Warning: This review contains full spoilers for Yaga Season 1, Episodes 1-2. Both episodes are now streaming on AMC+ in the US and Crave in Canada.
For anyone familiar with the Eastern European folktale of Baba Yaga, you might have visions of a wicked old witch in the woods who lives in a hut made out of chicken feet. In reality, Baba Yaga is a complex character who can harness the role of both villain and mentor, depending on the story, and encompasses both good and evil.
Yaga, the new series from Kat Sandler, who wrote a stage play with the same title, is a modern retelling of the folktale of Baba Yaga itself. The first two episodes offer an alternate version of the traditional lore, as Yaga dives head first into seduction and horror, while sprinkling humor throughout amid many twists that make you question what’s real, what’s something else entirely, and what that “something else” even is. (Sounds weird, right? Good.)
The opening of Episode 1 sets the tone for where the show seems to be heading. It begins with narration from Baba Yaga herself, describing in detail how she has been perceived in tales “as wicked as the night and as wise and powerful as the sea” – a creature who eats children’s guts and bones and is too ugly to be desired by anyone. But there’s an underlying warning to her ramble.
Nighttime shots are mixed throughout the monologue, ending with Baba Yaga saying, “But the thing that really gets me… is this.” Cut to a man in a forest standing in the middle of a large bonfire, screaming while he’s being burned alive.
We then go straight into meeting the main characters of Whittock, a small Pacific Northwest-esque island town, and dive into the basics of the story: Charlie Rapp, played by Noah Reid (Schitt’s Creek, The Vampire Lestat), and Sergeant Carson, played by Clark Backo (Letterkenny, The Changeling), are forced to team up to investigate the disappearance of Henry Park, played by Hudson Williams (Heated Rivalry) – a billionaire playboy whose family is well-known in the town. Rapp was hired on by the Park family to find their son and seems to have questionable intentions for working on the case, which Carson is immediately suspicious of.
We next meet Logan Casey, Henry’s roommate – also played by Williams – who surprisingly looks just like Henry, albeit with a seemingly different demeanor and minor physical changes. Logan acts like he’s hiding something as Carson and Rapp look through the house, though he lets it slip that Rapp and Henry know each other, and Rapp doesn’t seem to appreciate the revelation.
The investigation continues in town, with Carson wondering if Henry’s actually even missing. Carson also accuses Rapp of flirting with basically every single woman he sees, and at first glance, it is possible to dismiss Rapp as a dumb flirt, but as you get further into these first two episodes, his eye-batting tendencies are revealed as a tactic to dig up more dirt (well, most of the time).
Eventually, Rapp meets a woman, Katherine Hargrove (The Matrix’s Carrie-Anne Moss) in an upscale bar. He immediately hits on her and she pulls him right into her orbit – feeling him out with sexy, teasing comments. As Katherine, Moss evokes an intoxicating, seductive quality where you just want to know more about her – and what she’s hiding.
Throughout the first episode, Rapp continuously texts Henry asking where he is and if he’s alright. In a sudden twist, the episode wraps with Rapp finally getting texts back from Henry saying, “STOP LOOKING FOR ME.”
Over the course of these premiere episodes, we see clues from the investigation come into play, specifically images from Henry’s bedroom pointing to people who Rapp and Carson have associated with, including an obscure witch-like symbol, expensive vintage watches, photos, and chicken feet.
Speaking of which, there’s also a consistent, somewhat odd, yet seemingly calculated theme throughout the episodes: chickens. From a chicken foot being tied to Henry’s bedpost, to Carson hitting a chicken with his car while driving through the woods and Rapp snapping its neck to put it out of its misery (which, in turn, haunts him with hallucinations), to even finding a chicken lit on fire and nailed to the door of Rapp’s motel room while he’s getting intimate with a woman named Angel, chickens are everywhere.
By Episode 2, Rapp admits to Carson that he’s definitely friends with Henry – we don’t know how close of friends though – while various people in town who the cop duo are questioning seem increasingly suspicious about the “disappearance” of Henry. Are all these town characters somehow in on Henry’s vanishing? Is there something else going on, something altogether darker?
One of those people is Katherine, who we find out is a professor at the university Henry attends, and who numerous people refer to as the “Boner Beast” due to her allegedly having sex with students. However, she rejects the nickname, stating she’s known as more specifically the “Bone Beast” due to her studies in osteology.
We get the biggest twist so far in the last part of Episode 2, where we see Rapp and Carson going undercover at a “dark solstice party” Henry is apparently hosting at his house – despite his “disappearance” – complete with masks, dark mood lighting, and electronic music. Soon we see what looks to be Henry standing at the upper level railing wearing devil horns while looking down over his partygoers.
As Rapp and Carson search throughout the party for him, we see another shot of someone who seems to be Henry upstairs in his room, having sex with a woman against his photo wall while wearing a leather dog mask – she’s wearing ethereal angel wings and the scene gives a sultry nod to the duality of light and darkness… an angel and a devil.
At this same time, Rapp runs into Angel, who offers a lollipop dipped into a powder, possibly ecstasy, which he willingly accepts. Carson grabs Rapp while reprimanding his insane choices, and they head upstairs to continue their search for Henry. Soon, Rapp hears faint moaning coming from one of the rooms. The person who we now believe to be Henry demands the woman he’s with to say his name while they are continuing to have sex, and she shouts out “Henry!” multiple times, causing Rapp and Carson to instantly look at each other, confirming their suspicions.
Rapp kicks open the door and Henry sees him and panics, running out of the room and shoving Carson in the process as he escapes into the hallway.
As Henry is in the hallway, someone who resembles him seems to magically split apart from his body and run down the stairs while the other one takes off the mask and goes into the bathroom. However, we’re seeing this through Rapp’s point of view, and the drugs he took earlier might be affecting his vision, so he doesn’t notice one of the people going into the bathroom and follows who he believes to be Henry running down the stairs.
Carson is still upstairs at this point and sees Logan come out of the bathroom, despite thinking it was Henry who ran in there. As she tries to grab him to talk with him, he pushes her face into the wall and yells, “Fucking stay out of this!” and runs into his room nearby. Carson follows, but finds him nowhere in the small room. It’s like he magically disappeared out of thin air.
Rapp makes his way outside at a slow-moving pace (due to him hallucinating from the drugs he took) when he sees a vision of Katherine in a white dress with a white mask over her face as she speaks softly to him. He comes back to reality when Carson calls his name, snapping open his eyes and then seeing a large bird flying across the sky, lit on fire – but we don’t know for sure if what he is seeing is real or imagined.
In the final shot of Episode 2, we hear a shriek followed by a lifeless, naked body lying face down on the nearby shore. We pull back to reveal that the person the body belongs to is Logan. It’s a grim ending with dozens of questions left unanswered. What do you mean Logan is dead? And was he ever really alive? And where did Henry escape to – or was he never really there?
It’s often hard to find a show that makes you linger on so many questions: Is Katherine Baba Yaga or is that too obvious? Are Henry and Logan actually the same person but magically split in two? Is Baba Yaga creating visions for Rapp? Was Henry the one burning in the fire at the beginning of Episode 1? We don't have answers yet, but I’m ready and waiting for more reveals from this supernatural story that has already sunk its iron teeth into me.