Reaction: Side Quest, "Song and Dance," "Pull List," "Fugue," & "The Last Raid" | Season 1, Episodes 1-4

Back in my review of “Rebrand,” I wrote about my concerns with the upcoming spinoff season of Side Quest, worried that focusing exclusively on the standalone episodes ran the danger of diluting the brand and making them less special. Now that we’ve reached the end of season four, I’m going back on that concern because their stylistic experiments are one of the only things I trust the Mythic Quest team to get right. Looking at a season with rocky pacing and ill-conceived decisions, the main highlights are the standalone “Rebrand” and the somewhat standalone “The Villain’s Feast,” where the show either focused wholly on one character or went full genre tilt.

So I’m now much more inclined to treat Side Quest (originally titled Mere Mortals when it was first announced and smartly retitled since) as something that could be critical to the survival of the Mythic Quest franchise proper. Going outside the box is something that hasn’t worked out for Mythic Quest in the last two seasons, but whenever they have an excuse to take a stylistic swing or narrow the show’s focus, that always pays off. If we have a laboratory for more of these experiments, it could be a creative outlet to spur something new when the original series is running on fumes.