Shadowhunters Review: 1×03 “Dead Man’s Party”

It’s a Downworlder take over on Shadowhunters, as the mission to save Simon is on

On this week’s episode of Shadowhunters, Simon (Alberto Rosende) has been kidnapped by vampires, and Clary (Katherine McNamara) and the Shadowhunters are figuring out a way to find him. The group goes back to the Institute to consider their options and create a plan. Since the vampires want to exchange Simon for the Mortal Cup, and the Shadowhunters don’t know where the cup is, they decide that their best option would be a rescue mission, but first they need to find a way to enter the Hotel Dumort, the vampires’ lair, and figure out how to collect weapons without anyone from the Institute knowing what they are up to.

At the Hotel Dumort we are introduced to Camille (Kaitlyn Leeb), the head of the New York Vampire Clan, who is convinced that the Shadowhunters will give away the mortal Cup to save their friend, and to Raphael (David Castro), who appears to be her second-in command. Camille uses her “encanto,” a charm vampires use to persuade mundanes to act in their favor, to try to sneak out information from Simon about the cup. But as she realizes he has no idea of where the cup might be, she gets frustrated.

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Clary, Jace (Dominic Sherwood), Alec (Matthew Daddario) and Isabelle (Emeraude Toubia) go to a Church to collect weapons that are known to be buried on it’s graveyard. After they arrive, Isabelle leaves them to go and visit Meliorn (Jade Hassouné), a seelie ferie, who, according to her, knows how to get into the Hotel Dumort. After finding the weapons, Jace briefly teaches Clary how to use a seraph blade while Alec goes back to the Institute to collect his bow and arrows.

Jace and Clary went to a bar, where Jace shows her how vampires live among us and Clary has to focus to try to remove the glamour from them so she can see them. After an encounter with a vampire, Clary and Jace steal his bike to run away from him. The vampires motor bikes can fly with demon energy and Jace and Clary’s ride to the Hotel Dumort is a very entertaining one.

Meanwhile Isabelle and Alec find their way into the Hotel Dumort and fight the vampires as a distraction to allow Jace and Clary to go into the Hotel and look for Simon. Clary tests out her seraph blade abilities fighting off a vampire and thanks to the help of Alec, the Shadowhunters kill off all the vampires and proceed to find Simon. When the group finds him, Raphael has a knife against his throat but at the end he lets Simon go making sure Jace notices what he did for them, and proving to us that Raphael might not be an enemy for the Shadowhunters after all.

This episode was a crazy ride for the viewers. Let’s discuss the top moments that got our attention!

Hotel Dumort: Vampires and their “Encanto”

We were eager to meet the main two vampires from the Shadow universe, Camille and Raphael. After the casting announcement of Camille, we wondered where the writers were planning on adding her so it could work with the plot.

“Have you ever tasted Shadowhunter blood? It’s heavenly.”

“I’m not sure breaking the accords was the best idea. If you forgive me for saying so.”- Raphael.

“I’ll forgive, but I won’t agree.” -Camille

There is tension between the two vampires, it’s evident from the very first moment Camille says Raphael’s name. He is not very happy to obey her orders and doesn’t seem to agree with her plans. Camille likes to have fun and appears to always have things going on her way. After all, she’s the head of the vampire clan, other vampires are supposed to do whatever she commands them to.

Camille uses Simon as a boy toy and Simon is drunk with the encanto charm she has on him. There is a hot make out session, between the two than involved much more sucking blood from each other than kissing. Camille kept trying to get information about the Mortal Cup out from him, but it was clear that Simon knew nothing about it.

After noticing that the group of shadowhunters is getting closer, Raphael advices Camille to run and hide to protect herself while he takes care of Simon and the group. Raphael is clever and knows that killing a mundane can bring him many problems with the Clave as he would be breaking the accords that were signed by Shadowhunters and downworlders.

One thing we’re not fans of is Raphael’s makeup. On his first scene on the episode he looked great, but on the later scenes, the amount of makeup he had on was too much that it made him resemble a clown. And it kept changing, on one scene we would see him with less make up than in others. We hope in future episodes the makeup artists decided to give him a more natural look, as it was actually distracting for us, and we couldn’t focus on what he was saying because we couldn’t take our eyes off from his face.

We also didn’t liked the way the vampires look when they are killed off. Making them burn out and showing their skeleton looked very fake. It also made it appear easy for them to be killed, which it shouldn’t be. They didn’t seemed to be a big threat for the Shadowhunters, we would like to see them struggle a little bit more on their fights. Hopefully as the show goes on, the visual effects improve and the fighting sequences get more challenging and interesting.

Parabatai friction

“This isn’t about the mundane. This is about Clary. What, are you so desperate to get laid that you’ll risk killing us?”

Parabatai is such a strong term in the Shadow Universe and the fact that the writers took their time to explain the word to the viewers made us very happy. Parabatai is more than being linked to someone for life or having a close friendship with them, is being bound together by oath, and as Jace said, they complement each other. If one of them dies, one part of the remaining Parabatai would die right along with him. It was important to show how deep their connection is to make us understand how problems and disagreements between the two of them are not that common and should be taken seriously.

From the moment Alec met Clary, he has shown how much he dislikes her, even before he knew she is Valentine’s daughter. Every comment he throws at her is done in a bad mood and with a sarcastic tone, that we can actually feel the disgust in his voice. Alec is always questioning Jace’s decisions and no mater the argument he gives at his Parabatai, he never seems to truly listen. We can’t blame Alec for feeling this way. He and Jace have never fought like this before, he is used to have Jace by his side all the time, not only in battle but also by showing his support on his ideas and opinions.

Both of them have solid positions and we are not going to point fingers and say that there is only one person to blame in this. Jace is not taking the time to listen to his Parabatai and actually tell him why he trusts Clary and why he feels that helping her is the right thing to do. And Alec is closed minded, always following the rules and doing what’s right in the eyes of the Clave. He has a hard time understanding why feelings and instincts are sometimes enough to break the rules.

The scenes between these two were strong, especially the last one of the episode, which is probably our favorite from the season so far. Dominic Sherwood keeps improving, we still need more sassy dialogues from him but he’s getting there. Matthew Daddario has been one of our favorites from day one. He truly captures the essence of Alec’s personality and delivers a very strong performance. We can’t wait to see how his character grows as he learns to let his emotions take over sometimes.

Queen Isabelle slays again

The conversations between the Lightwood siblings are getting better and better. We are glad that on each episode we’ve seen different sides of their relationship, not only seeing the good side of it, but also see them fighting and disagreeing like normal siblings do.

“You know, you’d be a lot happier if you weren’t so freaking repressed.”

As we have said it before, Isabelle slays. Emeraude is doing a very good job at portraying Isabelle on the show. We are not only mesmerized by the way she can steal a scene, but we are also loving how she encourages her brother to let loose and don’t hide from himself. Isabelle is probably the only person who knows Alec that well. She understands why he acts the way he does and what he needs to be happy. She is that little voice that is always talking on Alec’s ear giving him the confidence he needs, and we love her for that.

Isabelle’s encounter with Meliorn was hot. We expected to see the two of them together at some point because both actors have been teasing it. In the books, Isabelle does have a fling with the seelie, but it’s only mentioned a few times. We don’t know what the two of them are up to or how their relationship worked. Isabelle, as well as most of the characters in the tv show, is older than she is in the books, and as we’ve seen in the three episodes of Shadowhunters that have aired so far, Isabelle is very confident with her body. If she wants to show it off is because she can and she feels like doing it. I think by now book readers know Isabelle well enough to know that she doesn’t let anyone influence the way she acts. She’s a free spirit that knows how to work with what she has and is happy doing it. Of course she’s not perfect like none of us are, and we hope we get to see her vulnerable side too in the episodes to come.

Final Verdict: Shadowhunters shows areas that need improvement, but still manages to get our attention.

The vampires and seelies had a very hot introduction on Shadowhunters and though it wasn’t perfect, it still had a lot of great moments. It was all about saving Simon, as the Shadowhunters and Clary learned how to work together for the first time to reach a common goal. Being the best friend to Clary, who is in the middle of the danger zone ever since her Mom got kidnapped, is going to make Simon suffer the consequences right along with her.

Alberto Rosende is still one of our favorite things from the series. Seeing him “drunk” with the encanto charm was a delight. He manages to capture everyone’s attention everytime he’s on screen. At the end of the episode, after reuniting with Clary, he briefly thought Clary was going to express her love to him, but he was just being friend zoned, which makes him even more relatable.

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The chemistry between Clary and Jace is growing as they get to spend more time together. We found some of their dialogues a little bit cheesy though, there is no need to force some lines into the relationship, the chemistry is already there, but the essence of both of the character’s personalities has to be present too.

We still don’t understand why a few things were added in the story, like Camille having the ability to freeze Simon or Simon biting her instead of Raphael, but we know that probably everything is going to get explained in future episodes. We are trying our best to separate the books and the series from each other. As we all already know, the series is exploring more with the material Cassie set up in the books. There are a lot of changes, it doesn’t mean that they are necessarily bad ones, but it does take some time to get used to them. Shadowhunters needs a lot of improving regarding the visual effects and editing. It’s easy for fans to point out the mistakes, specially if they involve the physical appearance of one of the characters. But we’re confident that they’re going to become less as the season continues and we are going to keep an open mind and give the Shadowhunters team a chance to impress us.

Are we going to tune in next week? Of course, we’re not going to miss the group meeting Magnus Bane. We are ready to see him in action and see him meeting a special someone for the first time.

Questions, Comments and Concerns

• What’s going on with Raphael’s makeup?
• How did Camille knew someone was calling even though the phone made a sound?
• Who drove Simon’s van to the Church?
• Where exactly is Meliorn’s place?
• Where did Isabelle changed her clothes and how did she got ready so fast?
• What’s up with the vampires using their hands to do the Encanto?
• Are we the only ones who want a full tour of the Institute?
• Where is Luke?
• Since Camille mentioned Magnus Bane, are we going to get to see some flashbacks with the two of them in future episodes?
• How are all of them going to get home?