S02.E07: Meet You in the Meadow

[AnimeMania]

As Alina reels over the staggering cost to harness the Firebird's power, Kirigan readies his army for a ferocious battle pitting Grisha against Grisha.

Premiere Date: March 16, 2023       Netflix

[PurpleTentacle]

Wait, wait, wait. Alina was super sure that she could have taken the stags power without killing it, but now that Mal is an amplifyer she won't even consider that as an option? Am I taking crazy pills over here?

[peridot]

I was tuning out during all of the speeches, and rolled my eyes at the almost-kiss between Alina and Nikolai.  She was in bed with Mal the night before and the next day she's almost kissing another man?! Mal is so self-sacrificing that he's giving his blessing to Alina and Nikolai.  What a saint!

I'm not sure how the Crows managed to get there in time without being ambushed by the Volcra or the other Grishas.  Jasper cutting off the lady's fingers was gross/cool.  There was a lot of standing around during the last battle scene, I thought there would be more chaos.

[MissLucas]

3 hours ago, peridot said:

There was a lot of standing around during the last battle scene, I thought there would be more chaos.

That's where the budget constraints are showing. Netflix throws a lot of money at this show but not quite the amount for having huge, epic battles.

[absnow54]

Okay, Kirigan speculating whether Alina had Mal’s bone in her yet, right after we saw them sleep together for the first time last episode, had me laughing like a 13 year old. 

This episode was not good. Maybe it’s because I’ve been mostly tuned out of the Ravka stuff. I just don’t care about these dozen people fighting another dozen people. Ravka last season felt like an actual place, but this season it’s felt more like a group of kids making an amateur war movie at an abandoned castle. The couldn’t even dub all the prop guns. If they didn’t have the budget for it, they should have cut the runtime and drowned it out with an over emotional score playing over slow motion extreme closeup battle scenes to hide the small scale. They must have spent all of their money on Ketterdam this season.

Everyone spent half the episode wondering where the Crows were, and I thought the same thing. Except for Matthias (who I guess isn’t technically a Crow.) I actually love Matthias and Nina, and their story last season was my favorite. But it was a big mistake trying to keep him around this season while he was alone in prison. His scenes feel shoehorned in, and haven’t added anything to the story at all. If they wanted to keep him around, there were better ways they could have done it (put another main character in Hellgate, have the Crows need a person on the inside for some of their heists…) even the Pekka addition feels largely played out at this point. 

[angora]

Uneven episode. A lot of the battle somehow felt underwhelming *and* too much at the same time. It annoyed me that Alina barely used her powers until they went into the Fold. Like, I get that your powers can't destroy the shadow monsters, but at least you can fight them back/distract them/whatever. She's the Chosen One, why is she hiding behind Mal and his phosphorus gun?

What was the deal with that one Grisha who'd been tortured by the First Army? Pretty sure I saw him displaying both Squaller and Heartrender powers, plus he did this electricity/lightning thing that we've never seen a Grisha do before. The other Grisha that Kirigan amplified either increased their own power (ex: Inferni can now create much bigger fires) or were able to do specific things within their power that they couldn't before (ex: Tidemaker can now freeze the water she controls.) Did amplification somehow allow this guy to get new, different Grisha powers? How does that work? It felt sloppy for the sake of heightening the drama.

Things I liked:

• The group at least coming up with a *plan* to amplify Alina without killing Mal. Further proof that you need people who were raised Grisha in the mix when you're talking strategy. Alina, Mal, and Nikolai were basically in a feedback loop of, "There has to be another way!", "There is no other way!" But when they told the other Grisha about it, Tamar and David were immediately like, "Well, why don't we just do it this way instead?" Even though circumstances wound up conspiring against them and they couldn't execute the plan, at least they were brainstorming.
• The Ketterdam crew swooping in as the cavalry. Loved Inej arriving on the scene with the sword (but then she only used it like once? What's the deal with that?), and later her reaction to seeing Alina's amplified powers in the Fold. Liked Tolya fighting to get back to Tamar and their reunion. Loved Jesper fully embracing his powers and following Sankta Neyar's advice to use his metal buttons when his gun was frozen. (Side note: was he wearing that skirt earlier, or was it just in this episode? It looked good whipping around during the battle.)
• Nadia encouraging her brother early in the episode about his ability to summon with one hand, and then the two of them later summoning together after Nadia was injured.

[festivus]

Jesper was my favorite part of this episode. What a complete and total badass. And looks great doing it.

[Zuleikha]

I am trying so hard not to judge this season on the basis of the books, but it is very hard when the changes end up feeling like an excuse to have the Six of Crows characters where they do not belong.

Inej looked cool when she arrived with the sword, but Inej is not an all-purpose martial artist. She's an ex-circus artist who Kaz taught to pick locks so that she could spy for him. Her proficiency with knives is just barely explainable as maybe she also did throwing knife stunts in the circus, but it makes no sense for her to know how to use the sword. Meanwhile, Tolya is an actual trained swordsman. 

Why the heck does Inej have the sword instead of Tolya? It even makes more sense for the actor skill-sets to have Tolya do the sword scenes!

I don't know how the writers conceived the showdown between the amplified grisha and Nikolai's army in their heads, but it did not translate to screen. It looked silly, and we have no reason to care about most of these characters living or dying. I can't even see Kirigan's Grisha as evil given that we know they had nothing to do with Kirigan's plans for the Fold and we saw that they were getting hunted down indiscriminately in the beginning of the show.