S03.E05: Cession in Session

[Cranberry]

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The Council of the Great River convenes to hear the unit's testimony.

Original air date: July 19, 2022

[william0102]

So who wants to take bets on which of the two ladies of the council is the one dealing with the Camarilla? There's the main lady who didn't say much, and weirdly acted lady with the glasses who was all "I was on your side". I honestly cannot believe that not one of them didn't know that one of their factories was producing stuff for the Camarilla. Speaking of which.... are they just flying the poison out from factories on other continents? OR are we to assume that since they have an army, that they have way more than one factory on the North American continent?

Anacostia escaping with her not!dead bf was awesome entertainment right up until they thought they needed to drag out that army shot. No, show, I'm not surprised they have an army and are that prepared. They've been hunting witches for thousands of years. It would be weird if the Camarilla didn't have an army. Also, too close to the current situation in the U.S., and it makes me sad during my happy show.

I was not expecting the Camarilla to have Raelle's dad. I thought there was a good chance he could die. but he didn't, yay. But since he and Anacostia's bf didn't die, the next person is probably gonna die. I'm sure we'll see Nicta again (heck, she might have even been captured by the Camarilla, but I hope not), they have to bring her back before the finale to finish her storyline.

All in all, it was a decent ep, with some really good moments, and some really weird ones, lol. I'm just glad that the tension is back up.

[Joana]

It's not that the show is bad per se, but it definitely feels like it's going out with a whimper instead of a bang, and I most certainly feel this is NOT how the last season was supposed to play out. But, unfortunately some things can't be helped. This way it looks like there's still a full season left in it, which we'll never get to see. 

[william0102]

Yup, not bad, just needed to cut some storylines to wrap up the series. Unfortunately, there's no storylines to cut with how they set up the end of season 2.

Honestly, they should have had the president dead with the start of the season, and killer dad president already doing his storm trooper bs. It would have cut the need for several of these episodes of set up Camarilla-wise. They've shown us nothing new Camarilla-wise except crazy pants being willing to put witch vocal cords in his throat. Then you get gestapo human army going after witches, while they set up their poisoning of the mycellium (if they had to be married to that plot), and show them taking over/revealing themselves to be in all parts of the government.

The plan on the witches' side being for the unit to split up and bring together the different factions of the witch community to fight the Camarilla. They wouldn't even have to use Raelle's actress, just show her planning to get to a Spree hold out place, or depending on the actor's availability, just have Raelle get captured right away, or fall off a cliff, have the mycellium steal her again, whatever.  Could have had Abigail, Adil and Khalida joining up with the army side to organize attacks, protect people, or just go after the president's people. So it would have been Scylla and Nicte to go rally the Spree, and Raelle and Tally do the same in the Cession and Tally's commune type communities.

So Raelle is with the mycelliuim/ captured whatever, they have to regroup. So Tally, Scylla and Nicte is the new plan to get to the factions, with Abigail and Adil working with the witch army on protecting people/ whatever the writers plan is with all the witch experiments we've seen. Could also have had protests within the general populace and shown the storm trooper human army that way too. That way they would have done more with the Nicte sl. Spree deciding to join the fight and Nicte somehow swaying Tally with that and the training. There needed to be someone step up to lead with Alder being gone. And everyone having to trust Nicte, or not trust her, would have been an interesting counterpoint to last season with Alder. You still get the tension of Nicte and the other non army witches not liking that they have to work with Abigail/the witch army. Shift it to the cession when the humans have fully turned against them. Then in the Cession, show more of the council (all to make up for Raelle being gone), Tally growing in her powers doing kind of morally wrong tactics to fight against the human army/Camarilla. They find out about the mycellium being poisoned because someone on the council is working with the Camarilla (so their tribe won't be persecuted/annihilated).

With the mycellium being poisoned, they have to shift their focus again, so they could have Abigail, Adil and little miss sus, go and try to round up the people who were holders of the first song (with Alder). Then spend a couple episodes with Tally balancing out herself after all the training with Nicte, with her mom and her community and the commune. Build up that bit of backstory about the commune people in those episodes. By that point there's no way there's any witch groups left that don't know what the Camarilla are doing, they're all willing to join, etc. Since I don't know what the availability was for Raelle's actress, you can keep whatever the writer's have planned for her, so either some big fight against the human army, or some covert op with a ton of witchy backup to try to take out the leadership of the Camarilla, while the rest of the witches around the country protect themselves and the humans who are pro-witch. And I'm assuming right now, that the witch bomb is a good thing, and not a witch bomb, but more of a power up the mycellium thing. Which having all the witches on board helps because they could be fighting Camarilla while the first song holders un-poisoning the mycellium. I have to be honest, I really don't see how the witch bomb fits into all this, but whatever, witch bomb power up for the mycellium after it's been un-poisoned. Or you know, witch bomb destroy it and have the first song holders sing the song to get a new mycellium, whatever.

I would just have everyone fighting it out, and the witches out numbering the Camarilla and killing/capturing the Camarilla. Use the president's not dead daughter to prove to the rest of the world that the Camarilla are bad/ shame the other people who would have done the same to the witches in their country. But yeah, the lack of a leader to rally around, and the fact that the unit just seemingly kinda floats around, have hurt this season as a last season- there's a lack of urgency plot-wise. And what we're seeing is interesting and great character building, it was clearly supposed to be the build up to a final season of confronting the Camarilla.

Edited July 26, 2022 by william0102

[DanaK]

There are so many things that were background and part of the world building of this show that I would have liked to known more about within the show but they never seem to get to it. Like the Cession itself and the council we see in this episode that I would have liked to know more about. There were some fascinating things brought up, but not expanded on, like the council’s dismissal of the Cama baddies, including one of the members describing it as “unlike the US, our people don’t fall for that Euro-Inquisition gobbledygook”, that made sense from a Native American perspective