A Series of Unfortunate Events, after two wonderfully melancholy seasons, managed to stick the landing in ways to both surprise and satisfy new and old fans.  Season 3 was easily the best of all the seasons with its new, faster pace, expanded mysteries, fresh and old faces, and deepened themes.  The acting was top notch, with Patrick Warburton and Neil Patrick Harris as the standouts, both portraying more depth with their characters than ever before.  Bo Welch has produced some of his best work on this show with his wacky set design, and this season is just as great as ever, most notably that of the Hotel Denouement.  Overall, this season was incredibly horrendous, magically horrifying, and brilliantly dark.

The Netflix series keeps the story and characters intact while changing minor aspects to make the viewing experience fresh for fans of the book series.  Some of the biggest changes include the lack of Captain Widdershins, the early deaths of Hugo, Colette, and Kevin, Count Olaf’s entire troupe leaving Mount Fraught, and the very end of The End.   Captain Widdershins in the books was a very morally ambiguous character, as he performs several questionable acts that put people in danger, even though he was on the fire fighting side of V.F.D.  His absence in the adaptation takes this away, but it allows for Fiona to seem more ambiguous in her motives, and for her to step up to become a more complex and dynamic character.  It also did away with Widdershins disappearance after the children return from the Gorgonian Grotto, which was always confusing in the books for the wrong reasons, so it was a welcome change.  Count Olaf’s original troupe also benefitted from the changes made.  In the books, they were fairly plain and not particularly interesting, at least in comparison to the adaptation, and several of them even end up dead, including the Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender and the Bald Man with the Long Nose.  In the Netflix series they are much more comedic and developed with their own personalities, and it is much more obvious that they are not as wicked as Count Olaf, making their leaving mean much more.  In the books it is just the Powder-Faced Women who leave, but in the adaptation it is all of them except for the Hook-Handed Man.  It is then revealed in The End that they went on to become performers, a satisfying ending for each of them.  They were people who did wicked things because they were caught up with the wrong people, but they weren’t truly wicked, just like everyone in the series.

Old fans of the series will be surprised by the amount of questions that are answered in this adaptation, I know that I was.  In the books, we never learn what was in the sugar bowl, what caused the schism, who killed Olaf’s parents, or if the Baudelaires even made it back alive.  All of these questions are answered in the adaptation.  The sugar bowl contains a cure for the Medusoid Mycelium, the theft of the sugar bowl and murder of Olaf’s father caused the schism, which were both committed by Beatrice, and the Baudelaire’s make it back to the mainland safely with Beatrice.  The new ending is also much happier, which is much more palatable for a mainstream audience, as we see Fiona and Fernald most likely finding their stepfather, Quigley reuniting with his siblings, and Beatrice retelling the story to Lemony.  All of these answers are satisfactory in their own right, but I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t disappointed that they were answered.  The ending of the books is left much more ambiguous in every regard, with the final pages detailing how the Baudelaires left for the mainland, and then a picture of a question mark in the water.  Throughout the season, the show slowly becomes someone’s other than the Baudelaires; it becomes Lemony’s.  He is the one who receives the final closure with his past failings.  While these new endings are fantastic in their own right, particularly Lemony’s, and I can see why one would prefer the adaptation’s, I do prefer the books more open-ended ending.  To me, it says that not every question in the world is answered, while this theme is portrayed in the show now solely through the Great Unknown, which brings me to my only real gripe with this season.

The Great Unknown simultaneously was shown too much and not shown enough.  It is the most fascinating aspect of the original series, and while it is incredibly debatable as to what it is supposed to symbolize, to me it has always been a metaphor for growing up/the future/change.  No one truly likes change, but the Quagmires and Widdershins take their chances with it sometime during the events of The End.  We don’t know what happens to them because you can never know what the future will hold.  This is then further seen in the final Brett Helquist illustration, as we don’t know what happened to the Baudelaires after they set sail.  We only really see The Great Unknown twice in the Netflix series, and it is then explained as an old mythical sea beast first seen by sailors.  This explanation is already more than we get in the books, and it is too much.  There’s really no explanation in the books at all, which is how much there should be.  The Great Unknown doesn’t have an explanation; that’s why it’s called The Great Unknown.  There’s also no image of the question mark in the water in the show at all, which is the true tragedy of the series.  It isn’t really an egregious problem, although it is something that I wish happened, but I’ve already gotten over it.  It’s really a minor problem in a sea of fantastic material.

A Series of Unfortunate Events is an anomaly in children’s entertainment.  Its dark tone keeps us hooked even as Lemony Snicket continues to tell us to look away, and the themes of moral ambiguity and relativity are something rarely seen in even adult entertainment.  Both the book series and the Netflix adaptation have their merits, and both are just as entertaining as the other.  A Series of Unfortunate Events is truly one of the best series for children in modern times.