‘House of David’ Season 2 Delivers The Bible Epic We All Need
(REVIEW) As a Christian boy growing up in the 90s, I loved God, but always thought there was a big hole in the Christian movies and TV shows that were made. My favorite movies and shows were ones about heroes — superheroes like Spider-Man or adventure heroes like Indiana Jones.
Yet stories like these were rarely part of Christian content, whether that was due to Christian discomfort with violence or discomfort with anyone being a hero in a Christian story but Jesus. This was always funny to me because I would read the stories from the Bible — adventure stories about David, Gideon, or Ehud — and think there was a lot of potential in there for just these kinds of stories.
“House of David” feels like that Christian boy finally got to make his dream project. The first season (which I reviewed before) was a high-quality sword-and-sandals fantasy epic that managed to stay faithful to biblical themes. And the second season premiere is even better than the first. The things that were good in the first season are good here, and the things that were weak in the first season — while they’re mostly still here — are substantially better. If this is a sign of things to come, then “House of David” may be one of the best pieces of Christian media ever.
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The show tells the story of the ascent of the biblical figure David, who eventually becomes the most renowned and celebrated king of Israel. Following David’s triumphant killing of Goliath at the end of its first season,
in Season 2, Israel nears collapse as Saul’s reign falters. David rises from shepherd to warrior, caught between loyalty and destiny, while the Age of Iron transforms warfare.
“House of David” is the flagship title of the newly launched “Wonder Project,” and the second season is the biggest launch title for its new subscription platform. A new entertainment brand founded by industry veterans Kelly Merryman Hoogstraten and Jon Erwin (co-director of “I Can Only Imagine” and “Jesus Revolution”), “Wonder Project” aims to produce and curate premium films and series for the faith and values audience.
In partnership with Amazon and MGM Studios, “Wonder Project” is launching a subscription service available on its own app or on Prime Video (with no need to have a Prime Video subscription to have a Wonder Project subscription).
In addition to originals like “House of David,” at launch the service will have more than 125 licensed titles and over 1,000 hours of hand-picked films and TV series across multiple genres—including “Sherlock,” “The Conners,” “The Sandlot,” “The Sound of Music,” “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” “The Mysterious Benedict Society,” “Pride & Prejudice,” “Jesus Revolution,” and more — available on Wonder Project on Prime Video.
Many programs have both TV-edited and original versions to give families more choices on how to watch.
This very big partnership launch between Erwin’s new company and Amazon shows just how much the faith-based film industry has changed. Hollywood studios have long known there was a market for faith-based content, but the quality of their material was considered so subpar that the bigger studios rarely partnered with them. This meant we got films about faith that didn’t resonate with most people of faith (“Noah,” “Silence”) and low-quality indie Christian films even most Christians didn’t like (“God’s Not Dead,” “Fireproof”).
Now, with Dallas Jenkins blowing everyone’s minds with “The Chosen” and Kingdom Story Company projects like “Ordinary Angels” getting great reviews, Amazon is willing to partner with people like Jon Erwin for a multi-season fantasy sword-and-sandals biblical epic like “House of David.” The confidence has paid off, as Season 1 captivated over 44 million viewers worldwide, premiering in the top 10 new series debuts in the U.S. to date, and reached #1 on Prime Video in the U.S.
It also shows how the audience that faith-based industry filmmakers are pursuing has changed. It wasn’t long ago that the almost exclusive audience for faith-based films was Christian moms, hence why the films all mostly resembled Hallmark movies.
But demographics in American Christianity are starting to change. Gen Z men now outnumber women going to church. And with them, the faith-based film industry is starting to open itself up to a variety of genres that traditionally have been made for men, like adventure, satirical documentary, and horror. “House of David,” “Nefarious,” “The Last Rodeo”, “Am I Racist?” and “The Forge” are recent examples. But the upcoming “Young Washington” and Mel Gibson’s “Resurrection of the Christ” show that these changes are likely to only become more persistent.
Nowhere is it clearer that “House of David” has embraced its new audience than in its first episode. “A Tale of Two Swords” opens with a glorious 40-minute epic battle that spans nearly the entire episode’s runtime. It’s a long do-or-die battle the likes of which call to mind scenes from “The Lord of the Rings” or “Gladiator,” with entire character arcs woven in to build up to the heroes’ victory.
While the sequence calls to mind other classic war scenes, it sets itself apart by embracing a stylized color aesthetic reminiscent of “Mad Max: Fury Road.” While “Fury Road” focused on intense oranges and blues, “David” does oranges and greens. This, combined with the Gandalf-coded Samuel praying on the mountainside for the grounded battles below, gives it a rare aesthetic like nothing you’ve seen before — something that represents the very particular shade of the “almost fantasy” biblical world they’ve built.
When the battle’s over, the show doesn’t miss a beat in picking up the other themes that were great about the first season: its relational-political intrigue and biblical themes. Saul and his family are still dealing with the inevitable fall of their house and David’s rise, as each side tries to either prevent it — not knowing who the successor is — or find a way to accomplish it without undue tragedy.
It’s the complexity of these characters, who all see themselves as the hero of the story, that the audience roots for. We wish Saul’s house didn’t have to fall. We root for David and Mychal even though we know that David’s rise will be tragic for their relationship, too.
The biblical themes, though, are what help it thread the needle between an inspiring hero story and a Shakespearean tragedy. “House of David” is a hero fantasy insofar as heroes do rise up and defeat evil. Yet that hero fantasy is conditional: God grants you the ability to be the hero. And if you refuse to acknowledge Him by disobeying Him, then He will take it away.
This makes “House of David” a kind of inverted “Game of Thrones” or “Dune.” Like them, it’s a deconstruction of the hero fantasy. But unlike them, which say the hero fantasy is a lie, “House of David” says it’s conditional on admitting your dependence on God. This is the kind of narrative dialectic that the Bible is complex enough to give us, and now Christian filmmakers are thoughtful and skilled enough to present.
A lot of the show’s previous weaknesses are also smaller in the new season. The show sometimes goes down rabbit trails to subplots where the relevance is unclear (Jonathan’s extended sickness and healing seem like an overly convoluted way to introduce a possible love interest). But they are far fewer and less perplexing than before. Likewise, David and Mychal are still two of the more bland characters in the series.
But David is becoming more interesting as they treat his annoying protagonist’s arrogance with more self-awareness as a potential character flaw. The show relies on some lazy hand-holding of the audience with voiceover and flash-forwards that upset the pacing. And some characters conveniently avoid death in order to keep them around for future episodes. But these are fairly easily overlooked compared to the show’s virtues.
When I was young, I longed for stories that showed me what being a hero looked like under God’s gaze. The “House of David” Season 2 premiere continues the show’s theme that being a hero under God’s gaze is possible, but only if you serve God and not yourself. I’m glad that kids growing up now will have a show that teaches them that — because we need to know that more than ever.
The second season of “House of David” is available exclusively with a Wonder Project subscription on Prime Video in the U.S.
Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at josephholmesstudios.com.