The Legend of Vox Machina: Trial By Water (4x02)

Okay, episode two! Maybe not my favorite, but not bad by any means.

Cons:

I love Keyleth very much, and I am so proud of her accomplishments, really. I will say, though, there's something of a diminishing return with all the fake-out "I'm on the verge of death and all is hopeless and then BAM I got a major glow-up and became an elemental and saved the day!" It was so cool when it happened during her fire trial. Then it kinda happened twice on her earth trial, as first her father and then Vox Machina briefly believed her to be dead until she popped out of the earth as a bad-ass rock monster. And now here, in her water trial, same thing. She's defeated, but nope! She's not! Hooray! There's nothing I can point to here that was poorly done, it's just the very nature of it being something we've seen twice before, you know?

My fears about Pike's story-line continue here. Why does she have this ambivalence about the Everlight? The one time they actually spoke back in season one, Pike learned the lesson that she didn't have to be pious and proper in order to embrace her faith and her powers. What, exactly, in the intervening time, has made her so wary of this connection? The only thing we have is the blood stuff from visiting the Hells last season and in that case, I would expect Pike's attitude to be more about feeling guilty or afraid about if her nature would conflict with her values. She just seems so... tortured over something, but I don't really understand why. I have no problem, in theory, with Pike working through a complicated set of feelings about her relationship to her goddess. That's kind of the only sort of deity experience I'm interested in seeing, in this show, one where it's about the mortal's journey and what they are going through. But I don't really get what Pike's going through, sorry!

Pros:

That said about the redundancy of Keyleth's plot, I can't exactly dismiss this entirely. The animation of Vesrah and under the water and the kraken, all of Keyleth's wild-shaping, the tentacles flying around, Keyleth using all the elements to stop the kraken in the end... this all looks incredible. I also liked the bit on the ship at the start, such great sense of motion to the waves.

Seeing Keyleth and Vax happy together and getting to spend some time on their own is unexpectedly lovely, and even though I still have questions about the blight from the Matron thing, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Keyleth knew about it, that Vax hadn't tried to hide it from her. I enjoy the fact that these early episodes aren't hanging on misunderstanding or deception plots; yay for people telling their partners what's going on! I also liked that Keyleth wasn't tempted to let the kraken through to save Vax: the proof that she'll make a great leader is right there. She knew what the kraken wanted was too far, and she wasn't swayed by personal desire. And the way she stands up to Uvenda and states her piece is so Keyleth! What she said was spot-on, as was the awkwardness of accidentally interrupting Uvenda before she could tell Keyleth that she'd already succeeded.

Percy and Vex continue to be #couplegoals or whatever. They are just a blast together, it's wonderful to see Percy so well-adjusted, honestly. The fight with the undead beast was great, Tary getting in the way and calling Vex "Little Elf Girl" was adorable, and in maybe my favorite small detail from the episode, we have Vex's warm and proud reaction to receiving an invitation to Keyleth's coronation. She's so proud of her friend! They've come so far!

We don't make a ton of progress in Pike and Grog's story-line other than to get confirmation about the former priestess of the Everlight. The animation of the creepy cult room was appropriately sinister, I love how it was hiding behind such an innocuous illusion! And I love Grog saving Pike's life, so genuinely worried for his little buddy with all the acid. I love that this show never forgets that Grog is an actual asset to his friends, despite his intellect.

It's appropriate, I think, that we haven't seen Scanlan yet, although I think the impact of this is blunted by the idea of them all being apart ever since Scanlan split off. This is a consequence of adaptation that I don't hate, just one of those things that will always haunt me from how it went down in the original campaign! Will we get to see Scanlan in episode three? I guess it's time to find out!

7/10