Review: Warhammer 40K – Angels of Death “Rise”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

The Sword of Baal prepares drastic measures as their enemies close in. On the planet, the Blood Angels reunite with Captain Orpheo face more Tyranid hordes while the tech-priest escapes with her artifact.

OUR TAKE

This episode felt very much like a valley between the major revelations of last week and the approaching final act that seems to be coming in the remaining two episodes. We’re in for some big monster on the Tyranid’s side coming to fight the Blood Angels, while back on the main ship, Hadrael (a guy who I cannot tell apart from the other angels because his armor is so similar to everyone else’s and could only know by name because he said it out loud) is putting together what looks like a big robot named Ignis to possibly turn the tide for the Sword of Baal crew. And they could definitely use the pick me up if they’re considering self destructing their own ship to keep the invading forces from taking them over. Though honestly, in terms of how I expect this season to end, I feel like it’s more likely for Orpheo’s team to die stopping the Tyranid plan than the House of Baal being the ones to bite it, since even having the team on the ground win without any way of getting off the planet feels like it would be a hollow victory and too depressing a note to end the story, even for the franchise that coined the term “Grimdark”.

There’s still plenty that I feel pretty lost on, however, one of those being what exactly the tech-priest is trying to get off the planet, what the heck Ignis is (I’m guessing it’s a robot but the lighting didn’t really help with confirming that), or what Orpheo’s thoughts on all this are now. Last episode he seemed pretty against helping the tech-priest with her plan, but I guess that her explaining that it would serve the empire and that being an extension of Orpheo’s job won him over, showing that he prioritizes that over even his own survival or that of his men. Yet that’s still framed as something that he needs to hide from the rest of his team, like they would turn on them if it was revealed, which doesn’t seem very likely considering they’re all as fanatical as he is about serving the empire. Or maybe now he knows that they have to die to protect the tech-priest, which might not be something to tell the team if, again, they didn’t seem like they’d take that order anyway. Ah well, it was nice to see Orpheo finally fighting with the rest of the group, even if the fact that we have two more episodes is likely because we have more hardships yet to come.