Victoria of Many Faces – Episode 1

What’s it about? Taking the alias Victoria Sellars, a spy fakes her death and flees to a neighboring kingdom to live an ordinary life free of espionage and violence. Victoria’s plans to keep a low profile get derailed, however, when she meets an abandoned child named Nonna and agrees to take her in.

My first thought upon finishing Victoria of Many Faces’ premiere was “well, wasn’t that nice?” And it is a very nice episode. It’s a breezy watch that’s very light on conflict, given that it supposedly involves spies and murder. Even Victoria’s sudden decision to adopt Nonna doesn’t come with much stress or cause much friction, aside from a few moments of internal monologue where Victoria reminds herself to Not Get Involved; your standard “refusal of the quest” before she inevitably folds. Nonna takes to her new situation remarkably well. The knight captain who helps them out, Jeffrey, is also a very nice fellow, handsome and dashing and kind with no sense of ulterior motive. If the ending credits are anything to go by, these three will be living together in domestic bliss before they know it. How nice!

This niceness isn’t a bad thing, to be clear, but I’m emphasizing it because this whole set-up is much more escapist and twee than I was expecting. The obvious comparison is to SPY X FAMILY, but I found myself thinking more of the cozy fantasy novels that are currently doing numbers in the English-language publishing world, which often follow characters escaping a dangerous, traumatic life and rebuilding a more peaceful one for the reader’s catharsis and relaxation. It’s a fun formula (and one that clearly works, given its popularity) but it does rely on the push-pull between the protagonist’s old situation and their new one, and establishing the contrast between the adventure they’ve come from and the chill time they’re having now.

On that note, my biggest complaint about this episode is that the escapism doesn’t quite land because it’s not super clear what Victoria is escaping from, nor the impact it’s left on her. Her spy life is brushed over in some quick opening narration, which, if I were for some reason asked to edit this episode, I would have done away with. Let us see Victoria’s spycraft, physical skills, and post-espionage paranoia in motion as she wanders around her new city, and let the audience put the pieces together ourselves! “Show don’t tell” isn’t a universal writing rule, but there’s a reason it’s such common advice. Demonstrating Victoria’s skills and hinting at her backstory before it’s revealed would have built more intrigue around her character and been much more engaging to watch.

But clearly this series wants to be nice before it wants to be intriguing or engaging. Its emotional priorities lie in Victoria’s relationship to Nonna, and the spy stuff is mostly background material to underline why she might latch onto a parentless child. As we can infer from several wonderfully unsubtle flashbacks, Nonna reminds her of her own younger self, and Victoria instinctively wants to give this kid the happy childhood she never had. It’s a sweet character motivation even if it’s not super novel, and frankly I like it more than if the storytelling played her protectiveness off as some sort of latent maternal instinct. Still, it remains to be seen how the relationship between Victoria and Nonna will develop… and indeed if Nonna will, at any point, feel like a character in her own right rather than a parallel to Victoria and a doll-like vessel for angst and cuteness.

I’ll also be curious to know how this story progresses and what its stakes will end up being. There’s so far no suggestion that Victoria’s former handlers will come after her; they seem to believe her fake-out death, and she seems to slip across all the country borders perfectly undetected. She also reportedly has a house, a job, a daughter she gets along with fine, and a prospective love interest by the end of this first episode, so her plans to start afresh seem to be going off without a hitch. If she never has to worry about her old life coming back to haunt her, it will be very nice, but I can’t help but feel it will be a bit… boring.  

But maybe that’s fine—maybe that kind of nice is what you’re after as a viewer. If so, give this show a try. Even if I, personally, was left hungry for a bit more plot and a bit more depth for Victoria, it’s not a bad set-up and there’s potential for it to be a fun, if frictionless, time. Sometimes you want a cozy fantasy where the “fantasy” is that everything will be fine for this young woman, actually, and there’s nothing to worry about despite what’s happened to her before. This premiere failed to hook me, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be someone else’s comfort watch of the season.