HBO's The Nevers has the instant appeal for being a sci-fi drama, but the Joss Whedon series falls flat with critics based on the poor reviews. Whedon, who directed the series debut, as long as a handful of other episodes in the series, has since stepped down as showrunner. Still, there were high expectations for what was initially advertised as a Victorian superhero series. After debuting on April 11 through HBO and HBO Max, The Nevers fails to justify the hype.

HBO received the rights to The Nevers after winning the bidding war involved with Whedon's original series. The show itself centers on a gang of Victorian women who discover they have strange abilities. These women (referred to as the "Touched") find themselves caught up in a special mission that has the power to change the world. Aside from renegades with other supernatural abilities, the Touched are forced to deal with threats ranging from petty criminals to those with stronger forces at the ready.

Related: The Nevers Powers Explained: Every Touched Person’s Turn

While The Nevers features a notable cast including Laura Donnelly, Ann Skelly, Olivia Williams, James Norton, Pip Torrens, and Denis O'Hare, the show has been clouded in controversy surrounding Whedon's involvement with the HBO series. Despite stepping down due to personal reasons stemming from pandemic-related issues, ongoing workplace harassment scandals connected to Whedon have affected his reputation. The original creator's name wasn't used in marketing material leading up to the April debut. It's unclear how much of the scandals have affected the perception of The Nevers going in, but it may not have mattered. The series currently holds a 52% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while the audience score is just a notch higher at 57%. The ratings on IMDb and Metacritic are not much better, with a consensus describing the plot as muddled and lacking focus. While The Nevers' ensemble cast gives the show a lot of room to work with, critics claim there's an overwhelmingness with the number of subplots. Here's what some of the more negative reviews had to say:

IndieWire:

Had the series slowly fleshed out its core premise and introduced its characters with better purpose, perhaps “The Nevers” could have avoided its own “turn” into nonsensical hooey. For every beat that strikes the right tone, there’s at least one that’s laughably over-the-top or utterly indecipherable. Too many early action scenes fail to articulate the stakes (or even who’s fighting). Too many performances chew the scenery so ferociously you can see hear it in their slobbering British accents. Too many plot holes expand beyond control, and too many “turns” undercut their characters.

Hollywood Reporter:

Even at this relatively early point, though, The Nevers is a show in desperate need of focus, and as episodes progress, more and more characters are added and the connection to the richest thematic throughline becomes increasingly tenuous. In familiar Whedon fashion, deaths are leveraged for hollow emotion and every time there's an opportunity to find new layers in the characters we know, the show gets distracted by something shiny, new and usually less interesting.

Rolling Stone:

But even if Whedon still had the pristine cult-icon image from the turn of the century, The Nevers would still be a disappointment. It has many of the elements you would expect from a Whedon show, and on a greater scale than any of the older ones, but some pieces only occasionally come into focus. Others leave you wondering why they’re around at all.

TIME Magazine:

There might have been a way to salvage such an unwieldy plot, so that a show whose dialogue, production values and acting (especially Donnelly’s lead performance) are above average for Dickenscore could at least hold viewers’ attention, the way the even-sillier Irregulars does. But the incomprehensibility of storytelling that barely allows time for us to register a character’s existence before moving on to a new set of faces, ensures that The Nevers is rarely fun.

The nevers cast and character guide

Though there's a failure in being drawn to certain characters, some critics and viewers are praising the performance of the cast for what they were given to work with. The direction of the story might be a negative aspect, but there seems to be an appreciation for the visuals and costumes depicting the 19th century London setting. Obviously, there's still time for the HBO series to flip reception, and many are intrigued by the chaos and twists. That said, here's what some of the more positive reviewers point out:

Los Angeles Times:

The Nevers is for anyone who loved Penny Dreadful or HarlotsWandaVision or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This period drama about the persecution — and power — of the marginalized goes wide on genre appeal, while homing in on painfully contemporary themes. And it’s full of riddles designed to keep us hooked.

Variety:

It’s a world rich with compelling characters, narrative possibilities and actors up to the task of making their parts sing. [Laura] Donnelly and [Ann] Skelly are especially good as the show’s central odd couple, their friendship anchoring “Nevers” as its mysteries unfurl and the stakes get impossibly high.

Whedon arguably nailed the setting and fantasy immensity when it came to the development of The Nevers. Still, it remains to be seen if the story gets on track in later episodes after Philippa Goslett took over. The series certainly has genre appeal on its side; it's just a matter of building a cohesive plot while utilizing characters that viewers grow connected to. The first six episodes of The Nevers season 1 will run through mid-May, while the remaining four episodes in the future. However, if the reception remains negative, viewers might not want to stick around for the second batch.

More: HBO Max: Every Movie & TV Show Coming In April 2021