- Yaga, a Canadian dark feminist mystery series based on Kat Sandler’s stage play, premieres October 23 on AMC+ with its first two episodes.
- Hudson Williams — who rose to fame in Heated Rivalry alongside Connor Storrie — plays a dual role as Henry and Logan, but the series gives him too little material to fully demonstrate his range.
- Despite a compelling cast including Carrie-Anne Moss, Noah Reid, and Clark Backo, Yaga struggles to fully realize its folkloric, feminist premise, leaving its mystery and witchcraft elements feeling more hollow than revelatory.
What Is Yaga About? A Small-Town Mystery Steeped in Slavic Folklore
Based on the stage play by Kat Sandler — who also serves as showrunner — Yaga draws viewers into the fictional small town of Whittock, where Henry Park, heir to a powerful fishery owner, has gone missing. Private investigator Rapp (Noah Reid) and local police detective Carson (Clark Backo) are paired — reluctantly, on Carson’s end — to get to the bottom of this mystery. What begins as a standard missing persons investigation soon becomes something darker and stranger. Chicken carcasses hang menacingly on doors. Bloody symbols mar crime scenes. Through it all, Rapp hears whispers of Baba Yaga, a legendary witch from Slavic folklore known for living in a house on chicken legs and flying around in a mortar and pestle.
The series opens with images of an unknown figure being burned at the stake, and each episode is bookended by a voiceover monologue from a wizened witchy figure — all but confirming that Henry Park’s disappearance is tied to the occult. It is an intriguing premise, one that blends procedural crime drama with feminist fable and folk horror. Unfortunately, execution proves to be Yaga‘s most persistent problem.
Hudson Williams Pulls Double Duty — But Gets Too Little to Work With
At the center of this witchy vortex is Williams’ Henry, who mostly haunts Rapp and Carson’s investigation in flashbacks, including a steamy podcast recording with intriguing professor Katherine (Carrie-Anne Moss), an expert in all things bone. Henry is not alone: Williams also plays Logan, Henry’s roommate, podcasting partner, and doppelganger. The production places Williams in a prosthetic nose and fake acne for the Logan role, and the result is a jarring trip to the uncanny valley.
A dual role should be rich territory for any actor to mine, yet neither Henry nor Logan receive enough screen time for Williams’ double turn to truly sink in. Henry is primarily a confident, if sleazy, charmer, while Logan is mostly presented as an awkward, almost wooden foil to that charm. Logan was not a character in the original stage play, and it shows in his thinness here. Yaga introduces a fascinating thread about Logan perhaps wanting to be — or maybe be with — Henry, but it rarely pulls it beyond the occasional unsettling sex scene. While onscreen intimacy can often be a great showcase of character dynamics, here, these scenes are often over too fast or accompanied by a voiceover that explains said dynamics without letting the actual performances breathe.
As the series unfurls, Henry and Logan become much more sinister figures. While the thought of Williams taking a villainous turn is an exciting one, his Henry and Logan don’t make particularly compelling villains because we know so little of them. This is a particular disappointment for a performer whose Canadian Screen Award-winning portrayal of Shane Hollander in Heated Rivalry — and that show’s runaway success alongside co-star Connor Storrie — demonstrated genuine charismatic range.
Carrie-Anne Moss, Noah Reid, and Clark Backo Are Underserved by the Script
Yaga‘s supporting leads do not tend to fare much better. Carrie-Anne Moss is slippery fun as Katherine, but too often she remains on the margins of the story. Backo and Reid’s buddy cop dynamic is punchy, yet frequently dragged down by Rapp’s incessant flirting. That most of the women in Whittock practically throw themselves at Rapp is one of Yaga‘s most infuriating features — as it happens again and again, these women’s advances bypass sexual empowerment and move straight into bewilderment.
The show’s supernatural scaffolding similarly underwhelms. Yaga‘s witchiness never truly sings. Too often, the series resorts to the same style of surreal fakeout dream sequences, where a stream of bloody feathers and foreboding masks blends into a shorthand for horror without truly scaring. The voiceovers, presented as coming from Baba Yaga herself, offer up platitudes about women who have been othered as witches, but they feel familiar to anyone who’s ever read a “we are the granddaughters of the witches you couldn’t burn” bumper sticker.
A Feminist Folk Horror That Never Casts the Right Spell
Yaga gestures out to interesting concepts, but ultimately, it never dives deep enough. As an examination of witchcraft as a conduit for female rage, it’s not angry enough. As an erotic thriller, it’s not titillating enough. As a mystery, its twists and turns are intriguing, but never quite captivating. The ingredients for success are there, but they never quite come together to cast the right spell.
Why This Matters
The arrival of Yaga on AMC+ is significant for several reasons beyond the series itself. It marks one of Hudson Williams’ first major post-Heated Rivalry projects, making it an early indicator of where his career trajectory is headed following that show’s breakout cultural moment. For showrunner and playwright Kat Sandler, the adaptation represents an ambitious leap from stage to prestige television — a transition that exposes both the strengths and limitations of expanding a contained theatrical work into a multi-episode format. The broader industry context is equally relevant: dark feminist folk horror has become an increasingly crowded genre, with audiences and critics demanding genuine depth alongside atmosphere. Yaga‘s relative shallowness in that space may limit its impact, even as its cast and central premise carry real potential. With two episodes debuting simultaneously, AMC+ will be watching closely to see whether word of mouth can build momentum for the remainder of the season.
Frequently Asked Questions
- When does Yaga premiere and where can viewers watch it?
- The first two episodes of Yaga premiere on October 23 on AMC+.
- Who is Hudson Williams, and what role does he play in Yaga?
- Hudson Williams is a Canadian actor who rose to prominence through his Canadian Screen Award-winning role as Shane Hollander in Heated Rivalry, which also starred Connor Storrie. In Yaga, Williams plays a dual role — Henry Park, a missing fishery heir, and Logan, Henry’s roommate and podcasting partner. The production uses a prosthetic nose and fake acne to differentiate the two characters.
- Is Yaga based on existing source material?
- Yes. Yaga is based on a stage play by Kat Sandler, who also serves as the television series’ showrunner. The character of Logan — one of Hudson Williams’ two roles — was not present in the original play and was created specifically for the screen adaptation.
