With nearly three decades worth of games, movies, and more to pull from starring one of gaming’s most recognizable heroines, you’d think a TV show based on the Tomb Raider franchise would be a sure hit. Yet Netflix, the streaming giant responsible for powerhouse game adaptations like its Castlevania series and Arcane, can’t seem to strike gold with Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. The new animated series is plagued by a shallow plot, uninteresting characters, and a disappointing lack of adventure. While the show’s portrayal of iconic hero Lara herself is its saving grace, there’s nothing else of interest that surrounds her. It leaves The Legend of Lara Croft feeling less like a treasure worthy of such a character and more like a cheap imitation of the real thing.
Ever since the most recent reboot of the Tomb Raider games ended in 2018 with Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the world has been woefully devoid of new Lara Croft adventures. The Netflix series sought to remedy that by picking up where the reboot trilogy left off, reintroducing audiences to that same version of Lara (voiced this time around by Hayley Atwell). She’s a survivor with a well-established history of fighting for her life in addition to a globe-trotting explorer. Though if you don’t have any familiarity with the games that take place prior to the Netflix show, don’t worry, the show has you covered—perhaps too much.
One of the immediate pitfalls of The Legend of Lara Croft is its insistence on retreading the events and emotional struggles Lara went through in the games. It’s intended to make the show an easier entry point for new fans, but it’s handled in such a way that leaves people who have played the games feeling like Lara’s character has regressed for no reason. Lara can’t escape the guilt she feels over the death of her mentor, Conrad Roth. This is a plot point we see in the first game in the reboot trilogy, and is central to her character development in that title. Furthermore, Lara isn’t comfortable living in her home of Croft Manor as she still sees it as her dead father’s home. This is a representation of her inability to let go of her father’s legacy and accept her own responsibilities, something players already helped her through in 2015’s Rise of the Tomb Raider. So much of The Legend of Lara Croft’s runtime is devoted to these two internal struggles, even showing flashbacks of Roth’s death multiple times.
Falling back on old plotlines is only the symptom of a larger problem Legend of Lara Croft faces: its wholly uninteresting plot. To sum it up: Lara has to stop a man named Charles Devereaux (Richard Armitage) from collecting some MacGuffins (plot devices of no real importance) that will let him reshape the world in his image. The show tries to make Devereaux a compelling antagonist by sprinkling in some childhood trauma and the suggestion that he might have altruistic reasons for his mission, but ultimately reduces him to a one-dimensional villain by the season’s conclusion. Armitage does the best he can with a thin script but there’s only so much even a talented actor like himself can do.
Lara’s mission to stop Devereaux takes her through a number of scenic locations that have her completing puzzles that could be straight out of the games—but without the audience having the ability to interact with these familiar tools, they feel like nothing more than plot devices used to kill time. While only consisting of eight, half-hour episodes, this frustrating pacing makes the show drag at every turn. Even the environment design itself seems to lack a sense of wonder that a good adventure should, something that feels like a step down for animator Powerhouse Animation, who previously delivered stunning visuals in Netflix’s Castlevania series. Whereas that show was constantly dripping with a gothic atmosphere in every scene, The Legend of Lara Croft has no sense of place despite the many locations Lara’s adventure takes her. That’s because outside of one impressive set piece that sees Lara rush through a city collapsing on top of her, there doesn’t seem to be much spectacle or compelling design in the majority of the show’s locales. In comparison to Castlevania the environment feels lifeless, with each new place Lara goes feeling too familiar to the last despite being at the other end of the globe.
Yet even with so much of the show feeling unremarkable, its portrayal of Lara manages to be filled with life. The survivor trilogy’s version of Lara has always been a much more serious and troubled woman and that continues in The Legend of Lara Croft. But the show doesn’t stop there, with Atwell, playing Lara with a hypnotic charm. This Lara is funny and suave. She’s got that adventurer’s death wish that she can’t stop joking about. Her personality brings a refreshing lightness to the character that was woefully absent in the reboot trilogy, which never let Lara be anything beyond a constantly-in-danger explorer. This time around you get to see her giddy with excitement at the prospect of hunting down treasures, or getting to know new cultures, or even at the promise of a fight. This blend aspects of survivor Lara with the more traditional charismatic adventurer we’ve seen in earlier iterations of the character without leaning too hard one way or the other. You get the sense that Atwell’s Lara is a true pulp adventurer hero, it’s just a shame the rest of the show just doesn’t know it.
At the end of Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft’s first season I am left with the strong impression that this show doesn’t know what it wants to be. There is no real sense of identity in its bland story that retreads old ground without saying anything new or exciting. While the titular heroine herself shines thanks to Atwell, the same can’t be said of the rest of the cast or the world in which they live. In many ways Netflix already has the most important key to make a successful Tomb Raider series: an incredible Lara Croft. If The Legend of Lara Croft gets a second season, it needs to create an adventure worthy of her.
.
