Amazing! I can't believe how happy I am with this whole season, it's just caused me so much joy from beginning to end. I can always find flaws in any thing I watch, and I'll talk about those briefly, but wow. I'm happy. I'm so happy.
Cons:
But let's start with a couple of things I wasn't totally sold on, although I wouldn't call them huge problems or anything...
The resolution of the cliffhanger with Keyleth didn't quite land for me, and it was mostly a minor pacing issue. We end the episode with "holy shit Keyleth is going to DIE," but this final episode isn't about that at all... We have a drawn out period of time where we are struggling to bring Keyleth back, but to me it lacked tension because when Keyleth did wake up, it was like "oh hey, we don't have time to deal with this" since Percy and Orthax were now the obvious focus. If I had been the one writing the scene, I would have replaced the weeping and the long pause before Vax realizes he can try the herb and dirt thing, and instead have it be more frantic, like, "oh shit, no more potions, quick, grab the dirt!" keep the momentum, make it more of a triage scene than a true resurrection-type scene. I get that they wanted the stakes to feel very serious, but it didn't quite gel the way I wanted it to in the aftermath. In short, while I loved the decision to make Keyleth the one in peril in the last episode, I'm not sure the resolution to that plot beat landed in the context of this episode.
And for a much smaller pacing issue, this was such a small moment and I only want to comment on it because the show has been so good at pacing character beat moments all along, so when there's a slight misstep it stands out. After Scanlan throws Percy's gun into the acid and we see the bubbling Orthax goop, there needed to be an extra beat of silence before "well I'll be damned" and then another extra beat before "thank you, Scanlan." It happened so quickly, I wanted more space for the incredulity to build. Like I said, this is tiny, but it stood out to me as a moment that wasn't paced entirely right.
And then for the "big" one, and by big I just mean comparatively, this is the most negative thing I have to say about the episode... I mentioned in an earlier installment that the pacing was my biggest concern for this season as a whole. These are short episodes and there's a lot of story to tell. They managed to build in a lot of character beats among the action and chaos, but these past few episodes especially have had very little in the way of breathing time. And that makes sense, I don't need breathing time when everything is action-action-action, go-go-go. But the consequence of that is... well...
In the aftermath of what happens at the Ziggurat, we see that Whitestone is trying to recover from the rebellion and zombie horde attack. The Briarwoods are defeated, as are all their henchmen. What happens next? Well, Percy decides that he isn't fit to lead, it should be Cassandra, and then he immediately fucks off with the rest of Vox Machina to Emon, since they need to tell the sovereign and the council what happened with the Briarwoods and all that noise. This... feels cheap and anticlimactic to me in the show, in a way that it didn't in the original version. See, there, they hung around in Whitestone for a while, they had a festival, we had conversations with Percy and Keeper Yennen. The reason Percy leaves with Vox Machina in the story is because it's a D&D campaign and Taliesin wasn't leaving the game. The reason Percy leaves here is... not well founded. I get that he feels like he needs to work on himself and can't be a leader, but that's not actually a reason he needs to leave town literally hours after defeating the great evil.
And this is a consequence of pacing - if we could have had some sort of montage showing that a couple weeks had passed with Percy and the whole of Vox Machina staying in Whitestone and helping Cassandra establish herself on the throne, helping the people to clean up and grieve after what they'd lost... hell, a scene where we see a monument, where Percy has a moment to grieve and say goodbye to his family and to Archie and all the people of his community who died, since he was forced to flee and never got to honor them at home... I just felt I was missing that final emotional resonance that we could have gotten with honestly just five more minutes of screen-time here in the finale.
I understand why they rushed everyone back to Emon. I knew exactly how they'd end season one of this show, a lot of people guessed it and they were correct, and I get wanting to end on a bad-ass shocking cliffhanger that gets people hooked in for what's next. But it did rob something from the epilogue of Whitestone specifically. I hope that we get to return there, maybe repurpose some plot beats from the next arc and set them in Whitestone so we get that chance to have Percy check in with the home he thought he'd lost forever.
But anyway! Enough of my complaining!
Pros:
While I stand by what I said about Keyleth's near-death being imperfectly executed, I do want to say that I loved the character work and the acting here. Vax's utter despair, Vex's disbelief and grief... and Percy's coldhearted focus on his revenge even as his friend lies dying. I like that Scanlan gets to be the smart one to figure out about the orb causing an anti-magic field. It mimics the fact that Sam is often the first one to cotton on to a clever mechanical aspect of the gameplay at the table, since he's got quite the strategic mind for this kind of thing. You've also got the tenderness of Grog taking Keyleth from Vax and carrying her, that little moment of solidarity between the two men... so tender!
But the bulk of this episode is focused on Percy vs. Orthax, and it is one epic showdown. I don't really know where to start in praising this aspect of the episode, and to be honest these reviews have gotten a little out of hand with their length so I'm going to try to restrain myself, but I probably won't succeed.
Percy goes insane at Delilah, doesn't kill her quickly, instead saying: "I'll shatter your ankles for my sister Vesper. your hands belong to Julius..." oof. Chilling. He breaks out into Percy's maniacal laughter, and when Vex says "something has possession of you," he and Orthax answer together: "and we are better for it." I just love how Percy has been doing this shit all season and yet the extremity still kind of catches you off guard, the degree to which he's gone off the deep end...
And let's just talk about the moment with Vex, because... fuck, I'm so happy with it. I knew they wouldn't let us down, I knew they must have moved this moment to a more pivotal place. First, you get Vax's panicked yell: "Vex'ahila, what are you doing?!" as Vex stands between Percy and Delilah, the object of his vengeful hatred. And then she says the thing. "Darling, take off the mask." The reveal of Percy's face under the mask, just full on sobbing, is exactly what I expected it to be and yet it still hit so fucking hard. Because this is the thing, right? The mask is so creepy, but what is it hiding? Not just the glowing eyes of Orthax, but the real anguish Percy has been feeling all along. Percy tries so hard to stop Orthax from controlling him, ends up pointing the gun under his own chin, but Orthax takes control before he can end it...
Everything about Orthax and Percy's fight is gorgeous. The animation, the voice acting (Matt does an amazing job as Orthax, holy shit!), and the whole psychological journey of seeing Percy's past and his present collide. This works for me on so many different levels. You have the flashes of his family being killed, and then said family insisting he avenge them, you have Percy trying to kill his tormentors again, but actually aiming at his friends... and then meanwhile Vox Machina is darting around trying to avoid him, Scanlan is dragging Delilah around like a ragdoll trying to avoid Percy's shots, the names of his friends are appearing on the barrels of Percy's gun... the intensity just won't stop!
I like that we're doing the possession trope too, this idea of "only he can stop it," and the power of love breaking through. Vex gets a moment where she manages to penetrate the fog, and Cass makes her speech to convince him. The reason this all works for me is that we learn that in some ways Percy asked for this. Not in the way where it's his fault, of course, but in the sense that he wanted vengeance, he wanted to kill those who had wronged him, and he let himself live in denial about Orthax and the darkness consuming him all this time, in order to achieve his goal. It's not some straightforward thing where Percy has been controlled this whole time so actually none of his behavior is his own fault. It's a series of escalations, a series of decisions that culminated in this moment where Orthax is trying to take all his choice away.
And then Cass is there, she says "I'm here for you", and Vox Machina is there, and Vex says "we all are", and my heart skipped a beat, I was so happy!
I like that the way of subverting Orthax was deceptively simple and yet still enormously thematically relevant. Percy shoots his own hand instead of shooting Cass, thus paralleling shooting Desmond's hand all the way back in episode three.
And then there's the silence in the aftermath. There's Cass asking for assurances that it's really Percy, and Percy saying: "I'm afraid so. Well, most of me anyway." There's Vex's declaration: "So... that was the most fucked up thing I've ever seen, and I hang out with Scanlan."
And then we're in the epilogue, basically, and the setup for the cliffhanger.
Taliesin's voice acting in the aftermath of Orthax's defeat is so perfect. He sounds different, like the Percy we got to see briefly back in the earlier episodes, but even lighter, even more free. It's only with the contrast that you realize how gradually and how entirely he has been consumed by the darkness. It's a brilliant performance from Taliesin Jaffe, I just can't say enough about what a good job he did with all of this.
And of course next let's talk about Vax and Keyleth! We got to see Vax's sincere grief and even a kiss on the hand when he thought he'd lost Keyleth, and then they spend the rest of the episode just a little too busy for a conversation... it's cute that Vax is holding Keyleth up, though, that she knows she can lean on him.
And then the final conversation between them out by the Sun Tree. It's obviously a lot shorter than the full conversation that played out at the table, but it amounts to something similar. Vax tries to reopen the conversation and say he meant what he said, and Keyleth shuts him down with a soft no. She doesn't say "I don't feel the same", but rather "we can't", because of responsibilities... honestly the reason why I love their relationship so much is that it does start with this rejection that is pretty clearly "I don't think I'm in a place for this right now" and not "it's impossible, I don't see you that way." It's a distinction that matters because of where the story is going, but Vax is going to respect her rejection and be her friend anyway, and I am honestly feeling very tender about it. Of course, Vax saying "I'm gonna walk away" was a lovely little comedy beat and a fun reference for all of us Critters out there who saw Campaign One.
To be honest and I don't want to be negative here but I've seen people saying some completely unfounded stuff about the Vaxleth content, and I don't agree with them at all. I think the people who are disappointed with Keyleth and Vax in this episode aren't paying attention, or something. I keep seeing people say "it was played for laughs" which is... absolutely not accurate to what literally is happening on screen? What are you even talking about? Just because a moment has some levity to it, or there's a laugh in there somewhere, doesn't mean an entire scene is being played for laughs, written off as nothing more than a joke. I even saw someone say that the Vaxleth dynamic was completely different from the stream, and that's not even remotely true. This is exactly what the dynamic was in the stream, they just haven't kissed yet. Calm down.
Sorry, I just really can't stand it that people are seemingly looking for reasons to be unhappy? The campaign is the campaign, and the show is the show. They are going to be different, but to look at what we saw with these characters, their relationship dynamic and think it was disrespectful and diminishing... I could not disagree more, as a huge Vaxleth shipper. To me those responses reek of entitlement. If you don't like what you saw, that's fine, but to act like you deserved something different betrays a lack of understanding in so many things. This show was made with love, and the obvious respect and attention given to Keyleth and Vax and their relationship is plain to those of us who aren't determined to be negative. I get steamed about this because the people who don't like something and are cool about it, that's awesome and great. I've listed my complaints in these reviews, the things that didn't line up for whatever reason. But I don't turn around and say "how dare they not give me the version I wanted." I've seen people go so far as to imply that people who disagree with them are watching the show "wrong" in some way. I've seen people doing that, and it grates on my nerves like nothing else. Okay, sorry, end of soap box.
This epilogue also has adorable Vex and Keyleth moments, like Vex calling her "Kiki" as they're being hailed as heroes, and then Vex encouraging her: "darling, you've got this" as Keyleth prepares to cast her spell to take them through the Sun Tree. Keyleth blushes, it's super adorable, and of course I love Vaxleth but honestly Kiki has got such a crush on Vex and we love to see it.
While I wanted more of Percy coming to terms with his home being rescued, I still did like the brief resolution we did see, with him leaving Cass to rule. He gets to say another classic Taliesin line, slightly altered and taking place at a very different point in the story: "we live as long as Whitestone lives." I loved that the line was in there, it was such a lovely tribute to the campaign but also a lovely setup for an imagined future prosperity for Whitestone, depending on how much of that future we actually get to see.
And then we're back at the keep in Emon! Percy is tinkering with a new gun, which I think might surprise some viewers but it's part of what makes Percy the deeply complicated character that he is. He knew what he was unleashing on the world when he invented guns, and he did it anyway in his quest for vengeance. He can't put that back into a box, and so instead he'll keep refining, and keep using the weapon he created when he was lost in darkness. Also, his hand gem thing thing is so cool! I bet I know where they're going with this based on a certain glove Percy has in the campaign, and I think that's such a fun way of showing a lasting consequence from what happened in Whitestone.
We also get an all-too-brief flash of domestic bliss at the keep, with Grog trying to do some repairs and dropping a door on his foot, Pike doing some healing and also some reading of a certain romance novel previously glimpsed at Gilmore's, we see Vex and Vax hanging out with Trinket, the best member of Vox Machina finally returned. While I think the pacing issues are a bit of a thing here, in that I would have wanted a bit more time to relax in this space before the end, I was still quite pleased with what we did see!
And then we're at the Cloud Top District. Sovereign Uriel Tal'Dorei is making a speech - he's stepping down as sovereign and handing rule over to the whole of the Tal'Dorei Council! What a shocking twist for the end of the season, right?
Oh yeah, and four massive dragons are flying towards the city. That's also a thing that happens.
I've got to say, I love me a good cliffhanger, and this one was so much fun because us in the know were all waiting for this exact ending! They teased us with not a whole lot in terms of character design for the Chroma Conclave, but what we saw has me super hyped for what comes next.
God, what else is there even to say about this show at this point? I'm already excited to do a full re-watch, and I know I'll be delightfully revisiting these twelve episodes for as long as I have to wait until season two comes along and gives me more to obsess over! I'm so happy that this show was made with such obvious care and love and attention to all the characters we already adore. You can tell this is a labor of love and even the times when I didn't agree with a choice or felt a joke fell flat, I could still sense the passion and effort behind every frame. It's all more than I ever could have hoped for.
High points of the season for me were probably episodes three, eight, and eleven, but honestly the whole season is a roiling adventure and a heart-stopping joy to behold. The finale gets...
9/10
No comments:
Post a Comment
I'd really appreciate hearing what you think!