Ninjago S15 E12

## Plot

Lloyd, Cole, Jay, and Fugi-Dove come across a road. They finally make it to Twichy's. Kai, Zane, and Dareth are already there. Their plan is to figure out which villain the Crystal King will recruit next, replace them, and then infiltrate the council in disguise. Fugi-Dove reveals that Aspheera has also joined the council. Captain Soto, Ultra Violet, and Killow are small timers. They need to think bigger. No one knows where the Time Twins or Garmadon are. Jay suggests the Mechanic. He used to be a small-timer, but he's leveled up since Prime Empire, and they know where his lair is, assuming he hasn't moved. Hounddog McBrag knows that the only place nearby is the gas station and searches it. The ninja, Dareth, and Fugi-Dive hide, but Twitchy reveals where they are because he still has memory problems. Fugi-Dove sacrifices himself to give the others time to escape. Kai destroys one car with his powers and they take the other one back to the city. They're attacked by the Mechanic. Lloyd is able to defeat him. He disguises himself as the Mechanic, who is tied up in the back of his own noodle truck. Zane was able to make a GPS device to follow Lloyd, who follows a crystal spider when it shows up. The guys follow him in the truck. Jay points out that Zane is the one who has disguise capabilities. He's even disguised himself as a villain before. However, they need him to track Lloyd. The Mechanic is able to free himself by detaching his mechanical arm, which no one notices. Lloyd is at the abandoned End Line. It turns out that there was a secret passage. It leads to a capsule that suddenly shoots him across a track at high speed. The Mechanic fights Cole and Jay and uses remote claws on the truck to upend it. We see Clutch with the Teapot of Tyrahn in a quick cameo. The guys follow the Mechanic down into the subway. He pushes them onto the tracks right as a train is coming. Kai and Zane are able to use spinjitzu to get back up, but Cole is on the side as the train passes, and Jay is underneath it. A crystal spider confirms the Mechanic's identity with facial recognition and watches the fight without anyone noticing. He's giving the guys a lot more trouble than normal. They're still out of practice. Jay accidentally zaps Kai and Cole, so Zane has to save them from another train, which the Mechanic uses to escape. They try to warn Lloyd, but something causes them to lose the signal on the tracker. Lloyd is on his own now. The ride finally stops in front of rows and rows of statues, specifically, warriors carved out of vengestone. He gets to the council room and sees that a rebuilt Mr. E has also joined, now called Mister F, but he still doesn't talk. Pythor mocks Aspheera's entire motivation, character, and personality being about revenge. Lloyd asks who sits in the last throne, which is slightly more elaborate. Vangelis and Pythor assume that the Crystal King sits there, but it's actually for his kabuki masked messenger. The king will reveal his plan in time. Kabuki Mask reveals that they have an imposter among them, and they start fighting amongst themselves before they're shown the footage of the Mechanic fighting the ninja and them saying that they have to warn Lloyd. If I were him, I would've tried to at least bluff my way out by claiming that he already defeated Lloyd. Aspheera tries to blast him when he runs away, but he dodges it. He's grabbed by Pythor, who turned invisible. His fake mustache falls off. He does spinjitzu and knocks away Mister F, Vangelis, and Pythor. However, Mister F is able to shoot him into a wall, headfirst. Ouch. As he falls unconscious and the episode draws to a close, Kabuki Mask reveals who they are by taking off their mask… and singing a lullaby. Their voice changes from a man to a woman's. *Spider's in the house sleep sleep Spider bit the mouse sleep deep Don't wake up or else you'll find a spider in your mouth* Yes, Harumi is alive, and she's the right hand to the Crystal King. I… honestly don't know how to feel about this twist. Characters in this show are really only dead until or unless a writer comes up with another great story for them. I felt like Harumi's end in season 9 was great though. She died by doing one good thing that had nothing to do with Lloyd at all. I guess my feelings will depend on how they handle this. Literally the only hint that it was her was the fact that Kabuki Mask spoke to Lloyd specifically in prison, and that they used spiders. I don't think Harumi sang that song once in season 9 though, and I only remember her singing it twice in season 8. According to supplementary material, Hutchins taught it to her as a child, and she used to think that it was creepy too. Like I said in season 12, I love that they brought back Britt McKillip to voice her again. Lloyd was supposed to finally be done with all of the angst about her in season 13 though. I felt like the beginning of this season implied that his arc would be about being a leader again and being responsible for the well being of his teammates after what happened to Nya at the end of the previous season. Before Mister F's inclusion and Harumi's identity were revealed, I also thought that it was cool that each ninja was going to face a villain that they had some sort of personal connection to, even if some were flimsier than others. Harumi's inclusion kind of throws that out of whack though, since her connection is to Lloyd, but I had him connected to Pythor before, because of season 1. Aspheera stole Kai's powers in season 11. Vangelis and Cole faced off at the end of season 13. Mister F for Zane, naturally. Before, I had him connected to the Mechanic for nearly killing him, but now all that's left are the Mechanic and Jay, who I guess are arguably indirectly connected through the business with Prime Empire. However, that leaves out Pythor. I guess he could count as one for all of them, given that he was the first main antagonist after Garmadon? Also, we haven't seen Nya, Pixal, or Wu have a significant role or scene in the story in what feels like *forever*. I'm sure we'll see them soon in the next six episode arc, but who knows when that will come out? Even though I didn't like Zane's arc, I would say that "The Benefit of Grief" is my favorite individual episode so far. Sally is probably my favorite new character to be introduced this season. I loved listening to the full version of her song. However, I wasn't a huge fan of the trailer for episodes 13 through 30 for this season, which was shown during a livestream called LEGO Con 2022. I thought it was filled with too many spoilers. I guess I should've known better, since the leaks from the first twelve episodes turned out to be true, but still. The only shocking part of the first trailer, at least to me, was when the monastery blew up. I audibly gasped the first time I saw that. **MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!** So, the Bounty gets damaged again and, like the monastery, is also destroyed for the umpteenth time, Lloyd embraces his Oni heritage/powers, Garmadon returns, and the Crystal King is revealed to be another previous antagonist who somehow survived or came back. This is revealed through a minor throwaway line by Garmadon that could've easily been cut out or spliced differently to keep up the surprise, especially since before this, we only knew what the Crystal King looked like through the sets. Dammit LEGO, even when you guys *do* advertise the show, you do it poorly! You release the first 12 episodes out of the blue along with the trailer on May 20, only to private them and the compilation videos three days later, and when they show up on Netflix, also out of the blue (but that's par for the course with Netflix), they're only up for a few days before they're removed by June 7. Then the episodes were un-privated on YouTube on June 1st (still not sure about the compilations), but with no clue when the rest would come out, or how. The first 12 episodes of the season came out on Netflix again, this time for good, on July 15th. During the LEGO panel at San Diego Comic-Con less than two weeks later, they announced that the rest of the episodes would be released on Netflix by October 1st, 2022, although the veteran fans, such as myself, knew that we'd likely get the rest of the season in English from another source sooner than that, either from LEGO themselves again via YouTube, or another country like Australia or New Zealand airing them first, etc. It was New Zealand, or rather, it was Aotearoa, throughout September and October. Either way, those of us that are too broke to pay for cable, internet, or a streaming service will be left to our own devices, if you know what I mean. I just hope that they won't be taken down again. It's now August 28, 2022. I recently watched the Chinese dub of episode 13 with a serviceable fan translation. It was fine. It was mostly just flashbacks with exposition with a minor scene set in the present at the very end with Lloyd. Again, I'm reserving my judgment on Harumi's return until I see more of her. It also revealed the Crystal King's true identity, at least to the audience, and it was done in a rather anti-climactic way in my opinion. Once again, just because the new writers will probably never top the Harumi betrayal/reveal doesn't mean that they shouldn't even try. And then when it came to releasing the season, it turned out to be all of the above, because on September 22, LEGO uploaded episodes 17 through 24 onto their YouTube channel in Cantonese, but they were region locked. This is why VPNs exist. The U.S. Netflix release was also delayed from October 1st to the 10th, although I don't know which company's fault that is. They're both rather incompetent and stupid, and make dumb or nonsensical decisions, so flip a coin. However, the Australia release remained the same. Way to prevent spoilers, assholes! Episode 24 was the first and only time I've ever put a spoiler warning instead of the title, but at least now I have some more context and can reveal the title, since it's a comedic episode. And don't even get me started on all of the leaks. Fans actually celebrated when Teletoon shut down in 2023, because apparently they've always been really bad with that. It makes me glad that I don't live in Canada.