Now that all three parts of internet supervillain musical Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog have aired, the web is buzzing with views on that heart-breaking conclusion. We won’t spoil things for those of you who’ll now have to wait for the DVD release of Joss Whedon’s action opus, other than to say that the final act took a devastating twist as Dr Horrible sought to defeat smarmy superhero Captain Hammer to win the love of kind-hearted homeless shelter worker Penny.
Dr. Horrible has been an enormous success all around the world – topping the iTunes download list in the States, the website posting 200,000 hits an hour, and the server crashing last Tuesday when 1,000 people tried to access the first part at the exact same second. Dr Blog Bot interviewed co-creators Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoe, who were thrilled by the musical’s success and apologised for some of glitches that faced international viewers. They also revealed that there are plans to make Dr. Horrible available internationally on iTunes, and that the soundtrack, along with the bonus-packed DVD release, are both in the pipeline. And that (musical) director’s commentary might give us some explanation for the devilish conclusion…
My initial shock at the turn of events – and the fact that there was no get-out-of-jail-card happy ending twist – soon subsided when I realised that Joss never pulls his punches. In the Buffy-verse, when people die they stay dead – Joyce and Tara in Buffy, Wash in Serenity, even Cordy in Angel (obviously we’ll ignore Buffy herself, here). Unlike the second series of Heroes, where characters were killed off to dramatic effect only to be reincarnated moments later, Joss presents a harsh, real world where the ones we love can be ripped from us and every action has a consequence. Look at the less-than-cheery sixth season of Buffy as an example – there was no Big Bad villain to beat in the end, instead the series’ bad guys were Buffy and the Scoobies themselves, their selfish, increasingly directionless lives and actions culminating in a near-apocalypse.
In the Sing-along Blog, Dr Horrible fulfilled his dream of becoming a recognised bad guy only after his foolish misdeeds caused terrible tragedy, ripping out whatever humanity was left in him – a shocking act of violence turned him into a fully fledged villain (not unlike Willow in season six Buffy) rather than the lame, wannabe we met at the start of the show.
So what’s next? A sequel has been mooted, so perhaps can Dr Horrible can redeem himself – as could the sniveling wreck of Captain Hammer. Joss and the crew will be at the San Diego Comic-Con later in the week, so perhaps more will be revealed then. And you might still have time to post a question for Joss to answer when the Washington Post interviews him on Monday. In the meantime, I’ll be splashing out on a fetching Captain Hammer t-shirt.
