Ah, yes, okay. So this is what I was kind of afraid of? Let's talk about it.
Cons:
I mentioned earlier in this season that there are always going to be Those Moments for each viewer that they feel especially attached to, and those ones are going to be harder to handle when they change in the stream. I've been really lucky up until now that most of what I was most excited to see, I did get to see in some form or other! But this episode was a two for one special of moments I loved from the stream not happening in the show. I actually understand both changes and I don't think they're flaws with the show, but they are personal disappointments for me specifically, so I do need to talk about them just a bit.
One is Scanlan's resurrection. They pivoted his death into a coma which I think was smart, but I just... man, I remember the whole gang gathered around doing a ritual to wake him up, and I remember Kaylie being there to help too by playing a song. And I especially remember the aftermath. They have really, really changed Scanlan's arc this season. It felt like they were leading up to a certain incident pretty heavy with the foreshadowing in the last two seasons, and then here the impetus for Bard's Lament exists but its emotional context has been altered significantly. I'm on record being totally fine with big changes, and I'm glad they didn't try and squeeze in Scanlan being angry with the group for getting Kaylie involved, since there's just not much time left in the season to delve into it. But overall, the animated series makes the characters... less messy. I miss seeing a version of this where Scanlan is in a really dark, fucked up place and it's not as simple as Kaylie telling him she wants a relationship with him. In the stream, it was a lot more convoluted than that, and I do miss that.
It's... carved into my brain. I was marathon-ing through campaign one and had almost caught up at this point. Percy was my absolute favorite character. It was intense, it was unbelievable, it felt so permanent and tragic and everyone at the table was so locked in, all of them together. There was so much rage and shock and pain in the collective experience of it.
And yeah, I might have guessed they'd change the specifics. I might have guessed after Ripley got away that we wouldn't get this group moment of revenge. And I'm going to talk in a minute about how cool the twins fighting Ripley on the boat was. It was a cool scene. Not trying to be a hater. I'm just... man, I was looking forward to some of what I'd felt all those years ago being recaptured in animated form, and this is the first time in the whole show that it very much did not happen for me.
Pros:
I want to talk about the episode we got, instead of the moments from the stream that are imprinted on my soul. Because this was definitely a fantastic episode of TV in its own right!
It's gentler, it's less dramatic, but I did like Kaylie showing up to talk to Scanlan, and that it worked so easily. Then you have the moment where Kaylie urges him to stay loyal to his group and go to face Raishan with the others, which I did like. The push and pull of Scanlan's loyalties with Vox Machina and with his daughter is an interesting tension and now that we know for sure they're getting a season four, I am eager to see how they develop it!
Keyleth's plot did get much stronger now that I've seen more of the resolution of it. Stunning visuals all the way through, of course! I loved the way she connected with the world and nearly lost herself, especially the epic-ness of her new elemental form cracking forward out of the ground quite literally - that was intense and super dramatic, a proper match to when we saw her become a fire elemental for the first time! Now here's hoping that in season four we get the water version, too. Of course, Keyleth getting to mirror back the "you know I'm in love with you, right?" moment to a vision of Vax was super sweet. And I like that the lesson here was she had to believe in herself and find strength in herself, but, that it's actually really hard to rely on other people and give yourself over to them, so that's part of what she needs to learn to do! In the end, she talks about how she needed Vox Machina to listen to her and they weren't, but also that they were the ones who gave her the strength to dig her heels in, in the first place! I do like that character complexity and where it's leading our girl Kiki.
Also, best comedic beat of the episode by far comes when Keyleth figures out how to reach through to the others using nature. Her face appearing in the sand, and Vax saying: "okay, what the hell is this now?" was so fucking funny.
The twins get my favorite plot again. As much as I'm bummed about the Ripley fight we didn't get, this was some of the show's finest and most interesting combat work. Vax and Vex are both such bad-asses and Ripley, along with her minions, made for a formidable foe! I loved Vax flying around using Vex as a weapon, Vex with her arrows, the gunshots flying in from all directions, Ripley continuing to get away because of Cabal's Ruin...
And Vax hearing Percy's voice coming out of the gun?? I saw people predicting this, that Percy was going to be discovered in some way through Vax's connection to the Matron, and I am beyond thrilled this is the direction they're going with it! This is the kind of change that spices up Percy's death from the stream, adding a bunch of cool new stuff instead of taking anything away. I loved the scene where Vax brought it up to Vex and she immediately started tearing up and saying she didn't want to be given false hope. We'll see how false that hope is after we watch the finale, Vex...
So yeah - just one more episode left until we have to wait for probably another two... years... for more of this show! It always moves so fast. I'm just glad we've got the Mighty Nein and the end of campaign three to look forward to in the meantime...
8/10
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