The Mighty Nein: Belonging (1x07)

I really, really liked this episode, it is maybe my favorite of this season, to my surprise!

Cons:

I'm much less intrigued by the machinations of Trent Ikithon than I think they want me to be. He's just kind of a bog-standard villain in a lot of ways. Power hungry and pure evil. Whenever we spend time on him and who he's working with, who he's betraying, my eyes kind of glaze over. I think it's most interesting when we see the interplay between him and the Volstruckers, and we didn't really get that here.

I'm still not sold on the Essek stuff, although I do have some compliments to pay to it later. I think the thing I don't like about this is again how dumb it makes certain characters look? Like, the fact that the Bright Queen believed Essek's story so thoroughly and so immediately to the point of killing Verrat without bothering to question him further? It's the kind of thing where the Bright Queen has to be just stupid enough for Essek to get away with this, which is a little frustrating.

Pros: 

However, all that said about Essek, I will say that if I just remind myself to think of this first season as the "origin story" of a lot of these characters, it helps a bit. Essek's naivete and his understandable reasons for his treason felt like they weakened the character from the jump, but to have him be here, knowing that he started a war in order to save his mother and that he failed, and then he decides to double down and protect himself... that feeds into him being a properly villainous figure in the story in a way that I do like. I wasn't expecting Essek's mom to die like this, so sudden, and at Essek's hands. What a horrible thing for a mother to ask a child to go through, but of course she doesn't think of it like that at all. I like the tension of that. I also liked seeing the Bright Queen reminiscing about her younger lifetimes, getting an insight into how much that experience is built into this culture, and how much Essek is an outsider to it by saying he won't get Consecuted.

I love how this episode played with the reality of this show as an adaptation of a D&D campaign. They've found ways to string the characters along up to this point, as to why they'd be together: one thing led to another, they all had reason to get out of town, but after doing a job for the Gentleman that resulted in Caleb getting protection back from scrying... why would they keep going as a group of six? Beau is rightfully worried about what it means that Trent is in power, Fjord is nervous and uncertain about his magic and wants to find out more, Jester's goal was to get here to Zadash... the group splinters basically immediately upon there not being a concrete task in front of them, and that feels realistic to what might happen to these messed up folks when given a chance to slow down and think about what comes next.

And so we see Fjord and Jester say a sad goodbye, and Jester have a freak-out about the Traveler still failing to appear. We see Fjord get some advice about communing with the source of his powers, and going to meditate in water about it. We see Beau get told by Dairon to lay low and wait for further word. We see Caleb ditching Nott, and Nott having a bit of a goblin meltdown about it. And Molly follows Cree to find out what the heck the Lucien thing is all about. Caleb, meanwhile, has to confront Astrid and Eadwulf, who decide to let him live just this one time, to honor their past together, but won't let him threaten their master.

On their own, the primary thing going on with all these characters is that they're scared. The world is fucked up in a way bigger than they know how to deal with, and every one of them, whether they try to take action against their enemies, learn more about their powers, or just fall apart, are unable to make real progress towards their goals on their own. We see Jester and Nott finding each other on the street, and we see Beau and Fjord have a conversation in the sauna. Caleb comes back to Nott. The group reconvenes, with a new goal in mind: The Gentleman wants them to steal a certain artifact, the one that kick-started this whole story.

I really admired the way this episode re-enforced the stakes and made the characters make an affirmative choice to be with each other. Not necessarily just out of personal affinity, although there are some real friendships forming here. It's more about a sense of purpose, all of them feeling helpless in their own way, all of them ready to make a real difference.

Some moments in particular I really enjoyed: Beau and Fjord's conversation about Beau's culpability in the war. I love that Fjord was able to give Beau some perspective, and she even compliments him on saying it in a way that doesn't make her want to punch him. I also liked Nott and Jester's temple desecration of course, fun Campaign 3 implications there, if you know you know. And I deeply adored the moment with Astrid, Eadwulf, and Caleb: all the juicy toxic romance vibes with these three will be the death of me. Because of the restructuring of the season, we get to some of these pivotal moments a hell of a lot sooner than you would expect: Caleb seeing these people, especially Astrid, again, was such a long time coming in the campaign.

I know I said this was maybe my favorite episode, and I think it's one I will be eager to see again in a re-watch of the show. So many of my problems with this season have been structural ones around the pacing and when and how information is given to us. I think, oddly enough, this is the rare show that is more designed as a binge, even as the episodes are dropping weekly. Like, I'm pretty sure knowing this episode is waiting for me is going to positively alter my opinions on some of the earlier episodes when I watch again. Particularly the Essek stuff, and also the timing around the Caleb information.

I'll stop there for now - it feels like we've barely scratched the surface, and next week it's the finale of the season!

8.5/10