The last stand for Meridian: W.I.T.C.H. season 1 24-26
The Rebel Rescue (Ursula Zeigler and Michele Gendelman): Previously, on W.I.T.C.H.: Elyon’s parents were rescued from the prison of Cavigor, Caleb battled a mind-controlled Aldarn for leadership of the Rebels while Phobos sabotaged Elyon’s chances of a peace treaty, and the discovery of the Infinite City led to the Rebels pushing up their attack and many of their men captured, including Caleb’s father.
A lot of this episode is mostly filler, but it does build up to the finale pretty well. About half of the episode focuses on Caleb and Blunk’s “reconnaissance” mission to the dungeons of the castle to rescue the captured Rebels, only they wind up hopelessly lost. And the B-plot is that Matt gives Will a dormouse (whom she names Mr. Huggles) as a pet, though her mom is less than thrilled. The story picks up when Blunk tells Caleb to go through the portal ahead, so he can try to take his Bag of Stuff, insisting that it’s because he makes a smaller target so it makes more sense to get the big target out of danger first. Caleb believes this when he makes it through but Blunk doesn’t, and he grabs the Guardians to help him search. They find a wounded castle guard, Tynar, and in his worry, Caleb blurts out that Blunk is his friend. Blunk, who was in hiding, is thrilled to hear this. Yeah, even Caleb points out that Blunk practically seems gay for him, when Blunk later says, “Blunk do anything for Caleb.” Caleb’s response is “You were much less creepy when you were devious.”
Though Caleb objects, the girls rescue Tynar and nurse him back to health, after they learn that Phobos horribly mistreats wounded soldiers. It’s not stated outright, but Tynar’s fear and explanation implies either torture or murder. Lovely man, right? There goes another one on the Evil Overlord List. Out of gratitude, Tynar leads them through the dungeons to rescue the Rebels, and he tells the guard on duty that they’ve been lied to about Earth and that he needs to tell the others. This moment really is the best part of the episode, even moreso than Caleb admitting that Blunk is his friend or Will and Matt finally hooking up (Will admits that she had to give away Huggles, then she kisses Matt. You go, girl). I pointed out back in “The Underwater Mines” how I liked that the Guardians showed mercy to the prison guards who would otherwise have been drowned had they not locked them in an airtight escape room. And here it is again: Phobos tortures his people-civilians, prisoners of war, and his own soldiers alike. The Guardians save them, ignoring all warnings by the Rebels to leave them behind. And this kindness is what allows them to defect. They are winning over their enemies. Someone ought to show Elyon that while she’s busy going totally guano loco.
Important things discovered: Miranda can transform into a hairy, almost spider-like creature, Matt fails worse than Caleb at romance, and Jeek is revealed to Caleb. Worse, he managed to follow the escapees through the portal to Earth…
The Stolen Heart (Andrew Nicholls and Darrell Vickers): This episode takes a LOT out of my suspension of disbelief. When Jeek steals the Heart from Will, Will totally fails to see MULTIPLE TIMES that it’s not Blunk-much less HEAR Paul Eiding instead of Steve Blum multiple times-but she still jumps to the conclusion that it’s Blunk. And Caleb never mentions once that they met another Passling who’s completely evil. I’m going to call this the Ren Effect, based on the hell Shinji goes through in episodes 13-14 of Kamen Rider Ryuki because Ren forgot to tell him the true identity of Kamen Rider Zolda: the serious second-in-command who knows what he’s doing, even better than the leader, doesn’t mention anything EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to his leader that they REALLY SHOULD KNOW. You could have saved them a lot of blaming, Caleb.
At the same time, Matt isn’t taking the fact that Will is blowing him off so soon after they made out well. At all. To the point that he pours his heart out to Martin. That’s bad. So he decides to follow her. Through a portal. Screaming like an idiot. I like him! He really doesn’t contribute at all except as a hostage, but hey. At least Will has someone to confide in outside the team. And he promises to keep her secret.
Things just get messy with this one, and it’s a shame because this is the episode just before the finale. You’ve got the mess with Blunk trying to clear his name and Jeek stealing the heart, you’ve got Elyon beginning to get a clue when she finds Lurdens in the mill room (I think it’s implied that one of the guards, having learned about Earth from Tynar’s rumor spreading, left the door unlocked on purpose), the guards trying to take down the Mage (and apparently being incinerated for their efforts-yay casual horrific murder!), Matt trying to figure out what’s going on with Will, Cornelia being mad at Irma, and yeah. Too many subplots. On top of that, it’s apparently still two days left until the coronation, even though Taranee slept for twenty-four hours the previous episode-also two days away. And then you’ve got this bit where to save Matt and Caleb, Will agrees to hand over the Heart to Cedric, and she creates a thousand copies while keeping the real one to herself. That scene must have been written by a proctologist, because that power was clearly pulled out of somebody’s ass.
But let’s not waste any more time. Here it is, the moment everyone’s been waiting for: “The Final Battle.”
The Final Battle (Andrew Nicholls and Darrell Vickers): Have you ever noticed that whenever anybody says this is the “final,” they’re usually lying? “The Final Battle” in Ben 10: Alien Force was supposed to be the last showdown between Ben and Vilgax, but Vilgie came back next series. Final Fantasy is now on XIII-2. Or how about the most egregious one of them all: Farewell, Kamen Rider Den-O: Final Countdown, whose theme song was even called Climax Jump The Final, and what followed it? Cho Kamen Rider Den-O x Kamen Rider Decade: Onigashima Battleship, the Cho Den-O Trilogy, Let’s Go Kamen Riders, and Kamen Rider x Super Sentai: Super Hero Taisen. I’m a little jaded, is all I’m saying. Yes, I know that you never know what might happen in the future, but if you’re calling something “The Final,” I expect you to make it the final.
That time-wasting nonsense aside, the episode: If the previous two episodes had issues with plot, this one is closer to perfection. The pacing is a little rushed in parts, and it’s impossible to believe that this is only the day after the previous episode, but it has a focused plot. In a surprisingly smart move, Phobos moves the coronation to that night rather than the next morning. This means he must show his true colors in a sudden but inevitable betrayal, leaving Elyon scared witless as she’s held captive in the throne and her powers are transferred over. It’s implied that she manages to send a telepathic message to Cornelia, who rushes over to the Dragon to get Will to change up the plan, and the Guardians and Rebels move their attack ahead twelve hours early. By using Earth as a relay between portals, they travel from Hu Gong Gorge to the Abyss of Shadows underneath the castle (“It Begins & It Resumes”). And having returned to work among the other palace guards, Tynar has told his story and managed to get a lot of the others to change their loyalties, increasing the odds for the Rebellion.
It’s actually kind of hard to analyze this episode. It’s good. Everything that the story has built up to finally pays off, and it pays off well. Phobos tries to take Elyon’s power. He tries to take the Heart. But all six girls manage to fight him off. You have the obligatory “This cannot be!” that violates the Evil Overlord List, and he’s locked away while the power he drained is apparently returned to Meridian. He betrays Cedric for failing him for the last time, and both Ceddy and Miranda are locked away too.
Character arcs come to a close. Cornelia and Caleb finally make out, putting an end to the UST that’s been building over several episodes. Blunk tries to prove himself as a warrior and actually does a pretty damn good job as a distraction. Matt tries to help Will, only managing to momentarily distract Phobos before getting blasted, where Caleb helps him stand-I predict ho yay for you two in the future. Elyon and Cornelia finally reconcile, and now that Elyon sees what kind of monster her brother really is, she has no remorse in blasting the hell out of him. We even get to see the Four Dragons from the Heart’s origin story-having drained part of the power of the Heart, Phobos tried to turn them against the Guardians, but since they were good at heart, they…responded well to the Guardians and Elyon blasting them. Yeah, I think they were missing something in the moral of their story there.
But in addition to being an ending, it’s also a beginning. It’s clear that a second season was in mind. Yan Lin warns the Mage that a defeated Phobos may be more dangerous than before, and that she must guard him at all costs. And though Will refers to everything ending, the Mage insists to herself that it’s only the beginning. And we’ll see how things begin, after taking a look back on how season 1 started and ended.
A lot of this episode is mostly filler, but it does build up to the finale pretty well. About half of the episode focuses on Caleb and Blunk’s “reconnaissance” mission to the dungeons of the castle to rescue the captured Rebels, only they wind up hopelessly lost. And the B-plot is that Matt gives Will a dormouse (whom she names Mr. Huggles) as a pet, though her mom is less than thrilled. The story picks up when Blunk tells Caleb to go through the portal ahead, so he can try to take his Bag of Stuff, insisting that it’s because he makes a smaller target so it makes more sense to get the big target out of danger first. Caleb believes this when he makes it through but Blunk doesn’t, and he grabs the Guardians to help him search. They find a wounded castle guard, Tynar, and in his worry, Caleb blurts out that Blunk is his friend. Blunk, who was in hiding, is thrilled to hear this. Yeah, even Caleb points out that Blunk practically seems gay for him, when Blunk later says, “Blunk do anything for Caleb.” Caleb’s response is “You were much less creepy when you were devious.”
Though Caleb objects, the girls rescue Tynar and nurse him back to health, after they learn that Phobos horribly mistreats wounded soldiers. It’s not stated outright, but Tynar’s fear and explanation implies either torture or murder. Lovely man, right? There goes another one on the Evil Overlord List. Out of gratitude, Tynar leads them through the dungeons to rescue the Rebels, and he tells the guard on duty that they’ve been lied to about Earth and that he needs to tell the others. This moment really is the best part of the episode, even moreso than Caleb admitting that Blunk is his friend or Will and Matt finally hooking up (Will admits that she had to give away Huggles, then she kisses Matt. You go, girl). I pointed out back in “The Underwater Mines” how I liked that the Guardians showed mercy to the prison guards who would otherwise have been drowned had they not locked them in an airtight escape room. And here it is again: Phobos tortures his people-civilians, prisoners of war, and his own soldiers alike. The Guardians save them, ignoring all warnings by the Rebels to leave them behind. And this kindness is what allows them to defect. They are winning over their enemies. Someone ought to show Elyon that while she’s busy going totally guano loco.
Important things discovered: Miranda can transform into a hairy, almost spider-like creature, Matt fails worse than Caleb at romance, and Jeek is revealed to Caleb. Worse, he managed to follow the escapees through the portal to Earth…
The Stolen Heart (Andrew Nicholls and Darrell Vickers): This episode takes a LOT out of my suspension of disbelief. When Jeek steals the Heart from Will, Will totally fails to see MULTIPLE TIMES that it’s not Blunk-much less HEAR Paul Eiding instead of Steve Blum multiple times-but she still jumps to the conclusion that it’s Blunk. And Caleb never mentions once that they met another Passling who’s completely evil. I’m going to call this the Ren Effect, based on the hell Shinji goes through in episodes 13-14 of Kamen Rider Ryuki because Ren forgot to tell him the true identity of Kamen Rider Zolda: the serious second-in-command who knows what he’s doing, even better than the leader, doesn’t mention anything EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to his leader that they REALLY SHOULD KNOW. You could have saved them a lot of blaming, Caleb.
At the same time, Matt isn’t taking the fact that Will is blowing him off so soon after they made out well. At all. To the point that he pours his heart out to Martin. That’s bad. So he decides to follow her. Through a portal. Screaming like an idiot. I like him! He really doesn’t contribute at all except as a hostage, but hey. At least Will has someone to confide in outside the team. And he promises to keep her secret.
Things just get messy with this one, and it’s a shame because this is the episode just before the finale. You’ve got the mess with Blunk trying to clear his name and Jeek stealing the heart, you’ve got Elyon beginning to get a clue when she finds Lurdens in the mill room (I think it’s implied that one of the guards, having learned about Earth from Tynar’s rumor spreading, left the door unlocked on purpose), the guards trying to take down the Mage (and apparently being incinerated for their efforts-yay casual horrific murder!), Matt trying to figure out what’s going on with Will, Cornelia being mad at Irma, and yeah. Too many subplots. On top of that, it’s apparently still two days left until the coronation, even though Taranee slept for twenty-four hours the previous episode-also two days away. And then you’ve got this bit where to save Matt and Caleb, Will agrees to hand over the Heart to Cedric, and she creates a thousand copies while keeping the real one to herself. That scene must have been written by a proctologist, because that power was clearly pulled out of somebody’s ass.
But let’s not waste any more time. Here it is, the moment everyone’s been waiting for: “The Final Battle.”
The Final Battle (Andrew Nicholls and Darrell Vickers): Have you ever noticed that whenever anybody says this is the “final,” they’re usually lying? “The Final Battle” in Ben 10: Alien Force was supposed to be the last showdown between Ben and Vilgax, but Vilgie came back next series. Final Fantasy is now on XIII-2. Or how about the most egregious one of them all: Farewell, Kamen Rider Den-O: Final Countdown, whose theme song was even called Climax Jump The Final, and what followed it? Cho Kamen Rider Den-O x Kamen Rider Decade: Onigashima Battleship, the Cho Den-O Trilogy, Let’s Go Kamen Riders, and Kamen Rider x Super Sentai: Super Hero Taisen. I’m a little jaded, is all I’m saying. Yes, I know that you never know what might happen in the future, but if you’re calling something “The Final,” I expect you to make it the final.
That time-wasting nonsense aside, the episode: If the previous two episodes had issues with plot, this one is closer to perfection. The pacing is a little rushed in parts, and it’s impossible to believe that this is only the day after the previous episode, but it has a focused plot. In a surprisingly smart move, Phobos moves the coronation to that night rather than the next morning. This means he must show his true colors in a sudden but inevitable betrayal, leaving Elyon scared witless as she’s held captive in the throne and her powers are transferred over. It’s implied that she manages to send a telepathic message to Cornelia, who rushes over to the Dragon to get Will to change up the plan, and the Guardians and Rebels move their attack ahead twelve hours early. By using Earth as a relay between portals, they travel from Hu Gong Gorge to the Abyss of Shadows underneath the castle (“It Begins & It Resumes”). And having returned to work among the other palace guards, Tynar has told his story and managed to get a lot of the others to change their loyalties, increasing the odds for the Rebellion.
It’s actually kind of hard to analyze this episode. It’s good. Everything that the story has built up to finally pays off, and it pays off well. Phobos tries to take Elyon’s power. He tries to take the Heart. But all six girls manage to fight him off. You have the obligatory “This cannot be!” that violates the Evil Overlord List, and he’s locked away while the power he drained is apparently returned to Meridian. He betrays Cedric for failing him for the last time, and both Ceddy and Miranda are locked away too.
Character arcs come to a close. Cornelia and Caleb finally make out, putting an end to the UST that’s been building over several episodes. Blunk tries to prove himself as a warrior and actually does a pretty damn good job as a distraction. Matt tries to help Will, only managing to momentarily distract Phobos before getting blasted, where Caleb helps him stand-I predict ho yay for you two in the future. Elyon and Cornelia finally reconcile, and now that Elyon sees what kind of monster her brother really is, she has no remorse in blasting the hell out of him. We even get to see the Four Dragons from the Heart’s origin story-having drained part of the power of the Heart, Phobos tried to turn them against the Guardians, but since they were good at heart, they…responded well to the Guardians and Elyon blasting them. Yeah, I think they were missing something in the moral of their story there.
But in addition to being an ending, it’s also a beginning. It’s clear that a second season was in mind. Yan Lin warns the Mage that a defeated Phobos may be more dangerous than before, and that she must guard him at all costs. And though Will refers to everything ending, the Mage insists to herself that it’s only the beginning. And we’ll see how things begin, after taking a look back on how season 1 started and ended.