So, this episode is all pretty much ‘gearing up’ for what would seem to be a final confrontation. The Spearhead is down to five, and they’re being sent on one last suicide mission, while Lena is having to face being trapped, alone and powerless.
For Lena’s side, we get an extended talk with her scientist friend who, given Lena’s continued insistence on trying to save Undertaker and the others has something of an emotional breakdown. She reveals that she used to have outsider-race friends and neighbors, but failed to add her voice, even to her father, to protect them when the purges of the 86 started. Further, the Para-Raid was developed with plenty of lethal human testing, which lead to her father committing suicide out of guild and the young woman herself having to continue the work, literally sacrificing children to produce an advanced glorified radio. In rage and despair, she throws Lena out and says she never wants to see her again. So there’s that door slammed shut.
Lena finds the orders for the suicide mission and takes them to her uncle to protest. This was, of course, expected, and her uncle also gives her a talking down. The consistent theme is that he, like the scientist, feels powerless, and in his case also has the “party line” on how the 86 need to be fully eradicated by the Legion in order to cover up the injustices done to them once the war ends, lest the Republic go down in history as a pariah state. Once again, 86 seems to want to express not how evil people do evil things but how relatively normal people can be convinced to allow or even participate in such horrible behavior. Especially pointed is the scientist’s talk about her neighbor, how she was abused for having an ‘undesirable’ as a friend, and ultimately passed that abuse on despite not ‘really’ meaning it. Even the memory of doing that hurts, and means she curses herself, but all the same she’s convinced herself that there was and is nothing else she can do.
We then get a communication between Lena and Shin. He accepts the mission and the fact that Lena can’t stop it, and she correctly intuits that he’s ready to go to the clash with his brother, and since since Shin doesn’t want her to hear what his brother’s last words were, he asks her to not call in again, and instead to make her way for the eastern border, hoping that once the lines break and the Legion begins to overwhelm the republic, she’ll have enough time for a foreign power to pull a rescue, especially if they’re successful and eliminate Shin’s brother, causing disruption in the ranks of the Legion.
From there, we follow the Spearhead survivors as they gear up for what they expect to be their final mission, a one-way trip to oblivion, perhaps, but at least one with both dignity and purpose. We get an extended goodbye to their base, with the support staff contributing, and it’s powerfully melancholy. If we didn’t have a second cour already announced (and, you know, many volumes of the novel that I wouldn’t expect to be covered in what we’ve seen) I would totally believe that we were in some kind of an endgame.
Finally, after the credits, we get a scene from a very different PoV, seeing a more complete version of the flashback Shin had to his near-death experience and his brother strangling him, how this happened in a moment of despair after the death in combat of their mother (so before Lena met him), and how Shin’s brother deeply regretted his actions and his inability to protect Shin. The narration then shifts to madness as we realize that this isn’t just a case of the brother’s dying thoughts. He’s still conscious, still thinking, and with the strength of his shiny new Legion body wants to ‘save’ Shin, setting the stage for their clash to be inevitable.
If there’s one thing I’m left wondering, it’s how Lena is going to be kept relevant for this situation. She’s been out of contact (according to the others, not even saying a general goodbye), has had it heavily reinforced that she’s powerless to change the bigger-scope problems that determine the Republic’s treatment of the 86. Especially now that the team is on a last march of no return and thus beyond her ability to send even minor supplies, it’s worth questioning what she can really do to contribute to Shin’s fight. Hopefully we’ll get a decent answer next week.