Spoiler Review of ‘YAGA’s’ First Episodes on AMC+

Technically, YAGA, AMC+’s new show starring Noah Reid (Schitt’s Creek, The Vampire Lestat), falls under the category of my favorite type of procedural: Investigators showing up local police departments by solving mysteries the cops are incapable of.

It also scratches part of the itch I have for Twin Peaks-style dramas that incorporate the supernatural or occult practices. I love me some spooky stuff, y’all.

YAGA starts strong with a narrator’s monologue that explains some of the Baba Yaga mythology the show is based on, and it sets the tone not only for the episode but also for the whole series.

Let’s start with what you say. You say I am old, old as the earth, as wicked as the night, and as wise and powerful as the sea. You say I live alone in the woods, in a hut on chicken feet, that I fly in a mortar and pestle, eating naughty children. Their fingers, guts, and best of all, their bones. You say I am ugly and lonely no one will love me, no one will f*ck me, for who could love such a beast as this witch that I am? But the thing that really gets me is this (screaming)

The naughty child is Henry Park (Heated Rivalry’s Hudson Williams). He’s gone missing with $15,000 in cash from the fictional Canadian island town of Whittock, where his wealthy family serves as the town’s benefactors and primary job creators.

His parents, who are in Japan “on business,” have asked family friend Charlie Rapp (Reid) to come to Whittock and help the police find him. Rapp is an investigator, of sorts, and his relationship with the Parks is shrouded in mystery. The local cops think the rich kid has run off on his own, but no one is willing to argue with his parents. And Sergeant Carson (Letterkenny’s Clark Backo) doesn’t take the investigation, or Rapp, seriously. She’s tasked with assisting Rapp, and she is intrigued by his charm and disgusted by his salaciousness. She calls him out on his unprofessional behavior, but not that harshly. She might be enjoying the change of pace Rapp has brought to the island, just a little bit.

It’s hard to blame her. Noah Reid is both rakish and affable as Detective Charlie Rapp. He gets off on making people uncomfortable as part of his investigative process. Rapp refers to people by the wrong name and takes Polaroid pictures of them unexpectedly. And he’s always getting coffee orders wrong. That’s his unconventional way of taking the measure of a person. According to Rapp, there are three kinds of people: the kind who don’t drink it, the kind who make you get them a new drink, and the kind of people who drink it so you don’t feel bad.

The first person the pair interviews is Henry’s roommate, Logan (also played by Hudson Williams). A scholarship student taken under Henry’s wing because they look so much alike, Logan awkwardly answers their questions and reveals Henry had a girlfriend, Pam, who broke up with him the day he went missing. Pam (Ezra Franky) tells them Henry had a history of cheating on her with students, townies, randoms at his parties, his hot maid, and the “Boner beast” - a professor at their school who Henry once interviewed for his podcast.

Later that evening, unaware of “Boner Beast’s” identity, Rapp hits on a woman named Katherine (Carrie-Anne Moss) at the bar. She whispers seductively to him, describing her favorite things about bones and joints, the topic of her new book:

Your bones listen before your brain understands. Your bones say yes before your mouth does

It should come as no surprise when Katherine turns out to be Professor “Boner Beast.” When Rapp and Carson go to the university to interview Katherine, they catch the end of a lecture, and she drops this little nugget of foreshadowing onto her students

Nature teaches us the best way to kill something is to be invisible, to blend into your surroundings. To disguise yourself as something your prey simply cannot see.

The first two episodes of YAGA are as full of foreshadowing as they are full of chickens. Carson accidentally runs over a chicken that’s crossing the road in the middle of the woods. There’s a dried chicken foot hanging on Henry’s bedframe. A burning rooster is nailed to the door of Rapp’s hotel room the night he sleeps with the very young concierge instead of focusing his attention on Katherine when he met her at the bar. The town’s diner is famous for the egg breakfasts. Carson’s eggs come with a bloody yolk. Rapp has a drug-induced vision of Katherine in episode two in a flurry of chicken feathers. And that vision gives way to one of a flaming bird flying towards him.

Chickens and roosters factor heavily into the mythology of Baba Yaga and Slavic folklore in general. Chickens represent the boundary between the living and the spirit world. Which is why Baba Yaga’s hut stands on giant chicken legs. In some spiritual practices, a rooster is a protective sigil. But in others, it’s a warning that visitors, changes, or trouble may be coming. In the show’s mythos, it’s clearly a message for Rapp to end his investigation. A message emphasized when he gets a text from Henry Park’s phone that repeats “STOP LOOKING FOR ME” over and over again.

The second episode ends with Rapp’s drug-induced kaleidoscopic tour of a “Dark Solstice” party being thrown at Henry’s house. Logan is hosting and may be masquerading as Henry. Just when Carson thinks she’s caught Logan, he disappears into a dead end. And there’s a dead body lying on the beach. But whose is it?

Noah Reid and Carrie-Anne Moss have electrifying chemistry in the few scenes they share in these two episodes. And based on the header image, we’ll see what kind of sparks she can make with Hudson Williams as well. I don’t expect YAGA to get the same face-fanning reception as Heated Rivalry. But putting Moss, Reid, and Hudson in a supernatural love triangle (quadrilateral?) is a boss move that I respect. A lot of what I saw in the first two episodes of YAGA reminded me of Hemlock Grove before it went off the rails.

Hemlock Grove started strong with its campy, sexy, witchy vibe, eventually teetering off into dull, confusing storytelling. But Netflix gave that show three seasons to hang itself. If Noah Reid can keep the gleam in his eye, and Carrie-Anne Moss can keep, well, just being Carrie-Anne Moss, for the full eight episodes of YAGA’s limited series run, YAGA might be the unhinged occult soap opera we need to keep us warm as the summer sunlight fades into autumn.

The first two episodes of YAGA are streaming on AMC+. New episodes are released on Fridays, with the season finale on November 27th.