S01.E02: Trust None

[AnimeMania]

Tenax and Domitian form a racing faction and recruit Scorpus; Antonia and Marsus undermine their efforts while Cala offers to help Tenax to protect her daughters; Emperor Vespasian ponders on his successor.

Premiere Date: July 18, 2024      Peacock    

[thuganomics85]

Time to bust out the good old IMDB page to learn everyone's name!

So, Tenax's grand plan is to form his own racing faction with Scorpus/the Blue's top chariot driver, and they are using Domitian/the Emperor's youngest son as a silent partner to make them official.  Which he is willing to do because he is actually broke and needs the money they will hopefully get from this.  But it sounds like the Blue family already knows this, because I'm guessing they were the ones behind the poisoning of the horses.  I suspect this is only going to get even more violent in the future.

Meanwhile, Cala tries to buy her daughters back herself, but one is sold to Antonia/the head of the Blue group, and the other is bought by Tenax because he wants to use her to spy on them somehow.  Cala offers up herself instead and Tenax seems agreeable... for now.

Looks like we're going to get some gladiator stuff as well, since Kwame has been forced to fight in the arena and has already made an enemy out of Domitian.  At least he seems to a found an ally in the form of this other gladiator who use to be the top dog, but now knows he's in trouble due another recruit that is pretty much a giant.

Still can barely tell the horse trader brothers apart and they just seem to always be squabbling.

Anthony Hopkins gets his one and done scene here by having the Emperor officially declare that he plans on making Titus the heir to the Empire.  This doesn't sit well with Domitian, so he will do... something sinister in the future, I suspect.

A little better than the pilot since most of the characters are now in the same place and we are seeing more of them get to play off one another.