Galavant Season Finale Review: Keep Moving, No Happily Ever Afters Here

Galavant S01E07 & S01E08: "My Cousin Izzy" & "It's All in the Executions"

It takes a set of globe-sized balls to end your four-week, hiatus-bridging, fill-in series with a cliffhanger. I don't know whether to feel foolish or cheated. But maybe I should just to root for Galavant, which took a dark turn with its final two episodes and ended with the hero sailing off into a dissatisfying dawn, his princess captured, the land in the power of a queen as evil as her headdress was complicated, and a plea for a second season literally hanging in the air.

I don't know when this notional Season 2 would air, though trust and believe I would watch it if it did. I worry that finding a block of free airspace between now and when audiences will have forgotten the four-week romp of Galavant might be challenging, but if the ratings are there I'm sure ABC would figure out the details.

Anyway, let's talk about the sorta-finale: It opened strong, with a little ditty sung by Anthony Head, of all people, and then shot us right back to the dungeon, where Galavant was feeling the pressure to make like dad and be the kind of hero who saves the day in one magnificent moment. And that moment was right on the horizon. With King Richard's even-more-evil brother Kingsley come to take the throne, King Richard demanded they settle like men: by assigning two champions and watching those champions fight on their behalf. Kingsley chose Gareth for his champion, and Galavant offered to stand in for King Richard with the understanding that if he won all his friends would go free.

However, we were cheated out of a Games of Thrones-esque battle—and Galavant was robbed of his heroic moment—by the arrival of Isabella's adorable young cousin Harry, a child she was apparently engaged to.

King Richard ordered a feast for the royal visitor, and things took a dark turn as handmaid Gwynne pushed her politics on the chef: when rich men fight, poor men die. She encouraged the chef to poison the supper and save their lives. She had a point, but the chef couldn't bring himself to kill the royals. Instead, he played on their allergies and gave them all a whopping case of loose bowels. Except for Isabella, because Galavant stopped her from eating crab, because he used his heroic moment to stop her from eating crab, because she was important to him. So his big heroic moment was saving her from indigestion, but that's sort of the point: He'd let go of the ego involved with being "a hero" and was focusing on what matters to him the most, personally. A good lesson for all of us!

When Kingsley ordered the chef to be executed for wreaking such gastronomical mischief, King Richard lost it. He said he wanted to fight Kingsley man to man, and Kinglsey declined; King Richard could waive his right to a champion, but Kingsley certainly wouldn't. King Richard would just have to fight his bestie Gareth to the death the next morning.

And with King Richard positioned directly opposite from his lifetime defender, the show was ready to pay off its ultimate message of "bros before hos," a package into which all the finale's falling action would neatly fit.

So, bros before hos! Guys teaming up against bitchy bitches! Galavant leveraged some nasty gossip about Madalena (her feet are gross) into a private audience with King Richard, then parlayed their mutual heartache over her into hatching a daring scheme with the king: They would sneak into Kingsley's chamber and kill him that very night!

Yes, this was a hella morbid scenario for a hero to initiate. Kill your brother? That's not exactly Sir Lancelot stuff. But the dialogue surrounding it, and the drinking song during which King Richard and Galavant alternately caroused and snuck around the castle like assassins, were hilarious and juxtaposed their happy bromance with the unspeakable horror and treachery of fratricide.

Of course, all the swigging and singing cost them the element of surprise, and by the time they reached Kingsley's room he was waiting for them with the royal guard, so they both ended up in the dungeon. Guys, we spent a LOT of time in the dungeon this week.

It was the pure, unsullied male friendship of Gareth that ultimately saved the day. He secretly shuttled Galavant and King Richard out to the pirates, promising to protect Galavant's friends if Galavant would look after King Richard until Kingsley could be dealt with. I appreciate the originality of a henchman becoming the ultimate hero of the series, and lord knows Vinnie Jones has more than enough charisma to make us root for him.

And then, in a final twist of events, when Gareth revealed that Galavant and King Richard had escaped, Madalena killed Kingsley pretty much out of nowhere.

That was kind of a bummer for me. Madalena's resurgence as the Biggest Bad left me feeling a little squiffy because it played into the trope of the Evil Ex-Girlfriend, wherein any woman cruel enough to dump the male audience proxy is gradually revealed to be a hateful harpy psychopath against whom any violence or degradation can be visited because she's no longer a human being, she's an Evil Ex-Girlfriend. King Richard, who by this point had been rounded out as a sensitive virgin with an awkward childhood, was not a villain despite kidnapping Madalena in the first place and slaughtering most of Valencia. Madalena was the bad guy, because she's a bitch who likes sex. Call me a wild feminist radical if you must, but I'm going to go ahead and say warmongering is way, way worse than being an emotionally unavailable lady.

Even if you loved watching Mallory Jansen go Full Evil Queen in this last episode, the ending was still an unfortunate anti-climax. I wish the writers had tied up the King Richard storyline and then hinted at Season 2: Galavant's next adventure.

While the characters, cast, and music are certainly winning enough to bring viewers back for a second season, the story feels like it's getting stretched a little thin at this point. I feel like it should've been a distribution no-brainer to wrap this season up in a neat little bow, and then Season 2 is, you know, Galavant and Isabella's wedding being threatened by a wizard played by Martin Short or something. Then, if Season 2 didn't happen, ABC still could've sold plenty of DVD sets at Target, which is how the REAL money gets made.

As it is, we've been left with no idea how our story ends, a sinking feeling of sorrow, and a whole lot of questions. Such as...

QUESTIONS:

... Are you bummed by the cliffhanger or into it?

... Did the poisoning/brother-murdering-brother stuff get a little too dark, or was the overall tone of the finale upbeat enough to keep you smiling?

... King Richard being a virgin: What does that really accomplish for him as a character?

... Do you sort of wish we'd gotten more pirates, or is that just me?

... Season 2: Will there be one, and will you be watching?

... Best line of the finale?