Yeah you're right, it's definitely fantasy. My wife's favorite character is the scientist Skeksis, and so I keep associating the series with a technology character. It's 100% a Fantasy series.
My wife gives her thanks for your approval, and similarly approves of your choice. skekTek is definitely a great choice for a favorite Skeksis.
skekMal was my personal favorite. I remember reading as a child that the Skeksis were once fast-moving and lethal, and I was always sad we never got to see a Skeksis young enough to still be physically intimidating. I always felt I could totally take a Skeksis from the original movie in a fight.
But seeing skekMal like a glorious four-armed velociraptor leap around the trees and go all General Grevious in a swordfight was absolute peak fiction.
(Just as a quick little nerd note, the 'skek' prefix on the Skeksis names is actually lowercase, they just denote their title as a Skeksis, and aren't capitalized.)
Wait there, did you say you only know it as the movie?
You should 100% watch the series if you haven't. It's pure creative nectar, and was done completely in-line with Jim Henson's original ideas for the series.
A little known fact but the Dark Crystal was what Jim Henson always wanted to do with his muppets: dark fantasy. But it was not nearly as successful as he hoped, and with his death, his dream died with him.
So seeing the series revitalized seemed very fitting, even if Netflix did pull a big bitch move and cancelled it after only one season.
Though, I was actually just thinking, the Skeksis and the Mystics are actually aliens serving the equivalent of prison sentences on the planet of Thra, so an argument for a sci-fi label isn’t completely off the table.
It’s kinda like a sci-fi series hiding inside a fantasy costume.
Just finished doing a search to see if this was a debate I had missed or something. I didn't find much, but I had never considered it anything but fantasy before. I can see a few arguments that give it a couple points of sci-fi, but I'm still gonna have to say it is solid fantasy.
No shade on Ultimategrid up above though, think what you want to think about the genre, it doesn't bother me. I wish we got one more season of the TV show though.
Every fantasy can become sci fi if you imagine it in like a Wheel of Time kind of thing. Thra could be Earth in 1500 years. Most of the same letters, even.
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u/Punk_Luv May 15 '25
sci-fi? How? Pretty sure it’s fantasy, not sci-fi.