English Dub Review: RWBY: Ice Queendom “Mirror of Darkness”

Overview

As Nega Blake proceeds to overwhelm Nega Weiss long enough to sever her connection to the Nightmare, Ruby is able to defeat it, unknowingly using her Silver Eyes in the process. Back in the real world, Shion manages to extract the Nightmare from Weiss, reverting her personality in the dream world back to normal. With Yang’s help, Blake takes control of herself again from her Negative counterpart. Team RWBY then works together to bring down the other Nightmare, and Shion extracts it from Blake. Team RWBY and Jaune exit the dream and wake up in the real world, though Weiss is strongly embarrassed by the incident…

Our Take

This time around, we now have a 3-way battle as Negative Blake and Weiss proceed to go at it against each other while Ruby tries to subdue the Nightmare Grimm. Yang takes down Big Nicholas with a sudden transition into Weiss’s flashback, and Jaune and the rest beat the armoured knight, it’s a fight fest.

However, I do find it weird that it took this long and the approach Blake used to slowly dissuade Weiss from the Nightmare’s influence. And it also would’ve been better if the main cast would have gotten some time to fight together and grow on each other before an arc like this. They just became a team but in this arc, it feels like they’ve been together for years, which just feels off.

Overall, this episode finally finished what it started and stretched for too long. Although, Ruby ending the Grimm with her silver eye powers (Which was a twist that wasn’t revealed until Vol.3) as an awakening/deus ex machina wasn’t tense at all. At the very least, they went all out in terms of animation quality in the best way. The season might have started a bit bumpy, but they concluded the fight in the dream in great style. But with one episode left, I wonder what they’re gonna do with the final episode while everything seems wrapped up?