Mayyyybe the best episode that the show has had yet?
Cons:
I'm going to talk about Pike more in the "pros" section, I promise I'm not trying to be a hater. First off, I talked about the momentum of the last episode being break-neck and intense and perfect, and starting off this installment with Pike just ground everything to a halt in not the best way, in my opinion.
And then here's the thing... Pike's stuff doesn't have the right stakes to it, because the story didn't build up properly. The pay-off is honestly very good. So much about this is very good. But narratively, the reasoning for Pike having this crisis of faith feels very contrived and ill-considered, until we get the explanation. I needed more build-up, I needed more hints of where Pike's issues were coming from, what she needed to realize about herself.
So, essentially, Pike needs to learn that it's okay that she likes to play rough with her friends, go out drinking and brawling. There are so many paths to a holy and faith-filled life, and Pike needs to accept all of herself to be a good cleric of the Everlight. That's great! I loved that! But this stretches back into the set-up of the earlier episodes. We see one example of Pike having doubt/discomfort about her relationship to the Everlight, and that's when she's slightly awkward blessing that family's house in the first episode. Other than that, whenever she's needed her magic to work, it's worked. Sure, she can't save the boy in the first episode, but that's not framed as Pike's failure because of her relationship to her goddess, it's just framed as... well, she ran out of spell slots. When she needs to heal Grog and Vax, she can. When she needs to create shields and buff people's weapons with holy power, she can. She doesn't seem to have any actual issue with any of it, or feel any guilt after she drinks with Grog or swears or does any of the other "uncouth" things she's now saying she feels bad for.
My point is, the earlier episode says she needs to "apologize" but doesn't actually show Pike feeling conflicted about any of this behavior. Until this moment, when she explains to us what we should have been seeing all along. Am I going too hard on this relatively minor complaint? Probably. I think it's because Pike's absence in the story was originally a contrivance because of scheduling conflicts, and I wanted to feel like Pike getting her own subplot here was a necessity, something that added an aspect to the story, something that was earned. Instead, despite the good things about it which I'm about to turn to, it still ended up kind of feeling like a contrivance to me, like treading water to pad out a run time.
Pros:
But like I said, the Pike stuff is by no means bad, here, and the pay-off works for me even without the buildup being what I could have desired. To start, Ashley Johnson is a world-class voice actor and she kills it with Pike, giving so much gravitas to the circumstance even with a script that in my opinion fails to properly explain the stakes. And the visuals of her trying to commune with the Everlight are maybe the coolest design aspect of the show thus far? They get to take it to such an artistically gorgeous place, the goop pulling Pike in, the sharp contrast between the light and dark... man, it's great, it's beautiful. And the temple is beautiful too, such a cool setting that you can tell they put a lot of thought into. We also get a lot of Pike's strength of character, her stubbornness, which leads perfectly into the resolution of these different aspects of Pike's life.
The Everlight looks so cool, and the voice is so ethereal but also so grounded... you get the sense of the Everlight not as some benevolent one-note light goddess, but a fighter, one who will crack some skulls to do what's right. Quite a bit like Pike, in other words. And as I said above, the lesson Pike needs to learn is one I really appreciate, even if it wasn't built to the way I would have built to it. I loved this line from the goddess: "any path can be a holy one, so long as one walks it with truth." Pike can be a bit of a bruiser and goof off with Grog and still heal people and be a worthy acolyte of her deity. That's an awesome way of reconciling the way Ashley played Pike in the original version, and I think it makes for a decent build to what we'll see in the next episode with Pike. Bottom line, I have mixed feelings over all the Pike stuff since she split from the group in episode four, but those mixed feelings are by no means extreme or ruinous to my overall enjoyment.
And then the main story, the fight with Anders, holy shit.
They really go hard on Cassandra's injury! I love how Keyleth's way of healing has a distinctly different vibe from Pike. It shows that Keyleth is a bad-ass with endless potential, but how she doesn't have the same skill with healing as Pike does, and being here without their cleric has serious disadvantages. Keyleth requires various components and time and personal strength to complete what Pike could probably do by snapping her fingers. It's gruesome, the way we see Cass fall to the ground and gurgle for breath, Vax holding his hand to the wound while Keyleth gets the spell ready. And then the moment when Keyleth briefly thinks she's failed and then Cass gasps and sits up... the screaming and pointing... Keyleth's babbling and then hugging Cass then running off... it was such a perfect moment to introduce the briefest amount of levity in such a charged sequence of events. Bottom line, I love Kiki, she deserves the whole dang world, and she's saved the day once again!
There are so many aspects of the Anders combat that I loved, and I feel like I could talk about them all for paragraphs and paragraphs, so let's do a couple of rapid-fire bullet points.
- Percy's rage with Anders is fucking amazing. The switch from concern for Cass to "you son of a bitch" was stunning and then hits just keep on coming in the best way, him running into the room and realizing what Anders is now capable of. Percy fighting off those golems, big strong melee adversaries, with a fucking gun that can't even scratch them. Yikes!
- Vax to the rescue! I told you I was soft for these two together, and we get him running in, standing between Percy and the things that want to kill him, saying "we're in this together"... there's even a shot of them standing back to back facing down their foes, just as Grog and Vex catch them up. I'm living for it.
- Speaking of Grog and Vex, I love their fight out in the hall with the soldiers. Vex gets flirted with by a dude impressed with her shooting, and then proceeds to split his arrow and shoot him in the head. Hot. Grog smashes men's heads together to teach them a lesson about messing with his friends. He's such a sweetheart.
- We get to see how the group has gotten better at fighting as a team, when they realize the golem's weaknesses and start to take them out efficiently and without getting in each other's way, playing to the strength of the more finesse-type fighters like Vex, Vax, and Percy, while Keyleth (as Minxie) and Grog can pin the enemies down. (I love Grog and Vax here, Vax offering his assistance, Grog saying "don't you do nothing", Vax saying "don't get mad, big guy," and then kill-stealing from Grog, Grog saying "I hate your face so much." They're bestest friends, y'all.)
- And then of course, the escalation point! Anders using his creepy tongue to charm Grog and have him turn on his friends! I love that he primarily goes after Vax. The subplot where the two of them have this antagonism that edges into real dislike even though they're still family, feeding into this moment where Grog is instructed to "kill Vox Machina" and he really seems like he's trying to do so. We get Keyleth saying: "We're your friends, remember? We lo---" and getting cut off, trying to break through the mind control. I love that it doesn't work, though. I love that they can't talk their way out of this one.
- And then the whole group is bewitched, Keyleth and the twins and Grog all facing down Percy, Anders watching with sickening glee as Keyleth and Vex use a vine and arrows to pin Percy against the wall, ready to murder him... this was such a creepy image, I love the way Anders was able to talk through them. What a way of showing what a true villain this man is. He's not only willing to do bad things to get what he wants, he seems to relish in specifically torturing Percy in the process of killing him.
- After Percy gets the first shot on Anders, I loved the comedy of the gang chasing after the silver tongue. "What... the fuck?" "Get it, I guess?" And Grog scrambling around trying to stab this tiny little menace.
And now to come out of my poor attempt at "rapid-fire bullet points"... let's talk about that Anders kill, shall we?
We've seen Percy shoot a man's hand off, we saw the brutality of his kill on Stonefell, but this one tops everything. The flash of demonic furor in his eyes, the mask, the smoke rising up more intensely than we've ever seen it. Because of the flashback in the last episode, we really understand why this particular betrayal was so intense for Percy. "We trusted you... you betrayed us when we needed you most."
And of course, another one of those "Taliesin what the fuck you are very good at this" lines that everyone remembers from the stream: "You're the face I saw when murder entered my heart." YESSSS. God, he shoots the man's jaw off and then explodes his head and shoots him back out of a window. Talk about an epic kill. I was living for it. It shouldn't be hot, but we all know it's hot.
But then Cass says Percy's name, and he drops the gun and mask to the floor and runs to her which just murdered me dead on the spot. The tenderness. The forehead touch. Percy has a sister and I'm crying about it, okay?
We're also getting hints of the larger plan of the Briarwoods in this episode... a star chart showing the solstice. Something big is meant to happen in five days. I like how they're working in the A-plot but keeping things grounded entirely in character moments. Like, okay, they've got the necessary plot point of informing Archie and the resistance that the plan worked and Cass is safe. Instead of just running and telling them, you've got Keyleth sending the De Rolo crest up into the sky, giving hope to the people of Whitestone, showing Keyleth's growing confidence and power, Vex being terrified/impressed/(and turned on hehe let's be honest) by the display... so much is communicated while still propelling basic plot points forward.
We also get to check in with our Big Bad of the season, and by Big Bad I do in fact mean Lady Delilah Briarwood. I love the moment when Sylas asks "what are you doing" and Delilah says "protecting you." I think it's the strongest hint we've gotten so far that while Sylas is a bad-ass and he will fuck you up no questions asked, Delilah is the one to watch the fuck out for. Creepy pentacle, ruthless sacrifice of her poor steward (poor Matt Mercer, murdered yet again), creepy necromancy magic, and... a zombie hoard. Of course, Delilah. Like we don't have enough to deal with.
I liked the "You got Scanlan'd" song and the break in the tension. Scanlan sees Keyleth's symbol in the sky, then sees what he thinks are a couple of dudes hooking up in a doorway... once again appreciate that Scanlan is unambiguously queer in this adaptation. And then there's a hoard of undead, courtesy of Lady Briarwood. I loved this line: "Of course it's zombies, because fuck me, that's why."
Our episode ends with Scanlan warning the rest of the gang about the new threat heading their way. We see a shot from the sky, Keyleth's skywrite spell, and the ruined, dreary Whitestone beneath, the dead walking the streets and intent on destroying our heroes. I'm hella pumped!
I just don't even know how to tell you how thrilled I am that this show is good. Like, it's really good, right? I've gotten my sister into it and she has no prior investment in Critical Role and she's loving it so far. They are just doing such a great job with the intensity and the darkness but most importantly the characters, they all really truly feel like themselves and I'm so pleased about it, I can't even tell you. Onward to the last episode of this week's drop! I can't believe next week ends the season!
9/10
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