Reign - Series Premiere Recap: And We'll Never Be Royals

Aside from the lavish nature of the production, between the Irish castle standing in for the French court and the understated elegance of the costumes, Adelaide Kane is the best part of this pilot. She plays Mary as someone equal parts savvy and unassured, eager to please yet unwilling to submit. It's a wonderfully nuanced performance that imbues the story of the pilot with real weight, and this is definitely a good thing when we consider that the series itself needs to be anchored by a performance that feels real, given just how substantially the series veers from history. As the series begin, we learn that Mary, who has been the Queen of Scotland since she was six days old, has been raised not in the French court, like the historical Mary, but in a convent. This decision was made to keep Mary safe from enemies both foreign and domestic, as an assassination attempt is made on her life with a bowl of poisoned porridge.

Credit: The CW

As she nears the age at which she'll be fit to rule, Mary is sent to France to become acquainted with the French court, as well as with the old friend to whom she's been betrothed since childhood, Dauphin Francis (Toby Regbo). Mary's arrival in France, as well as the introduction to all the characters who will be joining her at court, is the best sequence of the episode. It's a completely breathless series of arrivals, introductions, hand-wringing, whispering, flirtations and speculations, as the French court doesn't know what to make of Mary any better than she knows what to make of them. It's a game of appearance: appearing to be regal, appearing to know what you're doing, appearing to be happy at the prospect of marrying a man you haven't seen since you were a child. And on the note of Francis, we once again deviate a bit from history, as Francis is not the short, sickly boy he was in history, but rather a strapping, golden-haired lad with a jawline to rival Chris Pine's. And he has a brother now too! Well, half-brother -- Sebastian (Torrance Coombs), a bastard son of King Henry II (Alan Van Sprang).

Credit: The CW

The men in Mary's life certainly seem glad enough to have her at court, and her ladies-in-waiting are similarly thrilled. Though we only get rough sketches of them in the pilot, there is already plenty of fertile territory to explore the friendships between a Queen and her charges. Lola (Anna Popplewell) is the most developed character of the group, a starry-eyed girl who wants nothing more than to marry her servant boyfriend, Colin. Kenna (Caitlin Stasey), meanwhile, is the adventurous one of the bunch, hooking up with King Henry in a stairwell after watching Francis' sister lose her virginity during the traditional bedding ceremony. Greer (Celina Sinden) and Aylee (Jenessa Grant) are little more than cyphers at this point, but again, there is plenty of room to tell genuinely incisive coming-of-age stories with this group of girls. The pilot already explores the tricky nature of friendship between a royal and her subjects, as Mary seems anxious for the girls to like her.

Lastly, there is Francis' mother, Catherine 'de Medici (Megan Follows), who spends the episode trying to undermine Mary. She is suspicious of her future daughter-in-law due to a series of visions reported to her by Nostradamus (Rossif Sutherland), who claims that Mary will be the death of Francis. While some might dislike the decision to inject a bit of mysticism into an historical show, I found it largely worked here. Nostradamus' visions are intentionally vague, as is the question of whether Mary's mysterious benefactor (who warns her against drinking the wine served to her at the ball, a warning that ends up saving Mary's virtue) is truly a ghost or simply someone playing a role, and that ambiguity serves the narrative well. It's a narrative choice that worked similarly well for Starz's The White Queen, of which Reign reminds me quite a bit.

Credit: The CW

And so with all of the pieces on the proverbial chess board, Mary begins her process of acclimating to the French court. As the pilot rolls on, she clashes with Francis after he makes it apparent that although he's attracted to her, this might not be a marriage he's willing to go through with after all. Of course, he stops just short of saying he wants out altogether. And so Catherine decides to come up with a way out of the marriage agreement herself, conceiving an assassination plot against Mary. However, unlike the assassination attempt in the opening, this will not be an assassination of Mary herself, but rather of her character and reputation. She hires Lola's boyfriend Colin to serve Mary poisoned wine that will render her unconscious, after which point, he'll sneak into her bedchambers and rape her. She'll awaken deflowered, and no longer suitable for marriage. It's an utterly appalling scheme that immediately frames Catherine as the villain of the series, far above other characters of suspect morality, such as King Henry and even Dauphin Francis. But the scheme thankfully doesn't work, as Mary was warned against drinking the wine by a mysterious "ghost"-like figure in her room. When Colin attempts to assault her, Mary wakes up and screams for help, at which point the guards drag Colin away.

This is where the pilot takes a turn into troubling territory, as Lola is convinced that Colin couldn't have committed this act of his own accord, and Mary eventually agrees with her. It's a moment that attempts to excuse attempted rape, and even presents the accused as not that bad of a guy, despite the fact that he would have been within moments of forcing himself on Mary had she not woken up. If there's one positive to the ugly nature of the whole rape storyline, it's in how the show doesn't ask us to sympathize with Colin (who refuses to implicate Catherine), but with Lola. Anna Popplewell does a terrific job communicating the depths of Lola's grief upon learning of Colin's execution for treason, and it leads to a great scene where she denounces Mary for causing all of this to happen, affirming that while Kenna, Aylee, and Greer are her friends, Mary is not. By virtue of her position, she can't be. She's their Queen.

Credit: CBS

Ultimately, the pilot ends with Mary feeling more isolated than ever, though not without the hope of things getting better. She thanks the "ghost" for warning her about the wine in a weirdly ineffectual scene that involves a "now you see me, now you don't" disappearance amid a flash of lightning. She also receives some hope from Francis that this is a marriage he still wants, even if he's hesitant to allow himself to want it. Mary also gets a visit from Sebastian, who finds and returns her dog from the woods and then flirtatiously implies that he'll always be around if she needs him. So yeah, Mary has a lot on her plate, to put it mildly. Yet while the pilot has a lot of story to tell in a short span of time, it hits all its story beats efficiently, presenting us with the world and fleshing it out just enough to keep us hooked for next week, at which point the show can delve a little bit deeper. Between the solid ensemble and the sumptuous aesthetic of the series, this is the most excited I've been about a new fall show in a while. Hopefully, series can sustain the momentum of what has been a strong pilot.

Thanks for reading my recap and review of the Reign Series Premiere, "Pilot"!