What Is The Crooked Energy In Raising Dion?
After more than two years since its first season dropped, "Raising Dion" Season 2 is now available to stream on Netflix, continuing the adventures of superpowered 7-year-old Dion Warren (Ja'Siah Young). Along with his mother Nicole (Alisha Wainwright), Dion has more worries than dealing with elementary school bullies and the loss of his father, Mark (played by executive producer Michael B. Jordan). A scientist for BIONA, Mark and others develop superpowers after witnessing an aurora event in Iceland, and Dion inherits special abilities from his father, who dies under mysterious circumstances.
Throughout the first season, Dion works with his godfather Pat (Jason Ritter) to develop and control his abilities, which include healing and teleportation, even as an unknown villain Dion nicknames the "Crooked Man" targets him. The Crooked Man manifests as a giant consisting of black clouds and electrifying energy, and it's ultimately revealed to be Pat, who needs Dion's healing abilities because the Crooked Energy, or whatever fuels this nefarious power, is killing him. Pat — who seems to not receive powers during the Iceland event — actually becomes possessed by the Crooked Energy there, which corrupts Pat and prompts him to kill and absorb others with superpowers.
After (supposedly) defeating the Crooked Man in Season 1, Dion embraces his abilities and uses them to become the superhero Mind Mover. But the Crooked Energy remains, possessing a new body — Dion's new schoolmate Brayden Mills (Griffin Robert Faulkner) — and remaining a threat to Dion and his friends and family. So, what exactly is the Crooked Energy?
The Crooked Energy uses negative feelings to corrupt
The Crooked Energy in "Raising Dion" is an evil entity that can possess both powered and non-powered people. In Season 1, it possesses Pat in Iceland, even though he walks away from the aurora incident without abilities. However, the incident leaves him feeling unhealthy and dying. When his girlfriend Kerry (Ariana Guerra) breaks up with him, accidentally setting his hand on fire with her powers of pyrokinesis, the Crooked Man manifests, killing her and absorbing her energy. Upon realizing her death has restored him, at least temporarily, Pat begins seeking out and killing other superpowered people.
Ultimately, Dion uses his powers to defeat Pat and the Crooked Energy, proving that it is parasitic in nature. Actor Jason Ritter told TV Insider, "The interesting thing about Pat and the Crooked Man is that it wasn't as if Pat was some perfect guy and then the Crooked Energy made him awful. Certainly, he did a lot of things to feed that energy, but Pat has a lot of his own issues and anger and a bit of a superiority complex. How much of those character flaws were the Crooked Energy poisoning him, or how much of that is just Pat, who always was a little bit jealous of his friend, Mark Warren?"
In the second season, it's revealed that the Crooked Energy can inhabit a powered person, too — Brayden. Like Dion, Brayden inherits abilities from his father, Walter (Marc Menchaca), who is also present at the aurora event. As a young child, Brayden watches the Crooked Man murder his father, leaving him feeling abandoned, afraid, and vengeful. After Dion defeats the Crooked Man in Season 1, the Crooked Energy possesses Brayden, sending him to Atlanta to seek revenge on Dion.
The Crooked Energy is still a threat
In Season 2 of "Raising Dion," Brayden visits Pat in his containment cell, and Pat warns him that the Crooked Energy feeds off of negative emotions, corrupting the person it possesses until only evil remains. Viewers also learn that the Crooked Energy leaves behind a stain anywhere it has been unleashed, and one of the strongest stains is on the school field where Dion defeats Pat years earlier.
The field also happens to be the site of an American Civil War battle, and the Crooked Energy uses the land's legacy of pain and hate to spawn a dangerous ecosystem beneath it. Spores released from flowers inside this ecosystem can turn those they touch into mindless zombie-like monsters, controlled by the Crooked Energy. Even Nicole becomes infected, but she still manages to remind Brayden of the unconditional love his late mother had for him, which allows him to reject and weaken the Crooked Energy. Dion is then able to inject an antidote created by BIONA into the ecosystem, freeing its slaves from the crooked energy's influence.
As parallels of each other, Season 2 shows that Brayden and Dion are both capable of good or bad, and both are loved unconditionally by their mothers. It is this love that frees Brayden from the evil entity's control. In the Season 2 finale, however, Pat proves he is more bad than good when he escapes and injects himself with a DNA cocktail of all of the superpowers at BIONA. When the Crooked Energy finds him, he invites the entity to possess him again. This doesn't bode well for Dion if viewers are gifted with Season 3.