RWBY V5 C2

## Plot

Dr. Watts meets with Professor Lionheart in person, and they head to a secret place in Haven. A seer Grimm is waiting for them. It allows them to communicate with Salem. Cinder is with her, and has recovered her voice. I'm not gonna lie, it feels good to hear Jessica's voice again. Needless to say, Lionheart definitely invokes a cowardly lion here. He tells them about the location of the Spring Maiden, that Qrow told him, and that Ruby was with him. When he tries to tell them to get to her quickly though, Salem threatens him and chokes him with a tentacle of the seer Grimm. Well, that's gonna give me nightmares. Salem instructs Cinder to head to Mistral and convince Raven that her tribe's survival depends on her cooperation. Then she will bring the Spring Maiden to the relic and contact Hazel. After that, the White Fang will be free to destroy Haven. Meanwhile, Watts has to fix Tyrian's tail. Cinder asks Salem why they have to work with bandits and keep Ruby alive, since they have enough power to take what they want by force. Salem tells her that using others can be… well, useful. You know, I wonder if Salem just wants the relics and sees even her own inner circle as pawns. Cinder will have the powers of the maidens, but only when the time is right. All power comes with a cost. If Ruby learns how to use her silver eyes, then Cinder has to be careful. She also tells Cinder to tell Tyrian that she would like a word with him. Uh oh. She's probably mad that he failed to even kill Qrow, much less achieve his objective. Back with Weiss, the ship is going by some floating islands with lots of gravity dust on them, which makes them experience some turbulence. They see the source of the distress call from the previous episode: Lancers, a.k.a. giant bug/wasp Grimm things that hook onto ships and destroy them. It turns out that the pilot is illegally smuggling Dust to Mistral. Makes sense, what with Mistral being a haven for criminals, and the fact that there doesn't seem to be any Dust shortages even with the embargo. Plus this guy was easily bribed by Weiss. He's not exactly a paragon. Working together, Weiss and the pilot are able to kill all of them. Weiss has improved immensely with her glyphs. They accidentally awaken a Queen Lancer though, which gives them far more trouble. Weiss is able to kill it by summoning the knight though, set to "This Life is Mine", sung by Casey. No, none of these songs ever get old. However, the queen was able to take out one of their engines. Weiss uses some black gravity glyphs to slow them down, but they still crash land at the shoreline. Adam is meeting with Sienna Khan, a female tiger Faunus and the high leader of the White Fang. She's angry at him for destroying Beacon Academy, since that only justifies people's fears in them. She *does* want humanity to fear and respect the Faunus, but she doesn't want to get involved in a war she thinks they can't win, especially since Adam is getting support from Hazel and his group, who are humans. Mostly. Adam tries to convince Sienna to attack Haven Academy, to no avail. She instructs her guards to throw them both out, but they don't listen to her. It turns out that Adam turned them to his side. His coup has begun, and tons of White Fang soldiers show up and point their weapons at Sienna. She refuses to bow down to Adam though. He knew she wouldn't, so he runs her through with his sword. She attempts to strangle him in her last moments, but he tosses her body down the stairs. He instructs all of the witnesses to give her a proper burial, and say that she was murdered by a human huntsman, in order to make her a martyr to the rest of the White Fang so they will accept him as the new leader and support the attack on Haven. It turns out that Hazel didn't expect Adam to launch a coup or murder Sienna. He disapproves of his actions, saying that no one had to die today. Wow. That is surprisingly complex morality coming from another villain. Seriously, who *is* this guy? I already wanted to know more about him, and that comment just intensified that feeling tenfold, like with Ilia. Weiss has survived the crash, but barely. I don't know if the pilot is dead or not. And yes, I still hope he is. Even if he isn't, it seems likely that he'll be killed by the people who come across Weiss: Bandits. And not just any bandits. Raven and her tribe, who knock Weiss out and say that they hit the jackpot. Well, that was unexpected.

## Review

This was definitely a villain episode. Of the heroes, we only saw Weiss, and even her segment ended badly. I don't know if she knows the connection between Raven and Yang, but considering that Blake, Ruby, Jaune, Nora, and Ren already seem to know, I'd say that it's likely that she does too. Now the question is, did she recognize her or not? I'd say that Raven definitely recognized *her,* and might be planning on ransoming her to her father. This means that she could be sent back to Atlas, and she'd be in an even worse position than before. And that's assuming that her father even wants her back, since he disinherited her. Man, now I *want* Yang to go to that bandit camp, so I can see her wreck something. And reunite with Weiss. This is only the *second episode,* and things are already really tense. I'm a little disappointed that after the cliffhanger with team RNJR and Oscar in the last episode, we didn't get to explore it more here. However, combined with this cliffhanger, it just further ensures that I'm going to watch the next episode as soon as possible. I *did not* expect Weiss and Yang's story lines to intersect, and I still can't wait to see how team RWBY reunites.