YMMV / Into the Badlands

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • While almost every single character has this, to a certain extent, as loyalties and morality are flexible in the badlands, the most clearcut example both in and out of universe is the Widow. What is clear is that she styles herself as a reformer, yet is too ruthless and treacherous to live up to that ideal. As far as everything else is concerned: does she believe her own rhetoric, or is she simply using it to amass followers? Is her ruthlessness a result of callousness, or simply a necessity in the Badlands? Was she always a self-serving warlord from the moment she murdered her husband, or did power corrupt her once she got a taste of it? Or did the horrific attrition of the Badlands simply wear down her empathy with every sacrifice she was forced to make until she just stopped caring? The whole issue is muddied by the one unambiguously evil thing she does, turning Veil over to Quinn, but while even she admits that it was incredibly petty of her, she has a very justifiable reason to have no loyalty to Veil, and she never even seems to realize how turning her over to Quinn was a betrayal of her ideals instead of just getting back at someone who tried to kill her.
  • What exactly is the evil force more powerful than any human that the Master warns Sunny about at the end of Season 3? Is she referring to some unknown individual or faction that has the Badlands in its sights? Or is she referring to the rediscovery of working firearms?
• Anti-Climax Boss: Baron Quinn. Despite all his build up, being dubbed the most powerful baron in the badlands, and the fact that he was one of the two main antagonists of Season 1, he is killed rather easily and without a fight by Sonny during the Season 1 finale. However, this is also a case of Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: A constant character point is that he's getting old and his only son is an Inadequate Inheritor, plus his brain tumor is probably speeding things along.
  • Subverted, turns out he is Not Quite Dead.
• Awesome Music: At the end of season 3 episode 13, a montage of the central characters preparing for the climactic battle is set to Disturbed's version of The Sound of Silence with the lyrics matched near flawlessly to the visuals.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • With the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Iron Fist (2017). While that show has faced criticism for use of the Mighty Whitey trope and lackluster fight scenes, this show has an Asian-American lead and excellent fight scenes.
    • For his part, Daniel Wu says that Iron Fist has promise but that its production team needs to "step the fuck up" to make something worthy of praise.
  • The series gets hate from some The Walking Dead fans due to "The Talking Dead" being pushed back to make room for it.
  • Another series that came out in 2019 Warrior (2019) is also getting attention by fans due to similarities and kung fu oriented except this series is set in nineteenth century San Francisco. There's a youtube channel who noted some similarities.
• Genius Bonus: In Season 2, Episode 4, Quinn kills Ryder in front of a modified version of the statue Laocoön and His Sons which shows Laocoön trying to fight off the snakes sent to kill him and his sons. The version in the episode has the sons missing, which could symbolize that Quinn only fights for himself.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • In Season 1, Episode 6 Waldo comes to free Sunny from Quinn's dungeon, says he wishes he'd saved Sunny from life as a Clipper a long time ago, and gives him the Azra pendant that was around his neck as a child. This doesn't gain Waldo anything and as far as we can tell, he does it purely because he cares about Sunny. Waldo has one of these moments with Sunny again in Season 2, where it's becoming very clear that no matter who's side he's on and despite the world in which they live, he and Waldo have a very father-son like bond if not at least a mentoring bond.
  • In Season 2, Episode 1, Sunny attacks several guards to stop them from executing a sick slave even though he doesn't know the slave and never sees him again. A few episodes later, Sunny demands that a woman and her daughter, whom a Smuggler has purchased and intends to sell into sexual slavery, be allowed to journey through the Badlands Wall with them. When he refuses, Sunny attacks the Smuggler and fights his forces in order to get their freedom.
  • The story of how Minerva became the Widow. She found out that her husband was raping their servant Tilda nightly and murdered him. Tilda told her "I love you", the first time she said those words and meant them. From that point on, Tilda called Minerva Mother because she gave her life.
• Ho Yay: Bajie has some rather gay moments with Sunny, like when he kisses a key Sunny gave him.
• Just Here for Godzilla: The numbers of viewers who tune in solely for the fight scenes is surprisingly high.
• Moral Event Horizon: Baron Quinn crosses it when he orders Sunny to murder a doctor and his wife for telling him that he had a tumor. When Sunny refuses, he kills them himself and orders him to take the blame for it.
  • The Widow most assuredly crosses it by selling Veil to Quinn without so much as batting an eye.
• Narm:
  • The Badlands' equivalent of "fuck" is "wick."
  • Tilda's haircut, come season 2. She looks like the Johnny Depp version of Willy Wonka.
• Rooting for the Empire: Though she's ostensibly the primary antagonist, many fans view the Widow as A Lighter Shade of Grey than the other barons, especially Quinn. She at least claims to be fighting for a better world; Quinn and Jacobee are out only for their own power.
  • She's actually arguably worse than them since, especially in Season 2, she's really no different from them and is clearly just doing what she sees fit for herself rather than actually fighting for any greater goal and her claims of fighting for a free future wring hollow and make her a liar. At least Quinn and the other Barons don't pretend to be fighting for any higher goal.
• The Scrappy: Ask any fan of the show who their least favorite character is, and the answer will almost always be M.K.
• Spiritual Adaptation: This is probably the closest to a live-action TV series of Fist of the North Star.
  • It also has many parallels to Bunraku as both are American fusions of Westerns, Post-Apocalyptic, and Wuxia genres, making them American live action animes.
• Spoiled by the Format: Considering Marton Csokas's name shows up in the Season 2 opening credits, some viewers weren't surprised when Quinn is revealed to be alive at the end of the first episode.
• Squick : In order to keep Henry safe from having his throat cut, Veil has to distract Quinn — the mentally deteriorating villain who killed her parents, holds her life and her son's life in his hands, and is disturbingly fixated on her — by kissing him. Eeeesh.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Quinn kills Ryder.
  Quinn: Why did you hesitate?
  Ryder: You're my father.
  Quinn: You're my son.
  • When Veil is trying desperately to escape Quinn's compound, she does everything she can to incapacitate Edgar, her kind guard, rather than killing him — but in the end she has no choice. And when she gets to the final door she's unable to open it, meaning she killed Edgar for nothing.
  • Veil gives her life to kill Quinn, and secure the survival of Sunny and Henry.
  Veil: Teach him to be good.
  • M.K's entire character arc from start to finish. Chased, orphaned, hunted, abused, kidnapped...he never gets a break but his one hope is always to reunite with Sunny and find Azra. Then he learns that Sunny was the one who killed his mother, which permanently severs their relationship. He joins Pilgrim because he believes that he's the only person who has ever told him the truth, assisting him with various massacres and gradually becoming a villain in his own right. In the series finale, his mental state deteriorates after being burned and it's only when he nearly kills Tilda that he begins to realize what he's done. But it's too late, as the Widow fatally wounds him and leaves him to be burned to death as the Meridian Chamber explodes.

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