This week’s episode of Marvel’s Inhumans season 1 felt extremely one-note. All the Inhumans on Earth paired up with inexplicably accommodating humans. Their interactions were mostly expository dialogue. Repetitive humor around the human’s surprise at these strange people broke up the exposition.
Medusa’s interactions with Louise were especially grating. Louise constantly rambled and brought up non-sequiturs as a sloppy way of revealing information. Things like Louise’s sudden monologue about her father’s failed dream of going to the moon felt incredibly unearned.
Marvel’s Inhumans is now tracking five different storylines involving royal Inhumans. So redundancy is a huge issue. Furthermore, that’s a tough sell because these characters believe in a firm system of inequality. If the show tracked just one of them, it might be possible to flesh them out so that we can see their perspective, but right now the show seems to take for granted that we’re invested in these characters.
Maximus isn’t offering much of an alternative. The basic idea of him wanting to overhaul the system at any cost is a good one, but he pursues powers more than he actually works to change society. So, there’s no one left for us to care about.
Maximus teamed up with a scientist named Evan Declan, played by the always enjoyable Henry Ian Cusick. Evan may have a way to use Black Bolt’s DNA to give Maximus powers. Because this is currently the most clear, tangible goal anyway on the show has, it’s the storyline I feel most invested in. However, I think it would be more interesting to watch Maximus embrace not having powers and work around it so that we could at least enjoy him as an outsider character. This would go a long way in making him a stronger anti-hero.