There are few things Americans love more than a historical epic in which someone else’s ancestors do all the dying. If that story comes packaged with lush production values, a charismatic star who can growl in multiple languages, and enough spears, drums, and tattooed torsos to keep the costume department in business for a decade, well — you’ve got yourself a hit.
Enter Chief of War, Apple TV+’s latest prestige binge, starring Jason Momoa as Ka’iana, a historical Hawaiian chief navigating the brutal, shifting alliances of the islands during the late 18th century. The show has thundered onto Rotten Tomatoes’ charts with a 91% Tomatometer score and the coveted #1 slot in popularity. Critics are calling it an “authentic recreation of Native Hawaiian history,” a “ferocious, magnetic performance” from Momoa, and “the kind of television that makes you want to buy a plane ticket and reconsider every vacation you’ve ever taken to Maui.”
The Momoa Effect
Let’s be clear: Jason Momoa could stand on a beach reading parking citations and half the internet would still describe it as “cinematic brilliance.” He is a man who embodies the concept of “impractical but necessary” — like velvet throw pillows or military parades. In Chief of War, he channels that charisma into a performance so physical you can almost smell the salt water and the blood.
Momoa doesn’t just play Ka’iana; he inhabits him. He glowers, he roars, he fights shirtless in ways that make you question whether historical armor was ever necessary. But beneath the spectacle, there’s a deep, quiet grief — a man watching his homeland fracture under the weight of colonialism, his alliances shifting like tides he can’t control. It’s a performance that dares to make tragedy magnetic.
“Authenticity” — Hollywood’s New Favorite Word
The buzzword for Chief of War is “authenticity,” and in fairness, the production has earned it. Native Hawaiian historians were consulted. Indigenous actors fill the cast. Dialogue flows in ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i, the Hawaiian language, without being patronizingly over-subtitled or slowed down for mainland ears.
It’s refreshing to watch a show about Polynesia that isn’t just a backdrop for white adventurers “finding themselves.” This isn’t South Pacific. This isn’t Blue Hawaii. This is a story told from the center, not the periphery — and the camera never flinches from the brutality of intertribal warfare, political betrayals, and the encroaching shadow of Western imperialism.
Still, one has to wonder: when Hollywood uses “authentic,” do they mean “accurate to history,” or “convincing enough that white audiences won’t Google it”?
Colonialism: The Original Prestige Drama
The late 18th century in Hawaii was a powder keg of shifting power among ali‘i (chiefs), new technologies brought by European contact, and the slow, devastating creep of colonial influence. Chief of War treats this not as background flavor, but as the spine of the narrative.
There’s no romanticizing here. Western ships are not saviors; they are harbingers. Gunpowder changes everything. Christian missionaries arrive not as quaint side characters, but as the opening notes of cultural erasure. The show’s genius is in its refusal to frame these forces as inevitable or benign — instead, they are shown as deliberate, calculated intrusions into a complex and self-sustaining world.
It’s almost jarring to see a prestige American drama acknowledge that colonialism didn’t just “happen” to people — it was done to them, with intention.
Critics Can’t Shut Up About It (For Once, Rightly So)
The reviews have been effusive, almost suspiciously so. Variety called it “a war epic with the soul of a Shakespearean tragedy.” The Guardian described Momoa’s performance as “Hawaiian history’s most feral elegy.” Even notoriously stingy critics have gone soft for this one, praising its “meticulous world-building” and “unflinching portrayal of cultural resilience.”
The Tomatometer’s 91% score feels earned — and maybe even restrained. We’ve reached the rare moment when prestige TV critics and binge-watchers agree: this is the show you should be watching, if only to remind yourself that history was not the sepia-toned parade of inevitability your high school textbooks implied.
The Streaming Wars and the Real War Beneath
It’s fitting, really, that Chief of War is dominating the streaming charts. Apple TV+ has been quietly sharpening its blade in the streaming wars, and this show is a strategic strike — not just another glossy drama, but one with cultural gravitas and the kind of on-location cinematography that makes other platforms’ green screens look like cheap magic tricks.
But the “war” in Chief of War is not just on-screen. It’s the war for narrative control — for who gets to tell the story of Hawaii, for whose lens it is filtered through, and for whose benefit. The series may be set in the past, but the tension feels deeply current. Watching it in 2025, you can’t help but think about modern Hawaii’s ongoing struggles with land rights, sovereignty, and the commodification of culture.
A History Lesson Disguised as a Bloodbath
Let’s not pretend this is homework. Chief of War is gorgeous, brutal, and deeply bingeable. Battles unfold in wide, unbroken takes that make you lean forward without realizing it. The choreography is precise but never pretty — you feel the weight of the weapons, the exhaustion of the fighters, the wet, terrible sound of war up close.
It’s rare to find a series that manages to be both a history lesson and a binge-worthy spectacle, but here it is. You could almost trick the less politically curious into watching it just for the action — and in doing so, smuggle in a sharp, necessary education about Hawaii’s past.
The Momoa Factor, Again
It can’t be overstated: Jason Momoa is the axis around which this whole enterprise spins. His physicality is obvious, but it’s the stillness that’s devastating. In moments where Ka’iana realizes what is slipping through his fingers — his power, his alliances, his homeland — Momoa lets the silence do the cutting.
And then there’s his off-screen presence. Momoa has been an outspoken advocate for Hawaiian environmental and cultural preservation, and that commitment bleeds into his performance. You can feel the difference between an actor “playing” a culture and one carrying it.
Is This What Prestige TV Should Be?
Chief of War raises the uncomfortable question: why isn’t this the standard? Why is it still exceptional to see Indigenous history told with budget, care, and depth? Why do we still treat such projects as one-offs rather than the baseline?
Apple TV+ clearly understands the marketing appeal of “authentic storytelling,” but if streaming platforms are serious about that phrase, they’ll need to produce more than one Chief of War per decade. Otherwise, it risks becoming another prestige token — proof they “did diversity” before returning to the white medieval fantasies and Manhattan loft dramas that dominate the budget.
The Bee’s Closing Sting
You should watch Chief of War. Not just because critics love it. Not just because Jason Momoa is impossible to look away from. Not just because it’s history that will make you rethink every lazy travel brochure you’ve ever seen for Hawaii. You should watch it because it’s a rare act of mainstream television doing right by a story that matters — and because moments like that are still far too rare.
History doesn’t just live in archives. It lives in whose faces we see on screen, whose voices get the last word, and whose pain we decide is worth dramatizing. This time, the right people are telling it. But don’t mistake that for a permanent victory.
The war for narrative never ends. Sometimes, the best we get is one season, one show, one moment where the truth breaks through before the tide pulls it back under. Watch it now — before someone decides history is more profitable when it’s less honest.