All rights reserved. It seems like the show could have been better served revealing Pat’s duplicity earlier, dedicating more episodes to Nicole and Dion then figuring out how to defeat him. Issue #108: You Won't Like Him When He's Angry.
Only recently were viewers, on the mainstream level, afforded a more robust serving, thanks to movies like Wonder Woman, Black Panther, Captain Marvel, and the insanely fantastic Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse. Every piece of evidence that Biona is good was fed to us by Pat, who isn’t exactly a reliable source of information. There’s Nicole’s (Alisha Wainwright) story, about a grieving single mother who is trying to rebuild her life in the face of unexpected loss. The series is not likely to be some rogue outlier show that can't quite take off; it's the streaming giant's new normal. Does the reveal play entirely fair, though? After their father is murdered under mysterious circumstances, the three Locke siblings and their mother move into their ancestral home, Keyhouse, which they discover is full of magical keys that may be connected to their father's death. It felt good. And there’s the combined story of Nicole and Dion, about a mother and son learning to make a life in a world that doesn’t know what to do with young black boys or black women despite them doing their very best to succeed. Although Raising Dion was created in 2015 in comic form, it belongs to this more recent wave of representational recalibration.
But what’s become clear more recently, particularly with the release of Raising Dion, is that Netflix now wants to be our small-screen everything. Is it an alien planet destroyer with its own agenda, or just a parasite that feeds off negative emotions? It’s a twist so out of left field that for a moment I froze and sat gawping at the screen. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Choices, Raising Dion Is the Latest in the Netflix Era of Just OK TV. A widowed single mom discovers that her son has super powers and tries to figure out how to raise him safely and responsibly. At one point, Dion is racially profiled by his teacher, which painfully forces Nicole to explain to Dion what racism is. On October 5, 2017, it was announced that Netflixhad given the production a straight-to-series order for a first season consisting of nine episodes.
Series creators Ross and Matt Duffer are huge film buffs, and they've used every opportunity they can to reference some of their favorite movies in Stranger Things. The WIRED conversation illuminates how technology is changing every aspect of our lives—from culture to business, science to design. Ion Manipulation: Dion’s primary power allows him to create, shape, and manipulate ions (atoms in …
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There’s Dion’s story, which is about a young black boy learning to grapple with superhuman abilities. The fruits of at-all-costs growth—of manically oversaturating the TV landscape with all manner of content—are seldom realized. The series is based on the comic book of the same name written by Dennis Liu and illustrated by Jason Piperberg. “I started this project many years ago because I wanted to see more diverse representation on film and television,” Liu told Deadline when Netflix ordered a season of Raising Dion in 2017.
The show follows Dion, an 8-year-old boy with superpowers, and his widowed mother, Nicole, as the pair try to grapple with Dion's developing superpowers and the potential new supervillain in their … A warrior chosen as the latest and last Wu Assassin must search for the powers of an ancient triad and restore balance in San Francisco's Chinatown. The other part is rising above it to add anything truly singular to the conversation, and Raising Dion is unlikely to do that (not that it’s burdened with that expectation, but you feel the show striving for it nonetheless). The gates that were once closed to creators of color were now open; the race to streaming supremacy allowed for more healthy inclusion across the board.
Alisha Wainwright and Ja’Siah Young in Raising Dion
Instead, it feels like Raising Dion pulls a Mad Daenerys twist, favoring shock value over a fully developed arc that could’ve seen Pat be a formidable villain for the second half of the season. One can only hope that Raising Dion will get renewed for a second season, as there’s a ton of material left to explore, and plenty more room to grow.
Raising Dion
Available for everyone, funded by readers. On top of that, there is the narrative of Dion’s dad Mark (Michael B. Jordan, who also serves as executive producer), which is relayed through flashbacks—memories that, at first, are romanticized but slowly expand to fully detail how Jordan’s character died trying to save a woman’s life in New Orleans. Liu then directed a short film based on his comic. As origin stories go, Dion’s (Ja'Siah Young) is ripe for symbolism. Check out some of the IMDb editors' favorites movies and shows to round out your Watchlist. Is Iceland really just rotting away after the meteor shower?
The show spends an inordinate amount of time showing us Pat caring for Dion, with zero whispers of any ulterior motive. In the kingdom of superhero fiction, Raising Dion is, in many ways, a first.
This raises several questions: what is the storm?
This diversity is treated as normal and unremarkable, but there are moments where the show’s plot diverges to address how being marginalized may affect how someone moves through the world. It is in the story of Mark, a scientist, and Nicole, a former dancer, where Raising Dion finds some of its most fertile ground—but it doesn’t happen until episode five. Dion and Nicole are able to deal with Pat relatively easily, but they don’t succeed in wiping out the storm. TV is currently in a state of bloat; there’s just too much noise. https://www.netflix.com/watch/80186941?trackId=254015180, Torn between the latest phones? Later, Dion floats Esperanza out of her chair without asking, a moment of casual ableism he’s later educated on. Hope You Survive the Experience. A major selling point for Raising Dion is undoubtedly that it’s one of the only superhero shows centered on a black family, alongside the CW’s Black Lightning. Raising Dion incorporates representation in a variety of ways, from featuring a majority black cast to casting Sammi Haney, a young wheelchair user who has brittle bone disease, as Dion’s best friend Esperanza (easily the standout character of the season). In the final moments of the show, it’s revealed that Brayden killed his aunt, and is now carrying the storm inside him. Regardless of what the storm is, if Brayden is also able to manifest multiple powers, Dion may just have his own Brandon Breyer to contend with. Last modified on Tue 5 Nov 2019 19.41 GMT. Watching Raising Dion, Netflix’s latest sci-fi series about a gifted 8-year-old with superpowers, there’s one feeling that’s hard to shake: This doesn’t belong here. Why is Dion able to manifest several powers, while the other adults in Iceland appeared to get only one? Is that why it’s attracted to Pat and Brayden, who both demonstrate that they’re unable to control their rage (particularly around women)? Adulting is never easy, nor is childhood this comes together with great integrity. At the end it’s revealed that Pat wasn’t so much the creator of the preternatural storm but probably just a host possessed by it. Instead, the storm itself literally whizzes off, seeking a new body – and it certainly finds one in Brayden (Griffin Robert Faulkner), the second-generation, anger-prone young super that Charlotte (Deirdre Lovejoy) has a brief run-in with in Alabama. Netflix’s latest binge watch focuses on a mother dealing with her superpowered son but we really need to talk about that big twist …, Thu 10 Oct 2019 06.00 BST And so, however poorly executed, our lens of the world shifts with their looking. superpowers and supertwists: discuss with spoilers Small-screen representation. The second time, on a lake, he and his mom almost lose their lives when, again, his powers prove too forceful, conjuring the hellish fury of nature.