‘Chief of War’ Episode 9 Recap: “The Black Desert”

Wow.

In plot terms, Chief of War’s season finale is easy to summarize. After a tense day and night of preparation during which our heroes reconcile their various estrangements, Kamehameha and Ka’iana’s forces attack those of Keoua and Kahekili on the volcanic plain known as the Black Desert. Ka’iana’s red-mouthed weapons, and the formidable fighting skills of him and his allies, carry the day. Keoua’s fire god betrays him, washing away his army in a river of lava. 

Just before Ka’iana can pull the trigger and put him down, a fissure of steam erupts, killing the evil king. He joins the vile Maui soldier ‘Ōpūnui, brutally killed by his former victim, Heke. All our heroes survive to fight another day, though the illicit connections between Namake and Kupuohi on one hand and Ka’iana and Ka’ahumanu on the other threaten the peace. So does Kahekili, who pauses from an orgy to declare total war on Ka’iana. 

That’s pretty much that. Only that barely covers it. God almighty, it barely scratches the surface.

With “The Black Desert,” co-creator, co-writer, and co-star Jason Momoa also establishes himself as a truly formidable director. He tells this story less with traditional plotting and dialogue and more with color, sound, the contrast of one image with the next. Yet he also captures human connection with tenderness and candor, his camera lingering on the way the hands and bodies of friends and lovers interact. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, his skill at filming battle is simply astonishing. What is this kind of combat, if not bodies and hands interacting? In the twenty-odd minutes of mayhem that form the climax of this episode and the series so far demonstrate, Momoa joins the ranks of Neil Marshall and Miguel Sapochnik from his starmaking show Game of Thrones as one of the premiere directors of action on television. 

I could go on and on about the violence for quite some time, and I probably should. It’s thrillingly filmed and expertly paced, the twists and turns of each miniature battle depicted with surprise and clarity. Lengthy shots traverse the battlefield horizontally or from front to back within the frame, throwing an insane amount of action on screen at any given time. The use of Hawai’i’s shark tooth-based weaponry makes the actual act of killing gnarly and unique to look at. There’s even a lengthy “spiritual battle” prior to the physical combat, involving priests chanting and kings and chiefs talking shit at each other like pro wrestlers. You don’t see that very often!

The ne plus ultra of the battle is the showdown between Heke and ‘Ōpūnui, her crazy-eyed tormenter. He bats aside her attempts to defend herself with ease and threatens another assault. But Ka’ahumanu sends a round through his leg, allowing Heke to bash, slash, gouge, poison, and finally stomp the man to death. She puts out his eye right there on camera — eat your heart out, Dali and Buñuel! All this is accompanied, as is so much of the episode, by the magnificently overstated music of Hans Zimmer and James Everingham — until it winds down like an unplugged record player as Heke realizes she finds her vengeance at least as upsetting as it is cathartic. The music, the fight choreography, the gore, Mainei Kinimaka’s grindhouse-worthy performance…it’s all there. It all works.

You can say this over and over and over again. The use of color alone! In a cranked-to-eleven opening sequence during which Keoua forces a repentant chief to knock out his own teeth, Momoa is painting with shades of yellow and orange I’ve never seen before, and considering how orange everything is on TV these days, that’s really saying something. He really seems to enjoy lighting Cliff Kurtis’s Keoua like a villain in a Nicholas Winding Refn movie, with reds reflected from the volcanic fires or blues from the deepening night. The effigy of the war god Ku looms blood-red against the bone-white statues of his fellow gods. Daylight is often depicted as a white so dazzling as to be blizzard-like in the background.

But the people, don’t overlook the people! Ka’iana and Tony share a tender, shirtless embrace lesser tough guys would steer well clear of. Kamehameha’s acceptance of Ka’ahumanu back into his council and his heart is depicted with a kiss accompanied by an orchestra hit that would make David O. Selznick say “okay, maybe that’s a little much.” (Complimentary!) Momoa himself and Luciane Buchana as Ka’ahumanu really stand out during these encounters, which is perhaps why their chemistry is so combustible. Whens he finds his unconscious body after the eruption that kills Keoua, her desperation for him is so palpable I half thought she’d kiss him right then and there, king and country be damned. It’s that kind of romance.

It’s that kind of show. Chief of War is an achievement in historical fiction on television, an earthbound spectacle to rival and surpass the faraway fantasy lands and science-fiction galaxies of other epics. It announces the arrival of Momoa as a filmmaker worth watching — worth studying, even. There are compositions in here that call to mind Kurosawa’s Ran, and I don’t say that lightly. This show delivered in every way I’d hoped it would, and in countless ways I never dreamed it could. 

Wow.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.