Childhood’s End — Satan Holding Children’s Hands

“There is no need to be afraid?” Okay, the question mark is ours, added to Karellen’s sentence. But there’s no doubt humans are conditioned to be afraid of certain things, and the costume designers of Syfy’s Childhood’s End clearly know what those things are. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have made the Overlords — the apparently peaceful but still terrifying Earth invaders — look exactly like our deep-brain archetype of Satan.

Was it the wings? Perhaps you weren’t ready. ? ?? #ChildhoodsEnd pic.twitter.com/XDlSTnpAU1

— Childhood’s End (@ChildhoodSyfy) December 15, 2015

Night one of the three-part series revealed the natural appearance of Karellen, the Overlords leader, and the visceral reaction to seeing him in the raw — in all his winged Beelzebub-esque glory — tells everything. This is just not who we want holding hands with our kids. (Game of Thrones veteran Charles Dance is remarkable in the role.) And if it’s not the wings, maybe it’s the horns? The series, which has taken more than 60 years to become the visual spectacle that SyFy presents over three nights (December 14-16), is based on the science fiction novel by genius Arthur C. Clarke. Whether things that look like Satan must ultimately cause satanic disruption and chaos, or whether that’s caused by people who look more like us — that is the question, as Hamlet might say.