The Legend of Vox Machina: The Ghosts of Whitestone (4x07)

Yes, Laudna, I'm going to go ahead and call this one "fun" scary!

Cons:

I am hyper-sensitive to hetero-normative stuff, especially in shows where I feel like they are good about not being too rigid in that regard... so I have to point out that I definitely did roll my eyes at Delilah taunting Vax with the future he could have if he lived, and that future was... having a lot of babies with Keyleth? I don't know. Is it just me, or is that tedious. We saw Scanlan have visions of growing old and becoming a patriarch of a family a few seasons back. We know that Percy and Vex will have a bunch of kids some day. Is the tragedy of Vax's impending death that he won't get to "settle down" with Kiki and become a father? That was never really the vibe I got from the original source material. This is a small thing, a nitpick, really, I just wish there was an imagined future that Vax was afraid of losing that didn't have to evoke the idea of having kids. That doesn't always have to be the symbol of a hoped-for future, ya know? I am also side-eying the idea of Keyleth and Delilah being parallels, what with Keyleth wanting to try and save Vax the same way Delilah tried to save Sylas. I always thought Percy and Vex were the obvious Briarwood parallel but whatever.

Also a nitpick but it does strike me as a little ridiculous to think of Delilah and Sylas and Laudna living underneath Whitestone this whole time, when it's fully occupied by the de Rolos, and we know Percy and others have been down at the Ziggurat poking around... just how big is this underground area, and how do we feel about the fact that it hasn't been discovered in over a year? A little too goofy of an idea, perhaps. Honestly, why would Delilah choose it as a place to do her Sylas experiments in the first place? What's the benefit to her, if the Whispered One is already out and about and she doesn't need access to the Ziggurat for anything?

Pros:

I really am doing some picking of nits though, this was a very good episode. I kind of love that the past couple of episodes have been created basically from whole cloth; I knew we'd have to do a lot more massaging of the story-beats for the last couple seasons of this show, given the nature of the source material, and thus far I've been really pleased with what they've come up with. I like how contained this is, the whole episode focused on happenings at Whitestone, with Pike and Grog only making their way back at the very end to share their news about Wilhand and make plans to go find Scanlan.

Tary and Trinket being left behind for the spooky tunnel exploration made me laugh - any excuse to have fewer people (and bears!) to animate, right? I feel so bad for Tary even as he makes me smile; he had a couple of fun laugh lines in this one, the best one being his instruction to Keyleth and Vax to "cease [their] coitus". That feels like a fun nod to one of the funniest sequences in all of Campaign One, the infamous flash card scene with Pike.

I did love the spooky atmosphere of going down under Whitestone and finding a recreation of parts of the castle up above. I loved the sheer sinister vibes of this place where the walls kept shifting and swallowing people up. Once again we got a team-up of the twins on the one hand, and Percy and Keyleth on the other, which I always love to see, after last season had a lot of focus on the romantic pairings. Always love it when you've got these characters yelling for each other in worry, with Percy being worried for Keyleth, and later Vax being worried for Percy when he gets yoinked away as they're facing down Delilah. Delicious stuff, I must say.

Including Laudna here was SO fun. I always want to make the distinction between "they changed that from the campaign and that's inherently bad" and "they changed that from the campaign in a way that I think is weakening the story/themes in some way". Does it make sense for Laudna to be here right now? I'd have to go back and re-read What Doesn't Break, the Laudna backstory book, but I kinda think no, it doesn't make sense. But then on the other hand, sure it does! Why not? Let's include it, as evidence of Delilah's continuing influence on this story and world. Much like last week's episode showed the lingering effect of the Chroma Conclave in the form of this deadly disease of the lungs, here we see that the Whispered One and the Briarwoods have had their tendrils of influence literally spreading out underground this whole time. The Laudna character design was so fun, I love how cute and spooky she was, I loved the puppets, I loved her and Vex teaming up. I really hope we get a Bells Hells show someday...

Another thing that is not in the campaign is like, the back-story to explain the Briarwood's return. We've got Delilah who was brought back by the Whispered One, she says, and then attempts to bring Sylas back were failures because his vampiric nature has overtaken him. She has been cloning him, trying to find a body that won't succumb to these violent urges, so that he can be with her for real. What an effective demonstration of how scary and serious things are, to take one of the season one villains, a terrible baddie who took a shit-ton of effort to kill, and have him pop up over and over. Vax decapitates one version of Sylas right away. Vex is able to "kill" Delilah with an arrow very quickly, although of course her culty necromantic magic means it doesn't stick. It's just such a cool concept, to pull back earlier sinister monsters and have them be the minions of a much bigger threat. Incredibly effective and spooky.

Overall, I liked spending this episode in Whitestone, soaking in the spooky atmosphere, seeing some interesting action moments, unraveling more of the secrets of the Whispered One through Delilah. Mainly I think I liked this episode because I got to watch my poor lil guy Percy live through his worst nightmare... I do love me some angst.

Next episode I think we are finally going to get back to Scanlan. I am extremely curious about how they're going to do this reunion, given that the Scanlan stuff from the last chunk of Campaign One is, I think, some of the most memorable and beloved of that story as originally told!

9/10