Series Seasons 1-2: Fairly Decent, But Not Without Serious Problems
Alas, Locke And Key is a bit of a mixed bag - both in terms of its value as an adaptation and as a standalone story.
First, what works: the performances are decent. The series opts for a whimsical overall tone, counteracting the wearisome YA vibe that seeps in whenever Tyler and Kinsey get involved. Bode is easily the best of the main characters, partly because he's funny but mostly because his story is actually focused on the magic instead of Tyler and Kinsey's YA bullcrap. The magic of the Keys is brought to the screen with impressive flourish, and the new Mental World aspect of the Head Key is arguably a genuine improvement.
As for what doesn't work... well, by now, everyone's talked about the stupidity of the Lockes, Dodge's Villain Ball, and the misapplication of the Keys, so instead I'll focus on what I feel is the root of these problems, namely pacing.
See, because the show feels the need to shuffle things around and pad things out, events no longer make sense. Really useful Keys are never used against the villains because these confrontations are based on comic events that occurred before these Keys were found; Dodge escapes before Sam Lesser's attack on Keyhouse, so she has to keep doing something stupidly villainous until then, and so on. Rather than simplifying the story in order to make it fit the medium, the show has complicated things by adding unnecessary tragedies and artificial mysteries, adding up to more padding.
In the process, the story has deviated further and further from the original narrative until the notion of it being an adaptation flies out the window. And this wouldn't be such a bad thing if the writers had an established plan for what to do next... but the ending of season 2 seems to indicate otherwise.
To whit: Dodge has been killed off for real without ever establishing the full extent of his comic-book counterpart's plans and is replaced by Captain Gideon. In the process, we lose the Big Bad who arranged for the murder of Rendell Locke, played the Lockes like puppets, and did more to ruin their lives than any other villain in the show. Also, we miss out on the ultimate fate of Sam Lesser and Dodge's possession of Bode via the Ghost Key - which is even more baffling, considering that Sam tries to steal Dodge's body in season 2 just as he did in the comics, so unless season 3 takes a hard left-turn, that setup was for nothing.
And having lost our Big Bad, in exchange we get... some guy. Yes, he murdered Peter Locke, but that was two centuries ago, and he's already been executed for it. Gideon has nothing to do with the modern Lockes, no personal connection with any of them, and as far as we know, his goals are only going to be slightly more aggressive than Dodge's. So why change things up?
All in all... it just qualifies as "okay." But do yourself a favour and read the comics after Season 2 - just to numb the disappointment.
Series Give Me the Keys, You *********** ************!
Who is the intended target audience of Locke and Key? That's my first thought watching the show. On the trailers and my first impressions, I assumed I would be watching a children's horror/thriller in the tone of the old Goosebumps books. But despite the children protagonists, there is a great deal of violence, swearing, and other elements that would traumatise younger children and cause no end of grief for onlooking parents. But it doesn't feel specifically like an adult show either, and I'm not sure how many older audience members would want to put up with idiot children and mopey teenagers for most of the screentime.
Locke and Key follows the adventures of the Locke family. Three children and a mother move to a ginormous old family house, where they soon discover various magical keys that grant incredible and dangerous superpowers. I liked some things about the show. Many of the situations presented by the keys are creepy, and I enjoyed the intrigue in trying to find and figure out what each key does, along with the broader plot of trying to understand where they even came from.
Less good is how the keys are used in the story. For instance, one character gets their hands on a key that allows you to take complete physical control of other people within earshot. Despite this being an incredibly powerful item, we see this key get used exactly once for some mean prank, and never again, even in life or death situations where it would immediately stop the villain and resolve the plot. Later, we learn there is a key that gives the holder perfect disguises; even when everyone knows about the key, most of the characters utterly fail to realise how this could be used against them in practically any situation. There's a red spy in the base, idiots! The plot depends on the audience forgetting about these damn keys existing, which they won't because it's the entire point of the story.
Then there's the villain, who gets utterly unresolved by the end of the story. It's fine to present her as this mystery who has beef with the Locke family, but you need to actually provide satisfactory answers at the end of these mysteries - simply swapping it with a handwave and a new mystery is the kind of Lost nonsense I'd hoped we'd grown past.
Overall, Locke and Key is great at atmosphere, but disappointing in terms of story. If you have any hatred of teenage or child protagonists, you will find these stupid, uncommunicative, and constantly depressed Locke children fairly insufferable, and will most likely turn against the show before the season finale.
Series Season 3: Utter Disappointment
It’s somewhat appropriate that this season arrived on Netflix just days after the wonder of The Sandman (2022): it was a tough act to follow, but Locke and Key’s final season nobly stepped onto the stage to prove its worth as an adaptation... whereupon it tripped over its own clown shoes, fell into the orchestra pit, landed in a sousaphone and promptly suffocated to death.
At the end of the previous season, I was worried about how the story would go since former Big Bad Dodge had died with arcs left unfinished and been replaced by a villain with no emotional significance to the Lockes.
This season, the plot took the hard-left turn I was worried about and made it even stupider: Sam completes his character arc, but against Gideon and his gang of cardboard villains instead of Dodge - so any emotional significance to finally striking back at his abuser and achieving real redemption is lost.
It’s sadly clear that the plot blew its load in the previous season, and now it's stuck in a ditch, spinning its wheels. The padding is worse than ever: this time it got so bad I had to wonder if the showrunners were suffering from some David Benioff-style aversion to fantasy, because the segments on home life and marriage just seemed to be getting more and more bloated - to the point that I could almost feel the script dragging its feet whenever the main plot had to get involved.
This wouldn't have been a problem if we had enthralling characters with fun personality quirks, but this isn't The Umbrella Academy (2019): the only entertaining character is Bode, and he keeps getting sidelined in favour of crushing bores like Josh or Tyler – who I’d hoped would stay gone after he left Matheson last season. Instead, he’s back within the first two or three episodes… but now he’s lost his memory and now we’re forced to recycle Duncan and Nina’s troubles from previous seasons.
And on top of being boring, the characters are stupider than ever. I mean, in previous seasons, our heroes had the excuse of being drunk, hormone-addled, chronically depressed, under the influence of magic, or just too young and naive to know better; by this season, they’re supposed to have developed... and yet one of Nina's first actions this season is to nearly get Bode killed – not because she was drunk or enchanted, but just due to being an idiot.
But if the heroes are dull and stupid, the villains are even worse, to the point that the story has to bring back a deceased bad guy in order to make things more interesting – and fulfil a plot point from the original comic books in the most egregiously stupid way: in the books, Dodge manages to possess Bode by pulling a fast one on Sam and the heroes; here, it happens because Bode decided to go back in time and be a moron.
And the ending… okay, I know it’s not always possible for the show to feature the same dramatic climax as the comics, but goddammit, the previous season finale was more impressive than this – and it featured villains that had emotional significance to the main character!
All in all, I wouldn’t bother with this season if I were you. Just read the comics; one of them even features a crossover with The Sandman (1989)!