#apologies if this Recap is messier than normal

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “Strings”

Happy Saturday, RWBY friends! I am, quite obviously, going to dive into the recap in just a moment, but first I wanted to take a short detour to discuss the elephant in the tumblr room. Namely, Supernatural.

For those of you out of the loop, the tl;dr is that a fifteen year, beloved show ended with a truly horrendous finale. Specifically, the finale rejected everything that the show had been building towards: the logical conclusion to character arcs, the theme that “family don’t end in blood,” the potential for a queer romantic relationship… I could go on. The point I want to make is that the fandom had every reason to believe we’d be getting these things. This isn’t a case of fans upset that the finale didn’t go the way they wanted as an individual viewer, but rather that the finale didn’t go the way the show clearly and explicitly said it would. It’s not an exaggeration to say that in many respects, viewers were straight up lied to.

(I recommend reading the reviews.) 

What does this all have to do with RWBY? Well, I can’t help but think that history is repeating itself. Certainly there are some notable similarities between the two series. Both have long, meandering plotlines with no clear end in sight (though I hope RWBY doesn’t reach the 15 Volume mark…). Both began with a small, core cast, but quickly expanded—generating the expectation that these now equally important characters will be given their due. Both have moved from the small conflict of fighting everyday monsters to a god-based mythology. Both have a popular queer relationship dangled in front of the viewers, featuring scenes where they’re “obviously” in love… but will it ever be confirmed? Both have a fanbase that says loudly and confidently that the writers know what they’re doing. Just wait! It’s all been planned! We’ll be rewarded for our patience and soon all the naysayers will be proven wrong.

Thing is, the Supernatural fandom wasn’t rewarded. Right up until a week ago those fans—myself included—had faith that the writers knew what they were doing because they can’t really be that out of touch with their own story...right? It’s not possible. Yet they were, it was, and now that I’ve gotten solid proof of precisely how far a show can go to reject its own logic, themes, and premise, that just makes me more wary of RWBY’s mistakes. Before I had a solid faith that things couldn’t possibly get that bad, that no matter how much RWBY might be messing up in the short term, it will undoubtedly pull it together overall, because what show wouldn’t? Especially a show with such promise and, at times, wonderful storytelling. Well, Supernatural didn’t manage it and frankly I’m not sure what to do with that information.

Seriously. I don’t have any grand conclusion here. It’s not my intention to suggest that anyone should stop watching RWBY, or to claim that it will absolutely fail because Supernatural did. Obviously, we don’t know what will happen until we get to see it in the show. I only want to acknowledge these parallels and the similar journey I see both fanbases on. I can’t help but wonder if, a couple years from now, RWBY fans will be making incredibly optimistic posts about how it’s all coming together, just have some faith, everyone who says that the group won’t get a satisfying ending, or Blake and Yang won’t be confirmed are just mean trolls… only to wake up that Saturday morning and get another metaphorical slap in the face.

It’s something to think about.

But here I’ve spent a page talking about the wrong show. Let’s get into the episode!

We open on a black screen with lots of ambiguous noises. At first I thought this was Oscar struggling in the Hound’s grip or something, but then I remembered that RWBY likes to insert an episode between cliffhangers. I watched Ironwood (presumably) shoot a guy and he only came back this week (though that question still isn’t answered. At this point I kind of wonder if it will be). Oscar was kidnapped last week, which means we won’t get to see him until next week. Or… two weeks from now? RT skips the week of Thanksgiving, don’t they? Sounds familiar doesn’t it? Something horrible happens to Oscar and we need to wait two weeks to find out how it’s resolved. 

Watch him escape the Hound off screen and return to the group with a new outfit 😂

So it’s not Oscar we hear, but Ruby, the last one coming out of the tube. Weiss is in the process of pulling Nora’s ear for that stunt… with a frankly strange looking hand. What’s up with RWBY animating weird hands lately? I’m pretty sure that’s not how anatomy works.

Anyway, Nora counters that this was a “Once in a lifetime experience,” but they were all going to go through the tubes regardless. Weiss isn’t pissed that you sent her through, she’s pissed that you did it unexpectedly when she was alone, heading into enemy territory. But of course, there’s no one in the room to hinder them, so the mistake is meaningless.

We’re setting the tone again though. For the first half of this episode everything is sunshine and giddy adventure, which doesn’t fit the situation at all. It also creates emotional whiplash when I’m suddenly supposed to be super worried about things later on. This sort of about-face works once in a blue moon, as an emotional punch, like we see in Mulan: 

But RWBY does it every other episode, which makes the overall tone of the series confusing instead. Half the time RWBY feels like two different stories—the cartoony tale of girls going on fun adventures, and the traumatic tale of a fantasy war—that have been badly spliced together.

“Alight, Robo-Girl, which way?” May asks and Penny demonstrates why she’s the best for sneaking into a facility. She’s able to map out the whole place, including seeing where everyone is so they can avoid detection. Kudos to RT for going this route. I was worried that they would have Ruby and the others straight up attacking Atlas grunts, knocking them out/potentially even killing them because who cares, right? They’re the bad guys! So I’m glad they’re working to get in and out undetected. Granted, we see in some places that they’re clearly willing to fight the soldiers if it comes to that—they’re reaching for their weapons when Penny opens the final door, expecting the room to be full of people. They were going to attack—but at least they’re trying to lessen that conflict as much as possible. That’s the sort of choice I expect to see from heroes and I’m glad we got it here. 

After scouting the area Penny corrects May: “And my name is Penny,” to which Ruby gives a satisfied “Heh.” I’ve got no problem with Penny rejecting nicknames, even potentially well-meaning ones, because she’s always struggled with her status as a real girl and her name is her own. She gets to decide what others call her. I do, however, have a problem with making the presumed trans character the one who is corrected. Granted yes, we haven’t gotten confirmation in the show that May is trans, but RT doesn’t get to cash in on that rep without likewise suffering the consequences for how the character is treated. You’re telling me that a trans woman is going to roll her eyes when someone asks her to use a specific name? Please give May flaws, yes, she’s a person, but out of all the millions of flaws across the human spectrum, this is the one we’re shown? 

Not to mention Ruby’s continued attitude. It’s like, ‘Yeah, May. Stop being a horrible person who draws attention to the fact that Penny is a robot. I never did that.’ Except when Ruby first met her she didn’t know Penny was a robot. Just like she didn’t know Blake was a faunus—something we’re reminded of this episode. We might assume Ruby wouldn’t have ever made any missteps at the beginning of these relationships, but the fact remains that she got to know both girls before their minority status was ever revealed. Ruby loved them before she ever had to grapple with their differences. 

Put in her place, May then demonstrates that she can make lots of people invisible, not just herself. That’s handy. She creates an invisibility bubble that reminds me of Harry’s invisibility cloak. In the sense that others might not be able to see you, but they can still hear and touch you, which makes sneaking around still pretty challenging.

No sooner have I thought that then two guards get into the elevator with them. The group keeps quiet as the duo discusses how no one can get close to Salem’s storm without “getting shocked right out of the air.” Interesting. And frankly one hell of a roadblock if the Hound escapes into the clouds. Oscar may be gone for a while if he doesn’t escape on his own... The woman also comments about how creepy it is that all the grimm are just hanging out, waiting. It’s “worse than if they’d attacked.”

No it’s not! RT, stop trying to implement the idea that Salem withholding her forces is some epically cool choice. She should have decimated everyone by now and the fact that she hasn’t just shows how transparent the problem is: you’ve created a villain that’s too powerful and now you don’t know what to do with her.

As the group sneaks out of the elevator Nora grins and presses all the buttons, which is, as expected, a dumb move. They’re supposed to be sneaking into this base. If they’re caught they’re going to be thrown in jail at best, killed at worst, but Nora wants to risk that for a practical joke? Again and again we see this insistence on incorporating comedy where it’s not only unnecessary, but actively interferes with other aspects of the scene.

Reaching a terminal, Penny inserts her finger and gains access via Pietro’s credentials. She’s really demonstrating this episode why she’s… pretty terrifying? I mean, Penny is an incredibly powerful fighter with a computer’s view of the world, access to everything in the most powerful Kingdom alongside its information, and she now has Maiden powers to boot. Which, I should add, it took her one fight to master (because remember, the heroes are now always as strong as they need to be to win…). Now that Watts is planning to hack her, I expect her to be an incredibly formidable enemy, just given the amount she could potentially do. I think Penny herself is too kind to exploit all that potential and as we’ll see via Pietro briefly taking control, she doesn’t always have the knowledge to use the tools at her disposal. But in the hands of someone like Watts? He’ll turn Penny into the ultimate weapon.

Access granted, they learn that they have to go “Right through central command!” Of course, Penny makes it sound like a fun game and the spy-movie music/cartoon lecture doesn’t help. Again, tone. It’s adorable! It just doesn’t fit sneaking into a military base with your lives on the line while Salem waits outside. That was a RWBY Chibi moment. 

Penny explains—twice—that Ruby can use her semblance to fly them all through central command and it’s treated like a revelation. At first, I was pretty confused because Ruby has been dong this for ages? She carried Weiss in “Argus Limited” and Nora during the Geist fight. But upon close inspection, what Penny seems to have “figured out” is that Ruby can carry multiple people at once because the “mass doesn’t matter.” Okay. Not a contradiction then, though I think RT could have made it a little more clear that Ruby was shocked at the idea of carrying multiple people, not carrying someone at all.

What I do take issue with though is Ruby mastering this skill instantaneously. I mean, why is Ruby being forced to try this on the fly (pun not intended)—Penny has known the layout of the building since they made this plan. She knew they had to get past central control and that it would be packed with people. She’s obviously thought about Ruby’s semblance a great deal—and why is she succeeding? Give me a Volume 7 where Ruby actually trains in this technique, set up via Harriet’s comment early on about her semblance, and then she’s victorious here when it finally matters. Or give me Ruby assuming she can pull off this incredibly difficult skill only to fall out of her semblance halfway through, a roomful of Atlas personnel staring at them. Then what? 

Not this.

This is a character who does everything perfectly on the first try without ever having to fail. Ruby is boring like this.

Crisis averted, we transfer to Ironwood who is… working with Watts.

What else is there to say? I’ve already laid out all the reasons why this is stupid and makes no sense. Others keep coming onto my posts to explain to me how Ironwood’s awful deeds up until now fully show his decent into villainy, conveniently ignoring the numerous limitations he was under and his choice to do what he thought was best for the world using inaccurate information. Ironwood was always a divisive character and many are happy to ignore the years’ worth of deconstruction done—a man who looks like the Evil Military General but actually isn’t—because they never liked him to begin with. Not liking him is fine, no one has to like any character, but I’m honestly shocked by the number of viewers who refuse to acknowledge how bad the writing is, even if it means defending a character they hate a teensy tiny bit (#SupernaturalVibes). As a friend put it, Ironwood now feels like a caricature of his former self, a Pure Evil Ironwood who appeared out of nowhere and is now here to stay. He shoots kids. He shoots unarmed civilians. He teams up with Salem’s men and tries to hack Penny. These are undeniably horrible acts, they’ve just been given to a character who never would have done them until RT randomly flipped the Evil switch.

The “RWBY” tag, alongside all the fluff moments of this episode, is now filled with posts encouraging Marrow to turn, yelling at the Ace Ops for being “bootlickers,” and capslock screaming at anyone who dared to speak up for Ironwood. It still sucks to have bad writing twisted into an attack on the fans and it’s going to continue to suck until at least the rest of Volume 8. I’d like to again remind everyone that Qrow teamed up with Tyrian a few episodes, yet because he’s again in Ruby’s graces, that was twisted into a ‘not that bad’ situation. The issue isn’t really that Ironwood is teaming up with one of Salem’s subordinates, but that he’s doing it to go against RWBYJNOR… the second a character teams up with Salem to get what Ruby wants (to not have her team in jail) then that’s totally fine… but that’s a wrinkle a lot of people are happy to ignore. 

So yeah, Ironwood is an idiot now too. Like Qrow also was last Volume. He really thinks Watts isn’t going to betray him somehow? Although, I do wonder if the chance to ruin Pietro’s creation outweighs his loyalty to Salem, but the point is that Ironwood can’t be sure of that either. At least he’s smart enough to keep Watts under continuous guard. He puts his hand on Watts’ shoulders and goes, “I’d hate for us to have to try motivating you. Again.”

So he tortures people too now? Like I said, caricature. This was Ironwood and we were given no clear idea of where he disappeared to.

RIP a great character.

Watts notices though that Pietro has apparently accessed a secure area and alerts Ironwood to it. I laugh that the information is just ¡EMERGENCY! In large, red letters. Ironwood immediately makes an announcement for everyone to be on guard. It’s a level 3 lockdown — that won’t impede the group leaving via airship! — and they’re to use “lethal force” if necessary. Weiss is disgusted.

As much as I disagree with making Ironwood into a shoot first, ask questions later kind of guy  — he’s definitely wrong to be doing this — I also find myself rolling my eyes at reactions like that. Yes, Weiss. You attacked four operatives until they were knocked unconscious. Prevented an entire city from escaping Salem’s wrath, endangering them all. Now you’re breaking into the most classified room in the Kingdom to steal an equally qualified project and use it for your own means. There’s no reason why Ironwood would level his might against you. Is death still an extreme response? Yes. Should Weiss be acting like Ironwood is crazy for responding to them in an extreme manner? No. Her remark makes it sound like Ironwood is attacking her poor, innocent, defenseless team… not the team that’s been lying to him, betraying him, attacking him, and stealing from him. Not the team carrying deadly weapons into a facility to take what they want at any cost. 

With their presence known, May wants to go grab an airship. That’s the series now.

Meanwhile, Penny insists that they can still complete their mission and we see Nora come up with some sort of plan. 

Except, what plan was this?? What did she say to the group? ‘Hey, let’s wait around until some guy conveniently walks by with a full cup of coffee. Then we can trip him and the mug will fly alllll the way across this gap to land on a terminal, startling at least two workers. Except this guy will be hated by the whole room because he’s always messing things up—his coffee mug has been changed from #1 Dad to #1 Dud—so that this little mishap will create a ruckus that gets everyone involved, giving us the opportunity to slip by them all.’

Seriously, what? This kind of “plan” only works with someone like Clover, where we know he has a good luck semblance and thus all these unlikely pieces fall into place. I could absolutely buy Clover smiling smugly, working under the knowledge that he just has to wait around a few minutes and something will come along that works entirely in his favor. But Nora? How did she know any of this would happen? Obviously she couldn’t have, so what exactly was their intention if this coffee carrying, hated guy didn’t show up? RWBY, your contrived plots are showing.

I do, however, love the grimm Jaws poster. Jaws is an absolute favorite of mine, so seeing a reference to it in RWBY? A funny one at that? It almost makes up for how bad this episode is lol.

Because frankly I’m bored. The group sneaks around, criticizes May and Ironwood, briefly confuses me about Ruby’s semblance knowledge, and gets through tons of Atlas personnel in the stupidest way possible. I have to watch this guy running out of the room with coffee on his pants screaming, “WHHHYYY???” and he doesn’t notice the five girls standing right next to him. It’s silly. It’s boring. Luckily for RWBY, things are about to pick up in the second half.

After Ruby gets them upstairs and the final room is also conveniently devoid of people, Pietro takes control of Penny—including yellow possession eyes like Oscar has with Ozpin—and he...gets Amity started. That’s it. After a whole volume of ‘It’s not finished yet’ and ‘We barely have the resources’ and ‘Robyn stole what we were using to do idek what with’ he presses buttons for a while and they’re in. How good for them!

I do love that Penny calls Pietro “Dad” though. I’m here for the android-father relationship.

While Pietro works we turn to Blake, Weiss, and Nora. Blake tries to convince the audience that Ruby and Yang had an actual fight with, “I’ve never seen Yang and Ruby fight like this.” Yeah, because no one in this group has ever said the sliiiiightest thing against Ruby, so you all read the tinniest disagreement as a “fight” to be worried about. I mean, doesn’t RT have friends to draw inspiration from? They’ve never disagreed about Huge and Complex Questions before? Never gotten pissed and then shrugged it off the next time you want to text? RWBY’s idea of a diverse friend group feels like many other writers’ idea of a sibling relationship: anyone with an actual sibling goes, “What is this?” Speaking of, Weiss explains that sisters often have “very different ideas about what’s right” as if, again, people don’t have different ideas? Just in general? Why is this suddenly a sister thing? She’s clearly thinking about Winter, but doesn’t actually bring it up, so all we’re left with is the same situation we had last Volume. Weiss thinks she’s right, Winter is wrong, and they’re just going down their separate roads because there’s definitely no reason to re-examine any choices here. It’s all static. 

Until Winter betrays Ironwood, of course. 

Nora tries to reassure Blake that the group will be fine (ha) even though they’ve split, the irony being that we, the audience, know they just got wrecked by the Hound. Jaune is a great leader though, Oscar has grown so much, Yang could defend them all in a fight, and Ren… well, she can’t think of anything to say about Ren. I hate the Nora is acting like Ren has drawn away from her for no reason, after she chose to kiss him—without consent—rather than listening to what was bothering him, then proceeded to pretend that this mystery problem never existed. What does she expect? I do, however, like the general acknowledgement that she doesn’t know who she is without Ren. Who is Nora? Someone who is “strong and hit[s] stuff?”

See, this feels like RT writing self-consciously because Nora doesn’t have much of a personality. Oh, on a surface level she’s bursting with it, but past the bubbly exterior? That single layer? We can add maybe one thing to this “Likes Ren, is strong, hits stuff” list: she’s funny. That’s it. Anything else we might add like “she’s loyal” or “she’s kind” is just a generic characteristic of this entire team. They’re all meant to be crazy talented good guys and even the “is strong” aspect is suspect when others frequently pull off attacks as showy as Nora’s hammer hits. So who is she? What are Nora’s dreams? What are her hobbies? Her fears? Her history? We’ve seen a single flashback of her on the streets and one scene back at Beacon where she listens to music and reads a magazine. Seven years worth of material and that’s it. There’s a reason why the go-to, non-combat action for Nora in fics is “makes pancakes.” We know so little about her still. 

So I was excited for a brief, shining moment. Yes! Explore who Nora is outside of being strong and hitting stuff! … and then her big action this episode is, as she says, being strong and hitting something. Don’t get me wrong, outside of that setup it’s pretty epic. I like Nora going to those lengths to save Penny and I absolutely love the repercussions of the choice: a broken aura, passing out, and badass lightning scars all over her arms and neck (especially when women often aren’t allowed to accumulate scars in visual media). That’s pretty damn awesome. It’s just that it comes on the heels of the story insisting that Nora is more than this, that we’ll learn something new about her… and we haven’t. This is indeed cool, but we already knew that Nora was willing to crazy lengths by hitting things really hard. That’s already her established norm.

At least this moment has some really nice characterization alongside the stupidity. The conversation between Ruby and Penny is just plain stupid. Penny wants to stay to help with the evacuations, but Pietro says she should come with him in Amity. Why? As Ruby says, because then she’ll be up in the sky and Salem won’t be able to access the relic.

That’s what Ironwood wanted to do! We could have had this conflict episodes ago with you all working with him! I really can’t with this cast. Also, the rest of this is still confusing. I thought pretty much everyone was in the slums by now, so what evacuation are they talking about? Do they plan to evacuate everyone in Mantle out of the kingdom somehow… like Ironwood wanted to do with Atlas? And why are they acting like Amity is evacuating some people too? I thought they were just using it as a communication device? To add insult to injury, Ruby then contradicts herself a minute later when she tells Harriet that Ironwood can’t have the relic because “Salem will find her way to the relic no matter where you go.” Ruby, if Salem can access the relic high in the sky she can also access Penny in the sky. If you believe that literally nowhere is safe then why are you sending Penny away under the claim that she—and via her the Relic—will be safer? If you want Penny in Amity to lessen the chance of Salem getting the Relic, why can’t Penny be in Atlas while simultaneously (hopefully) getting a whole slew of people to safety? 

I’m continually confused by this “plan” of theirs. Their claims just flip-flop according to what (supposedly) contrasts them with Ironwood. Even though that’s not actually the case.

Penny is me, sad while watching this train wreck of a scene. 

So yeah, the Ace Ops are here. I’ve wondered since the trailer why Weiss looked smug while everyone else was startled. Turns out it’s because of her line, “So, your first time losing to us wasn’t enough?” I can’t express how much I dislike all the girls’ personalities now. I want to shake some compassion and humility into them. Plus, they never should have won that fight in the first place. Marrow yells, “We were holding back!” but coming from the team’s weakest member it reads as defensive. Like we’re supposed to go, ‘Lol yeah right, Marrow. Just admit you got your ass kicked,’ even tough the Ace Ops should have wiped the floor with them, holding back or not. That’s my biggest takeaway from this fight: it’s the reverse of what we should have gotten. The Ace Ops should have beaten Team RWBY with ease and struggled greatly against an android Maiden, not falling before a bunch of teens and succeeding against Penny if not for Nora’s timely breakthrough. Your half-trained cast of growing heroes should not come across as more powerful than an intelligently designed weapon now wielding magic.  

Before the fight starts we get a whole lot of lines that are, frankly, frustrating. Vine tells Penny, “I thought you were supposed to protect the people, not hurt them” which is true enough. Penny is taking action that is putting a lot of people in danger, regardless of the fact that Ruby is at the helm. Problem is, the Ace Ops then blame her for Winter’s injuries and “stealing” the power? That’s not the issue here. The issue is Penny’s blind loyalty to Ruby, but by having the Ace Ops back a stance that is clearly inaccurate—Penny didn’t cause Winter’s injuries, Cinder did; Penny didn’t steal the powers, she was encouraged to take them—it makes them come across as Very Evil people who will twist things to make poor Penny look like the villain. Even if this is a case of Ace Ops having bad intel (which seems unlikely. Wouldn’t Winter have told them what happened?) RT has avoided letting the Ace Ops take a justified stance here because that would make them look too sympathetic… even though they do have multiple justified stances to take. Like, ‘Hey, stop keeping half a kingdom here where Salem can easily kill them all’ or, ‘Hey, why did you spend months betraying Ironwood and then turn on us instead of trying to find a compromise?’ Even, ‘Why did your uncle help kill our leader?’ There’s plenty that the Ace Ops should be rightfully pissed about, so choosing Penny and Winter out of everything feels like RT is firmly backing them into Ironwood’s corner: you’re just bad now and bad people blame innocent girls, rather than acknowledging the actual wrongs done against them. 

So we have Ruby contradicting herself and the Ace Ops backing warped ideas that make them look worse than they actually are. Adding to the stupidity is the fact that Elm mentions that Winter is in “critical condition” and Weiss… doesn’t care. Harriet then tells Ruby that she’s “throwing [her] in jail right next to your uncle, runt” and... Ruby doesn’t care. Qrow is missing and Ruby just found out he’s been captured by Ironwood, yet there’s no reaction whatsoever. This show continues to go hard on the ‘screw adults’ mentality, huh? Ozpin needs to keep quiet and is horrible for coming back. Ironwood is now a cartoon villain. Winter made the wrong choice so no one cares about her anymore, not even her sister. The Ace Ops remain enemies despite trying to talk things out. Qrow? Barely know him. Who’s he? This is a Ruby loves Penny episode. There isn’t enough emotional nuance for her to care about him too.

The sad thing is I adore Nuts&Dolts. In a different context these moments would be a goldmine for me. 

If anything, this episode feels worse than the majority of last week’s because there are good things here that have been thrown into a bad setup. I can’t get excited for the group’s battles when I see who they’re attacking. It’s hard to squee over Ruby hugging Penny when she doesn’t react to Qrow. Watching Nora go all Thor feels like it only has half its potential when it’s coming out of a very messing, ‘I’m more than just being strong and hitting things… which is why I’ll continue being strong and hitting things.’ RWBY has excellent moments set into a terrible story.

The fight, at least, is exciting. The Ace Ops goad Penny into stepping away so they can trap the rest of Ruby’s team—smart—and she’s forced to hold her own while Weiss tries to break through with her knight, then Nora overloads the system. To be frank, I’m not great at analyzing combat. Not unless I’m looking for something specific like whether a win is justified. I’ve already mentioned above the broad issue of the Ace Ops very nearly beating the most powerful fighter next to Salem herself, yet failing so spectacularly against Team RWBY. Outside of that context though? I really enjoyed this. Lots of tight action, creative attacks, teamwork, some emotional pauses throughout… it feels like a pretty solid battle. Put it on Youtube as a clip, outside of the rest of the story’s messiness, and you’ve got yourself a fantastic watch. 

We can’t stay in the combat forever though. During all this Weiss calls the Ace Ops “cowards” for making it four vs. one. You know, RWBY should really just do away with dialogue and make the show purely action because the cast frequently sounds so stupid when they speak. Like her comment about Ironwood’s lockdown… really Weiss? ‘Yes, we might be wanted criminals who betrayed this group in the worst possible way, but how dare they not do the honorable thing and have three of their teammates sit out while trying to capture us? Even though the girl they’re trying to capture has magic. I mean, the nerve of them!’

Weiss, at this point I’m not sure how to explain to you that the people you’ve made into your enemies do not owe you a fair fight. 

Another detail: we get to see Ruby fall off the edge of the walkway and this time she remembers she can fly! A definite improvement from Volume 6.

Finally: by the time Penny’s eyes go full Maiden in Elm’s grip, I think we’ve seen everything from our trailer. Episode 4 will truly be a mystery.

Ironwood has, of course, been watching the fight this whole time. When it looks like the Ace Ops will lose against the team he means to send in reinforcements, but Watts says he has “a message for your operatives.” Instead of capturing Penny they steal one of her swords instead, ending with a shot on Marrow looking conflicted.

Because remember, there’s no actual moral grayness in this story. The protagonists are right and everyone else is wrong. It’s (supposedly) black and white. Which means that if the Ace Ops have any hope of surviving this Volume and being seen as anything other than evil bootlickers, they have to join with Ruby. Marrow seems primed to do that.

Am I surprised? No. Disappointed? Always lol.

May has the airship ready to go and they fly off… despite the shields. And the lockdown. Consistency? Who’s she? Nora is said to be “in bad shape” and after another hug Penny leaves to hide in Amity, even though Ruby thinks that hiding is a useless, cowardly choice. Just not when she and her allies choose to do it.

We end the episode with Watts receiving Penny’s sword and making the statement, “If you can’t beat them… then make them join you.” I have to say, his cheesy villainy is something I continue to enjoy, even if it’s heavy handed at times. Watts is just fun. I do have to say though: if Penny is hacked, what does that say about her agency? We double-downed on the ‘real girl’ narrative by giving her the Maiden powers, but she’s simultaneously synthetic enough that a single piece of her can remove all autonomy? It once again feels like RT isn’t sure what point they’re trying to make, they’re just chucking a lot of themes at the wall and seeing what sticks. Still, we’ll have to let it all play out before making any judgements.

And that’s it for this week. It seems like this is a slightly shorter recap than normal, though that may be because I struggle with discussing pure action sequences, which made up a decent chunk of this episode. I’ll no doubt return to the Ace Ops vs. Penny fight when I’m not on a self-imposed, one day deadline for posting. The only thing left is to update the Bingo Card, but I don’t think we made any headway this week. So... good job, RWBY? 

I’m still going to hold off on the civilian’s square until Salem’s army actually attacks, as well as the two day timeline square.

No Winter this episode

Watts is teaming up with Ironwood which is… so much worse than him teaming up with Jacques again. Does a square get an X if the canon is even worse than what you assumed it would be??

Maria was mentioned this episode. Jury’s out on whether she’ll actually do anything.

Atlas is still standing, we knew Penny was heading towards a hack so it’s not much of a cliffhanger, no Qrow, no Ozpin, no Neo or Cinder.

It certainly looks like we can check off “The team gets Amity up and running,” but let’s just see if there are any problems next episode. If the problem is only ‘We would have launched it if not for Salem’s attack’ or something, I’m checking it off. The point is it would have worked.

I’m also leaning towards “More obvious Blake/Yang implications without confirming a relationship” given Blake’s heart-to-heart with Nora… but let’s see if the Volume does anything more egregious.

All in all (and perhaps despite what I’ve written above), I don’t think it’s fair to totally drag this episode. As said, this feels like a strong episode in a bad story, something that I would have LOVED if a) Salem weren’t here and b) the ‘ethical dilemma’ wasn’t boiled down to a ‘Team Ruby is good’ and ‘Ironwood and everyone associated with him is evil’ situation. It’s an episode whose tone and character action belong in a different version of RWBY. If you gave us this fun episode in an earlier Volume against a Pure Evil antagonist? It would have been great. 

Ah well. It is what it is. Expect more emotional whiplash when we come back and everyone learns that Oscar has been kidnapped by Salem’s talking pooch 🙃

See you then! 💜