'Helstrom' Episode 1: Daimon and Ana carry hell around with them in the form of their past childhood traumas
"Hell is not somewhere you go, it's something you carry around with you." With 'Helstrom', Marvel made its move into the darker parts of its universe. After what seems like a hellishly long wait, the show is now streaming on Hulu. Deviating from the comic-book source material, we meet estranged siblings Daimon (Tom Austen) and Ana Helstrom (Sydney Lemmon).
In the comics, Hellstrom is the most powerful in his own realm of hell, as his power is nearly infinite. Outside his dimension, he has strength, agility and destructive magic at his disposal. And if that isn't enough, he has a trident that's made of netheranium that gives him power. Moreover, he has the power of 'soulfire', which can burn people's souls. His sister Satana, is just as powerful.
But that's not the case here: the two siblings Daimon and Ana, apart from their surnames, have little in common with their comic-book origins apart from the actual hell they carry around with them. The first episode of the show sets the dark tone and gives tantalising hints about their disturbed childhoods and horrors they have witnessed together.
It has left them so scarred that even their relationship is fractured to the point that Ana refuses to visit her own hometown till the end of the episode. On the surface, Daimon is a snark-fest of a human who gives mean jibes to others. But at his core, he is just as broken and vulnerable, and this weakness comes whenever he sees his mother — who is really not his mother anymore, as she is possessed, with only a few seconds of sanity to spare.
Twenty minutes into the first episode, Daimon has an emotional conversation with his mother, who is lying in a fetal position on the floor, as he brings up an old childhood memory. She almost turns to him but the demon inside her has more power. At the end of the episode, once again, she has a brief moment of clarity.
As Daimon's colleague Gabriella discovers, both Daimon and Ana witnessed some particular horrors in their childhoods, as their father was a serial killer who had even abducted Ana at one point. There's more to be uncovered about their lives, but this shows that the real demons in their childhoods were their own guardians. Their childhood traumas are their horrors, perhaps more so than anything else.
'Helstrom' is currently streaming on Hulu.
