Willow’s End-Credits Music Is Truly Atrocious, An Insult To Fans New And Old

There’s a scene in the new Disney+ Willow fantasy series when Willow says to his slow-learning pupil, Elora Danan, that he knows magic is buried deep inside her.

“Very deep,” he says with a grimace.

That’s how I feel about Jonathan Kasdan’s sequel series to the wonderful 1988 Ron Howard film. Created by George Lucas, Willow wasn’t a huge hit at the time but it combined all the good bits of Star Wars and Lord Of The Rings and won over the hearts of a cult following—myself included.

I know I speak for many (er, a small niche group of superfans) when I say this, but I was more excited for Willow than just about any other TV show this year, including The Rings Of Power and House Of The Dragon.

There’s a good TV show buried inside Willow. Very deep.

One of the most striking and obvious problems with the show is its bizarre choice of tone. Half the cast is comprised of glib teenagers cracking bad jokes that feel straight off the CW. The dialogue is bogged down with bizarre modern vernacular and phrases like, “You’re not the boss of me, princess!”

It’s . . . extremely off-putting. And nowhere is this tonal calamity more apparent than in the end-credits music. Modern rock songs kick on as the final scene fades and the credits roll. I don’t know about you, but when I’m watching an epic fantasy I no more enjoy hearing the word “like” used in its modern usage—“She was like this totally like gorgeous princess”—than I do hearing this directly after a massive character reveal:

Oh, Elora Danan is back! She was hidden away for twenty years to protect her from the forces of evil and now guess who’s back. A little on the nose much?

Who is your audience here, Willow producers? This feels like some Disney daytime teen comedy-drama more than a return to the adventures of Willow and Madmartigan. Back then, James Horner’s score was one of his best ever, rivaling anything in Star Wars.

Horner based the Willow theme song on Mari Stanke Le, a Bulgarian harvest song. When Omni Music released the 350-page score for Willow, it included on its back cover this description of Horner’s process for scoring the film:

The story of Willow stemmed from the mind of legendary filmmaker, George Lucas. He enlisted the directing talent of Ron Howard. James Horner was given the task of creating the music, and while relatively young, his reputation was gaining respect in Hollywood in the 1980s. Willow was a creative breakthrough for not only the composer, but also the visual effects team, who pioneered the early use of computer technology. Nearly every possible dramatic element is represented through the music, whether it be adventure, romance, fantasy, or the otherworldly. He created music for epic moments with as much care as those of tender reflection.

Horner instinctively knew that the musical landscape would need to be a familiar one to Western audiences. Yet, the story, while seeming to take place in medieval times, existed in an alternate land where witches and evil sorcery existed. To accomplish this, Horner anchored the score with a traditional-sounding orchestra, and layered on top of it the sounds of various pan pipes, didgeridoo, hammered dulcimer, the South American quena, and also an instrument from the Renaissance period known as a shawm, an early double-reed precursor to the oboe.

With this musical palette at his disposal, as well as conjuring memorable themes and motives, Horner was able to create an original sound for the film Willow. It was the highest budget for a motion picture score at the time, and Horner put it to great use. It included the King’s College Choir of Wimbledon, 2 Alpine horns, no fewer than 40 different percussion instruments, and the shakuhachi, the use of which would influence many other contemporaries to include in their own film scores.

The music in the Willow TV series sometimes pays homage to Horner’s score, but it is—like the show itself—mostly bland and generic and, it should be noted, used much too often (almost constantly). Overuse leads to less impact on the viewer. And then, in the end, instead of oboes and violins and hammered dulcimers, we get Metallica or a punk ballad.

I’ll have more to say about other elements this show fails at in separate posts. For now, my only hope is that Disney recognizes what an insult to fans this horrible, disastrous creative choice is and removes altogether out-of-place modern rock songs from the end-credits of future episodes. The Rings Of Power was a terrible show but at least it had the decency not to assault our ears at the end of every episode.

Read my spoiler-free review of the first few episodes of Willow here. Check out my video review below:

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