Domina Review: Family (Season 1 Episode 3)

Domina Season 3 Episode 3, “Family,” pushes the series over a decade into the future, recasts all its main characters with more age-appropriate versions, and finally gets into the meat of its story — but not before shaking up everything we thought we understood about the show and its characters in the process.

Kasia Smutniak and Matthew McNulty take over as the now-adult Livia and Gaius, who have both apparently morphed into even more serious political operators over the past decade, becoming Rome’s most powerful couple.

In all honesty, the recast is more jarring than I might have expected — Smutniak’s heavy accent is fairly distracting until you get used to hearing it, and though the series’ early episodes laid the groundwork for Livia’s love of the Republic, her sudden desire to restore the Roman Senate after spending the better part of a decade enjoying the power her husband wields over the city feels convenient, if nothing else. 

Plus, after finally feeling like I had some kind of a handle on who, exactly all these people are, this episode essentially sets us adrift again, aging up Livia, Octavia, and Scribonia’s kids and introducing them all as new characters in their own rights, even as more seemingly random Romans announce a variety of plots and new grudges. 

And, not for nothing, missing ten years of Gaius and Livia’s relationship is frustrating as all get out — we have no idea what their relationship is now or how they function together, all because Domina decided that wasn’t something worth showing us.

(Hearing Livia rattle off a bunch of exposition about how he’s a good husband she’s come to truly love over the years is not the same thing, show.)

Livia’s personal motivations are equally murky. Though she gives plenty of lip service to the idea of restoring the Republic, she ultimately does plenty of her husband’s dirty work, including coming up with the idea to have the Senate choose to bestow ultimate power on Gaius as what is essentially a bait and switch.

He’s clearly never really planning to step down should the plot fail, and despite Livia’s heartfelt pleas to her dead father’s ghost, it’s not entirely clear that she ever really wanted him to in the first place. 

Sure, she says she’s going to teach Gaius’ son to respect the Senate and revere the idea of the Republic, that she’s destroying Rome now so that it may be made great again later — I mean, again, it all just sounds very convenient.

(Not for nothing, but it’s clearly not an accident that both these scenarios leave Livia at the center of power, no matter who’s wielding it.)

And of course, her ultimate plan suffers a significant setback when she miscarries, for what is clearly not the first time. (And at what appears to be a fairly late stage in her pregnancy.) 

History tells us that Livia favored Tiberius above all her children and fought for his right to succeed her husband as Emperor later in life. Perhaps that’s also where we’re eventually headed with this, but Domina obviously has some work to do on that score, since this Livia doesn’t particularly seem to like either of her children much.

Though, given what we’ve seen of them here, it’s hard to blame her.

“Family” is at its worse when it’s focused on the next generation: Tiberius is quiet, moody, and regularly getting bulled by by Octavia’s adopted son Marcellus. This subplot somehow manages to involve everything from a purposefully murdered turtle to a fistfight between the teens that ultimately ends with Antigone losing it and literally fighting Marcellus herself. 

Octavia tries to threaten Livia into banishing Antigone, who may be a freedwoman but still generally gets treated like dirt because of her past as a slave and a prostitute. Livia, of course, refuses in expectedly colorful style, but it’s enough to make you wonder what, precisely, Antigone’s arc is meant to be here.

Surely she deserves a better story than fighting strangers over kids who aren’t even her own?

Stray Thoughts and Observations

• Agrippa has aged like a fine wine, just saying! 
• Did I laugh at Scribonia’s shady “I’ve been praying for you” comment to Livia at dinner after we saw her begging Proserpina and Pluto to send her a nasty miscarriage? Yes, yes I did. We love a woman who embraces how petty she is. 
• I’m assuming Tiberius’s deliberate turtle murder that closes the episode appears to be meant as a hint of the general madness and viciousness that runs through Livia’s bloodline. She’s the direct ancestor of both the Emperors Caligula and Nero, neither of whom are exactly known for not being deeply crazy. 
• Are we supposed to think Livia did kill her husband to get her sons back? That’s the rumor after all, and after this episode, I’d believe it of her. (Another unfortunate side effect of this episode’s twelve-year time jump is that we never see Livia struggling with missing her sons or how that loss impacted her — she’s just suddenly got them back again, as though her divorce never happened.)

What did you think of this episode of Domina? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Domina airs Sundays at 10 pm on Epix.

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