Fx’s Adaptation Of Octavia E Butler’s Award-Winning Novel Kindred Is A Bridge Between Two Worlds That Reflects All The Light And Darkness That Comprises Humanity

*Mallori Johnson as Dana James, all photos courtesy of Photo credit: Tina Rowden/FX*

Sometimes it is only through the eyes of travelers that we see the realities of our own history.

Starring Mallori Johnson and Micah Stock Kindred is a brilliantly written story that links the present to the past in the most painful and unknowingly consequential ways. It centers around Dana James (Mallori) who relocates to Los Angelos to reconnect with her family and pursue a career in entertainment writing. She meets a somewhat awkward but well-meaning waiter named Kevin Franklin who ends up giving Dana a ride home after an awkward family dinner. The two eventually hit it off but have no idea what the universe has in store for them.

Within days of her arriving in a brand new city, to a house she bought online, and to a family that doesn’t seem very excited to hear shes there, Dana begins to experience rounds of time travel that she, at first, is unable to control. Without warning, Dana is periodically pulled away from this reality back through time to a plantation owned by the Weylin family at just the right moment to save the Weylin’s son Rufus from dying of an accident he managed to create for himself. Once Rufus was safe and in the arms of family or trusted slaves, Dana is then pulled out of the 19th century and back to present-day Los Angelos. With every trip back to the past Dana’s stay lasts just a little longer but no one is around to see it until Kevin just happens to be at the right place at the right time and he has a few questions.

During one particular episode, Dana accidentally pulls Kevin back with her which allows both of them to experience not only time travel but life under slave ownership. Kevin is considered Dana’s master but both of them are desperately trying to work together and separately as a team to find out basically why them and when is the next travel back home. Why is Dana’s family intrinsically attached to the Weylins? She found her mother, Olivia, back in the 19th century living near the plantation, helping slaves to survive working on it or fleeing from it, after a lifetime of thinking she was dead, which brings up even more questions. If her mother traveled back in time, and Dana is now going back and forth, has this happened (or is it currently happening) to another family member, and why? By saving Rufus every time he’s done something stupid are they protecting some timeline they don’t know about?

The longer Kevin and Dana stay on the plantation the more dangerous things become, with Master Thomas Weylin (Ryan Kwanten) increasingly acting more paranoid and deranged toward the pair, the risks that have been taken to save some slaves continuously becoming poisonous to all of them, and the present-day lives that Kevin and Dana should be living are eroding. The season ends on a frantic note with Dana stuck in modern-day L.A and unable to get back to Kevin who is stuck in 19th century Maryland and looks to be conforming to his situation a little too well. While the showrunners are hopeful for a season 2, so far there’s been no news of a renewal.

The series is tightly written, beautifully shot, and flows extremely well between episodes. The character interactions are incredible and at times hard to watch because they emanate everything we despise about that period in our nation’s history but do so very naturally. It’s a deep, intense, and unique brand of sci-fi and it is definitely worth your time.

All eight episodes of Fx’s Kindred are available to stream right here on Hulu.

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