Netflix's Ares season 1 premiere recap: Episode 1

An ambitious young woman named Rosa discovers an elite and sinister student association called the Ares Society and decides to pledge.

A young woman goes off to college in a montage set to a cheery soundtrack on Ares. She is beautiful, good-humored, and vibrant, but as she begins dating an attractive young man and pledging an unusual student society, something changes and her eyes take on a lifeless, dark quality. The montage ends with the woman, once so full of life, optimism, and potential, stabbing her eyes out with a pair of scissors and then cutting out her own throat. What brought her to this?

Elsewhere, a young medical student named Rosa just can’t seem to be able to get ahead in life. She misses out on a prestigious internship and her mother suffers from a degenerative brain disease that causes dementia. She needs to be cared for 24/7, which limits Rosa’s ability to go to a better school away from home.

She’s not even glad when her best friend Jacob comes to visit, because once he went away to college himself he’s been completely out of contact. Is she not good enough for him anymore? She’s understandably angry, but Rosa’s mother insists that she and Jacob go out to dinner so they can patch things up. She’ll manage, she promises.

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But when they go out to dinner and they run into a group of Jacob’s new friends, he gets shifty and awkward. He even seems afraid. He promises to explain everything once they’re in a taxi, but he does everything he can to keep Rosa away from them. Unfortunately, Rosa is headstrong, curious, and angry. She confronts Jacob’s friends, telling them to leave him alone.

One of the group, a woman named Carmen who had previously befriended the dead girl in the montage, introduces herself to Rosa. They were just leaving, but Jacob has to go with them. Jacob wants to bring Rosa home, but she’s curious to see what he and his friends are up to so she insists on coming along.

They go to an art museum and Rosa attempts to tease out the details of this mysterious student association as they browse the art pieces. Carmen appears to be cosplaying as Sabrina the teenage witch or something. Is that how rich people dress? Rosa doesn’t get much out of her except a metaphor about an egg in a painting that represents Holland and the swan that protects it from the dog. Rosa says she must be the egg. Is Jacob the swan protecting her from the dogs of the society?

What Rosa does know is that they are members of a society for people with potential. The next morning when she wakes up, she finds an egg and a postcard of the swan painting with a calling card clipped to it. Someone snuck into her room while she was sleeping. Creepy! But not as creepy as Rosa’s dream about an oil-slicked black humanoid creature bound by chains.

Rosa calls the number on the calling card and a distorted voice tells her to wait at the library at 6:00 if she’s interested in joining the Ares Society. When Rosa confronts Jacob about it later, he begs her in a panic to forget about it, for her own sake. Whatever this society is, it’s pretty scary stuff. But no one tells Rosa what she can and can’t do, so she waits at the library at 6:00 and Carmen comes to pick her up.

Carmen asks Rosa what she wants. Rosa’s been working so hard, but she never gets ahead; she never wins. She wants to win. Carmen seems impressed, but she has to be sure that this is what Rosa really wants and that she’s willing to go all the way. Instead of going home to watch over her mother like she’s supposed to, she gets on a bus filled with other initiates and gives up her cell phone.

Of course, this is when Rosa’s mother suffers an accident. She arrives bloody and wounded at the hospital where Rosa’s father works. Suffice to say, he is surprised to see his wife being brought into the emergency room. He calls Rosa, but her phone is already stuffed away with the others.

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Meanwhile, plastic bags are put over the initiates’ heads as they’re taken to a secret location where they are forced to crawl through a disorienting tunnel of obstacles. Their clothes are cut off their bodies and replaced by baggy shifts. As they kneel in supplication, the bags are removed from their heads to reveal a round, ornate room surrounded by a balcony level filled with masked, black-robed figures. Before them stands seven more masked and blue-robed figures lead by a yellow-robed master of ceremonies. The initiates are given eyeless masks to hold in their mouths, turning them into a blind and silent Greek chorus.

Well, so far this probably isn’t even as bad as some actual fraternity pledges, but something tells me that there’s more to it on Ares.

What did you think of the Ares premiere? Be sure to tell us in the comment section below!

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