I had wanted to watch a deep psychological crime thriller, and Queen Mantis had been on my list for a while. The premise is interesting, and of course, I mean obviously, the very first thing that came to my mind was Clarice and Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. The cat-and-mouse game along with their bantering will never not get boring to me if done right. I think Queen Mantis, at the end of it all, is another one of those series that just exists in the space of mediocre. It feels right at home in a streaming place like Netflix, where it’s just another one of those shows you likely come across out of the blue, you watch it, and assuming you make it to the end, you move right on to the next. It’s not bad enough for you to talk really that much stink about it, but nowhere good enough for you to recommend it because, again, you’ll likely have forgotten it as soon as you’re done with it.

So there’s a copycat vigilante killer on the loose. The police force seemingly doesn’t put quite as much effort into solving it and so instead, they go into panic mode and immediately consult with the original serial killer captured 23 years ago, known as the Mantis. But of course, there is a demand that she is only willing to consult with her son, who hates her with a passion. I guess the viewers can take it from there. Veteran viewers will obviously be skeptical of the first couple of suspects they catch because this early on in the series, how can they possibly be the actual murderer? What else would the show go on? I do like that the show once again posses the question of whether a vigilante killer should get some slack or not. For better or worse, there are consequences to everything and Queen Mantis shows that.

Anyway, there’s not much to talk about, so I’ll just skip to the ending. The majority of the episodes do their job of just doing what they have to to move the plot along. Just for fun, I had guessed incorrectly about the end reveal. I had thought that out of nowhere, we were going to learn that the Mantis herself is not the actual biological mother of the detective. Of course, that would have been dumb, but hey, I had to entertain myself somehow. Instead, they went for the incredibly cliche route of child molestation. Chalk it up as another eye roll where I thought my eyeballs would just roll right off. Like, come on, guys. Why do so many end reveals have to be about sexual molestation of a child? My gosh, I have to hear it on the news in real life with all these slimy politicians, and I have to continue hearing about it in fictional novels, movies, and TV series as well. Humans are capable of inflicting so much horror and suffering, and yet these producers and writers can’t come up with something different other than child abuse? Come on! Seriously! That last episode showed likely one of the most incompetent hostage handoff I’ve seen in a while. The fact that they had zero snipers posted is just lazy.

I think the best part about the series is the actress playing the Queen Mantis herself, Go Hyun-jung. Her abilities to show off the various emotions required for her role made the show. Everything and everyone else was just okay. Thinking about it, the two extra male cops in the group (not the main dude) felt unnecessary. Not sure if they even did anything worthwhile in the whole series. As to once again highlight the incompetence of the cops, they had to, of course, set up a cliffhanger at the very last minute. The main chief detective gets whacked and mutilated (they did him wrong on this one), and who do the main female and male cops come crawling back to once again? That’s right, mommy Mantis. Again, come on! So, are they going to be doing season two? I did a quick search, but it doesn’t seem like it for now, which is fine by me.