AMC's Into The Badlands (following Walking Dead on Sunday nights at 10 pm) was created by the same team (Alfred Gough and Michael Millar) that gave us Smallville. But this time,k instead of reimagining a classic superhero story, Gough and Millar borrow from a half a dozen different genres, mixing kung fu with King Arthur, Mad Max, and Heroes (or, if you prefer, X-Men.)
In a post-apocalyptic future, we're told, guns have been banned and seven rival baronies keep an uneasy peace through the use of Clippers, highly trained martial arts assassins. We know this because in the first scene, an unarmed Clipper named Sunny (Daniel Wu) kills about a dozen "nomads" who scavenge the Badlands for sustenance.
If you're lucky in this world, you live on an estate protected by one of the Barons. Serfs - or Cogs, as they're called here - till the fields (each Barony is responsible for one vital resource, like oil or food; Sunny's Baron Quinn grows poppies for opium.) A select few get to live inside feudal castles, lit by candles and filled with young cadets hoping to be trained as Clippers. Despite this being an apparently agrarian society, somehow someone somewhere still manufactures automobiles and motorcycles, as well as refining gasoline and producing rubber tires. (It's a fantasy, people; you're not supposed to think about those things.)
After quickly disposing of those aforementioned nomads, Sunny pops open the trunk they were transporting and discovers a kidnapped teenager named M.K. (Aramis Knight.) It seems a rival Baron (well, Baroness) named The Widow had hired the nomads to bring the boy to her. Sunny brings M.K. back to the Baron and lets him compete with the others in the training arena, but soon learns the kid has a secret: Any time he bleeds, his eyes glow bright white and he develops the strength, speed, and martial arts skills of a super-ninja.
Back at the castle, it turns out the Baron's latest wife is shagging his grown son, and the Baron is having some serious migraine issues. (Poison, maybe?) M.K., for his part, is on a quest to find his mother and return to his birthplace, a city called Azra that supposedly lies outside the badlands and is depicted on a medallion he wears around his neck.
But the Baron's son ends up with the medallion, and M.K. is captured trying to get it back. Rather than let the boy be executed, Sunny helps him escape, perhaps thinking Azra may be where he's from too (even though the Baron assures him there's nothing beyond the Badlands.)
So that's where we are. Who is M.K. and where do his powers come from? Why is The Widow plotting against Baron Quinn, and will it erupt into warfare? And will Sunny be satisfied with his life as an assassin, or will he rebel and try to live a normal life with the woman he secretly loves?
As an accompaniment to The Walking Dead, Into The Badlands should easily tap into the same audience - it's got plenty of thrills, violence, gore, and fantasy - without actually dragging zombies into the conversation (like the awful Fear The Walking Dead.) There hasn't been a good kung fu show on television in ages, so expect the body count to stay high, the fight scenes to be epic, and the plots to remain just clever enough to keep fans tuning in from week to week. No, it's not Game Of Thrones, but it looks like it'll be a fun hour of escapist TV.
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