Didn’t like: The waste of Gordie
Season three fleshes out Gordie Shaw (Michael Therriault), a minor character who went to high school with the late Rendell Locke (Bill Heck), but wasn’t part of his cool-kid friend group and therefore doesn’t know about magic. Gordie suddenly becomes a huge part of season three when it’s discovered there’s a key hidden inside him—and the gang has to venture into his head to find it. There, they face great peril while Gordie’s worst memories, including his traumatic experience coming out to his mother, play on a loop behind them. (Gordie’s queerness is never addressed beyond that, at least not that I noticed—other than the fact that he’s really into theater.) Both Carly and Gordie exist mostly as season-three plot devices that shape the actions of Locke & Key’s main characters, but Gordie—who gets horribly murdered by Gideon!—feels especially shoehorned in, then discarded when he’s no longer needed.
