The picture Chief of War paints of pre-colonial Hawai’i is beautiful, but it’s not rosy. There’s cruelty there, warfare with terrible weapons, kings with dreams of colonization and conquest. Women are subservient to men, a sad state of affairs that the castaway John Young tells his friend Ka’ahumanu has been the case everywhere he’s been in the world. In Hawai’i and the white man’s world, men tell themselves this is how God wants the world to be run.

As a battle-hardened war chief, fugitive, reverse-castaway, hunter-trapper, and refugee, Ka’iana has seen his share of brutality both at home and abroad. But nothing prepares him for what he finds the day he’s set to sail for home, carrying a cargo of guns with which he can overthrow the tyrannical, bloodthirsty King Kahekili whom he once served. 

Hunting for his missing friend Tony, he hears a baby crying from beneath a sheet of canvas. When he lifts up the flap, he finds people, including the baby, caged like animals. The sight fills him with a rage and disgust so apparent on actor Jason Momoa’s leonine face that it seems to slow time itself.

You can imagine how Ka’iana reacts when an angry slaver starts yelling at him for opening the tarp. Spanish soldiers save the bastard’s life and send Ka’iana running for his. While the war chief’s fellow Hawai’ian expat, Vai, convinces Captain Meares to wait for him before setting sail, and while Meares lies to the troops on his man’s behalf, he’s not about to spend the night sitting around. If Ka’iana doesn’t make it to the ship soon, he won’t make it at all.

But in keeping with the mythic sweep that writers Momoa, Thomas Pa’a Sibbett, and Doug Jung lend their take on actual history, Ka’iana is not about to shrug and move on. Rifle in hand, he strolls into a slave-labor sweatshop, kills every last guard, and sets every slave and captive free, Tony included. 

Given power and beauty by Momoa, Ka’iana’s wrath against these repulsive people and his messianic freeing of the slaves is a magnificent thing to behold here. It’s the kind of catharsis against easily dispatched villains that once seemed cheap, before villains just as cartoonishly racist took over our country for lack of Ka’ianas when we needed them. (Killing slavers and rapists also feels a bit like some kind of interfictional karmic make-good for the actions of Momoa’s breakout character, Game of Thrones’ Khal Drogo.)

But again, just because things are appalling abroad doesn’t mean they’re a picnic at home. The king of Hawai’i proper, the revered Kalani’ōpu’u, has died, setting up his grumpy son Keoua to rule at this pivotal moment in the kingdom’s history. But while he bequeaths the power of government to Keoua, the late king leaves the kingdom’s war god — a red, sharp-toothed likeness of the deity, affixed atop a staff — to the formidable Kamehameha.

Keoua is so outraged he knocks out one of his own teeth just to prove what a hard man he is and show that his period of mourning for his father is over. “Yours,” he warns Kamehameha’s chief advisor Moku, “is only beginning.” But while Kamehameha won’t relinquish the war god to the new king as this would have been against the old one’s wishes, nor will he make a preemptive strike against the throne, no matter how hard Moku and his other regional allies advise it.

It’s Ka’ahumanu who persuades Kamehameha that to sit around waiting for the Keoua to kill him is folly. But her husband has a secret. In an origin story with echoes of King Arthur and countless other mythic monarchs, Kamehameha proved he was the chosen one by flipping over the Naha Stone, “the immovable rock of the gods.” 

But it was a fortuitous mini-quake that shifted the ground beneath the stone so Kamehameha could flip it over at that precise moment that made the miracle possible. Try as he might, he hasn’t been able to replicate the feat. “The gods have gone silent,” he laments, clearly wrestling with real feelings of unworthiness. But when Ka’ahumanu explains that this is all the more reason to make the decision himself, it’s exactly what he needs to hear.

After presenting the god of war to his local shrine — it’s just one of countless epic images in the show, which uses the bright color of the Hawai’ian’s capes, dresses, and helmets against the green backdrop so effectively they ought to trademark it — Kamehameha informs his people of his decision. He will not attack Keoua. But if Keoua attacks them, Keoua is going to lose. 

‘But the war god is silent, my chief,” cries out one of his supporters. 

“That is why the decision is mine,” Kamehameha replies.

Chief Moku turns and looks at his daughter Ka’ahumanu, whom he forbade from involving herself in the matter; he knows these are her words coming from her husband’s mouth, but since she got the results he himself could not, how can he be anything but impressed?

Which is more or less how I feel about this show. Chief of War’s use of color and composition and its willingness to play the occasional trick with film grammar (there’s a quick fade/cut hybrid in this episode that knocked this TV critic back in his seat) are bold and impressive. Its willingness to go big — big images, big events, big proclamations, big emotions — feels very of the moment. Its cast is terrific, its use of the Hawai’ian language wholly unique. While I still yearn for a fantasy/historical epic that can shoot a city at night without resorting to a lot of blue and orange digital color grading, it was all done in service of Jason Momoa massacring like a dozen slavers, so it evens out. 

Tell the Shōgun and Game of Thrones fans in your life now: Chief of War is the real deal. 

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.