The Holy Grail of Eris – Episode 1

Content warnings: public execution, blood, torture

What’s it about? Young noblewoman Constance “Connie” Grail has been framed for theft by the scheming Lady Pamela, who is having an affair with Connie’s fiancé. Humiliated in the middle of a ballroom with no allies to turn to, Connie finds help in an unexpected place: the ghost of Scarlet Castiel, a villainous woman who was executed ten years prior, and who is happy to aid Connie if it means a shot at her own revenge.

A glittering ballroom, a betrayal, a broken engagement, a nasty Other Woman—at this point, these villainess and villainess-ish stories are all basically cooking with the same ingredients and referencing the same cluster of stock archetypes (for example, if you feel like you’re having déjà vu, you did just see almost this exact scene in last season’s May I Ask For One Final Thing? except that one ended with the scheming mean girl and unfaithful fiancé getting punched, and this one… well, we’ll get to that in a moment). I find it more useful to talk about what stands out and what might appeal, rather than sighing about repetitions of a strict formula. So, at this point, what stands out about The Holy Grail of Eris is its dark and damn near Gothic tone, with bloody deaths, terrible tortures, and vengeful spirits hiding amidst the usual aesthetic and tropey trappings.

Not to say that this series is unique in this (From Villainess to Savior was pretty severe and gritty, for instance), I more want to emphasize that it has a few moments where I found myself muttering “far out, really?” in surprise. The first was its opening scene, which follows a young Connie as she stumbles into Scarlet’s public beheading, complete with a splattering cascade of vivid, raspberry-jam-red blood and the executioner gleefully holding up Scarlet’s severed head. Obviously this makes it nice and clear that Scarlet is dead, giving us all a surprise when Connie spots her in the ballroom ten years later, but it also does the work of setting up a pretty brutal and unforgiving world. The rest of the episode doesn’t shy away from this, either: Pamela and Neil’s punishment for deceiving, cheating on, and scheming against Connie is to dance until they die, Grimm’s fairy tale style.

It seems a harsh response to what essentially boils down to infidelity and some mean girl machinations, but I think the show is making a point with this rather than just inviting the audience to nod along and say “yeah, that catty rich girl deserved it.” At least, I feel like it’s making a point, with its panning shots over the glowing red eyes and manic, delighted smiles of the aristocracy who watch as Pamela and Neil get very musically tortured to death. It forms a haunting parallel to the cheering, leering crowd at Scarlet’s beheading. Clearly this setting is a bloodthirsty one with very little patience for any kind of court intrigue. Oh, she might have planned to poison her romantic rival? Off with her head, her reputation tarnished forever!

It’s grim out here (no pun intended) and poor Connie certainly has some high stakes to navigate. She fits the role of the ingenue who’s earnestly Just Trying to Be Kind and is too shy and bound by social niceties to ask for help when she needs it. There’s something sweet about Scarlet sticking up for Connie the way that no one stuck up for her, solidarity between unfairly villainized women across generations. But there’s also something dastardly and kind of frightening. Scarlet rescues Connie by possessing her after all, and I doubt it will be the last time. So Connie’s bargained off some of her bodily autonomy and agreed to help Scarlet exact some unspecified revenge on members of royalty. Maybe she got out of the ballroom debacle unscathed, but I can only imagine there are even riskier entanglements in store.

Is Scarlet her friend in all this, or just her puppetmaster? Has Connie dipped out of an unhappy engagement only to end up in a way more dangerous spirit contract? These are pretty juicy questions, and I think The Holy Grail of Eris could pull together into a nail-biting fantasy thriller if it plays its cards correctly—and a thriller with things to say about society’s cruelty towards young women and general bloodthirsty voyeurism, too.

An intriguing premise doesn’t always unfold into a compelling series, of course. The characters represent concepts and archetypes more than fleshed-out people at this point, and with lazy writing, Connie could simply remain the golden “good girl” to contrast Scarlet’s confident villainy (complete with Connie dressing in chaste, little-girlish yellows while Scarlet kicks around in dark reds, lipsticks, and a dress that shows off her substantial cleavage. You know, because the Good one is modest and the Bad one is sexy). The show’s tendency towards the gruesome could also swing past meaningful commentary and land in “gore for the sake of shock value” territory.

But I’m cautiously optimistic. Being possessed by an already-dead villainess, and having a weird magical partnership with her, is certainly already a more inventive set-up than the ol’ “reborn in an otome game” that used to be much more common, so part of me is on board for that alone. If you like this ever-blooming subgenre and want a ghostly and grisly take, give this a shot and see what you think.