Anyone wanting to get their Gremlin on this October us sure being spoiled by Max this year as the streaming platform is choosing to release the newest season of Gremlins: The Wild Batch in five episodes clusters at a time. This means you can pound down almost the entirety of the first half of the second season as fast as an unruly Mogwai can cram down a chicken leg the second the clock clicks to a minute after midnight and without any further ado, it’s time to join Sam, Elle and Gizmo as they arrive in San Francisco to try and save the city from a Gremlin infestation they believe is growing there.
However, upon accidently arriving on Alcatraz island, the group not only have to deal with the usual supernatural goings on that seem to plague them, but they’ve also got to welcome some new additions to their team – and not all of them welcome…
After stepping out of a portal last episode to find themselves on the prison island of Alcatraz, Sam, Elle and Gizmo are immediately met by the Warden of the place who seems ridiculously eager to tale them on a grand tour of the facility despite the fact that it’s plainly the middle of the night. Still, as they have no way off the island, our heroes reluctantly agree only to find themselves locked in a cell for smuggling “contraband” (ie. Gizmo) onto the island and the Warden promptly confiscates the panicking Mogwai for rather freakish reasons.
You see, it turns out that any guard who dies while on duty at Alcatraz is doomed to patrol it’s corridors at night as a ghostly entity and as the Warden isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, he likes to while away eternity caring for cuddly pets, but the catch is they all eventually die of old age. However, as Gizmo is essentially eternal, this neatly solves his snuggle related problems in one fell swoop, but there’s one issue that could make a bad situation inordinately worse and that’s Gizmo’s increasing and worrying lack of impulse control that’s becoming ever more Gremlin-like. Case in point: despite trying to fight the urge, his more anti-social tendencies causes him to plunge his hand into his water bowl and before you know it we’ve got two more Mogwai running about the place which can only mean bad news.
Meanwhile, Sam and Elle meet Chang, a roguish prisoner who has been locked up for smuggling who fills them in on the ghostly history of the island and vows to help them escape from Alcatraz, but even if they get out of their cell, even if they can avoid the ghostly guards patrolling the grounds and even if they manage to get Gizmo and the two new Mogwai back, how on earth will they manage to make it across the bay to San Francisco itself?
However, it seems that Noggin, the brain Gremlin, has already staked his claim on Chinatown.
One of the more charming things about Secrets Of The Mogwai was the integration of Chinese folklore into the show with the inclusion of various demons and creatures giving the show a real distinctive flavour so it’s kind of nice that now that the show has relocated to San Francisco, the writers seem to be trying to do the same for the Golden City by drawing from the city’s rich history. Of course, when you’re talking about Frisco, you have to bring up Alcatraz and so we get a little side adventure featuring Will Forte’s dastardly ghost Warden who’s weakness for small, fluffy fur babies could end Sam and Elle’s American adventures before they even start. Once again, the presence of glowy-eyed ghost-zombies means that the show manages to find that sweet spot between kiddie friendly and having that slight edge (one guard has trouble keeping his decapitated head in place) and it proves to be yet another perky episode that keeps us going at a zippy pace while we wait until the main threads of the season move into place. A hefty piece of the puzzle is naturally Gizmo’s uncontrollable and anti-social tics that now has resulted in two more Mogwai being born and while it’s agonisingly obvious that these fuzzy additions are destined to go all green and snarly simply by the look of their character designs (the one with the wide-ass mouth seems especially perfect for a monstrous glow-up), we still have to await the ramifications of Gizmo’s growing issues.
Elsewhere the mystery of Elle’s prophetic dreams of her lost mother thickens when she spots a building that’s appeared in her visions and it’s a nice little character beat that Sam believes her instantly when she confirms her fears to him simply because… well, after all they’ve seen together, why would a prophetic dream seem so far fetched? However, the most substantial addition to the Gremlins mythos comes in the shape of Simu Liu’s Han Solo-esque Chang, a swaggering smuggler who has dreams of expanding the couple of streets that comprise Chinatown into something far greater. It makes sense that he’s been included mostly because our leads need some sort of guide to speed things up, but he also adds that wild card, can-he-be-trusted, criminal element that Elle herself used to claim before she turned completely good. However, most importantly of all, he may probably be the gateway that will eventually cause young Sam to settle in San Fran until we pick up with him as a wizened old man in a dingy store in the bowels of Chinatown in 1984.
Still, we’ve a way to go until we get to that point and the final aspect of the episode that clues us in to what’s going on now is the return of the Noggin Gremlin, who is still gifted with the muscular vocal chords of George Takei. However, anyone who thought that the Gremlins would be lurking in dank alleyways or maybe even a sewage system might be stunned to find out that Noggin and his beastly brethren not only seems to be living something of a comfortable life, he seems to be in control of Chinatown in general like some sort of bat-eared mob boss. How far this stretches remains to be seen, but the Gremlin’s influence seems to have turned Chinatown into a ghost town and when Noggin hears that Gizmo is around, his response isn’t exactly the sort of hate the Mogwai usually seems to get from the likes of past (future?) nemesis’ like Stripe and Mohawk. Could Noggin’s oversized brain have caused him to evolve beyond typical Gremlin urges such as wanton destruction, insidious mischief and casual acts of murder?
Time will tell, but The Wild Batch’s second episode gives us a whole bunch of stuff to chew on in the relatively tight space of twenty two minutes that proves that the show certainly hasn’t lost its pep in the time it’s been away.
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 