Last year, Max debuted a new animated series focusing on the Gremlins from the 80s movie franchise. I enjoyed that first season, and you can read the review for that season here. Now it’s back this fall with a new season subtitled The Wild Batch, and it continues a year after the events of the first one. We see Sam (Izaac Wang) still studying to be a Doctor like his Mother Fong (Ming-Na Wen) and Grandpa Wing (James Hong), along with Elle still living with the family along with Gizmo, the heroic Mogwai that’s the hero of the franchise and cute creature. Their pretty stable life is upended when Gizmo starts acting weird and by weird, like the green creepy Gremlins that Mogwai turn into when they eat after dark. While Gizmo isn’t changing physically, he’s becoming more mischievous to those at home and on the streets of Shanghai. Gizmo never remembers what he did when he shifted to his red-eyed self, but it worries Sam and the rest of the family. Meanwhile, Elle has dreams of her younger childhood and her mother, which disturbs her as the dreams tell her to find her mother in America. Sam and Elle decide to go and find a way to help Gizmo after getting advice from Grandpa Wing, and they end up being transported to San Francisco. This new adventure leads them to meet Chang (Simu Liu) and their adversary from the last season, the super-smart Gremlin Noggin (Eric Bauza).
The second season keeps the delightful and playful design and style of the art direction for the show from last year. The characters are familiar, and you won’t feel lost watching this if you don’t remember everything from last year. To me, the show works for a wide range of children and still works as a show that the whole family can watch. There isn’t a lot of violence, but just as last year, it alludes to it from the Gremlins’ perspective, making them feel like a threat. Also, they get splattered a lot, too. Liu is an excellent addition to the cast with his fun, rogue-like voice work for Chang, this brash young man who wishes to take over for his father in Chinatown. It gives the central core a little muscle to deal with some things and works well with Sam as an older brother type of character. In this one, his parents and Grandpa aren’t involved as they were in the first season. Now that I’ve only seen the first half of this season, things with Elle look to be resolved in the second half. The stuff with her mother is a bit less fun than the Gremlins stuff in Chinatown, but I look forward to how it’s handled as episode 5 ends on a good cliffhanger for the next big Adventure Sam, Elle, and Gizmo now has to embark on. Gremlins: The Wild Batch is a fun returning series and definitely something kids and adults who give it a shot will enjoy this fall on Max.
Score: B
