Your post wraps ups my concerns with these first two episodes.

Sure, I could just accept that Will needs to do what he’s doing… but there already was an exposition on the tower this episode! They could’ve helped us understand the world better. Nope, instead we get a “hey, remember that you need to graduate to move up!”. And because of that we get a battle test that Will has to pass because… because he has to graduate! And he needs to graduate, we just learned that’s how you move up!

They showed one of the classmates becoming mangled. Presumably the other took a good hit as well. They chose to keep both classmates alive. No explanation. I guess it’s magic!

Maybe it’s leaving out details intentionally. I doubt it; it feels sloppy. (I mean, we did just see a teacher go to the principal to ask for permission to give a student a surprise extra-difficult test where failure means expulsion because the teacher doesn’t like that the student can’t use magic.) It feels like they don’t want to bother fleshing out the world. Let’s just move the plot forwards. Am I supposed to care? I feel like the answer might be “no”.

A lot of the rest is done fairly competently. I’m willing to ride along and maybe it’ll get better. I’m expecting it won’t.