Stick em with the pointy end.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Chudelkin stands firm and erect against Kirito, Eugeo, and Alice with his summoned flame genie…which is destroyed in two minutes when Kirito strikes Chudelkin’s body, seemingly killing him. This also makes him take on the appearance of his Aincrad avatar for no apparent reason, but this also tips off Quinella that Kirito is from the real world. He tells her that her attempts to control Underworld with the Integrity Knights has failed and that Rath will likely just destroy everything if the invasion doesn’t go as they planned, but Quinella refuses to bow to those who pretend to be god, even if they can kill her at any moment. To prove this, she summons a being made of multiple Divine Object weapons that she dubs “The Sword Golem”.

The golem one-shots Kirito and Alice handily while Eugeo looks on in horror until voice commands him to use his dagger. The voice turns out to be Charlotte the spider, who grows to giant size…somehow, to buy him time. She’s soon fatally wounded but provides Eugeo with the opportunity to open a door letting Cardinal through to the cathedral. Cardinal then blasts the Sword Golem back and heals Kirito and Alice, as well as explaining that Charlotte became able to love by being around enough people for so long, regardless of her programming. This surprises Kirito, which is odd considering he knows Yui, who was in a similar position to Charlotte, but nevermind that, back to fighting Quinella!

OUR TAKE

So, two episodes starting with anti-climactic fights in a row, only this time the fight was only two minutes long, followed by a long talk that covers most things we already know, and then another fight that is rather abruptly ended. Basically a lot of stop-go-stop-go that can give you whiplash if you’re not careful. And what’s worse is there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of actual progression up until Cardinal shows up. Chudelkin’s fight could have either been replaced by the Sword Golem fight or mixed into it for all the good that it did, and the reintroduction of Charlotte just to see her die was less of the emotional sucker punch they might have liked and more like a wet flop. I might have cared more about her death if, say, she had been more apparently around and interacting with the characters, thereby making her sacrifice more meaningful, but they chose not to do that for whatever reason. Still, you can definitely say a lot of cool looking things happened, even if the execution is pretty messy.

Quinella gets the closest she’s ever gotten to being sympathetic or relatable, having supposedly rebelled against her creators to show she has free will. I could almost be willing to feel something for her plight if her backstory didn’t plainly color her as a textbook remorseless sadist who tortured animals and only cared about amassing power and preserving her physical youth. But her contempt for Rath also creates a parallel between her and Alice, with both of them trying to secure their independence and free will from those who would try to control them. Shame there doesn’t seem to be any leaning into that so we could explore some more dimensions to her beyond a typical mustache twirling bad guy.

But now, we at least have the fated showdown between her and Cardinal. Two sides of the same coin. One hoping to preserve life to control it for her own ends, the other who would rather destroy the world to stop that from happening. We’ve briefly seen both of their capabilities against each other in the past, but now we have a chance to see them really cut loose. With two episodes left and the focus placed firmly on Quinella as the primary antagonist (and hopefully no more opening acts like Fire Clown and Sword Bug), we can hopefully just get down to dealing with her once and for all.

Score 5/10