The Final Fight?
The Season 1 Finale of Wu Assassins begins with Kai and Lu Xin heading to the location McCullough gave them for the exchange. After giving away their weapon, McCullough gives them a speech about how Kai has no chance to win and demands he give him the Earth Xing. Instead, he throws it to Tommy who then becomes the earth Wu. With all five elements present, a portal opens and they are transported to the spirit realm. As each of them loses their Xing, Kai is able to form the prophesied shell and sends it through the gate. Meanwhile, McCullough has decided to go through the big doors to look for his family, closely followed by Kai, determined to stop him once and for all. After fighting multiple assailants, his friends manage to leave through the gate back whence they came. After stepping through the doors, McCullough wakes up in the past in Scotland. He finds his Wife and Son but they act fearful at first because he looks and sounds different. Kai arrives soon after and manages to quickly dispose of him, using his faithful chef knife. We then jump forward and see the four friends having dinner together, trying to put the pieces of their lives back together. Kai is a chef at Jenny’s restaurant and Tommy has been sober for 44 days. Lu Xin steps out and sees CG. She tells him that since Uncle Six’s death, there has been a power vacuum and to be careful. They finally kiss and she leaves, stealing his car in the process. An old friend of Jenny’s, Roland Ong, arrives at the restaurant soon after. He offers her a business proposal in public services but suddenly Ying Ying appears and tells Kai that it’s not over yet. She continues on, explaining that the world still needs Wu Assassins where we leave the series, wide open for a possible second season. Given Netflix’s recent trigger-happy way of killing off shows prematurely, seeing this ten episode series end on a cliffhanger, wide open for a second season is always a bit of a worrying sight. While I have no doubt they’d be able to pull off a second season pretty well, especially given the dizzying array of well-choreographed fights here, Netflix aren’t always the most reliable when it comes to maintaining shows for the long-haul. It also would have been nice to see a fight between all the element Wu’s to showcase their powers. The fight between Kai and McCullough is certainly climactic but it also feels a little underwhelming. It’s a shame too because the show has been building up to this moment for the last few episodes but the result is something that’s a bit disappointing – perhaps a second season will bring what was missing from the final episode. Despite this, Wu Assassins has been an easy to binge and enjoyable martial arts series. It’s not the best out there, and as mentioned before it doesn’t hold the same allure as a series like Cobra Kai or Warrior, but there’s enough here to make this well worth a watch nonetheless. Let’s just hope Netflix don’t cancel this before renewing it for a second season.
