TV Review: Samurai Jack Season 5 Episode 1

Written by Brandon Mills

Samurai Jack is back! Or is he? After a long wait for the return of Samurai Jack, the creators of the show considered their audience very well as the writing style, themes, humor, and tone has been catered towards a mature audience (i.e. kids watching the show 14 years ago and now). After the unfortunate event of Jack losing his sword in the last episode of season 4, Jack has been wandering around Aku’s future for 50 years and for better or for worse hasn’t aged at all, grew a wise man’s beard, rides a motorcycle, and has some stylish armor. We can safely assume Jack has been fighting Aku’s minions during the 50 year time-skip as he shows in the opening scene he is still the stoic face, witty, butt kicking samurai we grew up watching. The spirit of the samurai, the sakai, has not faltered over the 50 years. Unfortunately, those are the only positive things happening to Jack. 50 years without the only key (his sword) to returning to the past to stop Aku has waned heavy in Jack’s mind and heart as we see him going through an existential crisis throughout the episode in addition to the external threats the world poses. Jack sees vision of his village and his people and questions whether he remembers his purpose and wonders if he’s abandoned his people since it’s taken him so long to return. These visions all contain a mysterious black figure, sitting upon a horse with bright glowing red eyes, eyes that give off a very ominous glare that is fixated on Jack. Jack will usually snap out of these visions after a long stare down but they come to him at the worst of times.  Recall that Jack has a huge bounty on his head and assassins, mercenaries, and the like all want the prize and are constantly assaulting him. This season we have Aku’s favorite assassin, Scaramouche the merciless, and a mysterious cult of Aku followers, who trained seven daughters with their only purpose of existing is to kill Jack. Jack meets Aku’s favorite assassin after a pressing journey and the showdown between them is entertaining in all shapes and forms. Scaramouche definitely lightens up the show’s dark setting with some witty humor and unique powers. Scaramouche calls Aku on his cell phone in the middle of battle, uses sound to manipulate his weapons and surroundings, while talking in a retro Austin Powers voice, yeah baby. Jack ultimately wins the fight against Scaramouche and takes a special weapon, capable of dismantling anything it comes into contact with, before Scaramouche disappears. It was no easy task though as Jack fell victim to the visions he kept having and Scaramouche being a venerable opponent didn’t attack Jack in his trance state and waited until he snapped out of it. These visions could become a problem in future battles especially with the seven assassins from the cult coming after Jack as we see them run off into the real world at the end of the episode. Jack has many obstacles to overcome if he is still trying to return to the past and put an end to Aku’s reign of terror. Only time will tell if he can endure these hardships and accomplish his true goal.