Talk about a cliffhanger jesus fuck.

Imagine a world where studio-produced art was allowed to be good, instead of having to be what some lizard-brained finance bro thinks will be profitable.

That would be a pretty cool world.

Too bad the only "answers" he can give at this point are hidden glyph-magic lessons encoded in weather events.

This episode does two things. One is getting Luz and Hunter the information they need to make the next part of the plot happen. Which it does an annoyingly hamfisted, but technically sufficient, job of. The other is being a character study of Phillip Wittebane, and at that it does far better.

It's honestly pretty prescient for a 2022 release. The trends were obviously already pointing in this direction, sure, but Tara's portrayal here is much more spot-on satire of the second Trump presidency than it is of the first.

The state abduction attempt turns out to be a...prank? Object lesson? Something like that?

"Fullmetal Alchemist-y" is becoming more and more a propos.

I don't know what the thesis statement is yet, or even if it has one. So far, the show's left room for a lot of nuance, showing us weirdo outsiders who are unjustly persecuted, weirdo outsiders who are justly persecuted, the social insider counterparts to both, and how organizations twist themselves into pretzels around all of the above.

She appears to her mother and comes completely clean.

Is this sterile perfection what Luz's mother Camila had been hoping for? If so, then it's fair to ask if she ever actually loved her daughter at all.

I like that the show is able to use Hunter as a pretty effective antagonist even after starting his face turn back in the palisman episode.

Very "Katalepsis," heh.

A lot of the best episodes seem to be the ones that feature Belos and Co, I've noticed.

"I Want Lilith Clawthorne to Die Slowly and Horribly."

Season two, episode three, is a game changer of an episode.

We've been building up to this guy since the pilot, and he does not disappoint.

Luz being sent to a parody of gay conversion camps hits a lot different with her being actually gay.

Episode seven, "Lost in Language," is where most of the positive is concentrated. Episode twelve, "Adventures in the Elements," is where most of the negative can be found. Not all, but most.

Luz can learn from Eda, but just as much by taking her as an instructive bad example as by imitation. Eda gets by, but life is harder than it needs to be for her and the people she ostensibly cares about.

It’s another Disney production, which at this point is basically just another way of saying “it’s a piece of entertainment media created in or near the United States.”