“Willow” was one of the year’s biggest (and best) streaming surprises.
A sequel series to warmly remembered Ron Howard fantasy film from 1988 (also called “Willow”), this new iteration was developed by Jonathan Kasdan, who worked with Howard (and Lucasfilm) on 2018’s “Solo: A Star Wars Story” and is, to put it lightly, a “Willow” super-fan.
What made the show so much fun was that it didn’t rely on an encyclopedic knowledge of the film’s mythological underpinnings and never leaned too heavily on lore. Instead, all viewers needed to know (or remember) was that Willow (played once again by Warwick Davis) was a young sorcerer tasked with saving a baby from the forces of evil.