‘Robin Hood’ Episode 3 Recap – Is This All Too Serious?

When I said that the premiere of MGM+’s new take on Robin Hood risked missing the point of what made the character fun in the first place, I was half joking. But Episode 3, “No Man Can Hide Forever”, doesn’t do the show any favours by introducing more Merry Men, none of whom are especially merry. While I can appreciate that the horrors of Norman occupation weren’t exactly happy-clappy fun times for the subjugated Saxons, I think the point about what works for this character and what doesn’t holds true, even though his hour works just fine on its own terms.

Needless to say, following his murder of the garrison captain – the one that Priscilla was having it away with; a lot of these characters look pretty similar – Rob is now a wanted man. Everyone, including the Sheriff, totally buys into the idea that Rob was hunting Normans as revenge for his father’s execution, which isn’t quite what happened, but is as near as makes no difference. Priscilla tries to make the case to her father that capturing and executing Rob is a matter of tremendous importance for Norman honour. The Sheriff isn’t quite buying that, given how her own dalliances risk bringing the family name into disrepute, but he takes the point about the bounty either way.

In all this, the Sheriff sees an opportunity. Marian’s father, the Earl of Huntingdon, is on the hook for Rob’s actions as far as the Bishop of Hereford is concerned, since the way he did away with Rob’s father was virtually guaranteed to radicalise him. Since the Sheriff is one of many local Norman lords, if he’s the one to apprehend Rob and publicly execute him as a warning to any other Saxons thinking about rebelling against their oppressors, it’ll help him consolidate power. That’s a win-win as far as he’s concerned, but it means bringing Rob in alive, which is complicated by the fact that the Earl is trying to claim the bounty for himself so that he can stop the Bishop from demanding recompense over how the matter was handled in the first place.

Rob, then, is forced to flee deeper into Sherwood to avoid the manhunt, and it’s there that he runs into the Miller siblings, Ralph, Drew, and Henry. Henry is mute and has some unspecified mental illness that causes him to regularly indecently expose himself to passers-by, which is what led the three of them to be banished from the comfort of their home in the first place, and Ralph is secretly a woman who is disguised as a man, a reveal that made me chuckle since she has done such a poor job of it that I never suspected her of being a man in the first place. Either way, this is the beginning of Rob’s band of not-so-merry men, but there’s still a key player missing…

Robin Hood Episode 3’s version of Little John is fine by me. Here, a bounty hunter who believes he can commune with forest spirits, he’s introduced pursuing the bounty on Rob’s head but then does a face turn when he’s told by a pagan deity that Rob is now beloved of the forest and must be protected. Something tells me this might be connected to the obvious trauma in Little John’s past, which involves having gotten a taste for killing by offing his murderous, abusive father, and continued the habit ever since. You could make the argument – and I’m going to, right now – that Little John becomes a staunch ally of Rob a tad too quickly for the transition to be believable, but he’s also a giant dude who can throw Normans around, so his presence is welcome nonetheless.

More time is devoted to Marian’s new life in Westminster, where she is serving at the behest of Queen Eleanor, who considers the vows of marriage to be rather flexible. But it becomes clear virtually immediately that Marian has been headhunted by Eleanor for a secret, specific mission, the details of which we haven’t been made privy to yet, but that will doubtlessly involve the Sheriff of Nottingham and Priscilla, given her proximity to both. I can imagine Marian being sent back to Nottingham sooner rather than later to try and get in their good graces, and Priscilla probably deserves the fate, since she was very quick to throw Marian under the bus when she heard about Rob going rogue. Something to keep an eye on.

Something else to keep an eye on is the utterly untenable situation occurring back in Nottingham. When the Huntingdons set up camp near Rob and his new allies, one of his sons, Aaron, gets carried away and heads deeper into the woods to look for Rob himself. Unfortunately for him, he finds him and takes an arrow in the chest from Ralph for his efforts. The Earl arrives just in time to see his son snuff it, which isn’t good for the vibes. It also isn’t good for his relationship with the Sheriff, since he swears revenge on Rob despite the Sheriff’s pretty clear instruction to capture him alive. You can see how all this is going to go wrong sooner rather than later, I feel.

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