The series finds some comfortable territory to explore with Ace and Baby Ball’s recent popularity, especially when their fame brings out some latent jealousy in Gaz Digzy. Gaz and her destructive ways were very much the focus of the show’s first two episodes, but the character works even better when she’s got something to prove and no longer the golden child of the Leptons. Gaz was certainly over the whole ballmaster thing when she was forced to play with her new team, but now that she suddenly might not be the best any longer she has a new sense of worth to prove just how much ass she can kick.

Of course, Ace might have the ability to fuse with Baby Ball and turn into some legendary ballmaster warrior, but the major problem here is that he has no idea how to trigger the gamechanging transformation. Gaz is wise to the duo’s obliviousness towards their powers, but all of this ends with Buddy Marinara setting up a highly anticipated ballmaster death match between the Leptons and the reviled Xythryll. Marinara promises that the Leptons will win the match with their new trump card and the rest of the episode explores a stressful training session while the team tries to prepare for something that they don’t know how to control. Gaz is also particularly eager to heckle Ace and Baby Ball’s failed attempts to activate their skills. She basically only wants the Leptons to win if she’s the one that earns the victory.

Since the Xythryll is the major threat of this episode, the series goes off on a fun, twisted tangent that clues the audience, and Gaz, into what this abomination is all about. A lot of the time it looks like the threats in this universe will be rival ballmaster teams, but the Xythryll is instead one dangerous, overpowered beast. Legend dictates that the Xythryll is an abandoned chinchilla who’s mutated into a killing machine through a steady diet of radioactive waste. This creature is so mysterious and elusive that apparently nobody has even seen its entire body, only the versatile appendages that do its killing for it. Ballmastrz spends just enough time on Xythryll’s backstory to give this episode momentum while also not getting lost in this detour. It also acts as a strong model for the sort of one-off monster stories that this show can tell in the future. At this early point in the show’s run it’s always helpful to see what sort of series this can be beyond the whacked out sports angle.

With the Leptons’ efforts going nowhere and their fear only becoming more palpable, Ace decides that maybe the mighty Crayzar knows something important to the Ballmaster myth. Up until this point, the powerful Crayzar still feels like a cipher and Warden-esque omnipotent creature rather than a character onto his own. In that sense, it’s helpful to get a larger dose of him in this episode, let alone in his home rather than the ballmaster field.

Unfortunately, it’s not so easy to get admission to see Crayzar. The Leptons struggle with gatekeeping riddles as Crayzar’s fortress adopts a very Wizard of Oz vibe. In my opinion, riddle challenges are always a fun time, so this is the perfect sort of madness that Crayzar would have his guests go through. Ballmastrz naturally imposes its own bonkers take on the whole riddle trope too (ten guesses per question) and soon what would be a cliché scene turns into a lightning round of absurdity. Plus, they also reveal some (strange) information about Crayzar and his pre-Rad Wars ways.