We were promised war at the end of the last episode and the third episode brings Sunny and M.K. to The Widow’s doorstep as Quinn leads his Clippers into battle. While Clippers fight elsewhere to take control of her oil fields, Quinn wants to take the battle directly to the enemy and marches into her house. Sunny takes down a variety of Bowler-wearing Clippers in the Widow’s service while her (girl assassins) whittle the number of Clippers down to size. That is all undercard action though as the main event features a sword fight between The Widow, who is buying time for her girl’s to escape, and Quinn.

Sparks literally fly as the two dance throughout The Widow’s great room matching each other blow for blow until Quinn finally manages to gain the upper hand. He is about to strike her dead when he is crippled by a headache, brought on by his tumor, and drops his sword. Sunny rushes in and in his haste to make sure his Baron is safe, The Widow manages to make her escape through a secret passage that had been opened by Tilda as she led the girls away from the fracas.

While Tilda was herding the girls through the passage, which was in The Widow’s study, she sees M.K. huddled behind a desk. He had been told to stay outside by Sunny with the other Colts but he snuck in to find anything he could about Azra. He had found a book on The Widow’s desk when the girls came running in. Tilda does not alert anyone to M.K.s presence but gives him a harsh look that says “you are really going to need to dazzle me if you expect me to go to the Clipper prom with you!”

Ryder is still unconscious from the Nomad ambush while his mother Lydia and his father’s eighth bride-to-be Jade (who is also Ryder’s secret lover) hover over him. Jade tries to play off her concern for Ryder as just impending family obligations. They are interrupted by the return of Quinn and what is left of his Clipper forces. Lydia and Quinn bicker over The Widow’s escape but really they are bickering about Ryder’s failure to recover from his assault. Something is wrong and there is no doctor that she can can call on since Quinn killed him last episode to ensure nobody would know about his brain tumor. Quinn just walks away from her and beds Jade while Lydia sits in the next room holding her dying son’s hand.

M.K. and Sunny look on as dead Clippers are carried back into The Fort when M.K. shows his mentor the book he stole from The Widow. Sunny is fed up with M.K.’s rebellious nature and M.K. is frustrated that Sunny won’t teach him how to fight. Sunny relents and takes him to see the wheelchair-bound Waldo. If M.K. can manage to strike Waldo then Sunny will train him however M.K. wishes but if he cannot then M.K. needs to… well you know how this works out. Despite being in a wheelchair the former Regent repeatedly flips, throws, and humiliates M.K. Sunny explains that you cannot underestimate any opponent.

Jade tells Quinn that she knows someone who can help Ryder but it is not going to be something Lydia is comfortable. Quinn says she will be fine with anything if it means that Ryder will recover. Jade goes straight to Veil, a childhood playmate, and asks her to help. Veil refuses, not wanting to get drawn into the politics of The Fort. Jade pleads with her and Veil, seeing the love for Ryder in her friend’s eyes agrees.

She explains that Ryder has suffered a head trauma and his brain is swelling. Lydia does not want a “cog doctor” working on her son — especially when she see the large drill bit that Veil is prepared to use to reduce that swelling. Faced with the possibility of Ryder being dead by nightfall, Lydia not only acquiesces but helps with the procedure. It is successful but it catches the attention of The Baron, who Veil knows killed her parents. Baron expresses his condolences and vows to catch the scum that killed them. He also tells her that he knows about her and Sunny’s relationship.

Ryder awakens and his father demands to know who set him up. He says it was Angelica, a girl from The Tick Tock Club. Quinn sends Sunny and M.K. to bring her back alive. Meanwhile that is exactly what The Widow is scared of as she and her girls arrive at a burned out mansion that will serve their hideout. She fears it is only a matter of time before Quinn sends someone after Angelica and she dispatches Tilda to go retrieve her before that can happen.

While Sunny is inside the club Tilda sees him as she approaches the club and punches M.K. They argue about who is worse Quinn or her mother while Sunny is inside fighting with Angelica who puts up much more of a fight than anyone else Sunny has faced in three episodes. Rather than let herself be taken by Sunny she hurls herself head first off the balcony to splatter right in front of M.K. and Tilda. M.K. tells her to run before she is spotted by Sunny.

Sunny and M.K. go to see Veil to patch up the wounds that Angelica inflicted upon him and Sunny realizes that the walls are closing in on him. Veil tells him that Quinn knows about their relationship and both M.K. and Veil begin to fill in the details of each other. Most important to M.K. are all the books in her office which means she can read the book that may contain clues about Azra.

Lydia scolds Ryder for not having the will of his father. She is aware that he attempted to kill The Widow and that it will bring a great cost to The Fort. She also tells him that he does not have what it takes to be his father’s heir and leaves him on his own. She will no longer fight for him. He is on his own. It turns out that by seizing The Widow’s oil fields Quinn has violated the Foundation Treaty and the other barons have demanded a parlay. Sunny suspects that it more likely an execution and Quinn agrees. He needs to forge an alliance with Jacobee, who “hates me less than he hates the others” and asks Sunny to approach Jacobee’s regent Zephyr.

Zephyr and Sunny are old flames and she tries to rekindle things with him but realizes from Sunny’s response that he is in love with someone else. She scoffs at the idea that he believes someone’s love can save him. She also scoffs at the idea of Quinn trying to forge an alliance with Jacobee and suggests that if Sunny were willing to clip Quinn that the other Barons would recognize his act. Sunny firmly rejects all her offers and she agrees to take the proposal back to Jacobee but does not expect it to be a fruitful discussion.

With Sunny out of The Fort, M.K. retrieves his book and goes to visit Veil, who practices out her mothering skills on the young boy with a bowl of hot food. He asks her to read the book but she does not recognize the language it is written in. They are interrupted by an unexpected visit from Quinn. M.K. slips out of sight but is able to overhear as The Baron asks Veil to save him like she saved his son.

Episode one was very much driven by men. The Fort is a bastion of male hierarchy where male Colts strive to become Clippers for their Baron and be rewarded with women; the Baron can take eight wives; and his first wife has to send out the invitations for his eighth wedding. Episode two starts out with the confident stride of the The Widow, in her thigh high boots atop six inch heels, across the floor of a club the likes of which we have not seen since STREETS OF FIRE (A ROCK & ROLL FABLE) where exotic dancers perform with power tools and the fate of Barons is discussed amidst befeathered escorts.

The Widow is there to meet with an embezzling former regent, Teague, and there is no love lost between them. Teague does not recognize her new title, disdainfully calling her Minerva, and she is upset that he stole from her. Each Baron seems to have a monopoly on some commodity and The Widow is able to maintain her power through her control of the oil fields. Teague does not expect that the other Barons will like being beholden to a woman. She implores him to join forces with her against Quinn who is the most stubbornly chauvinistic, assuring him the other Barons will fall in line after Quinn is gone.

Before the conversation can get very far Teague has his head split open with an ax hurled across the room. There are assassins everywhere but The Widow is a whirling dervish of knives and quite literally slices through all but one of them. She leaves one would-be assassin alive long enough to learn that Ryder hired the nomads to take her out. The Widow finishes him off with a heel through the throat proving her choice in footwear was fashionable and practical.

Meanwhile… M.K. is on the run after escaping The Fort and stumbles onto The Widow’s territory which is marked by her butterfly insignia. He spies Tilda hunting with shurikens shaped into that insignia and when she talks about her mother training her you know she is The Widow’s daughter. When Sunny, Ryder, and a group of clippers approach, Tilda offers M.K. sanctuary and brings him to meet the Widow.

It is a very special Thanksgiving episode of Into the Badlands with a tense family dinner between Quinn, Ryder, Sunny and Lydia with the full menu of resentment, secrets, and lies. They know M.K. escaped into The Widow’s territory but were not able to follow without it being seen as an act of war — not something that concerns Ryder who has already sent assassins her way. Quinn knows that somebody helped the boy escape and is much more concerned with that than the boy himself. Lydia knows that Sunny was the conspirator but is keeping that to herself for the time being. Quinn has heard about the attack on The Widow and obviously suspects that Ryder is behind it but everyone says the right things while working their best telenovela stares at each other.

The Widow walks in on M.K. taking a much needed warm bath and washes him while talking about her conspicuously absent son Percival. She explains that she is looking for a boy around M.K.’s age who was last seen at The Fort. The boy is special and she needs him to accomplish something great. She shows him a piece of paper with the symbol that was on his medallion but he feigns ignorance and assures her there is nothing special about him.

The Widow is looking to augment her forces and with Teague dead and M.K. hiding his light under a bushel she turns to nomads who she promises to give a territory to if they take down Quinn. The nomad leader is intrigued but they are skeptical about fighting alongside the female fighters that The Widow brings to the table. The Widow proposes a deal; if Tilda can defeat one of their nomads in combat they will join forces with her. If Tilda loses they can take her. It is not even remotely close to being a fair fight as Tilda makes short work of the nomad with throat punches, ball kicks, and finally a neck snap. The Widow has forged her alliance.

Quinn takes just Sunny beyond the walls of The Fort, where we get to see it’s curb appeal and hear his story of being a lowly “stunted grunt” whose father was beaten to death for stealing an extra corn cob without even raising a hand to defend himself. Quinn went to his Baron and asked to become a Colt and has not stopped killing since that day.

He takes Sunny on a covert trip to see Doc and his wife who turn out to be Veil’s adopted parents. Quinn gave them the girl when they could not conceive on their own after the doc saved Ryder’s life as an infant. Quinn gets some dire news about his headaches. He has a tumor and will be dead before too long. The doc assures him of discretion but Quinn cannot risk word of his weakness leaking out. He orders Sunny to go back into the house and “clip” the doc and his wife. Sunny refuses to do so but does not raise a hand to stop Quinn as he takes Sunny’s sword and does it himself.

Sunny does some soul searching as her cleans the blood of his girlfriend’s parents off his sword. He goes to talk to Waldo, an older wheelchair-bound clipper played by the great Stephen Lang, about the possibility of walking away from The Baron. He tells Veil that the Baron killed her parents and vows that her family is now him, her and their unborn child and they will be be leaving the Badlands.

The Widow knows that M.K’s powers only emerge when his blood has been spilled and she conscripts Tilda to train with him and cut him to prove that he is lying. As Tilda sits atop him with her blade he begs her not to cut him. He admits that he lied about his parents being dead and weakens her resolve by talking about finding her. They fake a wound and with The Widow watching from the next room it appears M.K. is not the special boy she is looking for.

Ryder falls into a trap when his prostitute shows off a brick of opium and claims she stole it from nomads who are holed up in an abandoned building with a large cache of it that they stole from Quinn. Now that The Widow does not believe M.K. has any special powers she gives him to the Nomads who are heading to execute the plan. Ryder and Sunny head to the warehouse but find only empty cases and rafters full of nomads. Ryder quickly ends up with a chain wrapped around his neck twisting from the ceiling. The nomads are gracious enough to lay out their plans; once Ryder and Sunny are dead, The Widow is going to take the fort and gut Quinn herself.

Sunny whittles the force down a half dozen nomads at a time and eventually cuts Ryder down. While he is paying attention to his Baron’s son he is caught from behind by the leader of the nomads and is in danger of being choked to death. Fortunately M.K. has escaped from the trunk of the car he was being held captive in — thanks to one of Tilda’s shurikens tucked in his pocket — and saves Sunny, killing the nomad from behind. He tells Sunny that he lied to him earlier and knows a way out of the Badlands.

Sunny and M.K. bring Ryder back to the fort and Quinn wants to crush his neck but Sunny asks to train him as his Colt. Sunny has never taken a Colt before and Quinn lets M.K. pledge his loyalty to him. He is going to need all the men he can find after all.

They are going to war against The Widow.

Excited but nervous was how I would describe my reaction to seeing the trailer for AMC’s newest show that debuted last night in the ultra cushy time slot right after WALKING DEAD. Excited, because the trailer was visually stunning and the action scenes conjured up memories of Shaw Brothers martial arts flicks that would air weekend afternoons on Channel 5 growing up. Nervous because…well…let’s just say they focused squarely on the art direction and the fight choreography in those commercials.

The show opens on a motorcycle ripping through a field of bright red poppies while exposition washes over you about how nobody can remember the time before the chaos that led to a feudal state with seven barons ruling the world in (and I am just guessing here ) an uneasy alliance. Guns have been outlawed and order is enforced by armies of men known as Clippers. As we meet Sunny, our Clipper (and again, I am assuming here) with a heart of gold, he is pulling up to the corpse of another Clipper with a hatchet stuck in his forehead. There is an overturned truck and a row of dead prisoners, their throats sliced.

One prisoner is missing and Sunny immediately spots a fire nearby and drives to investigate. And by investigate I mean “kick the living shit out a dozen nomads” camped around a fire. They end up giving their lives to protect the contents of a trunk. Sunny takes the men out one by one without even seeming like he is in any danger of getting a scratch. He runs up the trunk of a tree and flips over assailants, he disembowels multiple people with their own weapons, and never even needs to reach for his sword which he confidently left leaning against his bike when he approached the group.

And this is all before the opening title sequence which left me scrambling to IMDB to find out more about Daniel Wu who plays Sunny. (I learned that he was born in the US, was in a Hong Kong boy bond, once dated Maggie Q, and has made a LOT of a martial arts films in his career.) When he opens the trunk a young, scared boy — M.K. — pops out and tries to run away but Sunny quickly subdues him. The boy wakes up as Sunny is burying the bodies that the nomads had left behind when the kidnapped him. The boy reveals that someone known as The Widow paid them to find him. The boy asks to be let go but Sunny says he is going to be taken back to The Fort to work in his Baron’s poppy fields.

The Fort is surrounded by serfs working in the beautiful — seriously they look amazing — poppy fields. Inside the fort we see an army of clippers, that would make the Gramercy Riffs think twice, doing their exercises. Sunny tells M.K. that he will be fighting among the Colts — Clippers in training — and brings him to hear Quinn, the Baron of the The Fort, address the young Clipper-wannabes. Quinn is played by Marton Csokas, who was the breakout villain in THE EQUALIZER, and he plays the part one part antebellum slave owner and one part SOHO hipster, telling these young men that “there is no God in the Badlands”. Quinn is the only person who can offer them a path out of debt and misery. They can fight their way to become a Clipper and if they become a Clipper they become like family. He shows the boys Sunny’s back which is tattoo adorned with a tick mark for every life he has taken in the service of the Baron. Sunny was once a pathetic wretch like them but Quinn took him in and forged him into the man standing before them today. He promises that such a fate could await them as well.

M.K. has attracted special attention from the Baron because of his mention of The Widow. The boy has no knowledge of why anyone would be interested in him. Quinn cautions him against lying and sends him to fight in the pits to take his measure. Meanwhile, Quinn’s son, Ryder approaches his father and urges him to take action against The Widow. Sunny is opposed and clearly has more influence over the Quinn than his own flesh and blood. Ryder’s does a lot of glowering in Sunny’s direction.

M.K. hesitantly walks toward the pits but before he can do anything he is ambushed by Ajax, who we saw during Quinn’s motivational speech was eager to become a Clipper. Ajax tears a medallion from around M.K.’s neck and challenges him to take it back. The two begin fighting but it is broken up by Sunny who sees the bronze medallion, which depicts an urban skyline that looks suspiciously like New York City, and has a jolt of recognition. He sends Ajax away and keeps the medallion for himself. Ryder watches this all from atop the wall surrounding The Pits while M.K. finds an ally in Bale who warns him about Ajax’s violent ambitions.

Quinn returns to the poppy plantation to be chided by his wife Lydia. Multiple barons have declined the invitation to his eight wedding. He dismisses her concerns as jealousy but she assures him he can have as many wives as he sees fits. Quinn is racked by a headache so severe it has accompanying music and Lydia urges him to hand off some of his responsibilities to Ryder. Quinn scoffs at the notion that Ryder is up to the task and Lydia reminds him of “everything that boy sacrificed for you”.

Sunny goes back to his bunk and takes out a compass that has similar markings to the medallion he took from M.K. He flashes back to a memory of him as a small child taking the compass from the hand of a man whose throat had been slit — in a similar fashion to the prisoners from the beginning of the episode — but his reverie is interrupted by Ryder. He demands to know what Sunny took from the boy. Sunny slips the compass into his pocket and flips the medallion to Ryder, who wants to know if Sunny has ever seen anything like this before. “No,” lies Sunny.

Sunny travels into the Badlands where his visits Veil, his lover who has taught him how to read. She reveals that she is pregnant and Sunny tells her she cannot keep it. He makes it clear that to keep the baby would carry punishment by death (although it is not clear for whom). She tells him she has heard stories of lands that exist beyond the Badlands that they could run to. “I know buried under all this ink there is a good man,” she implores.

“You’re wrong,” he assures her.

Ajax jumps M.K again, this time in the catacombs where they bunk, and draws blood when he knocks him to the ground. Upon seeing the blood M.K.’s eyes go black and he kicks Ajax into a mirror which sends shards of glass shrapnel into the air. M.K. seamlessly snatches one of the shards and flings it into Ajax’s eye before collapsing in front of a stunned Sunny. When he regains consciousness in Sunny’s quarters M.K. explains that something takes control of him when he bleeds. He and his mother left their home when he was little to find a healer who could cure him. They were beset by nomads and separated. He has been searching for her ever since. Sunny shows him the compass and M.K. explains to Sunny that he found something that depicts his home of Azra, which lies beyond the Badlands.

Sunny goes back to see Veil, perhaps with some hope of starting a family in Azra, but cannot bring himself to go through the door to her shop. He is confronted by sword wielding — and bowler-wearing — assailants in a stunning battle in the pouring rain that looked like it could have been cut straight of out of Tsai Hark movie. While the fight someone watches on from a car. As Sunny slices the last assailants throat The Widow emerges from the car and flaunts that Sunny cannot harm him. She demands that Sunny bring her the boy from The Fort and shows him a piece of paper with the same symbol of Azra.

Meanwhile, M.K. — despite Sunny’s warnings — attempts to retrieve his medallion from Ryder’s room but is captured. Lydia hears the commotion and comes in and is obviously startled by the sight of the medallion. Ryder declares that M.K. will be killed at dawn as an example to the other Colts. While awaiting execution M.K. is visited by Sunny and the boy tries to make him promise to find his mother. Sunny frees the boy and tells him to find her himself. He brings him to a tunnel that will take him out of the fort and warns him that if he is caught he will be killed. He is giving M.K. the choice he never had. Lydia observes them as Sunny facilitates the escape.

Sunny is summoned to Quinn’s mancave which seems like it was furnished during a raid on a Hammacher Schlemmer ̶w̶̶̶h̶̶̶o̶̶̶r̶̶̶e̶̶̶h̶̶̶o̶̶̶u̶̶̶s̶̶̶e̶̶̶ warehouse. Actually everything about the Baron and The Fort is intensely male. He has George Bellows’ painting Stag Night at Starkey’s hanging over his mantle, he is about to take his eighth wife, and all of his servants, Colts, and Clippers are all male. He clearly has a paternal regard for Sunny and wants him to be closer to the main house even though it will upset Ryder (who unbeknownst to Quinn is sleeping with the woman who is about to be the eighth person he calls Mommy).

All in all it was, as I expected, gorgeous, action-packed, and more than a little trope-laden on story. I am definitely going to keep watching for the action scenes alone, if nothing else. It is safe to say it is the most successful Western implementation of martial arts fight choreography that I can recall in a Western film, much less on a television show. Also Stephen Lang joins the cast for four of the six episodes and I would watch a show with far worse fight choreography to see him in anything.