by Kim Filchak, Reporter
I have said all along that King Lassy is the beating, wonderful, only occasionally murderous, heart of Galavant, or if I haven’t said it I should have. The heart eyes I have whenever he is on screen are utterly justified and the season finale It’s All in the Executions just goes to show that the asylum full of un-medicated mad geniuses who are behind Galavant totally agree with me, but I am getting ahead of myself. Galavant soared triumphantly into its season finale last week and the question on everyone’s lips is did they stick the landing? Ehhhh… Not so much, it was more of a belly flop, but damn it was fun to watch.
To begin with My Cousin Izzie, quite possibly our final hour ever in the magical land of Once Upon a Time’s low rent singing cousin, we pick back up in a flashback to Gal’s childhood where his armed and armored Dad gives him the advice all emotional constipated heroes seem to get indoctrinated with somewhere along the way to their destiny, emotions are bad so don’t feel them. And also never get married because the wife will NEVER let you finish your solo.
While Gal is busy dealing with his myriad of daddy issues, everyone still in the really scary dungeon (The one with the mice and that they realized has cell doors that aren’t even locked last episode but have seemingly forgotten, which is confusing but of all the plot holes I have fallen through while watching this show for the past month it is not by far the most egregious so I will let it pass) and are watching his incipient psychotic break with varying degrees of confusion, ranging from “I am totally sure he’s got this, right?” all the way to “This Asshole is going to get us all killed”.
As they wait Princess Sassy Skirts, Sid, Jester Steve and Princess Sassy Skirts Royal Parents are all chilling and Princess Sassy Skirts really wants to talk about the massive UST between her and the titular character (As well as the requisite standard issue unexpected third act complication on the way to rescue them) but Gal has no time for that feelings crap. He is in hero mode and has hero-ing to do. And Gal had better nail that Hero-ing because his potential in-laws the King and Queen of Valencia are so not impressed thus far by him or basically anything about him and his lapsing into third person is not helping. First step? Get them outta the cells and find his moment.
Gal taking a beat in the whole escaping thing in order to sing a hero power ballad is interrupted because Queen Mad wants everyone brought to the throne room so she can get her future husband, King Lassy’s Big bro Kingsley, aka Rutger Hauer, up to date on all the players in the game. Except Sid, she doesn’t know what his deal is.
The gloating is pretty much par for the course with her general horribleness and ends with King Lassy and his bro throwing down with duel challenges. Mind you, as is the tradition amongst their people, they won’t actually be fighting the duel themselves. That is what the lower classes are for and in a move that is just typical of jerky older brothers everywhere, Kingsley goes and calls dibs on Gareth as his champion first.
I mean first off? That is seriously a dick move and it also leaves my beloved King Lassy with no one to fight for him, that is until Gal steps up and offers to kick ass on his enemies behalf in exchange for his and the rest of Team Heroes freedom. It seems his whole grudge against King Lassy has become much less fierce after he realized he was in pining over a sociopathic monster. Amazing how that puts things into perspective, huh? Then Gal ruins it by attempting to sing again but thankfully the most evil dude in the room chloroforms him because that shit is getting annoying.
Skip to the duel and King Lassy is having a tender moment with Gareth, his One True Hench Dude, while Gal once again bravely makes another attempt to power ballad his way to greatness. But wait! On the horizon, a pointy hatted army approaches! Looks like Tiny Prince Harry is in the house, and he is super cute!
While Princess Sassy Skirts tries to explain to Gal about her 9 year old fiancé, King Lassy uses the arrival of foreign troops on sovereign soil to delay his worst day ever by hosting a preemptory pre duel feast.
It is at this point that Adorable Chef and his equally adorable love interest whose name I forget because my notes just have puppies and kittens doodled around a heart in place of actual, you know, notes, decide that it is time to go WAY off book. Well, mostly it’s her pragmatic and surprisingly blood thirsty plan to poison all of the royals and live happily ever after, but Adorable Chef is down with the plan as her dimples hold the ultimate veto on his heart and also apparently the morality centers of his high brain functions. Never has mass murder been so cute.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwhCuT2zt9I
At the feast Gal is having a bit of a stoic hero man-sulk when Queen Mad calls him on it, which was almost human of her… then she immediately disproves all hints of humanity by threatening to disembowel a little old lady at the buffet table over the last danish thus proving that while she can indeed mimic human behavior she is actually a soulless lizard monster, with admittedly fabulous tits, who has gone so ludicrously dark side at this point I am almost rooting for her to win by the sheer force of the ovaries girlfriend his bringing to the table.
Around this time, give or take, the rest of Team Hero, having managed to escape the dungeon due to Jester Steve’s awesome, are making their way to the throne room… or possibly just trying to escape but getting lost due to bad directions. it is unclear. Either way Sid shows up just in time to toss Gal a sword that he uses to disarm the guards and save Princess Sassy Skirts…. from a crab puff. Galavant, our hero, does this instead of… oh I don’t know.. Killing any of the evil Kings litter the room or fighting everyone’s way to freedom.
Apparently she’s allergic and if she ate it she would make choking cat noises and therefore be rendered incapable of having a three hour conversation about Sid’s passive aggressive thank you. As a matter of fact everyone there seems to be having their own epi-pen moments. This would be because sweet Adorable Chef is not the type to straight up cold bloodily murder a ton of people he has known his entire life, even if they are the literal worst. So he just spiked the meal with stuff he knew everyone was moderately allergic to.
Once the royals figure out who dared to make them itchy Kingsley instantly demands that Adorable Chef be put to death, which King Lassy strongly objects to. The order to put Adorable Chef to death should be his and his alone. Adorable Chef’s fate is his to decide, thank you very much. So regrettably taking the advice of Gareth, his One True Hench Dude, King Lassy proclaims that he will be the one to fight his brother Kingsley in the duel. Gareth is so proud of his One True Monarch, too bad Kingsley is not signing on for this change in plans. Nope now King Lassy will have to fight his best-ie in a duel to the death that objectively there is no way in god he can win unless Gareth throws the match and lets King Lassy kill him.
Queen Mad is unsurprisingly massively turned on by this. She is also suffering from massive intestinal distress because karma, which is something even she cannot make hot.
The next episode brings us a new day and a new plan, and Princess Sassy Skirts is so down with both that and the entirety of Gal’s package. And yet! Gal seems to be unable to seal the deal, even with Sid lyric dropping the iconic Little Mermaid ode to lip locks “kiss the girl”, Gal is too intimidated about his man feels and their epic love to follow through. Besides there is the new plan to keep him nice and distracted. Yay plans!
The new plan? Bond with King Lassy over terrible Queen Mad gossip (she apparently has troll feet), getting drunk, sneaking into Kingsley’s bedroom and killing him dead. This of course leads to some fabulous male bonding on the part of the frenimies (King Lassy’s words, not mine), all set to song. Because Galavant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8qn-x4txdk
So after wandering the palace in drunken fellowship, including a brief pit stop back in the dungeon where Gal tells Princess Sassy Skirts that her beautiful brain exploded all over her face (and I have to say that line actually works for me. So, well done Gal.) They head on up to do the deed. Too bad Kingsley was awake and waiting…. Along with Gareth, King Lassy’s Best Beloved Hench Dude, and this? This betrayal is the cruelest cut of all.
Gal and King Lassy are dumped in the dungeon where Gal promptly passes out and King Lassy sings a soulful ballad, the same one that his and Gareth’s nanny would sing to them as children and the entire castle/town is moved to tears and man hugs. And I do not blame them. Also of note, King Lassy can hold his liquor WAY better than Gal.
Seriously this song is so sweet and tender and totally proof that if anyone is the beating heart of Galavant it is King Lassy. Sniff… Imma be right back i gotta cuddle my cat.
The morning brings a new day and a rescue by Gareth, who in typical badassery springs his King and Gal from the clink. He needs his King Lassy to be as far away from his evil brother, soulless monster of a wife, and the day’s duel as possible. He also needs to send a caretaker along because while he loves his king, he also knows that the real world would chew King Lassy up and spit him out. The plan most excellent is to send Gal and King Lassy off on a buddy cop road trip home to King Lassy’s kingdom of origin, with Gal given very specific instructions on the care and keeping of a King Lassy and even further explicit warnings of what will happen to Gal if any harm should come to the One True Hench Dudes Best Beloved Monarch (It involves Gals’ skin being fashion into a lap blanket, very reasonable as far as I am concerned).
King Lassy surprisingly wants to stay and to the right and honorable thing by dying horribly fighting a duel with his best friend over his right to literally terminate an employee but Gareth is not having any of that shit. He pulls the you are a prat with a wonky left calve and I never loved you shtick we are all familiar with, even King Lassy knows this is B.S. and that he is the sugar in Gareth’s bowl, but he goes along with the plan because he really is not as dumb as people think he is, just very sheltered, privileged to the point of psychosis, and utterly ruthless when riled.
Oh, and Gal and Princess Sassy Skirts finally lock lips when he wakes up from drunkenly passing out the night before, only to be interrupted by the aforementioned escape/rescue. Also of note? I completely forgot to mention said kiss when I first wrote up this recap, so that just goes to show you how invested I am in Gal’s story-line at this point. I really should just rename my recap The King Lassy and His Fabulous Hair Happy Fun Times Hour, with Special Guest Star Queen Mad as the Literal Worst.
So Gal and the Former King and Now Fugitive Lassy head off with pirates for a grand adventure and Gareth upholds his end of the bargain by freeing Team Hero and sending them off their way, with the exception of Sid whom he holds onto as insurance, before going to face the music. King Kingsley is seriously not happy with Gareth’s hench-ing at this point and is about to make his displeasure known via what I am assuming is a reprimand in the form of a decapitation when Queen Mad finally fulfills her destiny. She stabs King Kingsley right in the back, as is the way of her people, and ascends the throne to rule her court of madness. Though girlfriend is not stupid and invites Gareth to take up the other chair because while she can wile and scheme her way around most things, she is still going to need a big strong dude to open pickle jars and lead her merciless army as is marches it’s way across the land, spreading terror and carnage in her name. Basically she is doing the whole “All will love me and despair” thing only subtract the love and add terror and seething hatred, because she is the literal worst.
And what of team hero, minus Sid, you ask? Well Princess Sassy Pants, Her Royal Parents, Adorable Chef, His Equally Adorable but Much More Ruthless Love, and Hot Jester Steve, all make their way to the palace of Tiny Prince Harry. Once there Tiny Prince Harry promptly locks Princess Sassy Skirts into what I can only describe as a life sized music box with an interior so pink even Barbie would give it a side eye, with the intention of keeping her mint in box for the rest of her life, I guess? I mean who can know the motivations of 9 year olds?
And so here we finally come to the end of the dream/nightmare that was Galavant. In the beginning we had a hero and his main squire, his kidnapped one true love, an evil king with his main hench dude, a duplicitous princess and a hot jester. We ended with a not so evil king on the run with the hero, the original maiden fair now a seriously evil queen with a fabulous wardrobe ruling a court of madness from a throne of sculls, an entirely different but equally kidnapped one true love, and both the squire and the hench dude as free agents… or at least as free agent as they can be given their lowly birth status and the political realities of a the feudal system.
I guess the take away is don’t fall in love with someone simply because they are pretty, just make sure they are not the equivalent of Genghis Kahn in a push up bra? Oh and don’t take your minions for granted, they got your back so try to keep from killing them. Or my favorite, Timothy Omundson’s has glorious hair and I want to spend the rest of my days running a soft brush through it. I am sure it is one of those, or something similar.
Will they get a second season? Does it matter? I mean, yes I would give any number of body parts (though none of my own) to watch the Gal and King Lassy road show and their eventual reunion with their one true loves/hench dudes but I am also content to let it end here. So perhaps they did not quite stick thier landing, but it was not a totally face plant and they get full points for ending on a cliff hanger when thier future is so nebulous.
Goodbye for now Galavant, may we meet again someday. You were a lot of things, weird often painfully awkward things, but you were never sappy and you dropped a Little Mermaid references in your hail mary and I gotta respect that. So good night my friend, goodnight.
