Spartacus: Vengeance (Season 2)Trailer I knew that going into
Spartacus: Vengeance would be an uphill battle. Pun not intended. When a series makes it mark with a lead actor that meets an untimely death in real life, it's nearly impossible to replace the character with a different actor. With
Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, the creator of the show was able to sidestep this issue by basically giving us an origin story that would take place years before the man himself is made known. But in
Vengeance, there is no getting around the fact that they will have to take this challenge head on and replace the irreplaceable
Andy Whitfield with
Liam McIntyre in the title role.
Having just watched the entire season in 2 days, I can say that he did the role justice. He was actually quite good, but the role is still
Andy's and no matter how great
Liam was, he was never going to exceed what he brought to the role. Ironically enough, my biggest issue with Vengeance wasn't the title role being replaced by another actor, but a 3rd tier character that had very little to do with the first two installments. I of course am referring to the character of
Naevia. The actress they got to replace the original
Naevia (Lesley-Ann Brandt) was horrible and totally miscast. She just stuck out like a sore thumb and there was zero chemistry between
Cynthia Addai-Robinson and
Manu Bennett who plays
Crixus. Did not like her one bit and she (the actor, not the character) became more and more irritating with each episode.
This season isn't bad by any stretch here, but to me it does pale in comparison to the two that came before this one. I still look forward to checking out the 3rd and final season and how it can possible survive some pretty big death scenes that came in the Season Finale. It just sucks that they killed off two of the best characters on the show in
Doctore/Oenomaus (Peter Mensah) and
Lucretia (Lucy Lawless), who was great again in this season as was
Ashur (Nick E. Tarabay) I particularly liked how they were able to bring in
Gannicus (Dustin Clare) to tie
Season 2 with the Mini-Series.
Vengeance is worth a
Rent for sure.