The four standalone episodes leave the main offices to explore other people whose lives have been influenced by the game.
If there's one thing Apple TV+'s Mythic Quest loves, it's a detour. This has been true since the first season, which took a mid-season break for a one-off episode about two characters we didn't know and haven't seen since. It's continued in subsequent seasons, which dedicated entire episodes to detailing the backstories of the main cast members or catching up with a supporting character we hadn't seen in years.
Creators: Ashly Burch, John Harris, Katie McElhenney
Stars: Trisha Simmons, Shalita Grant, Annamarie Kasper
Now it extends to the series' first spinoff, Side Quest. As its amusing title might suggest, it's essentially a Mythic Quest, which is nothing more than those standalone chapters, which move away from MQ headquarters to explore the other corners of the show's universe, one quirky story at a time. But it turns out a detour is only a detour when there's a pre-established path to stray from. Without one, it's just an aimless, if largely enjoyable, jaunt.
Created by Mythic Quest veterans Ashly Burch, John Howell Harris, and Katie McElhenney, Side Quest begins in a place that will be familiar to fans of its predecessor. The premiere, "Song and Dance," is the most distinctly Mythic Quest installment of the season's four half-hours, to the point that it feels less like the start of a new project than a leftover segment from the previous one.
It centers on a character we already know (Phil, the ever-harassed art director played by Derek Waters) and features a cameo from an existing protagonist (Ian Grimm, played by Rob McElhenney, who harasses Phil with increasingly unreasonable demands). Plot-wise, it's another variation on the tired "MQ employee has no sense of work-life balance" formula. It even connects directly to the main Mythic Quest series by showing us the flip side of a phone call we'd already seen mentioned a few weeks earlier in that series.
But the fact that it opens with Phil on vacation with his beautiful, patient, but increasingly frustrated girlfriend (Anna Konkle), rather than at the office, is a subtle but crucial distinction. While a typical Mythic Quest story arc might see an employee's workday derailed by their personal issues, this decision subtly reframes the dynamic, so that work becomes the thing that affects the aspects of Phil's life that truly matter to him. It's the opening line for what will become a recurring thesis for Side Quest: the idea that life could be more than just this game.
Along those lines, the third installment, "Fugue," presents another tale of an artist nearly destroyed by her devotion to her career: this time, cellist Sylvie (Annamarie Kasper), who lets her own perfectionism get the better of her after landing her dream job with the Mythic Quest touring orchestra. Parts two and four focus on the general public, visiting fans, but focus less on their passion for the game than on the opportunity it presents to connect with others.
While the overall themes don't vary much, the styles do. Side Quest's anthology structure—none of these self-contained story arcs have anything to do with the others, and with the exception of "Song and Dance," they have little connection to the main Mythic Quest storyline—gives it the freedom to experiment with form and tone, to a pleasingly varied effect.
The fourth installment in this quartet, "The Last Raid," follows Team Dab Queef, a group of high school friends reunited for a long-awaited gaming session. With faint echoes of Mythic Quest's 2020 hit "Quarantine," it plays out entirely onscreen: we primarily see in-game footage of avatars fighting monsters while players argue over headsets, only occasionally showing their real faces in video chat. The plot becomes a testament to the power of these digital spaces to bring people together, but also to their limitations: in the end, despite the efforts of team leader Devon (Van Crosby), not even the pull of a virtual bar can keep a group of friends who have been drifting apart in real life together.
And the second episode, "Pull List," feels so unique that it could very well be a secondary pilot for another Mythic Quest spinoff. Written by Leann Bowen and Javier Scott and directed by Mo Marable, it's a casual comedy set in a comic book store owned by the dedicated but burned-out Janae (Shalita Grant).
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