Genndy Tartakovsky’s new series Unicorn: Warriors Eternal looks at the common phrase “destined for greatness” with an eyebrow raised. Sure, the expression is typically a compliment, but it also comes with added pressures. This is especially the case if the caveats include completely upending your life and leaving your family to become the vessel of heroes tasked with saving the world.
That’s the bullet point listing of the premise for the Adult Swim series. Only a few episodes into the series, Tartakovsky and his team already acknowledged the invasive nature of this situation, particularly with Emma/Melinda’s (Hazel Doupe) conflict for self-control. It puts the "chosen one" narrative under the microscope and finds that “pre-destiny” is just as much of a burden as it is a privilege.
'Unicorn: Warrior Eternals' Soul-Spitting Premise
The vessel point made earlier is a literal side effect of the hero’s journey. Three souls—Melinda the Sorceress, Edred the Warrior Elf (Tom Milligan), and Seng the Cosmic Monk (Demeri Hunte)—are reawakened every generation to fight a great evil. Copernicus, a friendly robot, blasts random people with the souls of the heroes, turning them into Melinda, Edred, and Seng.
Now, the souls of the people they replace are unclear. They all instantly remember their past lives and become heroes. They're host families if they have them? Irrelevant, time to fight and save the world. What happens after you win? Uncertain, but the souls reappear in another vessel later on. We do meet two people who say they’re relatives of earlier Melinda and Seng, but they fail to mention if their relatives died following their fight, or if they return to their lives, or even how Copernicus knows when to reawaken the heroes.
Right from the start, the process of “awakening” throughout time removes the agency of their hosts and forces people to fight for a mysterious cause. Their bodies physically change in a process that seems painful. The characters all scream in agony following the blast. Emma releases a jarring scream following her transformation. Alfi (a young boy, mind you) loses his hair and screams out during his change, and he’s sent half into the cosmic realm and half into the present. And this is the first known instance where a child is forced to be a bridge between the two worlds, something which Edred notes is “beyond a child’s comprehension.” Those chosen to become Edred’s physical ears change to become pointed and elf-like. His host, Dimitri, screams multiple times with his mouth stretched out. As Edred falls to the ground, smoke comes off his body, just like Dimitri’s soul is burned out of his body. Unicorn: Warriors Eternal physically details in a couple of scenes both throughout time and through the new heroes’ journey the start of the loss of agency that comes with a chosen narrative. Their life is on pause—or possibly over—to accomplish a greater task at the cost of the self.
Emma’s Lost Life as a Hero
The opening montage of the series shows these adults throughout time becoming the heroes and rolling right along. Emma is the first protagonist shown to have an issue with her change. She starts hugging her parents after watching her father cry tears of joy before her wedding. Her love, Winston, is in eternal bliss. He jokingly decompresses, standing straight before smiling with Emma at the altar for so long, that the man officiating the wedding has to interrupt them to start the service. And then Copernicus shows up. Her family fights, but the service is over and Emma is now Melinda. The whole process is a harsh reminder of what the process takes away. Emma’s loving family and husband are changed forever.
Melinda, at first, acknowledges she’s not Emma anymore, but then becomes uncertain. She has no memory of her life as Melinda. She’s the only member of Unicorn that cannot understand Copernicus’s whistles and noises (which is how he communicates, but he does have scripted dialogue, per Tartakovsky). She barely remembers Winston’s name and can’t even say for certain if the man who, moments earlier cried in her arms, is her father. She also cannot quite control her powers, with a blast in a fight with an enchanted elephant destroying multiple buildings, injuring dozens, including Winston. There’s a moment where it appears she accidentally killed Winston and storms off. She later sees Winston in the hospital along with all the other people hurt, with one person re-living the moment of Melinda’s attack.
In that heartbreak, Melinda/Emma goes to her original home. She has this montage passing through memories of learning to play the violin, of Winston sneaking to her window masquerading as a thief trying to steal her heart and showing her wedding gown to her parents. The sequence plays like a dream, poking into someone else's world even though Emma lived those moments. Again, her life pre-awakening was warm and pleasant. Now, when she tries on one of her old dresses and puts on a blonde wig, she doesn’t feel the same, but rather, a stranger in her own body. Later, after Winston follows her onto an enchanted ship, Emma describes Winston as “My fiancé! I mean, Emma’s fiancé.” Edred asks who that is and Melinda/Emma responds “Me! I mean, I’m Emma. I was Emma.” Edred tells her she’s Melinda, and she replies, “Yes, but she’s me now. I mean, this is her body.” Her very existence is a battle just to have an identity. How is she supposed to fight an unspeakable evil if she cannot even find a term for herself?
Emma’s spirit does get a chance to briefly confront Melinda’s soul after a deal with a séance. Melinda notes that Emma “shouldn’t even be aware,” meaning the hosts are just completely lost in the awakening process. Emma tells her she just wants her out, but a stern-faced Melinda tells her it’s “not her [Emma’s] choice.” Emma makes the point that it’s her body, but Melinda notes this is “bigger than you and me” and that “for whatever reason, you were chosen,” to Emma’s dismay. She asks her to choose someone else adding Melinda is “ruining her life.” Frustrated, Melinda asks Emma—whom she calls a “stubborn, petulant child”—to “relinquish herself” to fight the great evil they’ve fought for “over 1,00 years.” Then, Edred, Seng, and Copernicus find them, and Melinda and Emma’s souls both return to Emma’s body.
Tartakovsky has formed a reluctant chosen one: not a person coming from a horrible life to greatness, but a person with a seemingly perfect one thrust into conflict. Emma has fallen into a system where she shouldn’t “be aware” that her body has been taken over, or have any agency over her situation. And she’s right, as Emma should have a choice to live her life how she seeks. But also, Melinda is right to need to fight this evil. It’s a no-win situation. Emma/Melinda has to fight and that has consequences. Melinda takes over her body to defeat an enchanted fox, but in a blast, she notices she’s destroyed a family’s home. She lets the fox escape as she tries to apologize, but the mother just tells her to leave. Melinda flies off sullen as we hear the mother and her children cry. This, like the elephant disaster, shows the consequences of their powers. Carving up a massive foe can scar smaller people around. Melinda has spent “over a 1,000 years” fighting, so she can miss the smaller details, but Emma is still tied to her human half and sees the pain. That prevents her from using her powers later on in the ship and she sees the crying mother when she tries to go full force.
At a Young Age, They Realize That Powers Are Their Identity
Emma is just a part of the equation. Again, Seng is reawakened into a child, floating in a dreamlike, dopey haze trying to stay between the cosmic and human realms. He has more of his memories than Melinda. He knows who the other members of Unicorn are, but he’s also loopy and sporadic. He leads the team through buildings shouting directions to find Melinda as he cannot seem to tie the human realm to the cosmic. The bout with the ship severs his connection with the cosmic realm and his physical form starts to disappear. Here, he finally realizes that he’s part of the cosmic realm and “When our links our severed, I am nothing.” Quite the harsh realization for a child that he is nothing without his powers. It resembles Melinda’s brutal honesty about protecting humanity and pushing back evil rather than individual enlightenment. You can only accomplish so much outside of the greater purpose of their fight.
Edred’s reawakening is the only one that resembles previous ones. He’s in an adult's body with all of his memories intact, including his love for Melinda. But, of course, Melinda/Emma does not reciprocate these feelings, and Edred watches Winston try to help Emma with seething jealousy. To be fair, Winston did interrupt Edred’s moment sharing a memory of them falling in love in the darkness hearing an angelic choir amidst a blast of light, their “very souls bonded by the melody.” But even at that moment, Melinda/Emma shares an understanding that it has meaning, but her expression is confused, and unsure, like a piece is missing.
Within the first four episodes, Unicorn: Warriors Eternal already examines its "chosen one" trope in a fascinating, mixed gleam. Emma doesn’t see the honor in serving a higher purpose if it means losing her identity and her loved ones, all while hurting innocent people along the way. Alfie/Seng is more willing, but is thrust into a situation where he’s lost without this unfamiliar cosmic realm at a young age. So much media has grappled with superheroes accepting their responsibility or powerful people questioning their roles in everything, and this show puts it all in a fiery mess. Now, the path for the chosen is still “hazy,” and it appears will lead to more heartbreak. All for heroes who never asked to save the world.