic of Congo and strapped in a HAZMAT suit. I love Nam on West World and I was excited to see him here. But, I wasn’t too impressed to see a kid protecting his sister from Nam with a machete. I get it. It’s a brother being protective of his kid sister. Still.

Abby Arcane (Crystal Reed) walks in to the tent where Harlan is fending off the machete strikes. (Each one seems to connect with Harlan, but, they don’t. Wonky effects there.) Harlan protests, but Abby removes her HAZMAT mask and offers the hand of a white savior to the child, who almost instantly takes it and follows her out of the tent with his sister.

A couple of things here. Abby does speak the French or Kituba of the area, which makes convincing the kids a lot easier than Harlan’s loud gesturing from within a space suit. Why wouldn’t you send her in first? I know. It’s not as cool. But we shouldn’t be questioning that while the show is happening. It takes you out of the moment, which is highly contrived to begin with.

Also, the child is suffering from hemorrhagic fever. That can be extremely contagious and lethal. In the scene, Abby throws the clothes she was wearing into a trash can fire. So, whatever the kid has is super contagious. Abby exposed herself for a long time. But her and Harlan laugh it off with a promise for her to take all of the tests. What?!

Don’t Poke the Swamp

The teaser for the show was a bit long, but effective. Three guys are looking for drop points in a secluded area of the swamp in Marais, Louisiana. Before they can drop their payload, their computer tech guy is impaled by vines that rise from deep within the swamp and protrude ten feet above the water line. It’s like classic Evil Dead with roid rage. The other two guys get tossed in the water. One is torn apart by rabid vines. The other, Eddie Coyle (John Bishop), might get away.

He does. But when Coyle gets home, he must be in pain or trying to get in an altered state. He cracks open a bottle of pills, but those clingy vines bust right through the medicine cabinet and down the poor guys digestive tract via his throat. More on that later.

At school, his daughter, Susie (Elle Graham), falls out and is rushed to the Marais Hospital. Her teacher and school nurse who helped Susie also fall ill. They seem to be growing swamp in their lungs. Abby and Harlan are called in when this mysterious disease starts spreading throughout the town.

Abby enters the hospital and immediately tells the medical staff that this is serious and everyone needs to follow proper infectious disease protocol. Everyone looks back at her like they’re saying “No duh.” Also, we know Abby, herself, will not follow any protective protocol. But, way to take charge.

The Good Parts

The look and feel of the show are great. It’s dark, creepy, and makes you fear the swamp. There are a couple of legit jump scares that are not gratuitous. There’s even a vaguely explained side story about Abby actually being from Marais. She grew up there and was best friends with Maria Sunderland’s (Virginia Madsen) daughter until she killed her in their senior year of high school.

That is a juicy storyline that’s made all the better by Madsen. Sunderland clearly blames Abby for her daughter’s death. Abby owns it. Sunderland has a quick chat with Abby where she lays the ground rules for her CDC investigation: “The minute that little girl gets better, you get out.”

The killer vines are not Swamp Thing. They are the swamp. That payload the Coyle group was trying to drop? It’s a growth enhancing mutagen. Yes. That explanation is redundant. The mutagen is being dropped as part of an experiment by Avery Sunderland (Will Patton). He is a powerful developer and Maria’s husband. He had hired and then fired disgraced scientist Alec Holland (Andy Bean) to keep a sort of watch over the experiments, which seem to have gone horribly wrong.

Alec and Abby eventually team up, fend off Death Eater vines a couple of times, and have the one scene where there’s actual character development. Over brown liquor, both admit they have troubled pasts. They know there’s a cover-up happening. Investigating could be dangerous. It’s obvious that one of these characters will die in the next scene.

While Abby is collecting Alec’s samples to take to the hospital lab (not a contamination threat at all), Alec goes to investigate the swamp. He finds one of the drop sites. Before he can do anything, a person who looks like the killer from I Know What You Did Last Summer shines a flood light in his face. Alec sees the slicker bro in another boat. He also sees the bro has a shotgun, but it’s too late to react. Alec is shot multiple times. Long John Silver throws a stick of dynamite into Alec’s boat because if you’re going to do a thing, do it right.

Alec flips himself into the water next to the exploding boat, but the six inches of water separating Alec from the boat shields him from the blast and debris. Yeah, son! Alec then floats to the bottom of the swamp, which is mostly comprised of mutagen at this point. Instead of killing him, the helper vines insert themselves into Alec’s body and face like the aliens did to Fox Mulder in season eight of the X-Files.

Abby comes to investigate. She follows the fire from the explosion until it disappears and then reappears. I’m not sure if this is supposed to be an effect or if it’s season eight Game of Thrones editing. The vines are not so nice to Abby. They start their death march towards her. But, then they stop. An arm shoots out of the water. Abby is scared, but keeps looking. Alec is dead. But Swamp Thing (Derek Mears) is born! Mutagen is cool again!

I took a clear shot at the premiere episode of Swamp Thing because it was not particularly good at world building. If your plot is going to be this thin, you need to do more to set things up for the season. The atmosphere was good. Swamp Thing’s birth was okay. Alec’s death was ridiculous. The pilot tried so desperately hard to set Abby up as hardcore that they forgot to really fill in her character. It was eerily like any DCEU movie. Let the character scenes reveal her strength. Don’t have the character make a short, flat speech.

Still, I can’t wait for the next episode. I think this is mostly because I’m expecting the story to get fleshed out and spread like the codependent vines of the pilot. Does Swamp Thing control the vines? Will he cure the spread of the swamp disease? What are the circumstances around Abby and Maria’s daughter? So many questions. If the pilot did one thing, it peaked interest in next week’s episode. So, mission accomplished?

What did you think of the pilot episode of Swamp Thing? Will you be tuning in every week? Let’s discuss in the comments!

Luke Lucas

He, him, his. Capricorn. Born, raised, and based in Chicago, IL.One time on stage I played a weather man cosplaying as Michael Meyers during the nuclear holocaust.I believe Lodge 49, Perpetual Grace LTD, and Undone all exist in the same universe.I'm into horror, wacky dramas, and comedy. So, like, everything. I'm into everything.