Jason Momoa Has Never Been Cooler Than In ‘Chief of War’ Episode 1

Chief of War is a very serious and passionately rendered show about real history and indigenous representation and storytelling, but it’s also a mainstream series with a Hollywood megastar lead streaming on Apple TV+, so in that context the best way of determining whether it’s for you is how you feel about the following: In the first five minutes of Episode 1, a nearly naked Jason Momoa wrestles a shark.

There’s a lot more going on besides this, obviously, including beautiful location photography, impeccable production design, a hint of supernaturalism, and some epic scenes of conflict that make one wonder how much the budget was. But it’s undeniable that a lot of Chief of War‘s premiere is devoted to making Momoa look cool. He smoulders directly to the camera. He runs in slow motion. He catches spears. And he’s morally unshakeable, which is no doubt going to be important in a story that hinges quite considerably on pretty appalling, self-serving actions. Momoa is the quintessential good guy, and you’re going to see more of him in this — quite literally — than you probably expected.

Momoa’s playing Ka’iana, the former War Chief of the kingdom of Maui, one of the four ever-bickering kingdoms that comprised pre-unification Hawaii at the end of the eighteenth century, which is when the show is set. Ka’iana abandoned his army and his King, Kahekili, to hide out in Kaua’i, another of the kingdoms, with his immediate family, which includes his wife Kupuohi, Kupuohi’s sister Heke, and fellow warriors Namake and Nahi.

Ka’iana had his reasons for going AWOL, which are teased out throughout Chief of War Episode 1. To summarize, Kahekili is a self-serving warmongering maniac who cares only about securing glory for himself, and Ka’iana grew tired of it, especially when his endless conquering cost the life of Ka’iana’s father. For this reason, he’s reluctant to go back to Maui, even when he’s summoned at Kahekili’s behest for a meeting of some obvious importance. Out of a sense of duty, though, he eventually acquiesces, which leads quite quickly into a massive amount of utter chaos.

After messing up the new top warrior, Nui, for basically no reason whatsoever other than to establish Ka’iana’s tough guy bona fides, King Kahekili lays out the particulars. According to the seers, Maui’s future involves being conquered by the kingdom of O’ahu, which, despite having only a timid boy-king named Hahana, is nonetheless preparing to move against Maui under the subtle control of a devious High Priest. What’s more is that Ka’iana was mentioned by the seers by name as being integral to the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy, so it’s strongly implied that his tagging along isn’t for the benefit of Kahekili but all of the islands themselves.

Ka’iana still isn’t convinced, so Kahekili meets with him privately to show him how the O’ahu High Priest desecrated the bones of his father. Ka’iana also communes with a semi-supernatural prophetess named Taula, who advises him to “take his father’s hand”. He interprets this to mean picking up his war club and smacking it around the head of O’ahu’s High Priest, so he agrees to lead some men on a daring raid of the High Priest’s temple, prompting Hahana’s surrender and minimizing bloodshed. Kahekili likes the plan.

Cue the first big action sequence of Chief of War, which is mightily impressive in terms of its scale, even if it’s sometimes difficult to tell what’s going on because everyone is dressed the same (which is to say barely dressed at all). It’s very bloodthirsty, too, and Ka’iana sometimes does that thing from See where he wraps his weapon all the way around someone’s throat to kill them as brutally as possible. He was doing it because he was blind in that, so one assumes he’s just doing it for fun here. Either way, it’s pretty alpha. Momoa is so good at playing crazy hulking outdoorsmen.

Anyway, this all goes terribly wrong because Kahekili predictably doesn’t follow the plan. Instead, he turns up on the beach and starts clubbing literal children to death like Anakin in the Jedi Temple, marching all the way to the sacred ground of the Temple of Refuge, where he instructs his men to massacre everyone present, burn the place down, and ceremoniously execute the young king. Needless to say, Ka’iana, who realizes at the same time as the audience that Kahekili has thoroughly conned him into conquering a neighboring kingdom for no reason whatsoever, is fuming. Whatever he decides to do next, I’m pretty confident he’ll look cool doing it.

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