Apple TV+ comedy Mythic Quest hits the end of season three this week with a bittersweet and very funny episode. Ian must fix the rift between himself and Poppy. David must regroup from a loss, and Jo’s got just the ticket (though maybe so do Ian and Poppy). Plus, Dana, Brad and Jo need a new challenge.
I cannot stress how much I need this show’s creative team to crank out new seasons more quickly. I do not want to go another two years without checking back in with the Mystic Quest crew. A fine season comes to a very lovely ending.
Mythic Quest recap: ‘Buffalo Chicken Pizza’
Season 3, episode 10: In the season three finale, entitled “Buffalo Chicken Pizza,” Poppy (played by Charlotte Nicdao) is beside herself. Grim Pop is out of money, her game is a bust, and she has run out of energy and confidence. Dana (Imani Hakim) goes to Ian (Rob McElhenney) for help. He wants to, but he doesn’t know how. Ever since their fight, he hasn’t known what to do with himself. He isn’t sure he knows how to fix the company
David (David Hornsby) is also in a funk. The gaming company and the studios are no longer interested in making the Mythic Quest movie. There’s been a drop in players lately, which makes them less confident in the game. Jo (Jessie Ennis) has an idea that might help him on the road to recovery: Fire her. Maintain the facade that he’s in power and not afraid of making big decisions. If it looks like he’s firing the problem with the company, maybe it’ll restore confidence in him.
Jo makes a meal of her exit (Ennis’ performance is wonderful here), and it works. The rest of the staffers gets back to work with fear in their eyes. David, panicking, decides to hear out the whole office’s ideas about what the next step for the company should be — which is a mistake, because everyone’s ideas are terrible.
Everything’s changing …
Brad (Danny Pudi) is similarly feeling disaffected. He’s been paroled finally and fully and can now return to the private financial sector. The trouble is, he doesn’t know what to do with himself now. He turned Rachel (Ashly Burch) from a socialist into a slavering capitalist in a matter of weeks. Where’s the real challenge for someone with his talents of coercion and destruction?
This obviously throws her for a loop. She tells Dana, who can’t fully join in on her celebration because her own career is going nowhere. Dana’s concerned that the company’s not going nowhere. And, even if it could, Poppy and Ian aren’t gelling. Rachel gives Dana permission to resign from Grim Pop, and she runs into Jo and Brad in the elevator. They all instantaneously agree to go into business with each other.
Love and pizza
Ian finally confronts Poppy, presenting her with the slice of buffalo chicken pizza he couldn’t get her for lunch in the second episode. He tries to get her to see that the way things are is the way things should be at Grim Pop. He can’t exactly explain it, but he thinks ultimately that they are where they’re supposed to be.
Then he says something she wasn’t expecting. “I love you, you love me,” he says. “No matter what happens, our relationship is the most important part.”
She tries to say she loves him, too, but he doesn’t quite listen. So she stops him.
“Eat it,” Poppy says. She wants him to eat the buffalo chicken pizza, to prove he can meet her halfway. He hems and haws, but he does it.
Then it hits them — the way to save everyone. They take the Playpen software and fuse it to the Mythic Quest software, to enable players to make their own expansion. Thus it is that they go back to Mythic Quest just as Dana, Brad and Jo decide to create a company that will be in active competition with them.
Another fantastic season of Mythic Quest in the can
Photo: Apple TV+
At a certain point, what can you even say? Mythic Quest is a great show with an iron-clad emotional core hiding beneath a perfectly easy comic topsoil. I just love being here — I love these characters, these performances. And I like that, despite the season ending with a basic reversal of last season’s finale, I still can’t wait to see what happens next. Indeed maybe the show should just keep circling back around its own plot structure over and over again. That way there’d be no messing with the basic ingredients, which are all delicious.
I’m glad the show pulled back a little from the tenderness of the Poppy and Ian relationship. I’m not convinced the show should make Poppy and Ian more than co-workers. And I think me tensing up at the prospect of their confessions of love for each other meaning romantic love should be read as a sign that it’s a bad idea.
I’ve got two reasons: A) Network TV has too many of these and B) Their friendship is so beautiful and their support of each other should be for something other than romantic longing. But I also think the Mythic Quest writers are smart enough to know all this. They haven’t faltered yet, and I’m loving every second of this show. More now, please. I’m waiting impatiently.
★★★★☆
Watch Mythic Quest on Apple TV+
You can now watch the first three fantastic seasons of Mythic Quest on Apple TV+.
Rated: TV-MA
Watch on: Apple TV+
Scout Tafoya is a film and TV critic, director and creator of the long-running video essay series The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Film Comment, The Los Angeles Review of Books and Nylon Magazine. He is the author of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Form of Tobe Hooper, the director of 25 feature films, and the director and editor of more than 300 video essays, which can be found at Patreon.com/honorszombie.
