A breakout star, a different kind of show
Yaga is a Canadian production that gives Hudson Williams a co-starring role, and his recent success with Heated Rivalry is enough to earn him a with before his name in the credits. That is roughly where the parallels with the hockey-themed megahit stop. The witchy thriller, carried in the United States by the streaming service AMC+, works hard for the erotic charge and the understanding of sexuality that its predecessor achieved without strain, according to the review. Across eight episodes the result is frequently awkward without ever tipping into camp.[S1]
The show was adapted by creator Kat Sandler from her own play. It opens as a missing persons case built around Williams' Henry Park, a wealthy heir whose worried parents dispatch the family fixer Rapp, played by Noah Reid, to find him somewhere in rural British Columbia. The title signals the show's actual ambition: Sandler sets out to refashion the Baba Yaga legend of man-eating witches in huts on chicken legs for a contemporary setting. Slavic-language covers of pop standards foreshadow that project, a detail the review calls genuinely enjoyable.[S1]
Familiar ideas, thin execution
The review argues the series never develops a thought more probing than the notion that a witch is simply a person society has chosen to fear. That idea arrives more than a decade after works such as The Witch and American Horror Story: Coven explored similar territory with greater artistry. Other failures belong to Yaga alone: the review cites uneven pacing, misjudged casting and a shallow brand of feminism, concluding that viewers hunting for seasonal scares should look elsewhere.[S1]
The plot tries to generate tension through a triangle of sorts. Rapp learns that Henry and his lookalike roommate Logan, both played by Williams with colored contacts removed and a prosthetic nose added, were college students who shared an unusually intimate bond with their professor Katherine. Carrie-Ann Moss plays the anthropologist, nicknamed the bone lady for her scholarly fascination with ossified remains. Meeting Katherine in a hotel bar without knowing she will soon become a person of interest, Rapp attempts to flirt by requesting sexy facts about bones.[S1]
Chemistry, tone and a discordant mix
The review places little blame on Moss, who it says is essentially the only member of the ensemble to convey the grounded, seductive quality the show is reaching for. Rapp is another matter: Reid's portrayal turns him into a loudmouthed bro, and the effect he supposedly has on the town's women, Katherine among many others, is described as wholly baffling. At moments, the review notes, why Rapp is considered so attractive becomes a more urgent question than where Henry has gone.[S1]
A further clash separates the haunting atmosphere suggested by the scenery, with its fog-covered water and shadowed forests, from the buddy-cop exchanges between Rapp and Carson, a local police officer played by Clark Backo whom he taunts for being mannish or, worse in his eyes, gay. The review says the show cannot bridge the distance from such crude remarks to the eerie and metaphysical, so its elements collide instead of blending.[S1]
Provocation that curdles into crime
The review identifies a second overused archetype alongside the misunderstood witch: the wealthy man with a hidden appetite for sinister sex. As Rapp and Carson dig into what Henry and Logan have been doing, the shadow of Jeffrey Epstein falls over the series. The pair uncover house parties bathed in bisexual lighting and marked by the occasional chicken sacrifice. The review finds these details neither seductive nor revolting but nearly juvenile in their eagerness to shock, with the specifics of who sleeps with whom growing implausible and leaping from titillation to outright criminality almost instantly.[S1]
By the time the show reaches its expected reversals of perpetrator and victim, the hold it had on the audience is gone. The review says Reid's performance of Rapp's awakening, swinging from dismissive doubt to feverish conviction with almost nothing in between, becomes steadily less credible. It shares the blame with scripts that release information before building suspense. The review wonders whether horror dramas avoid brisk 30-minute episodes for a reason, while noting that a longer Yaga hardly appeals. The first two episodes are streaming on AMC+, with the rest arriving weekly on Fridays.[S1][S2][S3][S4][S5]
