Review: Nomad of Nowhere “The Witch and The Knight”

Witch Knight? That one, right over there.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

In the distant past, a man instills magic into his scarecrow to create a friend for his daughter Melinda (Brittany Karbowski). While word has spread that their king is taking all the magic in the land, the father teaches Melinda how to use it for herself with the scarecrow’s help, though he proves to be more of a player than a fighter. Years pass and Melinda accidentally uses her magic out in public, getting unwanted attention from soldiers. The father dresses the scarecrow up as a knight and tells him he is a protector before sending him and Melinda away.

The father’s fate is unclear, but two come to figure out how to live on their own. Melinda decides to hone her magic skills, making it her mission to find other magic users and stop the king. The scarecrow ends up changing his look, as well as earning a reputation and a nickname: the Nomad of Nowhere. But he’s still single-mindedly focused on protecting her, even when it draws too much attention and interferes with her goal. Eventually, Melinda’s frustration reaches a breaking point, so she uses a memory-erasing spell to wipe herself from his mind and disappears, leaving him in the bramble forest. She intended to only leave him there until she found a way to defeat the king, but he ends up living there for over a century.

In the present, the Nomad awakens to the clapping of Don Paragon. He’s been captured and taken to the Oasis.

OUR TAKE

Well, THAT was an interesting detour. Certainly not where I was expecting this to end up, at least. Much like the “El Rey” episode a few months back, this drops a ton of backstory and lore on us out of pretty much nowhere, though this gives an actual reason for it to be coming up now (as opposed to just being dropped into the story with no explanation as to how it’s being told OR how it relates to anything like El Rey’s sudden backstory was), that being it is directly linked to the Nomad’s origins. Most viewers could pick up that the brief flashback from the first episode was leading to something like this, as well as his actions and the fact he never ate or talked meaning that he wasn’t human, and some even guessed ahead of time that he was created. Here, we learn that he’s not only the making of someone who lived through El Rey’s initial magic drain of the land, he’s also powered by something that was either found or made to restore magic to that land. This puts his very existence in direct conflict with El Rey, as opposed to being the equivalent of the potato chip dust at the bottom of the bag.

And we can’t forget mentioning Melinda’s uncanny resemblance to Skout, which is more than likely to be intentional. Besides the obvious facial and hair/eye color similarities, Melinda and Skout (as well as Melinda’s unnamed father) share a strong sense of morality. Melinda’s comes through in her goal to defeat El Rey for the sake of the world (and possibly also for revenge) while Skout just tries to be helpful to those in need or those unjustly wronged like The Nomad. As of now, we have a better sense of a good portion of Melinda’s life that showed us her growth into an experienced magic user like her father, but there’s likely a big chunk we haven’t seen. What this means regarding Skout’s past and future is unclear right now, but it sure poses some interesting theories to chew on. It’s so refreshing to finally have something in this show to be legitimately curious about instead of bored and annoyed about.

This episode also makes use of the better parts of the show’s OTHER good episode (two out of ten so far, for the record), “The Kindness of Strangers”, namely in how it uses the many dark implications of the Nomad’s nature to its advantage in storytelling. Much of the story passes in the blink of an eye, sometimes literally, to highlight how timeless the Nomad is as a being. We even see a massive shift in the geography and the culture as lush green farmlands become desolate wastelands with old Western looks, though part of that may have to do with the Nomad and Melinda traveling across different regions in addition to a lot of time passing.

Though there is a big question I’m left with regarding all of this new information: What does knowing any of this change? We can assume the Nomad remembers all of this now, but what use is remembering it where he is now? Best I can guess is that he maybe treats Skout a little differently, but communicating “hey, you look like the daughter of the guy who created me” is a little difficult with no mouth. We also now know the glowing chest light is related to him protecting things, but what good is that when he needs to protect himself?

I appreciate the show adding in something unexpected from time to time. Even seeing another reference to creator Geordan Whitman’s “Sir Knight of Nothing” short is neat to see. It’s times like this that make it clear there’s a fair amount of passion in this production, even if that doesn’t come out very well structured. However, with just two episodes left in the season, it really needs to get back on track and show us that all of this means something in the end.