Board Thread:Episode Discussion/@comment-4141313-20181229081856/@comment-2238912-20181230032604

Finally watched the episode and they might as well have titled it "Reality Check: The Episode".

1. Mercury finally tells Emerald the brutal but obvious truth: Cinder doesn't give a damn about her. And it's confirmed that Emerald indeed sees Cinder as a mother figure rather than a lover. Whether or not she believes Mercury remains to be seen, but it's an interesting development nonetheless.

2. And we get more info about Mercury's fucked up past, namely that Marcus had the ability to steal Semblances and stole his in a twisted attempt to toughen him up. (Anyone else getting some serious My Hero Academia vibes?) But that begs the obvious question: What was Mercury's Semblance? Would've been nice to know that. Regardless, Volume 6 is definitely attempting to fix RWBY's villain problem by finally expanding on their backstories.

3. We finally get to see Tyrian's new tail and it looks pretty cool. Plus, the scorpion proves to be surprisingly insightful for a raving lunatic, deconstructing Mercury's motivations for sticking with Salem.

4. The fact that Tyrian and Watts are being sent to Atlas is predictable... and disappointing. Personally, I hoped the fact that Ozpin was back and taking the relic to Atlas would finally motivate Salem to take action herself. I guess we'll have to wait until Volume 7.

5. The scene with Jaune and the Pyrrha statue was easily the highlight of the episode as he finally comes to terms with her death and finally realizes he's been acting like an idiot. And Team JNR regains their resolve to help Team RWBY in their quest.

6. Turns out Oscar is safe and sound. He just went to get a fresh change of clothes. But it is nice to see that in spite of their anger towards Ozpin, they do care about Oscar.

7. We get some more Ruby Character Development as she finally calls out Qrow for being such a drunken pessimistic fool. Seriously, where has this Ruby been for the past two volumes?

Overall, there wasn't a lot of action, but it made up for it with a lot of heartwarming moments and Character Development. And since there are only four episodes left in this Volume, we definitely won't be getting to Atlas until Volume 7.