Raising Dion is one of Netflix’s new series that came out in October, and I pretty much binge-watched all the episodes in two different sittings. This show took me by surprise. Before I saw some mention of it on my twitter timeline, I’d never actually heard of it, and boy I am glad that I gave it a try. Raising Dion was a great show. It had a great diverse cast of endearing characters. And while it had superpowers and supernatural elements, it was well balanced with the everyday aspects of a single mother trying to raise her young son in modern times with a villain who always seemed to be lurking at the edge of the next storm.
From the beginning, there was the mystery of how Dion got his powers. They were extraordinary, but they were also somewhat wild and hard for him to control. But I actually liked the angle they took with Dion’s character. He was allowed to be just a kid, and it is part of what made his character so engaging. It also set him apart from characters like Eleven from Stranger Things (there were a couple of references to Stranger Things in Raising Dion; I see what you did there, Netflix). By contrast his mother, Nicole Warren, had to be mature. She had to take the lead, because she didn’t have a choice. She was a widow after the death of her husband, Mark, and the show handled that quite well. It was never portrayed as being easy, even though Nicole had family and friends in the area. She dealt with things like trying to find and maintain a job—when scheduling interfered with things she needed to do for her son—as well as putting her son into a new school. Those little details of the ordinary day-to-day stuff, was a great contrast to the supernatural elements in the show.
Speaking of the supernatural elements, I liked how they were done in the show. Most of the setting where the show took place was urban, kind of city-like but also like a suburb, nothing really special about it. So when the supernatural aspects came in to play, it contrasted sharply with everyday life for the characters, which is part of what made it memorable. There were also limitations to what Dion could do, and since he was a kid, it sometimes manifested in childish and impulsive ways. But since he was a kid, and the show established that from the first episode, it was in-line with his character.
However that wasn’t all Raising Dion had to offer. As the show progressed, a few more mysteries cropped up here and there. Some of them had to do with what happened before the current timeline of the show—like what really happened to Mark—and I liked how it was all incorporated together.
Overall, Raising Dion is probably one of my favorite shows on Netflix to date. The end of the first season was satisfying enough…for now. I won’t reveal much about it, but I will say that the end posed some interesting questions about what would be ahead for the characters—so there was definitely enough potential for at least another season.
Have you watched Raising Dion? If so, let us know what you thought about it in the comments below. If not, does it seem like something you’d watch?
Synopsis from Goodreads...
