Ninjago S11 E14

## Plot

Aspheera's Pyro Vipers keep ramming into the doors of the secret base, so the guys, Pixal, and Wu don't have a lot of time left, and they still haven't gotten the Titan mech to start. Lloyd, Nya, and Zane get to the Explorers Club, and they do have the second scroll, but they're not allowed to have it because they aren't members, and it would take way too long for them to join the club. Nya wants to go back in and give the guy a piece of her mind. You see what I mean about her being super violent? Zane uses his holographic projector to pretend to be Clutch. That's actually really smart. He should use it that way more often. I think he only ever used it like that once in season 8, and it was only briefly. Anyways, it doesn't matter, because Clutch's membership has been suspended, Zane is a horrible actor, and the hologram malfunctions a lot. They break into the building to steal the scroll, and leave their weapons behind to be extra stealthy. However, the rope they're hanging onto is cut, and they fall into a room with the parody characters. They run and lock themselves in the storage room where the club keeps all of their artifacts. They find a mirror that shows them their greatest fears. Lloyd is his dad, Nya is a normal girl, and Zane doesn't have any humanity. Is that last bit foreshadowing? And was it intentional or not? They lock themselves in another room after the guards break in. After some hijinks in the insect room, they finally find the scroll in the next room. It's too dangerous for someone to touch with their bare hands, so they wrap it in a cloth, leave the club, and start heading back to the monastery. They contact the others and tell them that they're on their way. Wu tells Nya to tell Lloyd to be careful with the scroll. The less he handles it, the better. She tells him, and he says he'll be careful as he starts reading it. When she suggests wrapping it up again, he snaps at her. He apologizes and puts the scroll down. Aspheera and her army finally break down the doors to the secret base, but it looks like no one is there. The others are hiding under a manhole cover, but Jay accidentally gives away their position when he sneezes. Pixal swats Aspheera aside with the finished Titan mech. The guys come out and fight the army of Pyro Vipers. Unfortunately, Aspheera wrecks the mech with her scroll and her magic, and one of the arms disappears after it's blasted off. They're out numbered by the army, but the others show up with the second scroll just in time. Lloyd fights with Aspheera, and when he drops the scroll, Jay picks it up, and then Cole, and then Kai. Kai doesn't get a boost in power though, presumably due to his lost powers. Aspheera tries blasting Wu, but it hits the mech instead, causing it to disappear. Zane picks up the scroll and encases Aspheera and her entire army in ice. He seems hesitant to give up the scroll to Wu at first, but he listens. However, Aspheera is able to partially break free and fire another blast at Wu. Zane pushes him out of the way, and is seemingly vaporized and killed. The others are devastated, especially Pixal. In my opinion though, they don't look all that sad, or even sound super sad. From an audience perspective, they already pulled a fake out death with this exact same character before, in the same heroic sacrifice way, and it's only halfway through the season. Of course Zane is still alive. One of his lines even reminds me of his battle with the Digital Overlord. Sometime later, Wu visits Aspheera in her maximum security cell in Kryptarium prison. She still thinks she's been unjustly imprisoned, even after Wu points out that she killed Zane, who was not only an innocent person, but one of the kindest, bravest souls he's ever known. Aspheera reveals that she never wanted to kill Wu; she wanted to make him suffer like she did, but worse. She banished Zane to the one place he can't help him: The Never-Realm. The episode ends as Wu runs off, and we see the snowy Never-Realm, which is also where the Titan mech is, and Zane's footprints. Honestly, the fire arc was pretty bland. Aspheera is a one note villain with the same motivation as a lot of the villains in this series: Revenge. Garmadon wanted revenge on the Great Devourer, the Serpentine wanted revenge on humans, Krux and Acronix wanted revenge on the elemental masters, Harumi wanted revenge on the ninja, etc. Personally, I think any writer would be hard pressed to top Harumi as an antagonist, but that's no reason not to try! Cartoon Network actually managed to air the first half of this season in the summer of 2019 in the U.S. first, which is fitting. Unfortunately, that also means that they waited until December 2019 to start airing the ice chapter, at which point most English speaking Ninjago fans had probably already seen the episodes in English thanks to Canada, Australia, and even the U.K. airing the whole season throughout the fall. And season 12 hasn't even come out in the U.S. yet. It's almost two in the morning on July 4th, 2020. Season 12 will finally premiere in the U.S. in fifteen days. That's over a year after they started airing season 11. Basically, Cartoon Network has to get their shit together or else, and Australia is amazing when it comes to airing new Ninjago content. They already aired season 12 a few months back, and they're going to start airing season 13 in two days. Actually, it turns out that New Zealand beat them to the punch, by airing every single episode in English on July 11, 2020, in a huge binge watch/marathon. Wow. I already figured that New Zealand was one of the best places on Earth, but this just confirms it. However, I really need to stop reading the episode synopses on the wiki, because they're terrible at hiding spoilers. Before even watching season 11 for the first time, I already spoiled myself on the identity of the main antagonist for season 13. Luckily, I had already correctly predicted who it was, but still. I would've been pissed if that had been a plot twist as big as Harumi. Normally I don't mind fast pacing, and Ninjago is usually no exception to that. After all, season 3 is still my favorite season for many reasons. However, some of the episodes were just too comedic for my now young adult tastes, and the lower tier episodes stopped the pacing and plot in its tracks. It felt like, despite the half episode run time, the much higher episode count left the writers with a lot of extra space to fill, which they did… with the aforementioned lower tier episodes and "comedy" instead of actual character development. Like the mirror that showed Lloyd, Nya, and Zane their worst fears. What was that all about? What was the purpose of that scene? It could've been a great opportunity for character development. I've changed over the years, and so has my sense of humor, but not my love and passion for the show. Seriously though, I get that there's a sense of urgency, but Aspheera and her army lose almost all of their villain cred when you realize that most of this arc took place over the course of one or two days, maybe three or four max to account for the montages in the beginning and the final prison scene. They're literally monsters of the week. Also, the golden weapons were reforged at the end of season 10, so why aren't the guys using those instead? The out of universe reason is probably toys, and the in universe reason revealed not in the show but somewhere else is apparently that a lot of their power was drained, first from Zane's first body while they were still the golden armor, and then after everyone did the Tornado of Creation to defeat the Oni. Also, Dan and Kevin Hageman, the writers for a majority of the show, except season 7 and Day of the Departed, left after "March of the Oni", which they helped develop the story for, but I don't know if that's the same as writing it. They also worked on *The LEGO Movie*, the *LEGO Ninjago Movie*, and Trollhunters, among other things. Bragi Schut is their successor. He helped the brothers co-write a few episodes of season 8, wrote three episodes for season 9, took over as lead writer starting with season 10, wrote *eighteen* episodes of season 11, for both chapters (nine for each arc), and wrote five episodes of season 12. And that's not even getting into the other writers and directors and the changes in animation and whatnot. The production process is incredibly interesting and complex. I don't know why I'm mentioning and researching all of this now. It's three in the morning! I swear, I'm not trying to blame anyone or make excuses for the crew, I just know how hard people work, especially animators, and how little respect, recognition, decency, or money they tend to get. RWBY with crunch time, Disney for overworking their VFX artists, Netflix's *Carmen Sandiego* with paying their animators, and probably a bunch of other pieces of entertainment media too, etc., especially most animated shows on Netflix and Max.