It’s been a few months since the launch of Apple TV+, which was perhaps a less auspicious debut than the tech giant had imagined for such high-profile and very expensive series as The Morning Show, See, and For All Mankind. But while the nascent streamer’s flagship series didn’t achieve critical consensus, they did point to Apple’s ambitions as a provider of original content, one that became increasingly clear with the subsequent premieres of arguably better shows like Servant and the critically acclaimed Little America. Those improvements are again on display with Apple TV+’s first outright comedy (See was, perhaps, inadvertently funny) Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet.
The series comes from the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia gang – Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day, and Megan Ganz, telling the story of a team of video game developers responsible for the World of Warcraft-like MMO, Mythic Quest. It’s a workplace comedy with an intriguing stable of characters and shifting power dynamics that make for seemingly endless possibilities. At the top of the office hierarchy is McElhenney’s Ian Grimm, an egotistical blowhard and creative genius behind the wildly successful video game. Joining him are his lead programmer Poppy (Charlotte Nicdao), Brad (Danny Pudi), the head of monetization, C.W. Longbottom (F. Murray Abraham), an alcoholic Frank Herbert-esque sci-fi author whose best days a behind him, and David Hornsby as David, the office manager, and early standout in the series.
The show’s sizable ensemble also includes a pair of game testers in Imani Hakim and Ashley Burch as Dana and Rachel, respectively, as well as Jessie Ennis as Jo, David’s possibly psychotic personal assistant. The series excels at skewering video game culture and the personalities on all sides of the medium, particularly with its depiction of teen streaming influencer Pootie Shoe (Elisha Henig). But as much as Mythic Quest works as an indictment on the video game industry, and the various ways developers, publishers, and entrenched personalities exploit fandom in the name of profit it’s much more even-handed in its satirization than trailers or marketing materials for the show would have you believe. Instead, McElhenney, Day, and Ganz (and their writers’ room) have made a memorable workplace comedy that understands what’s most important to succeed in the subgenre: characters the audience can care about.
While most of the characters exist on one extreme wavelength or another — Ian is an egotist par excellence, C.W. routinely fails to hide his drinking problem, and David is in desperate need of some therapy — Mythic Quest ultimately finds a way to revolve around its most grounded and relatable characters, Poppy, Rachel, and Dana.
The series premiere is largely concerned with a power struggle between Ian and Poppy over a shovel being added to Raven’s Banquet, the first major expansion of Mythic Quest. It’s a basic tool, one that allows the characters to alter the landscape and little else. It’s minor but it means a great deal to Poppy, as it’s the one thing she alone had a hand in designing and as such, Ian’s insistence that it isn’t cool enough or should also function as a weapon becomes a major point of contention between the two. Where Mythic Quest succeeds, however, isn’t necessarily in how it underlines the power dynamics between a man who completely buys into his own self-styled legend and a young woman who is arguably more talented and competent than her employer, but in how it finds resolution to the conflict at hand.
The show deftly manages to have things both ways, making use of McElennhey’s smarm/charm offensive, often elevating Ian’s behavior to an absurd (that, sadly, isn’t) degree, only demonstrate he’s not the monster the show could easily (and lazily) painted him as. It helps that Ian is surrounded by a group of misfits, some of whom exceed even his legendary unconventionality. But the key to the show’s success early on is in how it balances those irregularities with the down-to-earth simplicity of something like Rachel’s unrequited crush on Dana, and the ways in which Poppy must navigate the sea of oversized personalities around her, sometimes by exaggerating her own character to match.
The effect, then, is a laugh-out-loud workplace comedy populated with memorable characters and a boatload of character arcs with a lot of potential. In teaming with the It’s Always Sunny gang, Apple TV+ not only scores a comedic hit with Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet but also serves up a series that may one day be an all-important, Office-like part of the Apple TV+ streaming library.
Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet premieres Friday, February 7 on Apple TV+.