#where they foreshadow so hard in like s1 what happens in the latter seasons

[lunatheskier]

I will never get over how s1e8 of merlin is called The Beginning of the End and it's all about how they save Mordred and then Mordred ends up killing Arthur

[kryativelogos]

tl;dr : Scarlemagne Deserves at Least SOME of our UwUs (spoilers for S2)

I just finished watching Kipo and the Age of the Wonderbeasts’ second season and gosh, Hugo is such an interesting character to consider. Like wow, they really exposed this guy (and Lio), hard. This post will break down his past, why he ended up going bananas (haha- get it?), and potential routes for this character in a future season. WARNING: Long-ass post ahead... again

The mysterious Scarlemagne is first introduced in S1 as this Victorian/Elizabethan-era (sorry, I don’t really know my history beyond SIX) loving, piano-playing mandrill who was controlling humans and trying to basically take over the world. In the first season, we only see him as a bit crazy and with no reason behind his want for world domination, as most villains do. We get hints of a history between Kipo’s dad and a-once-known-as Hugo, but aside from that, we know next to nothing about our main antagonist. In terms of S1′s Scarlemagne, I saw him as calculative and clever, he had a backup plan and was teetering between a composed civilian and instinctual animal. Because of all the foreshadowing, I was glad to find an episode in season two (2) that delved into Hugo’s story with Lio (specifically Ep8, although throughout the season there are clips of the two’s history together).

In S2, we find out that Scarlemagne was once one of the last non-mutated animals in the world named Hugo. Lio and his wife, Song, were his caretakers and experimented on him to discover and isolate the gene that caused the animals to mutate. As Hugo grew up, he learned how to read and play the piano by Lio and Song. The couple loved Hugo as if he were their son and honestly, they really wanted what was best for him.

However, it was unclear how long Lio and Song had mutated Hugo and how long he was used as a milking machine by Dr. Emilia. These two scenes were strictly a montage to the audience and that’s why I believe we need to cut him some slack (just like how Kipo did in this season). If we’re going off of Hugo’s point of view, we need to consider that he was in a box for his entire life before escaping to the surface. Since we don’t know how long it was before Dr. Emilia discovered Hugo, I can only assume that there was simply enough time for him to learn/read about the old ages when monarchs were still a thing. He may have a larger vocabulary, but socially, I believe his mental age has got to be no more than 14 years old. I say this because his behavior during his time with Lio and Song (such as when he was playing the piano before he got caught) was still respectful, open to learning about the surface before it came crumbling down, and he was caring - especially with the unborn Kipo. That means he wasn’t introduced to distress until after Dr. Emilia had found him.

Even after Dr. Emilia started abusing him, he was still visited by Lio (as seen in the montage - Song was most likely busy with managing her own mutations and Kipo) but these visits were limited. Meaning that Lio was no longer teaching, and more there to provide accompaniment and comfort. Therefore, if he was still mentally at 14, he certainly did not grow to experience any sense of negative emotions aside from Dr. Emilia; even then, he shut out most of those emotions and kindly did this for Dr. Emilia for the sake of Kipo and her family - his family. So without learning that humans could be “bad” or had mixed emotions aside from loving - thanks to Lio and Song - Hugo grew up incredibly ignorant of the “outside world” and believing that humans had his best interest at heart. This is apparent when he defends humans once up on the surface and generally shy/awkward when he meets the goth apes. Again, this is because of his literally sheltered childhood where he lacked the social interactions he needed to develop as he grew up.

So because of all this, when Hugo notices not only that Lio left him behind, but didn’t look for him, didn’t trust him to hold Kipo, and even gave her his own blanket, the anger and all of these pent up negative emotions come rushing back tenfold. In terms of character, I think the way he received the news was very appropriate for the show. He didn’t know how else to think. So going off of the one book he was obsessed over and just trying to cope with the betrayal, Hugo goes off to make sure nobody ever feels left out again by forcefully uniting all of the mutes and turning the tables on the humans that he once trusted. Hugo took advantage of what he was given to try to make means of what he was feeling in his heart. I mean throughout the last two episodes you can see Kipo really getting through to him, but I believe that he was/is so full of grief and anger that he pushes away that lost feeling of being loved as a defense mechanism so he could never get hurt again.

In the final episode of season two (2) Scarlemagne was carted away with the TimberCats and was genuinely astonished that Kipo would willingly sacrifice her sanity to save mutes. This is a foil to when Lio left Hugo behind. Leading up to this point, Scarlemagne had pegged all humans to always think of themselves before anyone else, so when he finds out a human would go out of their way to help a mute, aka someone like him, he doesn’t know how to compute. I think in a future season the show could really work on a redemption arc with this character. Scarlemagne is still socially ignorant - he doesn’t understand what complex emotions are, and if Kipo was already starting to open up his heart this season, I don’t see why she won’t continue to try to help him in a future season. My only hope is that Kipo won’t take what her dad said to heart, that Scarlemagne will never change, and that she’ll continue to be as stubborn as ever to help those in need.

The other route I can possibly see happening is Scarlemagne turning into a mega mute, as in, no longer humanoid and going complete animal. This would be an interesting route to take since we do see a progression of him going slightly more insane by the end of the season. We have to also consider that the formulas given to Hugo were the same given to Kipo and Song, who both turned into mega mutes that lost their sanity. If this were the case, however, I feel like two consequences would occur: (1) any character development for this character from that moment on, would be wasted (2) progression of the plot may become stale given that there is no longer a clever antagonist and solely an enemy that needs to be taken down, which can be a hit or miss with the audience and the show becomes more or less one-dimensional. So in my opinion, a redemption arc, though cliche, would be a much better route to take, although I wouldn’t mind seeing how the plot changes if they choose to do something like the latter.

What do you guys think? I’m always up for discussion - and as always this was just a fun post, so please don’t judge me based on this! Thanks~

[commandervisor]

whats good dorter now do swr for that meme

the first character i ever fell in love with: Agent Kallus. It was either the promo video or the actual pilot episode itself, but in all likelihood, the sideburns were probably involved somehow. If anything, I will say that the second character is Tua, the moment she stepped into the shuttle way back in DoD. Like, yo.

a character that i used to love/like, but now do not: Darth Maul. But his usage of his EXPERIMENT 2000 DEGREE KNIFE on Kanan’s eyes, Ezra’s innocence, but most importantly, the Inquisition, is the last straw.

a ship that i used to love/like, but now do not: Kanan/Seventh, since FPJ and SMG are married, yeah. Didn’t last long, since now it’s Fifth/Seventh and I don’t particularly trust a majority of the fanbase anymore to make legible, sane, and legal fanwork where Kanan isn’t in a relationship with Hera/where Seventh is in a relationship at all. Yikes.

my ultimate favorite character™: don’t make me choose

prettiest character: All the female characters look good, and as for the ‘handsome’ kind of pretty, Kallus, Kanan, and the prettiest Lasat in the Galaxy.

my most hated character: Kind of hard to like the I/r/o/n Squadron, since their episode had poor characterization for them, building solely off of them being S1 Ezra clones. They could definitely improve though! And I do have a few headcanons on what they’ve been up to since that episode.

* And I definitely LOVE Zeb, that’s why I hate how they keep… ‘minimizing’ him? Like in “Warhead”, as funny as it was, I didn’t like that the crew and the others were like 'woah you can think?’, 'that was actually very smart of you!’, 'ugh can’t you take charge of the base for one day without trouble’, etc. The writers are obviously trying to show us that Zeb is much more than muscle, but c'mon, really? This kind of stuff is how you treat the audience like they’re goldfish as well as disrespecting the character. Instead of conveying the message that 'Zeb is both smart and strong!’, it comes off more as 'Zeb is strong, but secretly smart!’ or something condescending like that.

my OTP: Mallus, yeah yeah yeah whatever

my NOTP: S/a/b/3/z/r/a, it seems clear to be that they’re just supposed to be like brother and sister. I don’t like a majority of the shippers because they seem to be missing the point (like I remember reading the comments of a clip of where Sabine hug-grabs Ezra in the jetpack chase scene and 90% of it was full of shippers that I swear couldn’t have been older than 12.), but I will say that I like some of the fanart.

favorite episode: “Droids In Distress” (I don’t know, I just watched it a lot back then; in hindsight, I’d say it was a good start to the show), “Empire Day”, “The Honorable Ones”, “The Forgotten Droid” (again, I don’t know, I just liked AP’s and Chopper’s dynamic), “An Inside Man”, “Trials of the Darksaber”, I can safely say “Through Imperial Eyes” because Kallus rests in pepperoni. 😎

saddest death: Hearing Tua died in tSoL way back during Celebration 2015 hit me pretty hard, actually.

favorite season: Season 1 + parts of Season 3, mainly the latter half so far.

least favorite season: Season 2 + the timeskip/transition to Season 3, because it felt like it was rushed; there’s a disconnect between the episodes, especially in the latter half (I suspect it’s due to the writers still being in a TCW mindset, where arcs with completely different stories happened one after the other — not that I’m saying that it’s okay for the writers to do, especially because their intent is obviously for SWR to be in a different format. It’s just that I can see why it happened and I hope that at this point in time, they can at least learn from their mistakes…).

So because of that, new information and the problems are just rapid-fire out of pretty much nowhere instead of foreshadowed or anything like that as well as being solved in a flash, like:

* Hera’s some years of father-daughter estrangement with Cham are dealt with in one episode.* The Inquisitors should’ve done more to build up their credibility, like I thought Seventh was gonna be a rival to Kanan and challenge him as a master to Ezra, but I guess that got given to Maul in the S2 finale.* Fifth is apparently blind, but they didn’t do nothing with that, they could’ve foreshadowed something about it with Kanan, and they also seemed like he was gonna be Seventh’s rival or something (at the time, I imagined it like Ventress and Grievous during TCW), but he ended up just being her lackey.* But no, and then everyone in-universe was like 'eh’, so that ended up being reciprocated by the audience as well.* Also, while we’re on that topic, as 'memetic’ as it was, helisabers really did worsen their credibility than it already was.* I honestly was kind of on the fence about Sabine for a while, since I didn’t like that nothing at least semi-permanently bad happened to her until Season 3 and I just generally don’t like haughty characters that don’t seem to struggle.* Kallus being smug for like the first half of tHO like he’s always been up to that point, and then when he tells his backstory, that attitude is GONE for the rest of the show and then we don’t even get to see the transition from him as a loyal and ruthless Imperial that seemed to enjoy the hunt, to someone who is about the exact opposite.* Ezra’s storyline suffers from something similar, like it looked like it was going somewhere with obsessing with the Sith Holocron and/or doing much more questionable things, but that only gets touched upon in SoS because all of it already happened during the timeskip, so by the time we see Ezra, it’s instead just an excuse for the writers to start having him do more action-y stuff and be problematic (like tWJ).

I like most of the ideas behind them, it’s just that there’s definitely much more to be desired out of them. Yeah, I guess they could do a novel/short story/whatever about these things like the timeskip developments, but that seems kind of sloppy, telling the explanation afterwards instead of showing it when it was the most relevant. I want the writers to respect their characters (and therefore, us) more. It’s certainly possible to do, but it’s not constant; it just comes and goes, as seen here and in TCW.

character that everyone else in the fandom loves, but i hate: I definitely like/love Chopper, but the memes about him being a Dark Lord or a Darth undercover or whatever are being run into the ground.

my ‘you’re piece of trash, but you’re still a fave’ fave: Agent Kallus, Governor Pryce. Inquisitors technically didn’t make the choice to be this way, so I didn’t count them here.

my ‘beautiful cinnamon roll who deserves better than this’ fave: the Inquisitors. And Tua.

my ‘this ship is wrong, nasty, and makes me want to cleanse my soul, but i still love it’ ship: Mallus, Fifth/Seventh, yeah.

my ‘they’re kind of cute, and i lowkey ship them, but i’m not too invested’ ship: Kanera.