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Shadowhunters: The Mortal Instruments Season 01 Episode 01

Cassdandra Clare's masterpiece of Shadowhunter world was turned into a movie three years ago and it was a good movie. When I heard that the series would be transformed into a TV Series, I was so excited I could not wait another day without watching it.

So today is the day! I just watched Shadowhunters s01e01 and it was very disappointing. This series was supposed to be amazing. But instead, it was dull, humorless and a bit rushed.

For one, Clary, the protagonist character, who was portrayed by Katherine McNamara in the series wasn't what I'd imagined Clary would be. Her hair was too orange (Didn’t Clary have red hair?); and then Isabelle, why was she a Latina? Not only that, there are still many characters on the show that hasn’t been revealed yet, and they were not what we actually hoped for. We can get to them later.

So, the pilot starts on the scene where Jace, Alec and Izzy were hunting a demon who sells demon blood. While they were hunting, Jace walked into Clary which she responded by calling out to him and told him to watch where he was going. Jace was startled that Clary apparently could see him. Then the scene went back to eight hours earlier.

Clary was living her mundane life, worrying about getting into art academy, her eighteenth birthday, and having fun with her best friend, Simon, who clearly had a thing for her. But that day, in her eighteenth birthday, her life suddenly changed. She discovered that she’s been drawing magical symbol called runes unknowingly, that herself was part of something bigger, her mother was kidnapped, they were betrayed by Luke and now she was with this shadowhunter group. Jace took interest in her but Alec was the opposite, he despised the idea of something new. But to save her mother, they were her best chance.

With so many things to be discovered, it only took one lousy episode to cover it all. It feels like the introduction to the shadow-world was rushed into just forty minutes. If I never read the book or watched the movie, I would not finish this episode. People who watched this episode for the first time and never know anything about The Mortal Instruments will get confused by watching this. The episode moves so fast that it barely gives us – the watcher – to breathe or to wrap our head around it. It just goes and goes.