Shadowhunters Review: 1×05 “Moo Shu To Go”

We have vampires, warlocks and shadowhunters, what are we missing?

This week’s episode of Shadowhunters had a big revelation that might had come as a surprise for viewers, but for book fans it was a moment that we’ve been waiting for since the show started.

With the surprise arrival of Maryse Lightwood (Nicola Correia-Damude) to the Institute, things became complicated for the shadowhunters. The control Maryse has over her children is evident, and with her precense, things aren’t going to be able to go as they’ve been. Maryse immediately makes Isabelle (Emeraude Toubia) and Alec (Matthew Daddario) feel neglected with her comments, Izzy being the most affected by them. Maryse sends Isabelle and Jace (Dominic Sherwood) on a mission to see Meliorn and figure out why the seelies are not communicating with the Clave and Alec is left in charge of watching Clary (Katherine McNamara) at the Institute. Alec and Clary use their time to do some training, and while they are at it, Magnus (Harry Shum Jr) calls Alec to ask him out for drinks. When Alec sees that Clary is no longer in his sight he hangs up with Magnus, not completely rejecting the date proposal, just stating that he couldn’t do it at that time.

Alec finds Clary and they, along with Simon, go to Clary’s loft to collect a box of her Mom’s, that she thinks might help them find Valentine’s (Alan Van Sprang) location. When they find the box at Clary’s room, Alec hears strange noises coming from outside and decides to go and check them, telling Clary and Simon to stay at the apartment. But of course, while Alec is outside, Clary and Simon get kidnapped by Alaric and other people who Alec thinks are police officers.

Meanwhile, Jace and Isabelle are at Meliorn’s (Jade Hassouné) place trying to get information out from him. Jace receives a text from Alec who tells him about Clary, so he and Isabelle made their way to meet him. After blaming Alec, yet again, for Clary capture, Jace tries tracking her using one of her drawings but fails after Alec isn’t able to concentrate and do the Parabatai tracking.

Simon and Clary are being interrogated by their kidnappers who want to know where the Mortal Cup is. Since Clary and Simon really don’t know the cup’s location, Simon is taken away making Clary anxious to know where they are taking him. Clary discovers that her kidnappers are werewolves, and to buy her some time, she lies telling them she knows where the cup is and gives them a fake location.

Simon frees himself and calls Clary’s cellphone hoping that Jace or someone else might answer and come and rescue them. Since Isabelle took Clary’s bag from her loft, they are able to get Simon’s call and find out where he is.

Simon starts a fire as a form of distraction for the werewolves, and when they see it, they take Clary outside where one of them locks her inside a big storage box. Luke (Isaiah Mustafa) finds Clary and frees her but discovers that she doesn’t think she is safe with him. He carries her outside but Jace and Alec find them, knock him out and run away with Clary. They reunite with Simon only to find out they are surrounded by werewolves and just when they think they are lost, a werewolf appears on one side and challenges the alpha.  When the fight between the wolves is over, they discover the other werewolf is Luke who transforms into his human form in front of them and appears to be really hurt and in need of medical attention. Alec tells Jace that they need to take Clary back to the Institute right away but Jace tells him he and Isabelle can go ahead, and he is taking Luke to see Magnus Bane, who is the only one who can help him get better.

A lot happened in this episode, so let’s start discussing our top main moments!

Mamma Lightwood comes to set things in order

For shadowhunters, every action and every move they make has to be approved by the law, or The Clave, as they call it. But everything that Jace, Isabelle and Alec have done since Clary appeared into their lives hasn’t exactly been legal or Clave approved and Maryse made sure they knew how much she disapproves of their actions.

“The Clave counts on us Lightwoods to maintain order here.” -Maryse.

As soon as Maryse arrived at the Institute, she made Isabelle feel bad about, well basically everything. Maryse blamed her daughter for their current seelie problem and pointed out how she disapproves of her clothing choices. So far, we’ve only seen a confident Isabelle, so seeing her being emotionally crushed by her Mom was something we were not prepared for. We feel that Isabelle is going to go through some changes and hard times just by seeing how serious she gets when her Mom comes in the picture, and as more family members are going to pop in in the upcoming episodes, we know Isabelle might continue having a hard time. Maryse only appeared to show signs of happiness when she saw Jace training. It’s clear who is her favorite son right now, and this doesn’t go unnoticed by Alec and Isabelle.

Nicola makes a very strong Maryse, and we are not gonna lie, we like seeing someone make the shadowhunters lives a little bit more difficult. We know in the books Maryse is probably not as harsh as she was in this episode, but we think that making her more tough can work by shaking things up for the characters. Bringing her and the rest of the Lightwood family so early on in the story is going to help establish the character relationships to the viewers.

A new Alpha is in town

In the episodes we’ve seen so far, Luke hasn’t had any contact with the shadowhunters at all, other than some Circle members. But after this episode we feel like that’s going to change. We were starting to wonder what had happened to him. We all know he is, or was, very important to Clary, but after everything she has been through lately, we understand why she hasn’t been thinking about him for a while. Especially after finding out he doesn’t care about her or her mom.

We first see Luke at the police station talking to Alaric who expressed his concern regarding the demonic murders that have been happening in the city. Luke tells him to keep an eye open for Clary, so we’re guessing Alaric is probably going to go after her. Since we’ve seen Alaric in a few episodes before, we know that he is on Luke’s side, and even thought he takes part in Clary’s and Simon’s kidnapping, we guessed that he wasn’t probably going to harm them.

“You know you can’t cast spells with that thing?” -Luke.

“Yeah, but I already stabbed one demon with it.  I’m sure it hurts a lot worse on a man.” -Clary.

Clary’s and Luke’s reunion was a bit awkward at first, Clary still thinks that Luke doesn’t care about her and doesn’t know that Luke was just trying to protect her from the Valentine. When Luke finally sees Clary he notices how afraid of him she is and while he tries to explain himself to her, she doesn’t give a chance to do it.

We’ve been waiting for Luke to become a werewolf since episode 1, and we were not disappointed. The effects used to show his transformation were really good, props to the team for stepping up their game. Luke’s story has yet to be told in the show and we can’t wait to see him tell Clary more information about his and her Mom’s past.

Super… Simon?

Since his encounter with the vampires, we’ve seen Simon behaving not like himself and not precisely like any other mundane would. His behavior in this week’s episode just confirmed what we were thinking: something is going on with him.

For book fans, his behavior is probably not a big surprise to see. But even for them, seeing Simon suddenly running faster than he normally does, having super strength, or jumping walls, is something new. In the books we do know that he starts to feel different, but we never read about him actually doing any different things other than staring at the tv when he and Clary where watching vampire movies, or needing a little time to recover after thinking to much about blood.

“Have you been doing parkour or something?” -Clary.

Simon doesn’t seem to notice anything different, and though Clary does, she doesn’t put that much thought into it. Without the new abilities that he seems to have, Simon wouldn’t have been able to free himself from the handcuffs when he was hanging upside down, and if he had never gotten off from them, Jace, Alec and Isabelle would have never rescued him and Clary.

Simon keeps getting into these dangerous situations in every episode that we already feel like he’s changed so much since the first time we saw him. And we know that we haven’t seen anything yet. The more we see, the more we fall in love with Alberto’s interpretation of our favorite Mundie.

Final Verdict: The introduction of the Werewolves to the show made this week’s episode of Shadowhunters the most entertaining and enjoyable one yet. 

Things are starting to make more sense in this week’s episode of Shadowhunters, as Clary is starting to finally get some answers. With the involvement of Luke with the shadowhunters, we feel like the group is finally going to get the guidance they need, because let’s face it, Maryse Lightwood is not going to be helping them at all.

This episode was all about inserting some father/mother figures into the story and at the same time, making us see the difference between them. On one side we have Luke, who we know it’s like a Father to Clary and who is going to probably be much more involved in her journey towards finding her Mom. And on the other side we have Maryse, who is going to make things a lot harder for the shadowhunters as she’s all about discipline and following orders. We really appreciate that the writers made Luke become an alpha in the series. In the books we know that that happens, but to actually see it was really special for the fans.

The appearance of the werewolves was a moment we’ve all been waiting for. We are so glad Isaiah Mustafa is playing Luke Garroway, and we can’t wait to see more of him in the show. In every episode we’ve seen, we get introduced to new characters and if you are not a fan of the books, it might be a little hard to keep up with all of them. The show has been improving with each episode that airs, and we are in a point were the episodes are bringing much more than just throwing us information,. What would we like to see on the next episode? We are tired of the Parabatai fighting, hopefully Jace and Alec sit down and talk their issues out, we hate seeing the two of them disagreeing so much. We would also like to see confident Isabelle back, and of course more Malec! We always need more Malec. Let’s cross our fingers and hope that date gets to happen soon!

Questions, Comments & Concerns:

• How is it night when Simon is outside the Hotel Dumort but then it is morning even though Clary and Isabelle are wearing the same clothes?
• Matthew Daddario as Alec Lightwood still blows our mind. Amazing performance.
• When is this Malec date going to happen?
• Why can’t Jace just stop for a second and listen to his Parabatai?
• Is anyone else going to point out the fact that Simon appears to have super natural abilities now?
• How are the werewolves able to change form back and forth without ripping off their clothes?
• Are the other shadowhunters at the Institute ever going to do something? What’s the point of having them round then?