Future Trunks doesn’t waste much time on the mend. As soon as he learns that Future Mai knows where Goku Black’s hideout is he heads off in her direction to prevent her from doing something incredibly stupid. Make no mistake, it’s incredibly bad-ass that Future Mai would head off to Black and Zamasu on her own with the hopes of ending all of this with a simple sniper rifle, but Future Trunks is right with his concern. Black and Zamasu are so overpowered that they’d still be able to distinguish the lightning-fast pull on a sniper rifle. As cool as it would be for Mai to be the one that saves the day here, it would be greatly anticlimactic if the solution to such a monumental problem was a gun, even if it does use Magic Bulma Bullets.

Future Mai misses her sniper shot and brings on the full wrath of this genocidal pair, but in the episode’s defense it’s a surprisingly suspenseful sequence. Future Trunks is able to arrive just in time to keep Mai safe, but he’s not happy to be caught up in battle again either, especially so soon after his last defeat. That being said, Future Trunks does do an impressive job, plus he’s become a masterful study on how both Black and Zamasu operate, as a team and as individuals. It’s also very awesome to see Future Trunks connect a Galick Gun against Goku Black and do his father proud.

There’s been a fair bit of fighting against Zamasu and Goku Black over the past few episodes. In that sense, the battles that go down in this installment aren’t any more memorable than what’s recently transpired, but they’re still satisfying sequences that carry a very raw feel to them. Everybody is determined to put this feud to an end. At this point everyone is so strong that even brief thirty-second sparring matches between these characters still contain plenty of awesome moments.

Future Trunks, Goku, and Vegeta all get in some good licks during their fights, but these battles lack the stakes that were previously present. These matches just feel like a means to an end while other characters figure out what to do. It’s clear that this isn’t going to be the final showdown with these villains and that does rob the scenes of some weight, even if they still are entertaining to watch. During all of this ego stroking there are also a few moments where Goku Black becomes a little too self-aware about how much of a villain he is, which are just meta enough without going far.

Once Future Trunks begins to get overwhelmed again, Goku, Vegeta, and Bulma all arrive back in Future Trunks’ timeline courtesy of their time machine. Vegeta was rather worried that they’d be too late with their arrival, but they honestly show up at the perfect moment and prevent anything from further happening to the war-torn Future Trunks. After this humbling defeat, Trunks is quite insistent that Vegeta and Goku play it safe. By now Trunks should know that telling Goku and Vegeta something like this is only going to guarantee the fact that they head into battle, whether they’re ready for it or not. A Saiyan would much rather bruise their face than their pride. It’s a moot order anyway since Black and Zamasu finally get lucky and are able to connect a hit and blow up the time machine. Bulma does put out the fire quickly enough to salvage a lot of its parts, but it’s still a blow that traps the team in this dystopia. Let’s be real though, this probably just means that everyone is just stuck over here for a few more episodes than they would normally be.