(WARNING: Post contains season 2 spoilers but if you haven’t watched season 2 yet then skip this and the show; it’s bad. Real bad.)
Oh, Marco. Your setting was intriguing, your characters compelling, and your storylines complex and satisfying. I was in anguish when Kublai was forced to duel his brother, overjoyed when the Mongols finally took Xiangyang, and filled with dread when Ahmed revealed his intention to destroy the empire from within. You were everything I hoped for in a historical drama and I wanted to love you so badly. But you just won’t let me.
In retrospect, Season 1 had its share of red flags. Chancellor Sidao’s ridiculous out-of-character Kung-Fu mastery, swords that shred lamellar armor like tissue paper, and the big boss fight in the finale that felt like the weakest part of a video game all did their part to edge this historical fiction far too close to Braveheart/300 territory. Season 2, however, has forever shoved the series into the worst kind of historical fantasy.
It didn’t have to be this way. The second season seemed off to a good start; the Kurultai was a great way to bring Kublai’s longstanding rivalry with Kaidu to a head and it also stretched Kublai as a character by challenging him to solve his problem without violence (for once). Marco faced plenty of danger trying to find the Song Emperor with Mei Lin, and I found the Blue Princess’s struggles especially moving. Then the crusaders showed up, characters veered way too far off course to be believable, and events that should have felt epic and climactic instead felt inevitable and dull. Yeah, no.
Before I even get to some of the more obnoxious historical oversights, though, I need to address the biggest and most insulting reality retcon of this season- the existence of the Eastern Orthodox Church. It occurred to me as Nayan was chatting with the Pope that Roman Catholicism was mostly sequestered to Western Europe at the time. A little googling later, my instincts are justified; Mongolian Christians of the time followed Nestorian teachings and weren’t into the Pope at all. In fact, I learned that Kublai Khan actually wrote a letter to the pope requesting that he send theologians and scholars to educate the Christians within the Mongol Empire and said Christians protested that they had no interest in the Church of Rome replacing their already existing forms of worship. I found all of this information in the space of five minutes; for the show’s makers to so gleefully skip minimal research in favor of boring “what if?” scenarios is pretty shameful, especially when it erases the world’s second largest sect of Christianity.
Let’s talk about, sigh, the crusade. My biggest problem with tossing crusaders into the mix willy-nilly is that it reeks of the lowest order of historical fan fiction – who would win in a fight? If I want to find out who would win, I’ll play Medieval II: Total War. Also, the portrayal of the crusaders themselves leads me to inevitably conclude that the show runners have no freaking idea what they’re doing. Crusade armies were not composed of professional Papal soldiers but of volunteers (both noble and common) seeking forgiveness of their sins or trying to curry favor with the Pope. Generally they targeted pilgrimage sites in Palestine (with the exception of the fourth crusade which targeted Constantinople, although even that one originally was headed for Jerusalem). The story behind the crusaders going to Mongolia is that Marco’s dad is scared because of a letter which a Khan wrote to a previous Pope demanding the surrender of Christian lands. I looked this up too and it turned out there was indeed such a letter. Point, Marco Polo.
The letter in question was written by Güyük Khan and it did demand surrender of all Christian lands. However, this is deceptive out of context. During that time, Mongol letters always included a demand of surrender. It was their version of “Sincerely Yours.” Also, this letter was not out of the blue, but in response to a letter from Pope Innocent IV offering congratulations on being coronated. This is where Marco Polo, the series, fails history class the hardest; it ignores the fact that the Silk Road which was such a boon to commerce was also a means of connecting these disparate cultures. It was the Internet of those bygone days, a superhighway of both mercantilism and information.
Even if the Pope was convinced that Kublai was a threat, the foresight to call a pre-emptive strike is completely unheard of for a friggin’ Pope. To make matters worse, historically Gregory did try to launch a crusade but chose to ally with the western branch of the Mongol Empire, which emerged much later (I would say spoilers, but this show clearly has no interest in spoiling actual history). Essentially, Pope Greg X didn’t see a problem allying with pagan Mongols if it meant winning some of that sweet, sweet holy land from Muslims.
Furthermore, what would have actually fit into this point in history would have been for the Pope to have received letters from Roman Catholic Kingdoms bordering the Mongol Empire and encouraging the other European Catholic powers to send the troubled nations some able-bodied knights. This still would have been ahistorical, but at least it would have made sense.
Let’s move on from the anachronistic crusades to talk about anachronistic medical treatment. Specifically that of Nergui, the girl posing as the Blue Princess Kokachin of the Bayaut tribe. Having the real princess show up was quite a moment for that character and the revelation that she was hallucinating the encounters was a fantastic gut-punch. Then Empress Chabi seeks to help her by… trying to convince her that these visions are merely in her head.
Sigh. This is even lazier than the crusade.
People in the 1200’s were generally a lot more superstitious than people today. Most people of that time would absolutely not have understood hallucinations to be simply the product of a disturbed mind. Sure, Empress Chabi knew Nergui was an impostor, but her understanding of mental health would have been colored by local superstitions, not science (which was several centuries yet to come). More likely, she would have believed that the poor girl was being haunted by Kokachin’s ghost and had some ritual performed to drive the fell spirit away. Instead she tied the girl down and hoped the whole thing would pass and we were treated to a boring mash-up of Misery and The Exorcist.
Moving from ahistorical nonsense to failures in basic storytelling, what the hell was going on with Kaidu? He wants to be the Khan, he’s not sure, he makes a move and then regrets it and on and on. As a wise man once said, “If you come at the king, you best not miss.” Kaidu can’t be bothered to miss because he’s too busy agonizing about picking up the gun. And all of this would be forgivable if literally any of this made sense for this character but we spent all of the last season watching him be devious as hell and now all of the sudden he needs his mommy to hold his hand. Plus, does he really think the tribal chieftains will just overlook the fact that he brought a foreign army into their land to try and rule them by force? Congratulations, Kaidu, you won the election and are now the proud ruler of a protracted civil war!
On a final note, Ahmad’s role as a plotter and villain was incredibly anti-climactic. At the end of the first season, the revelation that he was working against Kublai Khan was shocking and set expectations for the impact of his future betrayal very high. Meeting those expectations, unfortunately, was a task for which this show was clearly ill-equipped. His entanglement with Song Dynasty rebels and his manipulation that led Kublai to kill the Song child Emperor was a masterful one-two punch. The revelation of the incident that led him to turn on the Khan was painful and heart-rending. I hated him for treating people like game pieces and yet I understood why he was so determined to undermine the Mongol Empire. I wondered how many seasons we would watch him throw wrenches into Kublai’s plans before the other characters discovered his treachery, if they ever did. When it all came unraveled by the season finale, all that tension just kind of deflated.
That’s a pretty good metaphor for Marco Polo’s latest season; deflating. Not like a balloon, which at least takes a few laps around the room before its end, but more like an air mattress which you have to fold, kneel upon, unfold, roll, and finally give up on before shoving the thing into its ill-fitting sleeve. This series, which showed such promise in its inception, now feels old and tired in its sophomore season when it has no right to. Can anyone truly defend its continued existence alongside Netflix’s other series like Stranger Things, Orange is the New Black, House of Cards, Bloodline, Narcos or even Daredevil? Sorry Marco, but I think it’s best if we viewers start watching other shows.
