October Faction is a Netflix series that premiered on January 23rd, 2020. It was created by Damian Kindler, and based on the comic of the same name by Steve Niles and Damien Worm.
Fred and Delores Allen, along with their teenage children Viv and Geoff, make a visit to upstate New York following the death of Fred's father to settle his affairs. The twist: Fred and Delores, as long as Fred's deceased father, are members of the international monster hunting agency Presidio, and a short trip becomes a much longer stay as they discover the small town is much less idyllic than it seems.
The series was canceled after one season of ten episodes.
Examples:
- Action Girl:
- Deloris is skilled at combat, often using a baton. As one (unseen) example, she once managed to take on multiple bikers at the same time and got away.
- Gina Fernandez is the female sheriff of Barrington-on-Hudson, and though she doesn't get into too much action is still trained to use firearms.
- Anti-Villain: Alice. This character's methods are extreme, but her village was massacred, including, she thought, her children, and she just wants vengeance and her people back.
- Armoured Closet Gay: Phillip, who bawled out Geoff for being a "fag" when they first met, is himself in the closet.
- Attempted Rape: Viv fends off a date rape which she foresaw using her power.
- Bar Brawl: One treated realistically. When an asshole in a bar messes with Delores, she whips out a baton and kicks his ass. The bystanders in the bar are promptly freaked out that she just assaulted someone and she's banned from the bar.
- Battle Couple:
- Fred and Deloris Allen serve as monster hunters with a group called the Presidio, frequently fighting them side by side.
- Another couple, both Muslim, are also seen (whom Alice kills).
- Birth-Death Juxtaposition: Alice gave birth to her babies while Presidio was slaughtering her people nearby, including her husband Omari.
- Blood Magic: Alice's ability to make people shoot themselves and others against their will is called this.
- Coming-Out Story: Phillip comes clean and tells Madison that he's gay, leading her to break up with him.
- Crime of Self-Defense: Viv stops a guy at her school from raping her, and then he accuses her of assaulting him. She then hits him angrily over this, and gets suspended.
- Dark Action Girl: Alice, the main antagonist of the series, is a female warlock who's skilled in combat (though she uses magic mostly). She takes down multiple armed male opponents with relative ease when they hunt her.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Presidio experimenting on supernatural beings (this includes vivisection) is explicitly compared with Nazi medical crimes. Alice accuses Fred and Deloris of genocide as they are its agents (though neither knew about these atrocities), since the organization seeks to kill all supernatural beings ultimately, dangerous or not.
- Enemy of My Enemy: In the season finale, Delores and Alice team up, despite Alice's initial hatred for Delores, as they—and more importantly to them, Viv and Geoff—are threatened by Edith more than by each other.
- Final Solution: Presido wiped out Alice's people, the warlocks, and intend to kill all supernatural beings everywhere.
- Ghostly Goals: Steve remains bound to the world due to his regret over his last meeting with Phillip, as well as Phillip's own inability to get over Steve's death.
- Grand Theft Me: A dead warlock can be summoned into a living body, provided their ashes are on hand. This is Alice's plan—she has the ashes of every warlock Presidio murdered when they destroyed her home, and she summons them back on a mass scale. However, they are not all onboard with this, feeling that they have moved on and it's not fair to the people whose bodies they're inhabiting.
- Heel Realization: Fred and Delores have always believed they were protecting innocents by working for Presidio, and are horrified to learn they actually assisted in a genocide.
- Hunter of Monsters: Deloris and Fred, along with the Presidio generally, have the mission to destroy dangerous monsters (however some turn out to be benign or neutral at least).
- Impersonating an Officer: Presidio's agents pretend to be FBI when they take over the town in the series finale.
- I See Dead People: Geoff's individual power is being able to see ghosts.
- Last of His Kind: Alice is the last warlock, along with Viv and Geoff, since she's their birth mother.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: Alice is Viv and Geoff's biological mother.
- Mage Species: Warlocks are identical to humans outwardly, but another species and can do magic as a hereditary ability.
- Maligned Mixed Marriage: Fred's dad doesn't explicitly say he objects to him marrying Deloris because she's black, but it was strongly implied as being a factor.
- Masquerade: Monsters and the supernatural are hidden from the world at large, not by magic but by the efforts of Presidio.
- Mercy Kill: Moshe euthanizes a supernatural being who's been vivisected by some Presidio doctors in one of their facilities using a shot to the head.
- Mind Rape: Alice inflicts it on Fred and Deloris, making both of them feel all the pain they caused to supernatural beings across the years.
- Minority Police Officer: Gina Fernandez, a Latina, is the sheriff of Barrington-on-Hudson, a small mostly white town in upstate New York. Years before her, Deloris' father, a black man, had held the post.
- Mistaken for Racist: Basil's dad flatly orders Deloris out of his store, with her family thinking this is because she's black. It turns out to be becauise he blames her for Basil doing time in prison.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Alice was identified by Presidio when she saved a woman using telekinesis because she almost stepped in front of a truck. This led to her being captured and sent off to a dire fate (although she freed herself, their agents still found her people's refuge, killing them).
- Our Vampires Are Different: They don't seem to be undead and lack the typical weaknesses and powers of vampires. They keep the typical fangs, but instead of being longer canines they're retractable and protrude forward from their mouths. They are created from normal humans though.
- Police Are Useless: At first. Gina, the Sheriff, tries to arrest Delores while she's confronting Alice (although to be fair, it does look like Deloris is menacing an unarmed woman with a gun to anyone who doesn't know Alice is a warlock), and nearly gets them both killed. However, eventually she wises up to the fact something strange is going on and becomes much more helpful. In fact, when Presidio rolls in, Gina's immediately suspicious and rallies the police force against them to save the town, eventually teaming up with Moshe and earning his respect despite his mistrust of humans.
- Power Nullifier: It turns out that Fred and Deloris have been drugging their kids with “vitamins” which suppress their powers for years. Alice was also drugged by a woman she thought of as her friend to suppress her powers so she'd get captured by Presidio agents. Presidio used some sonic weapon to neutralize warlocks' powers and slaughter them in their refuge too.
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Alice makes people shoot themselves on different occasions through controlling them with telekinesis.
- Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Samuel Allen's death was faked by Presidio.
- Seers: Viv can see the near future beforehand.
- Serial Rapist: Rob, it turns out, date raped at least three other girls before he tried to do this with Van. When she publicly accuses him, they all come forward to back her up.
- Talking Down the Suicidal: Geoff talks Phillip out of killing himself over having gotten a friend killed (who he was also attracted to).
- Time Stands Still: Alice's favorite way to spy on people is to freeze everything but herself and just walk wherever she wants to snoop around.
- Tragic Stillbirth: Deloris was injured and miscarried while pregnant, which devastated her. It turns out that she couldn't conceive after that, and her later twins were born via surrogate (or so it's said-they actually stole them from Alice).
- Van Helsing Hate Crimes: As it turns out, Presidio makes no distinction between actually bad supernaturals and those who are good people just trying to live their lives. The show also takes the tack of making these stack with actual hate crimes—Omari, a black warlock, points out to his (white) wife Alice that his ancestors weren't just targeted for having magic, they were lynched, and she needs to understand that because their future children will face it as well.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Alice can take on the form of people she encounters.
- We Can Rule Together: Edith tells Viv that she should join Presidio and help them study supernatural creatures. Viv flatly refuses.
- Wonder Twin Powers: Viv and Geoff each have their own warlock powers, but together, their blood magic is truly exceptional, busting through the Power Nullifier drug like it isn't there.
