Blake Belladonna, by the end of this episode, probably: “At first I was afraid, I was petrified. Kept thinking I could never live, without you by my side. But then I spent so many nights, thinking about all those people you killed, and I grew strong, and forgot about you before long. And now you’re back, from the moon outer space; I just walked in to find you here, with that creepy look upon your masked face. I should’ve stopped you ages back, I should’ve drawn a line in the sand, if I had known for just one second, you’d be back to cut off Yang’s freakin’ hand.” That about sum it up? For more recaps with even less Gloria Gaynor song parodies, check out the RECAP MASTERPOST, but to witness many miracles from Bunny Jesus, click the KEEP READING below.

Something something to all those who read, laughed, liked, reblogged, shared, commented, absorbed via osmosis, snorted, sauteed with a side of mushrooms, took a magic carpet ride with, defeated seven evil exes for, suffered through Battle Before Dawn on Hector Hard Mode for, genetically spliced a fly’s DNA with tragic results into, went in on Aspen timeshare with, sacrificed yourself so that it could become the Recap-Who-Lived, or joined a cult whose goal is to hide all knowledge of last week’s recap so that it and the other Recap Old Ones will never wake from their eternal slumber. Whacky fun episode on our hands here, and so let’s not screw around and go play some golf.

We start about where we left off, with Kevlenn The Dragvern awoken from his centuries of slumber and starting his quest to go to White Castle.

Ruby watches him go by with no small amount of trepidation and probably a little bit of, “I call dibs on killing it” feeling, yet her plans are upset by the appearance of enemies. A Griffon Grimm to begin, and then what we can only assume is the product of a nuclear waste truck and an ice cream truck colliding with a small child crossing the street.

Neo transforms out of her soldier-y outfit in such a way Sailor Moon would be jealous of, and snaps a picture of Ruby in the process, to be sent to Roman…

Before that cage match can begin, let’s see how the Beauty And The Beast reboot is coming along.

Badly. All the fire and the screaming. Kinda the reunion we expected between Blake and Adam, sure, but we probably never expected Adam to be so… icky.

If we didn’t already feel something of a Creepy Creeper McCreepersteinberg vibe coming from Adam last week, it’s not helped any today, either. The repeated, possessive, language, pushing her about her running away, holding a random student’s life hostage if she doesn’t fight…

Normal third date stuff, really.

No further prompting needed; fight time. Blade against blade, From Shadows reprise in the score, et cetera.

We see right away that Adam has the advantage, and that’s probably ‘cause he’s been training while stuck on the moon.

The moon also made him cray cray. I mean, he was already a little crazy circa Black Trailer, but Blake’s prior reminiscing about him didn’t exactly paint this picture, the one obsessed with her and bestowing these pet names (Haha. Get it. Pet names. No wait, that’s something I shouldn’t joke about, just like laser pointers and tuna…). And while it’s probable to assume her leaving him combined with the forced partnership with Cinder kinda took what was already a bit of a terrorist-y mental break and warped it more, there’s also just the possibility that Blake couldn’t help but misremember and excuse things, so to say, in the common way people in abusive relationships do. Either or, Adam ain’t exactly winning any “Mr Nice Terrorist” competitions this episode, as we’ll see.

Though, if we’re being real, the Beast from Beauty And The Beast was kinda a dick too. And I’m not just saying that since Belle was the best Disney Princess… Speaking of, out in the courtyard, Snow White and her many dwarves are having some trouble with the Atlesian Paladins.

We got a nice epic tracking shot of the student body fighting Grimm and the rowbits that puts last week’s to shame, as well as a neato Ren and Nora moment, but it does little to defeat the Gal Paladins. They’ll need a… miracle.

Desperate, Coco realises it’s time, coach. Time to finally put Rudy in the game. And it’s time for Velvet to unleash THE INTERNET BOX.

“Chaos in the windy city!” Velvet steps up to face the two Paladins, and a classic from the V1 OST finally gets its non-credits debut. “I May Fall” has always been a favourite of folk, so I found it kinda hilarious to see a considerable amount of people acting like it was a new song. Guys, go buy the OSTs, they’re great! You’ll miss out on songs like that - and Boop! - if you don’t!

“You can’t eat bones, Mike!” After a volume of teasing it, Velvet’s weapon is finally revealed. She uses her camera to take pictures of other weapons, and then summons them and the fighting styles that go with - photographic memory holla. Maybe it’s Semblance-aided, but either way, she’s basically a mimic; Gogo be proud.

“Patricia.” And her fighting animation matches Monty’s initial RWBY trailers, which is a lovely shoutout. For a character originally planned to be a one-off, it’s been a hell of a journey for Velvet, and this being her weapon makes sense: she got a whole team and more screentime because fans latched onto her, is wearing an outfit designed by a fan, and now we learn she’s a fangirl of weapons, just like us, and uses what she wants whenever she wants. GG Velvet. But while she’s able to take down one Paladin, the other one has already had dibs called on it by Weiss.

She runs forward to throw herself into danger to save someone - just like she did for Yang against Flynt and Neon - and she’s fully prepared to take that hit. And she would’ve, had it not been for…

It’s not summoning the entire knight, but goddamn if it wasn’t awesome to see that sword cleave the Paladin in half. A heiress who fled from Atlas defeating Atlas’s best weapon by the power of her heart, pure as driven snow. The sacrificial play - and for a Faunus! Take that, Papa Schnee - the emotion, the music… all contributed to a damn fine payoff for Weiss’s arc this season, no denying it.

And hey, even summoning a hand is a pretty big deal. Think about it! Weiss could summon it every time she doles out a particularly sick burn so she has someone to high five with. And she totally would, let’s be real. Also, with that taken care of, let’s see how Ruby’s doing.

Speaking of awesome, how about this fight scene, huh? Gorgeous. We haven’t seen Ruby go off the chain like this for an age. And Neo and Torchwick’s teamwork is amazing.

After his V1 fight with Sun/Blake and then V2 fight with Blake, this also makes the hat-trick for bitchin’ Torchwick fight scenes (V2C4 was all the Paladin, so). GG.

Torchwick warms up a bit first with taunting Ruby’s heroics, and she pushes right goddamn back, demanding to know why he’s doing this.

After all, if these airships are destroyed, then there goes another line of defence against the Grimm. So why would Torchwick want this? Isn’t his nature to steal from people, not see them all die? Isn’t he the ruler of the rats, not the ruins?

The whole thing, it turns out, is not about what he could gain, but it’s that he can’t afford to lose.

Which gives something of an idea for his motivation to work with Cinder; he may have more in common with Adam than we thought. Although, he’s less icky than Adam somehow, which is strange to say about a character based off Alex freaking DeLarge.

So anyway, the tide does not turn in Ruby’s favour. She’s left hanging off the side of the airship -

- kicking at Grimm coming close and listening to Torchwick monologue about the futility of his situation. He’s a gambling man, Kenny Rogers style, but he sees the storm coming, so he buys in on storm-proofing himself.

You can’t fight someone like Cinder, is what it amounts to. She’s working with the goddamn Grimm in some capacity, she’s got magic powers up the wazoo, she’s really really hot, and, hell, look at what she’s accomplished with her grand phase two finale! She’s lit a fire and then turned it into a volcano, spewing so much lava the entire world is threatening to burn. And you know the old saying, “If you can’t beat 'em, join 'em. Then you have Neo kill people. Like you, Ruby!” However, Ruby ain’t taking this lying down. Not after Penny.

She’s a scrapper, that Ruby, and manages to send Neo flying into same nebulous unknown state Port and Oobleck are hanging out in - shame that Everyone Is Neo isn’t someone not currently about to be eaten by Grimm, huh - then jump up, declare her intent to stop the bad guys - “BET ON THAT.” Chills from Lindsay Jones - and prepare to take on Torchwick unarmed.

Torchwick, for his part? Kinda upset. The emotion in his voice when Neo went flying was one of the most honest outbursts we’ve seen from him ever, and his anger gets him to the mopping the floor with Ruby part rurl quick.

But hey, even if he used it to blow up Ruby’s internal organs like that, at least we got a lot of Stevey Mk III action at all…

Furious, Torchwick saunters forward -

- and rants about the real world being harsh and cruel and filled with way too many great TV Shows to keep track of -

- and begins beating Ruby with his cane. Just straight up wailing on her.

Melodic Cudgel gets to live up to the latter part of its name, holy crap. It says something about the series’s current tone compared to Volume One that we’re now at a point of having a comic relief villain bludgeon a fifteen year old girl while ranting about the futility of being a hero…

And this here is Roman Torchwick at his core. The man who’s seen things, done things, existed at the same time as things. Bad things, good things, just things, the kind that take someone who could’ve been once upon a time just like Ruby for all we know, and then those things whittle that idealistic block of wood down and down until its a twisted and warped shapeless mass of hatred that gives splinters to everything it touches. It infects, insidious and irreparable, these pervasive thoughts, that being the good guy isn’t the way, and that’s how a bad guy is born. But then, when faced with a void, a nothingness, an extinction, soon not even being a bad guy is the way. The only guy who makes it out of Cinder Fall’s future alive is opportunism personified. A liar, a thief, a cheater, a survivor…

Cynicism like that? No wonder that Griffon Grimm dropped in to make Torchwick go the way of Samuel L. Jackson in Deep Blue Sea.

Early Griffon catches the rat, as it turns out. With nary a gulp, Torchwick is gone. Wellllllllllllllp.

Look, as fun as that guy is, if he’s dead, I totally get it. If he’d survive this, then he’ll follow the pattern of Ironwood, Port ‘n Oobleck (c’mon) and, let’s be real, Penny, which may be lacking in impact by then. Combined with the feeling that the villains gotta lose something in order to make things feel even, this might be a done deal death. Besides, this method of dispatching feels particularly Miles-ish (One of the RVB13 deaths come to mind), and showing the initial character design concepts for him in the credits could be a throwback little memorial thing-y. Yes, we could be setting up for a hilarious post-credit scene in the vein of Hannibal Chau, cutting his way out of the Griffon’s belly - another flawless escape! Doing so may work as a shoutout to both Pinocchio and to Red Riding Hood, so that’s a bonus, sure. Or hey, maybe there’ll be enough people wanting that not to be his end that he shows up again in Volume Four/Five/Twelve. Maybe, maybe not, no big deal.

You can’t deny that, if he’s going out now, he went out swinging. A badass fight scene, revealing a bit of depth and motivation, having an honest emotional outburst when he saw Neo get umbrella’d away, and at peak villainy - what with destroying two ships, facilitating the robot takeover and then beating a fifteen year old girl with your cane and all. If Torchwick comes out of it, then hey, maybe he’ll change in some way. If he doesn’t, then hey, maybe Neo will change in some way. Plenty of story opportunity either way. But if not? For at least this recap we’ll make like a surgeon willing to risk a lawsuit and call it, if only for the requisite gravestone joke:

And hey, you can’t say it wasn’t pretty damn fitting. Ruby’s there, for one thing, which feels like a nice full circle to their back and forth. And the speech about surviving being undercut without fanfare by the storm he helped bring in order to survive in the first place… It works, and not just for his arc. Grimm are beings of hatred and negativity, so the natural defence against them isn’t just guns and swords, it’s optimism and positive belief, which is what Ruby Rose is, all the way through. Even when being beaten by Torchwick and told that the real world isn’t for heroes, you can bet all the Dust in Atlas that Ruby’s resolve didn’t waver. It has before, and it will again, but that’s so intrinsically her to oppose all those things Torchwick said, and that she wasn’t eaten by the Griffon first by sheer force of positive will tells us that while it’s always darkest before the dawn, Ruby is that rising sun. And that sun is going to be what saves the world one day. Bet on that. Also bet on that when Blake hears the news Torchwick’s (maybe) dead, she’ll throw a party!

Hooray! So anyway, Ruby doesn’t stop to give Torchwick a twenty-one scythe-gun salute, just use her scrappy momentum to kick the Griffon into the ship’s hull. Solar power, son.

She bails from the exploding ship - and let’s not use the explode-y-ness as an argument against Torchwick possibly surviving, given what we’re about to see with Ironwood - pogo sticks with Crescent Rose to the ground, and heads off for the next fight.

Across the city, we find Qrow and Glynda in the thick of it, fighting Grimm and robots, and they’re also joined by:

Almost nice to see the guy, who knew. Yes, Cardin - last seen, what, getting his ass handed to him by P-Money? - hasn’t run away from the battle in a fashion Zacharias Smith would be proud of, and is fighting to the end.

Almost gets cornered and killed for it, too, were it not for the intervention of a mysterious figure walking out of the fog… Could it be?!

Hells to the yeah. As hoped, Ironwood has survived his crash, relatively unscathed save for his clothes - but that gives him an additional hundred points of John McClane-y manly badassness, so. Also helping is the casual kicking of every robot’s shiny metal ass in the vicinity, both his revolver and his hips-a-flarin’.

Oh, and turns out he doesn’t just have a robot arm and eyebrow. It’s an arm, a leg, probably a penis, half a chest… Let’s just say that it’s no wonder he became a general with a fleet of airships, since going through airport security must suuuuuuck.

Surprisingly, Qrow’s reaction to seeing the Tin Man here alive isn’t to ask where Dorothy and the Scarecrow are at, but to instead draw his weapon. All of his weapon.

Look at that handle, jeez, overcompensating much. Still, it’s a pretty damn sexy design, and seeing it fully scythe-y is another payoff for something set up earlier this season, and, similarly, the little spat they’ve been having all season about Ironwood’s actions makes Ironwood think that Qrow is attacking him. Oh Ironwood, you so silly.

Yes, Qrow was stabbing the scorpion by slicing a Griffon in half - the fun way, not the lame way - and he knows the robots going wild wasn’t James’s fault. The UncleWood ship lives on, everyone hop aboard, they’re going to save the day.

The General’s plan is to evacuate Beacon before Glennvin eats everyone while Ironwood gets his ship. Yeah, about that second thing…

With the ship down, so to go the robots, which also helps to defuse the last stand situation going on back at Beacon:

While Weiss recovers from her exhaustion, Yang arrives - no Zwei in sight; R.I.P. Zwei - to ask after Ruby and Blake. Ruby’s MIA, while Blake…

Yang runs off to live out a scenario we’ve seen in fanfics for years, while down below the school, another big ship heads closer towards their iceberg.

Poor Jaune is lost as all hell about the existence of the vault alone - what would a school like Beacon need to hide? A Philosopher’s Stone?! - and that’s definitely not helped by seeing the soul transfer set-up.

Ozpin shoos Pyrrha into a pod before she can tell Jaune just what’s up -

- and then tells Jaune to stand guard. What happens next? Well, P-Money’s got a choice.

Had that choice brewing for quite some time, she has, so the full stop to that sentence comes relatively quick. Without a word to Jaune, she gets in the pod.

Meanwhile, back in the cafeteria…

Kylo Taurus has Blake down and nearly out, trying to convince her that the day was supposed to be theirs.

Much like with Ruby and Torchwick, Blake’s got her idealism about Faunus equality, and Adam’s got what he thinks is the terrorist-y reality. What she wants doesn’t matter, he thinks, because of what he wants. And it’s her.

Yeaaaaaaah. And to prove his point, he makes a promise he intends to keep. While he’s busy crusading for the White Fang, he’ll also take time out of his schedule to destroy everything Blake cherishes. No wonder the cafeteria is on fire; it’s where all the tuna is. The library’s next, then her friends… Oh hey, there’s one.

Man, the Tauradonna shippers from before this episode must definitely miss the innocent days, huh. It says something that even the Rosewick shippers have it better, and one half of their ship might’ve died, right after giving the other half a mild beating. At least Torchwick wasn’t as creepy about it, I guess? Anyways, cut back to:

Ozpin, despite everything, doesn’t start the soul transfer without asking for Pyrrha’s consent. Getting that doesn’t stop him from feeling sorry about, y'know, Pyrrha screaming in pain and all, which happens after Amber wakes up -

- and gets Jaune to abandon his guard post without question.

Don’t blame the kid for his first instinct being to see what was making his quasi-girlfriend and teammate scream like that, okay? And hey, had he seen Cinder coming, he would’ve raised his shield to protect Pyrrha. No question about it. And the same end result is:

Back in the cafeteria, no work and no play makes Adam go stabby stabby, which certainly gets Yang’s attention.

Blake feebly tries to prevent what she knows is about to happen -

- but she’s unsuccessful. Yang erupts in anger, same as she has every time, same as she has been paying for all season, and goes in for the kill. Unnnnnnfortunately, Adam is quicker. The world goes all Black Trailer-y, and with it goes half of Yang’s goddamn right arm.

Yeeeeeeeesh. That’s a consequence and a half.

Fear not, Yang’s hand is in good company with all the great chopped off hands in the sky. Luke Skywalker, Jaime Lannister, Comic Rick Grimes… and so on. She also joins the list of people who lose hands and then make fans suffer through the same five hand puns for months on end from the rest of their ilk. Ugh. And it happened again with Arrow yesterday, goddamn it. When will it end. Speaking of ends, there’s also Amber’s:

Poor girl. I wonder if half a second when she woke she wondered, “I’m alive? Cool! I’m going to eat a hamburger, and go hanggliding, and -” Cinder gets exactly what she wanted by killing her, and all it took was one arrow. And an entire invasion of Grimm. And a concurrent attack by the White Fang. And turning a robot army to her side. And doing so after having one chick kill another robot chick. And broadcasting it live. Which she was able to do because she planted a virus in Beacon’s CCT. And basically everything else. She’s a real go-getter, that Cinder.

And now she’s apparently full on Fall Maiden. Welp.

While Pyrrha desperately tries to escape her pod, Jaune doesn’t hesitate to attack -

- even though, y'know, he’s about effective in a fight against a fully-powered Maiden as a Jaune fighting a fully-powered Maiden.

Pyrrha too tries to jump in to fight, but Ozpin stops her. He, much like Port and Oobleck, elects to stay behind and hold the enemy off while the kids escape. Makes you wonder if Beacon teachers discuss heroic sacrifice attempts during Monday morning staffroom meetings over tea and scones, really.

The tower cannot fall, Ozpin says. Combine that with the unusual attention Glenkevinn is showing to the place… Hmm. Ahh well, let’s go see how the 50 Shades Of Grey sequel’s going.

Not great, huh. Topping the creepy cherry on that abusive-y sundae, Adam demands why Blake must hurt him this way, before, y'know, taking it a bit far by trying to cut off her goddamn head.

That’s an image folk won’t be shaking anytime soon. Crazy how the stakes upped enough from the moment Penny got ripped apart to make a lot of things possible, but then got upped again to almost make this possible. Gotta hand it to Blake, though, it was a hell of a good shadow clone. Like a Volume 2/Volume 3 background character compared to the V1 ones, really.

So Blake and Yang escape successfully - thankfully all of Yang’s weight was in her right wrist, otherwise an injured Blake would be out of luck trying to lift her - and Adam watches on, Adam-y.

And, scarily enough, he calmly begins to walk in the direction Blake ran… Like the Terminator, this guy. Is that it for him this season, or he got some work to finish in the finale? Hmm…

Anyways, let’s end the episode on a lighter note, with Cinder and Ozpin about to kill each other! Hooray!

We get something of an intrigue from Cinder talking about Ozpin’s arrogance to keep secrets right beneath Beacon - just Amber? Another secret? Related to the tower falling? We got some big eldritch Grimm abomination secretly eating everyone’s souls? Wassup Cind don’t be vague.

Also, her saying that “she” was right about Ozpin, another flag. Is the she Amber, her last thoughts being less than positive to the guy who led her to being comatose and in that outfit, or a bigger bad “she”? Cinder’s boss, hinted at in V3C7? Most likely. Everyone and their mother’s saying its Raven or it’s the mysterious woman played by Jen Taylor that Ozpin was talking to in the first episode narration…

Ahh well. Something to look forward to. Eleven episodes down, and only the finale remains. Cinder Vs Ozpin, take your “it’s going to happen offscreen, isn’t it?” bets.

My predictions for the finale? Uhhhhh… there’ll be end credits? Some new music? A post-credits scene? Not much else to guess, really. That dragon’s still out there, and since more than half the cast is tired, beaten all to hell, stabbed or amputated… if there was ever a time to reveal someone’s been a Maiden all along, it’s now. Fans are throwing crazy theories out like that everyone will be forced to abandon Vale, which would set up for an amazing adventure next season, but I doubt it. Oh, and we should probably keep in mind the evil laughter we got from both Miles Luna and Jen Brown on a cast/crew livestream when they realised the finale was airing on Valentine’s Day… Speaking of, in case you ain’t heard, there’s another one of those tomorrow at 3pm CST, where the cast and crew will be livewatching and commentating on all the episodes of Volume Three so far. Get hype, that’ll be a fun ride.

That’s about it from me. We’re down to the wire, only one recap remaining. Expect callbacks to this season’s recaps next time. Lots and lots of callbacks. Lord, beer us strength.

So everyone, best of luck with Valentine’s Day, both in the usual sense and in the “oh god it’s hiatus time” sense, and thanks for reading!