Of all of Stephen King’s literary children, none burns as brightly as Charlie McGee. She is the main character in his 1980 novel Firestarter and arguably his most powerful protagonist. The child of participants in a college experiment run by a government agency known as The Shop, Charlie was born with the unique ability to light fires with her mind. Hoping to earn some quick cash, her parents volunteered for injections of a serum called Lot 6 designed to increase or even create psy powers in human subjects. Their daughter inherited their genetic modifications leading to her amazing power, an ability The Shop would do anything to get their hands on.

King’s novel is set solely in her childhood years, but one character speculates on how her powers will increase as she ages. Dr. Wanless, creator of Lot 6, theorizes that at some point in her life, Charlie may amass the power to cause a nuclear explosion with the sheer force of her will. It’s an exciting prospect and though King has returned to the stories of a few of his child characters, most notably Danny Torrance (The Shining) and Jack Sawyer (The Talisman), he has never written about Charlie as an adult. But 2002 saw Dr. Wanless’s theories explored in the sci-fi series Firestarter 2: Rekindled. Directed by Robert Iscove, this two-part miniseries features an adult Charlie (Marguerite Moreau), hunted by the Shop and still searching for a normal life while struggling to manage her impressive powers. 

Airing on back-to-back nights in March of 2002, Firestarter 2 catches up with Charlie roughly ten years after she burned down The Shop. Now a young adult, she lives a solitary life under an assumed name and spends her days researching Dr. Wanless’s work. Her nights are spent in fiery nightmares reliving her escape from the Shop and the deaths of her parents. But the shady agency, now known as Systems Operations, is still hunting her. Under the guise of a class action lawsuit, a young office drone named Vincent (Danny Nucci) is sent to track her down and inadvertently turns her into malevolent agent John Rainbird (Malcolm McDowell). A character in King’s novel, he betrayed Charlie’s trust when she was a child and suffered devastating burns as a result. Rainbird has spent the last decade nursing his wounds and obsessing over the girl he views as a daughter. But he’s also been busy creating a new generation of firestarters. The Lot 6 experiments have continued with batch 23 eventually spawning a gaggle of young boys with terrifying powers of their own. In order to save Vincent, Charlie must return to the place of her creation and face off against Rainbird once and for all.

It’s an intriguing premise and the story of an adult pyrokinetic with an ax to grind promises to be spectacular. Unfortunately Firestarter 2 is anything but. Despite a strong cast giving it their all, the series is a misfire in nearly every way. Premiering in the early days of TV’s golden age, Iscove’s episodes competed against hit dramas like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and E.R. and the emergence of reality TV. American Idol, Survivor, and Joe Millionaire dominated the airwaves in 2002 leaving little room for a science fiction film with a TV Movie style. Both episodes are filled with clumsy dialogue, sterile sets, and melodramatic musical cues, embracing the worst tendencies of the Network TV style. These effects are interspersed with an abundance of flashbacks that stop any kind of narrative momentum dead in its tracks. Some of these sepia-toned memories are so cheaply made that they’re essentially unwatchable. When compared with other dramas of the time, including premium channel hits like The Sopranos and the Wire, Firestarter 2 feels like a relic. 

Moreau gives a strong performance as Charlie, though her emotional arc is often vague and confusing. King’s original character is a precocious little girl who struggles with problems much too big for her nine years. She is pushed around and manipulated by nearly everyone she meets, her trust betrayed time and again until she finally unleashes her destructive powers. A companion website hints at the trouble she’s had in the years between her encounters with the Shop, moving from place to place, occasionally starting fires that burn out of control, and suppressing her need for human companionship for fear that revealing her true identity to anyone will put them in danger. Iscove tries to explore the weight of this isolation with a scene in which she attempts a drunken one-night stand in the alley behind a nightclub. But her arousal leads to a massive fire, further reinforcing her belief that she is dangerous. Having grown close to Vincent, she makes another attempt at physical intimacy, but once again winds up running unfulfilled from his burned hotel room. 

Charlie’s relationship struggles would be intriguing to unpack, but this complex emotional arc is handled rather clumsily. In perhaps the most egregious fumble, Iscove presents her painful trust issues, then essentially abandons the story arc to focus on other things. She once again becomes a pawn for the male characters, a target of Rainbird and his group of psychic boys who see her as more of an object of fetishization than an actual human being. Though Charlie says she’s conquered her demons at the end of the final episode, there’s little evidence in the plot to actually back this up. Her final line to Vincent’s family, “I guess you could say he taught me to trust again,” is ridiculously on-the-nose and a frustrating way to conclude what could have been a rich emotional journey.  

[Related] Failure to Burn: Revisiting the Original ‘Firestarter’ Movie

One of the biggest flaws of King’ original novel lies with its central villain, Rainbird. He is a paternalistic murderer who becomes obsessed with watching the light in Charlie’s eyes go out. But Rainbird is a stereotype. King describes him as a preternaturally silent killer evoking harmful stereotypes of indigenous people as savages and treacherous murderers. While uncomfortable on the page, Mark Lester’s 1984 remake doubles down, casting a cartoonishly styled George C. Scott in the role. Iscove’s Rainbird is played by horror legend Malcolm McDowell, another caucasian actor. While the charismatic actor is arguably the most interesting part of this series, a wiser decision would have been to leave this controversial character in the past and write the role for a different villain. Dr. Pynchot would be the obvious choice. As the doctor who once oversaw Charlie’s time at the Shop, he would conceivably carry the same grudge as his covert counterpart. 

But authenticity is not the only glaring issue with the character. This iteration of Rainbird has an uncomfortable obsession with Charlie that ranges from mildly creepy to outright pedophilic. The original Rainbird wanted to kill her and absorb her powers, but Iscove’s version alternately implies that he wants to kill her, adopt her, have her join his team of psychic boys, or allow her to kill him as part of a muddled way to “create god.” Though his motives are unclear, the ick factor is plain as day. The fact that Charlie kills him by channeling her fire into his body through a kiss is just icing on the cringeworthy cake. That said, McDowell is clearly having fun twisting his metaphorical mustache with the ridiculous role. Covered in prosthetic burn scars, he chews up the scenery with lines like, “He’s an accountant. That means he occasionally kills people for me.” 

Charlie finds another father figure in Richardson (Dennis Hopper). An addition to King’s story, he was a member of the Lot 6 experiment with Charlie’s parents and has been keeping tabs on the girl since her birth. The mysterious serum gave him the ability to know the past, present, and future all at once, a power that sounds intriguing, but mostly just leads to him deadpanning lines like, “You’re about to get everything you’ve always wanted. I feel sorry for you.” Meant to be profound, Hopper is given almost nothing to do and could easily be lifted out of the story entirely. Unlike McDowell, he plays this role with stoic determination, a choice that could be intriguing if the character were at all interesting. But as written, he serves mostly as exposition and plot device, a shameful waste of a talented actor. 

All of these gripes could be overlooked in comparison to thrilling special effects, but unfortunately Firestarter 2 fails in that regard as well. Most of the fire is clearly CGI, and though the final showdown does contain impressive explosions, they’re immediately negated by the clumsy effects mixed into the frame. Rainbird’s death is particularly egregious. After receiving a fiery kiss from Charlie, his body disintegrates into a smoking skeleton. This is likely a reference to King’s novel which gruesomely describes Charlie’s ability to instantly incinerate human flesh. But though this may work on the page, it reads as comical and bizarre on screen. His new bunch of psychic kids could provide another opportunity for visual interest, but their powers are also unexciting. One boy can detect lies, while another has a creepy obsession with anatomy. The most powerful of the bunch is known as an Energy Sink, capable of stealing the powers of others. But even this is rather bland and he ironically sucks most of the excitement out of the scenes in which he appears. 

Firestarter 2 could conceivably be so-bad-it’s-good fun, but the nearly three hour run time eventually wears thin. There are interesting sub plots that essentially go nowhere and bland characters who quickly wear out their welcome. The episodes feel like a failed pilot that realized half-way through it wasn’t going to get picked up. Had this been an intentional series, it’s possible to see showrunners eventually finding their footing midway through the season. Alternately, given some heavy editing, this could be an intriguing TV movie event. But what we get falls somewhere between too much and not enough with a convoluted plot that just feels exhausting. Charlie concludes the series hoping to start a new life and forget about her time with Systems Operations. Viewers followed suit and this sequel has been almost completely forgotten.

Firestarter 2 makes a noble attempt to reignite a fascinating story, but winds up a mere footnote in a long history of Stephen King sequels.