Board Thread:Episode Discussion/@comment-14138255-20161106163624/@comment-14138255-20161109182511

Some details are unimportant, or they assume we're smart enough to figure it out and read between the lines, and others aren't revealed because it's not the right time yet. We don't know Salem and Watt's pasts because it wasn't revealed to us, nor was it intended. We should not know Salem's backstory from the get-go, the mystery of her is a strength, she's an unknown entity, an abomination against nature that is leading a dark war to destroy all of humanity and snuff out hope. Watts? Her right hand man, and that says enough for now (I bet he'd be so steeled and used to the Grimm he'd end up chatting with the Metroid Grimm).

As for the minor details:


 * Merc killed his dad because his dad was an asshole who cut his legs off (maybe),


 * Emerald is most likely from Mistral due to the prescense of a dark criminal underbelly in Mistral and the fact that she is not native to Vale (Vacuo is another choice, but Cinder and Co claim to have come from Haven, and Cinder found her first, implying they're both from Mistral),


 * Salem's HQ is either on the darker parts of the world (Western Dragon continent, the dark parts of Mistral's continen) or in an alternate dimension we don't know,


 * The dragon was defeated or frozen via the SEW long tme ago, and after laying dormant for so long without enough negativity to feed off of, that an entire mountain grew around it and buried it (and mountains take a LOOOOOOONNNGG time to grow).

It's plenty progression, because we do know more than we did before. And this isn't just DBZ powerlevel fights, and most certainly not monster of the week. They certainly advance the story in the in-between. In contrast to the Geist fight that is ultimately pointless (though paints a picture of what ordinary villages have to deal with), the sea dragon fight allowed Sun to make his reappearence, give us a good action sequence, and show the conflict that's happening between Blake and Sun after V3 ended. I can't articulate it well, but this isn't Star Trek, these aren't bottle episodes, they advance something and are nice to see, they just don't reveal everything at once.

And again, the show just started. We will learn more about the villains when they tell us. You just have to wait and be patient.