Series / The Nevers

Society fears what it cannot understand.

"Horror and fascination go arm in arm."

— Hugo Swan

The Nevers is a 2021 Science Fiction series created by Joss Whedon for HBO and written by Jane Espenson. Whedon dropped from showrunning it in November 2020 and was replaced by Philippa Goslett (screenwriter of Mary Magdalene).

It is about an assortment of Victorian-era women and men who find themselves with unusual abilities, relentless enemies, and a mission that might change the world. They are known as the Touched, and their abilities are referred to as "turns", what we might refer to as superpowers today.

The cast includes Laura Donnelly, Olivia Williams, James Norton, Tom Riley, Ann Skelly, Ben Chaplin, Pip Torrens, Zackary Momoh, Amy Manson, Nick Frost, Rochelle Neil, Eleanor Tomlinson and Denis O'Hare.

The series premiered on April 11, 2021 on HBO and HBO Max. Season One consists of 12 episodes, but production turmoils due to the COVID-19 Pandemic delayed the latter 6 episodes, which were announced to air in 2023 instead. These six episodes would also be the last, as HBO cancelled the series in December 2022, resulting in the remaining episodes being streamed on Tubi Live in February of 2023 and repeating on an irregular schedule.

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The Nevers provides examples of the following tropes:

• Abnormal Ammo: Winemar Kroos (Maladie's gunman) can spontaneously generate "bullets" from inside his body (he also appears to be a Poisonous Person, as he leaks green acidic blood while locked up).
• Action Girl: Amalia, Maladie and Bonfire Annie are all quite capable fighters, using their bodies, mundane weapons or superpowers.
• Actually a Doombot: After Maladie's hanging, Frank notices that her toes have been cut off and realizes that the dead woman isn't Maladie at all — her Psycho Supporter, Clara, switched places with her and died in her place. The real Maladie has been Hidden in Plain Sight the whole episode, posing as reporter Effie Boyle, whose body was the one discovered back in episode 1.
• Age-Gap Romance:
  • Formerly between Frank and Mary, whose actors have a 22 year age gap. Or at least so it appeared: Frank's really gay.
  • This also occurred between Frank and Hugo, with a 15 year age gap.
• Alternate History: Set in a Victorian London where people with superpowers publicly emerged in 1896.
• ...And That Would Be Wrong: Amalia, explaining why they can't just kill Massen:
  Amalia: No. Even if he gave the order, he's part of something much bigger. Pull out one piece, it would be replaced in a day. [sees Penance's expression] And... damn it... it's wrong. He's a human being. Who's... alive, damn it.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Mary to Amalia:
  Mary: What do you know that you shouldn't? [Amalia doesn't answer] You want me to sing so that more people will come here? Maybe I'm struggling because I don't know if they should.
  • After enduring taunting from Hugo in regards to his being gay and general tormenting, Frank gets a good one in - but Hugo gets one hell of a last word.
  Hugo: Look at you... a shadow afraid of the shadows... Such a lonely life.
  Frank: [his eyes blazing] Yeah? Where are all your friends, then? [he stalks to the door]
  Hugo: The first time, Frank. [the door slams closed] You were drunk the first time.
• Armor-Piercing Response: After an encounter with Lord Massen at the gentleman's club, Hugo smirks and says that his sex club will open that evening, and don't the Touched deserve to earn a living? Lord Massen proceeds to publicly humiliate him and leave him standing speechless.
  Massen: [loudly, so everyone in the room can hear] I used to think your father's mind went to field because your brother Caleb drowned. [scoffs] More likely, it's because you didn't. Well, I assure you... you're about to.
• At the Opera Tonight: The first episode comes to a climax at one of these, where Maladie interrupts the opera by murdering one of the actors, slaughtering a good part of the audience and kidnapping Mary.
• Bad Future: In episode 6, Amalia is revealed to have originated from one. In the future, humanity has decimated the Earth and its people and whoever is left alive is fighting an endless war over whether to embrace or kill the benevolent Galanthi, aliens who seem to want to help the Earth. Stripe, as Amalia was once known, finds the last Galanthi left alive and watches it seemingly abandon the Earth, only to take her with it to Victorian London, presumably to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted. Amalia gets beaten up, stabbed, shot and otherwise injured in multiple fights, while Maladie is a clearly formerly beautiful woman who is now disheveled, unkempt and with yellowed teeth who regularly gets the tar beaten out of her by Amalia.
• The Berserker: Part of Maladie's power, complete with Red Eyes, Take Warning.
• Big Beautiful Woman: Désirée Blodgett, the "Diva of Desire", who prides herself on her impressive clientele even though she's "not exactly Mitzi Dalti◊". She also makes a joke about "keeping her chins up".
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Hugo, who appears nice and friendly at first, but who not only owns a sex club (that he uses to cheerfully blackmail the members), he's seemingly seeking out of work and possibly financially desperate Touched and inviting them to become part of the workers at his club, and setting up his so-called "friend" Augie into co-ownership of a sex club he does not want.
• Bottomless Magazines: Justified in Winemar's case, as his turn is to create "bullets" that can be fired from a gun that is bolted into his arm.
• Cannot Tell a Lie: Désirée's turn - anyone who comes in contact with her while sufficiently agitated (during sex or otherwise) is compelled to tell her the truth about anything and everything. Backfires spectacularly on one john who is planning to have her killed for what she knows, and sleeps with her beforehand anyways, resulting in his accidentally warning her and prompting her to go to the Orphanage. invoked
  • At first, Amalia thinks Desiree is a spy sent by the authorities, going on about the timing on top of all else she's got on her plate...then realizes she's been blurting out secrets of the entire organization and that Desiree is for real.
• Casting Gag: Anna Devlin, who stands at 5'1", plays 10-foot tall Primrose Chattoway.
• Chekhov's Gun: Amalia comments on this in episode four as a "rippling" (as she calls her glimpses of the future) shows her in Lord Massen's private study alone with the man. She notes later on that had she not experienced this view twice (in the vision and then in person), she wouldn't have taken such notice of the hunting trophies and displays of weapons on the walls. This allows her to identify Lucy as the traitor, as the latter had made comments on Massen's decor, but could only have known what it looked like if she had been there before.
• Country Matters: Maladie leans in to one of the young actresses at the opera and tells her in a conspiratorial whisper "Eve had a cunt."
• Cyborg: Amalia gets attacked by a man that seems to be a steampunk cyborg, as a large part of his body is mechanical.
• Deadpan Snarker: Several characters, but most prominently Amalia, Annie and Dr. Cousens.
• Death of a Child: Prior to the show's beginning Lucy accidentally killed her infant son when her turn first activated.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Towards the end of the first season, the Touched are required by law to register with the police, endure a "demonstration" of their turn (which is implied to involve policemen stripping the girls naked), and they are forced to wear a blue ribbon pinned to their coat whenever they're going out in public, so everyone can tell at a glance that they're Touched.
• Differently Powered Individual: A random group of people living in the UK given superpowers by an alien ship passing overhead are called "the Touched".
• Dirty Cop: Frank Mundi, but not of his own volition - Hugo knows his sexual orientation and is blackmailing him into helping him acquire Touched women for his sex club.
• Facial Horror: What's underneath the hooded men's robes. Quoth Lucy, "Fuck a drumstick, he's ugly!"
• Face–Heel Turn: Lucy has actually been working as The Mole for Lord Massen, as he promised to cure her turn.
• Failed a Spot Check: The Beggar King's men in "Ignition", who fail to notice not only Bonfire Annie, but Amalia and Penance, whom Amalia says "even sneezed once".
• Fanservice Extra: The scenes with Hugo's sex club have plenty of fully naked male and female eye candy.
• Fighting from the Inside: Hague's lobotomized slaves are thought to be effectively mindless, but there's some indication that they can regain their personhood, such as Beth using her powers on a bucket seemingly just because. The most notable instance is in "True", when Beth uses her Turn to save Amalia.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In the first episode, Amalia tells the Beggar King "This isn't my face." At the time, this just seems like a weird nonsense statement made in an attempt to show she's not afraid of his threat to cut her up with his razorblade. And in the next, Maladie also accuses her of changing her skin - though she seems to mean that as a metaphor for Amalia betraying her when she thought they were friends.
  • The first time we see him, Augie talks about the crows being unhappy with a tone that suggests he's more in-tune with them than he's letting on. The very next episode it's revealed he has the ability to possess the minds and bodies of crows.
  • Frank being someone important to Mary is hinted at in the very beginning of the first episode, as he's seen dropping her off at an audition and kissing her goodbye.
  • In the first episode, the Beggar King says that "You just cannot get [Odium] into a bath". Turns out this isn't a comment on the man's tall stature. He literally can't get in a bath, as his turn is that he is unable to go under water in any way, enabling him to walk over a lake.
  • It's perfectly possible to figure out the rough outline of Amalia's real backstory early in episode 4 - if you're able to catch that she starts her rant on the stairs to Penance with "We don't do that when I'm from." and then take everything she says about her "mission" and being left behind absolutely literally instead of parsing it as a metaphor about feeling unfit to be a leader.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Penance Adair invents various electrical gadgets and machines (including taser-umbrellas or electrical auto-carriages). Her inventiveness is enhanced by her ability to see electrical energy patterns.
• Gender-Restricted Ability: Downplayed. The majority of Touched are women, but male Touched do exist. The event apparently empowered people who were marginalized in one way or another, hence skewing female.
• Gentle Giant: Primrose Chattoway, despite being 10 feet tall, is still a sweet young girl.
• Giant Mook: Odium, the Beggar King's muscle is this - his actor is 6'8 and weighs about 360 lbs.
• Giant Woman: Primrose Chattoway has become this following her turn.
• Gorgeous Period Dress: A given, the show is set in Victorian London and has all the fashions that come with it.
• Green Thumb: One of the Touched seen at the orphanage has this ability, using it to grow a crop of tomatoes in about thirty seconds.
• Groin Attack: Amalia punches one of Myrtle's attempted kidnappers in the crotch.
• Healing Hands: Horatio Cousens, appropriately a surgeon and one of the rare male Touched, has this ability. Interestingly, his powers appear to have limitations. More than once after healing Amalia he stresses to her that her wound is not fully healed, and she needs to not aggravate it further. When forced to heal Maladie from a gunshot, he has to physically remove the bullet first, and when done notes there is still some surface infection (which he apparently can't heal).
• Heroic Sacrifice: Of the non-lethal variety. Mary outs herself to Maladie by revealing her powers in an attempt to prevent Maladie from torturing or murdering anyone else.
• Heroic Suicide: This is seemingly attempted by Amalia to escape a sadistic choice of Maladie's. Rather than either kill Penance or Mary, Amalia shoots herself. However, it's non-lethal, and she's quickly healed after. It's left ambiguous if she just missed or aimed this way on purpose.
• High-Heel–Face Turn: Sick of her riddles and madness, Bonfire Annie turns on Maladie and joins Amalia's team.
• Hypocritical Humor: In "Undertaking", after Amalia and the others have a discussion about not wanting to answer Mary's death with aggression of any sort:
  Penance: See? Annie agrees, and she's terrible.
  Amalia: And so do I.
  Penance: Good. Level heads.
  Dr. Cousens: All right. Augustus Bidlow?
  Penance: [without missing a beat] Yeah, we should murder him.
• I Know Your True Name: Where Amalia comes from, names are sacred. She only asks to know her friend's true name as she's dying, and revealing her own true name to Penance is a major character moment.
• Interesting Situation Duel: In "Ignition", Amalia is attacked by Odium, who can walk on water, but can't go through it. She uses a chain to choke him out by pulling on it from under the water.
• I Have Many Names: "True" has four chapters, each named after a name Amalia has taken: Stripe, Molly, The Madwoman of the Thames, and True. At the end, she reveals her true name: Zephyr Alexis Navine.
• Intoxication Ensues: Annie burns a cart full of opium, which Penance proceeds to get a lungful of while putting the fire out. Amalia goes over later and purposefully inhales some, although it doesn't seem to affect her as much as it does Penance (although Penance later manages to invent an amplifying device while under the influence... after she stops vomiting).
  Penance: [chasing one of her fire extinguisher tanks] Don't roll away, lovely. [she coughs] I'll make it up to you. [Sadly, to Amalia, while holding up the tank] I fell on my snuffer. [she coughs again] I don't like all that smoke to come at me. [she lifts her tank] This hero broke my fall. My back feels fine. Tingling, like my hand fingers.
  Annie: She found a better world.
  Penance: [she coughs a third time, then inspects her reflection in a nearby crate full of silver] Ugh. That's too many of me. [she coughs] Amalia, come and see my soul trapped in a jar - if you rub it, I'll give you wishes. You'll never guess what the fire was!
  Amalia: It's opium, my love.
  Penance: But it was the air... But also the cloud that wanted thunder but was too gentle to hold it.
• Jump Scare: Amalia suddenly gets a quick flash of Maladie vaulting her balcony at the opera while shrieking in her face.
• Kill and Replace: The dead woman found at the beginning of the series is the real reporter Effie Boyle. The one who's been hanging around Mundi's office is actually Maladie in a very convincing disguise.
• Knuckle Cracking: Amalia does a variant with her neck before kicking the asses of some thugs who were attempting to kidnap Myrtle.
• Last Disrespects: Maladie attended Mary's funeral, all right... Except she was in the coffin too, and proceeds to make disrespectful comments about the state of Mary's body and the dress chosen to bury her in.
• Laughing Mad: Maladie, who goes from shrieking with laughter to ordering her followers to murder everyone in about half a second.
• Mad Doctor: Dr. Hague, who is seen torturing and murdering an underling after he failed to capture Myrtle. The Touched themselves do not escape his experiments, with many (including poor Beth) winding up as non-verbal shells of their former selves.
• Magic Music: Mary's song is shown to affect only the Touched, including Maladie, who, upon hearing it, seems to become almost sane again. Penance and Augie, meanwhile, share a Held Gaze while they are being affected by the light.
• Mass Super-Empowering Event:
  • What appears to have been a giant fish-like spaceship spread a mysterious wave of what look almost like dust motes over the city, causing certain people to get "turns" (aka powers). Apparently everyone but Maladie then forgot they saw it. In the Origins Episode, it's revealed that this is actually atypical for the Galanthi, as normally they just enhance intelligence and empathy as well as giving their Spores "missions", and she didn't even know they were capable of handing out powers like this.
  • Interestingly, while most people only get one mote, and usually in a way that foreshadows what power they're going to get^note for example, Mary has one land on her voice box, Amalia has two or three land on her foreshadowing not only to her seer abilities but the fact that not only is she Touched, but that she is also a soldier from the future cast into an "empty" body.
• Master of Illusion/Compelling Voice: The Colonel's turn; people will believe anything he tells them. He uses this to torment Mary by nearly tricking her into eating a dead rat, and to kidnap Dr. Cousens by tricking him into a carriage.
• Meaningful Rename: Maladie's real name is Sarah - Amalia recognizes her as someone from her past right after Maladie refers to her by her old nickname of "Molly".
• Mix-and-Match Critters: The Galanthi in their natural form have elephantine skin and eyes, tentacles and translucent skin similar to cephalopods, and the stature of a T-rex.
• Moe Greene Special: How Frank kills Winemar Kroos.
• No Equal-Opportunity Time Travel: Amalia, or Zephyr, emphatically hates that she's been transported to a time when she has to play the part of a proper lady to get any amount of societal regard, as even in the Bad Future she was never discriminated against for being a woman.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Frank gives one to who he believes is Maladie after she taunted him about Mary leaving him because he was "sad", and tells him she had been hiding in Mary's coffin with her body during the funeral.
• Not Distracted by the Sexy: Maladie seeks to tease Dr. Cousens by baring her breasts. He ignores this and focuses on the wound over her left one (he's a physician). Likewise Cousens is unfazed by her flirting after he heals it.
• Offing the Offspring: The woman who was running the fake orphanage drowned her (pregnant) daughter because she felt her daughter's turn of being able to transform any liquid into water was unnatural - she specifically mentions that her daughter being able to turn wine into water was "the opposite of Jesus", which is why she felt she had to kill her.
• Omniglot: Myrtle shows the ability to spontaneously speak many languages but cannot control it well.
• Only Sane Man: Dr. Cousens, who is the only one to call out Amalia on being reckless with her life as well as Penance's.
• The Ophelia: Maladie is a psychotic, murderous one of these, as she was already clearly mentally ill, but was the only one to have remembered seeing the spaceship over London.
• Out-of-Genre Experience: Chapter 1 of Episode 6 is post apocalyptic military sci fi.
• Pair the Smart Ones: Augie, an ornithologist, and Penance, an engineer, share a romantic moment in which they geek out over the new senses their powers have given them.
• Persecution Flip: Massen fears this happening, as the Touched seem to be more women than men and more lower class than upper class, with not a single "man of stature" getting powers. While it does appear that the Turns are given to those who lack societal power, it's not as simple as he thinks: for one, the motes ignored Lavinia, a disabled woman, and empowered her brother, who has every advantage in Victorian society but is rather meek in personality.
• Personality Powers: Many of the turns exhibited run along these lines. Mechanically minded Penance is a Gadgeteer Genius, Dr. Cousens gets Healing Hands, Mary the opera singer becomes a siren, etc.
• Power Incontinence: While some Touched have control over their powers, some are either incapable of using them at their own convenience, such as Amalia and her clairvoyant flashes, or can't turn off their power, such as Désirée and her compelling people near her to speak honestly. Adjusting to these powers is part of their arcs.
• Playing with Fire: Bonfire Annie has the power to conjure fireballs.
• Sadistic Choice: Maladie demands that Amalia choose between Penance and Mary as her "best friend", with the consequence being that the other will be pushed off a ledge and hanged. Amalia promptly takes the third option and shoots herself. She then shoots Maladie to knock her back, only for Annie to throw a fireball at her when she attempts to attack Amalia again.
• Saying Too Much: Under the influence of Désirée's power, Amalia suddenly starts talking about Mary's ability in-depth but stops herself right before she makes a major reveal:
  Amalia: And Maladie's got no idea what Mary's "turn" can do. Mary is the voice of the Galan - ...oh. Huh. It's not just men.
  Désirée: No.
• Seers: Amalia has the ability to see glimpses of the future. They don't seem to be guaranteed to happen, though, as she gets a flash of Maladie suddenly climbing into their opera box while shrieking, but this doesn't happen in reality (instead, Amalia jumps from the box to the stage to attempt to fight Maladie).
• Self-Harm: Amalia viciously slaps her face after staring into the mirror and tracing a diagonal line across her nose and cheek. It's where her scar was back when she was Stripe.
• Slashed Throat: How Maladie deals with the actor at the opera.
• Spotting the Thread: How Amalia figures out Lucy is The Mole. She realized Lucy had knowledge of Massen's hunting which she could only have known if in his study. There was also her denying taking money, her absences and bits like "clean my study but can't make your own bed?"
• Steampunk: Penance's laboratory/workshop, as well as the gadgets she creates.
• Sufficiently Advanced Aliens: The Galanthi are a powerful alien race who appear when Earth is in peril claiming to want to help humanity, and can grant humans enhanced empathy and the ability to use advanced Galanthi tech. They are regarded as saviors by some and invaders by others, kicking off a war in the Bad Future. In 1896, some of the Touched consider their alien-given gifts as divine, while others... not so much.
• There's No Kill like Overkill: Mary is shot through the chest, which apparently instantly kills her. Winemar then proceeds to shoot her a good 15-20 more times before she collapses to the ground.
• Three-Point Landing: Amalia performs such a landing in the first episode to catch up to Maladie (who is in the process of kidnapping Mary) by jumping down a stairwell.
• A Threesome Is Hot: Pansexual Hugo is introduced while in bed with a man and woman.
• Time Skip: The fifth episode "Hanged" takes place five weeks after the ending of "Undertaking".
• Walk on Water: Odium (the Beggar King's Giant Mook) can do this, but with one weakness - he can't actually go through the water. When he attacks Amalia, both parties use to their advantage.
• Wham Shot:
  • At the end of "Exposure". Lavinia is Dr. Hague's boss and they've found the crashed spaceship.
  • At the end of "Ignition", there's Mary singing her song in the park into Penance's amplifier only to be brutally shot to death by Winemar.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Dominique - the hooker Hugo sleeps with in "Ignition" - was supposedly able to glow with purple light when she orgasms, but her turn is actually always knowing exactly what time it is. He is not impressed.
  • Hugo mentions a girl whose turn is to (seemingly permanently) float a few inches off the ground. People have to put a leash on her to take her anywhere.
• Would Hit a Girl:
  • Frank has absolutely no problem smacking Maladie's head repeatedly into a wall and then choking her out. Well, faux-Maladie's head, anyways - not that he knew it at the time.
  • In a more dramatic instance, Massen and the other lords are revealed to have been the ones who let Kroos out, gave him back his gun and sicced him on Mary and the others (99% of whom were women and children) at the park. Lord Massen himself is revealed to have been the one who sent Odium to kill Amalia as well.
• You Are What You Hate: Not hate, perhaps, but Augie seems to think the Touched are people who have something "wrong" with them (he even bluntly asks Amalia and Penance this flat out - the very first time he meets them, no less), but as we see at the end of the episode, he actually is one.
• We Used to Be Friends: Amalia and Maladie, back when they were Molly and Sarah.
• You Are Not Alone: After Mary's death, Amalia has a rant about how she was left here without a mission and she has no idea what she's doing, and how isolated and alone she feels. The rest of the Touched decipher Mary's song, and it's revealed to be a message to Amalia, reassuring her that the Galanthi didn't abandon her by choice, that she's not alone, and that it will return and give her her mission. Amalia breaks down into tears upon hearing it.

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