Everything You Need to Know About SyFy’s Lost Girl
The third season of supernatural crime drama Lost Girl is set to kick off on SyFy next week, so now is the perfect time to get caught up on everything that’s already happened in the fae world. Dark fae? Light fae? We’ll get you sorted out with this Lost Girl primer.
Lost Girl is basically a sexier, sluttier (as always, I mean that in the most positive sense) Buffy the Vampire Slayer. All the core concepts are there: a supernatural world hidden from humans; a scooby gang of friends who solve mysteries involving weird creatures; a tangled web of often doomed romances; tight, clever writing and witty dialog.
The lost girl of the title is Bo (Anna Silk, and yes that’s her real name), a succubus who lived on the lam because she kept accidentally killing people with her lifeforce sucking powers that she couldn’t understand or control. She is a part of the supernatural world of the fae, which imposes some strict structure and hierarchy onto all the werewolves, banshees, nymphs and nagas running around. Everyone is either dark fae or light fae, which ostensibly align as either evil or good, though it gets pretty fuzzy sometimes. Bo refuses to choose a side, and her neutrality is the hinge upon which many of the show’s plots turn.
Alongside Bo is her human friend Kenzi, a streetwise 20-something who has been fiercely loyal to Bo ever since Bo saved her life in the pilot episode. For all its other charms, I would watch this show for actress Ksenia Solo alone. The way she delivers Kenzi’s wry, sarcastic asides makes me bust out laughing at least once per episode.
The cast is rounded out by Dyson (Kris Holden-Ried), Bo’s on-again, off-again love interest. He’s a cop who can change into a wolf, and if I can be totally honest here, dude’s ridiculously good-looking and finds plenty of reasons to take his shirt off on camera. His cop partner Hale (K.C. Collins) is fae nobility. Rick Howland plays Trick, owner of a “neutral ground” fae tavern, Bo’s grandpa, and source of arcane fae knowledge (and also secretly the Blood King, who authored the ancient peace pact between the fae courts). Finally, there’s Lauren (Zoie Palmer), a human doctor who works for the light fae. She’s Bo’s other on-again, off-again love interest. The bond of friendship between these characters has a sweetness to it, and that, I think, is the engine that actually drives Lost Girl.
I’ve always liked how Lost Girl subverts the old horror trope (woefully reinforced by Buffy) that you have to be punished for having sex. Bo has a lot of sex, with Dyson, Lauren, other people she meets, the odd threesome now and then, and occasionally by herself. In fact, her succubus powers are sexual – with a touch she can make people so overwhelmed with lust for her that they’ll do just about anything she asks of them. She draws healing energy from her sexual partners, which she can use as a weapon, and which is also the source of quite a few “Bo is wounded and needs a Dyson booty call to regain her strength” scenes. She’s even learned to transfer her energy to her partners instead of always taking. So we’ve got a bisexual heroine who is never subjected to judgment because she has a lot of sex with a lot of people. That doesn’t happen too often on TV.
If you want to get up to speed before the season three premier on Jan. 14, you have two choices. The first two seasons are available on Netflix streaming right now, so you could caught up with a couple of all-nighters. Alternately, I’ll recap the more salient plot points for you.
In season one, Bo was finding her way into the fae world. Because she was raised by adoptive human parents, she knew nothing about her fae heritage. She spent a lot of time trying to track down her mother. When she did, she found her mother was a succubus too, but she was dark fae. Worse, she was a total psycho who assassinated a bunch of light fae elders. Bo ends up taking her down, but Dyson has to sacrifice something very important to him to the Norn to ensure Bo’s victory. That something? His love for Bo. That created all kinds of angst in season two.
Season two features Bo becoming more enmeshed in fae politics. The new leader (called the Ash) of the light fae plays some devious, manipulative games and seems like a real jerk. It turns out he’s preparing for the coming of a creature call the garuda that could destroy all the fae if they aren’t able to defeat it. Bo also runs afoul of the Morrigan (the dark fae leader), who messes with Kenzi’s new musician boyfriend. There’s a serious schism when Kenzi has to decide whether to leave Bo for a normal life with her boyfriend or send him packing and stay loyal to Bo (I was not expecting the level of pathos I got from these episodes, but Ksenia Solo was amazing).
The garuda turned out to be something of a let-down – instead of some insane cosmic entity, it was just a cranky guy in a business suit with fire powers. There was a big battle and some tertiary characters died, but they managed to defeat the garuda in the end. However, it seems that the battle left some strange shard of darkness inside Bo – season three is likely to feature her internal struggles to deal with some of her darker aspects growing stronger as a result.
I’m not going to even try to play it cool, I’ve become a total Lost Girl fanboy. Join me for Lost Girl recaps here every Monday, about an hour after the episode airs on the east coast. Bad-ass Bo, fractious fae courts, Kenzi and friends…I’m pretty stoked.
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Posted by Ed Grabianowski
on Monday, January 7th, 2013. Filed under Dark TV, Headline, Horror.
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Tags: anna silk, bad ass faeries, fae, lost girl, succubus, syfy
