Welcome everyone, to another episode of RWBY: Ice Queendom! Much to my surprise, Queendom continues its trend of actually being kinda good. Not visually, that’s still an absolute dumpster fire. But narratively? I’m… I’m kind of invested. And every time I write that I have to stare at it in shock. Why? Let’s dive in and talk about it.
First up, let’s just completely skip animation. We both know it’s not good at this point. Queendom didn’t even give us a fight with the giant robot statue Nicholas this week, that’s how disappointing it was. So instead lets skip right to the story where Queendom totally surprised me. Remember last week when I said this was the final run and we were going to slowly work our way to Weiss? Well forget that. Because instead we just speed ran our way back to the Grimm, failed, and then got punted to an even lower nadir. A nadir so low in fact that I am actually entertaining the possibility that someone might actually die. It’s a low chance, don’t get me wrong. But the OG RWBY did it, and we’ve already broken from canon, so why can’t Queendom? Suffice to say, I’d be really impressed if it did.
My conspiracy theories aside, let’s talk about the episode proper. The first half wasn’t much, I’ll be honest. They run in, skip the giant robot fight I was really looking forward to, fight Weiss/the Nightmare, lost, then get kicked out. It was very much a straight progression from A to B with only a few small character moments in between. We did at least get confirmation from Weiss herself however that she was locking them up to protect them. It wasn’t the first time, we’ve heard it from Pyrrha and others before. But now it’s straight from her own mouth. On top of that, with the Relic missing, it appears like the jail is no longer safe either. It’s like these things, these representations of her team, were warding away the Nightmare. And by taking them, they made her more vulnerable.
Additionally, Jaune of all people got some good lines out of all of this. When asked by Ruby what went wrong, he actually had a really good answer: They didn’t consider how she felt. As a group they just barged into her dream and assumed everything “bad” in it was from the Nightmare. Never considering that maybe Weiss herself wanted some things taken care of, that by changing so much so fast they primed her to refuse them rather than embrace them. On top of that, he also gave us a small chat about responsibility and how you eventually have to grow out of your childish impulses. As fun as they can be, if you want to grow up you have to start being responsible. Responsibility being the very same armor Weiss clad the statue of her father in to regain control of him from the Mini-Weiss. It’s… surprisingly good.
Meanwhile in the second half we have to start dealing with the fallout of everyone being banish. Jumping over to Yang and Blake’s side, we’ve finally found where Blake lives in the dream: A ramshackle, decrepit old house. Now it’s not yet clear what this house represents. It could be how Weiss views the world outside of her family estate, that the average household just cannot stand up to what she is used to living in and is, comparatively, a dump. Thus meaning her family is doing them a favor by welcoming them into the company/city. Alternatively, it could be a more Faunus focused view if it’s only Blake living here. I expect we will find out next episode. Whatever it is, I’m really curious what it’s all going to mean because Queendom has been really good about infusing purpose into every little detail.
As for Ruby’s side… this is where shit gets kind of dark. Remember that scratch from a few episodes ago? Well it turns out Ruby is infected and falling into a dream of her own. Only her dream is one where they succeed. Where everyone praises her, says she’s a good leader and generally accepts her rather than calling her a child. Weiss especially calls Ruby “Best Friend in the whole world” and a “fantastic leader”. Words that, even if she believed them, would never come out of her mouth. And this is where Ruby figures out what’s happening. Weiss doesn’t have her scar, showing how little Ruby considers it, her dad and dog are there, as are the robots and Mini-Weiss’s. That slow realization, the horror creeping into her eyes, everyone turning into the little dolls. It was some genuinely unexpected horror imagery.
And this is why I wondered at the start of the post if everyone is going to survive! Ruby is trapped in a dream within a dream, the Nightmare coming for her. Yang and Blake are off on their own. Weiss is about to go to sleep inside a coffin, most likely being consumed by the Nightmare. The only ones in any real position to help are Jaune and Dream Pyrrha. Of course what’s most likely going to happen is Jaune will save Ruby, thus giving her the same immunity he has and enabling her to combat Nega-Weiss. But I’d also be down for Queendom to go all in on the horror. Lets fuck some little girls up! Wait, not like that…
Anyways yeah, this was another surprisingly good episode of Queendom. The animation continues to be garbage but the actual story feels like it has a surprising amount of thought put into it. I still don’t expect anyone other than existing RWBY fans to enjoy it, but if you’re in that group I think you’ll have a good time. As far as character studies go, Queendom is by no means the worst I’ve seen. So far at least… We have a few more episodes to go for them to ruin it or knock it out of the park.
