OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)Nora, Oscar, Ren, Winter, and Qrow mourn their seemingly fallen comrades and adjust to life in Vacuo while helping the Atlas refugees and fending off growing unrest among the natives. Tyrian and Mercury start releasing prisoners to use in their cause, Port and Oobleck arrive from a destroyed Vale without Glynda, and forces gather to prepare for the final battle with Salem. With a dark horizon ahead, Raven portals the newly returned Team RWBY and Jaune to Vacuo to reunite with their friends once again…where they will eventually leave it again briefly to team up with the Justice League against Watts.To be continued…?OUR TAKEA while back, it was announced that there would be extra bonus content released to celebrate the arrival of RWBY Volume 9 onto the Rooster Teeth site after the one year exclusivity on Crunchyroll expired. This content, titled Volume 9 Beyond, would be an anthology series focusing on what certain characters were doing at the same time as the main cast were in the Ever After, with the plan to release an extended animatic of the cut Epilogue to V9 at the end. Then the company was announced to be shutting down and plans changed, so the animatic is getting released now, with the other content currently planned to be released later. But yeah, now we get to see a rough version of what would’ve been the finale to Volume 9, but MAY be the first episode of Volume 10. After a season focusing on just the main four and Jaune, we return to all the plot baggage that we left off with at the end of Volume 8 over three years ago. And while it’s nice to finally catch up with Ren, Nora, Oscar, and Qrow, it brings back some of the ever present issues that have plagued RWBY’s storytelling for awhile.Now, let’s be fair here. If things were going as planned, we wouldn’t be seeing this episode in this way outside of MAYBE a Blu-Ray special features menu. So, there’s only so much I can properly critique about it considering it is literally unfinished. But, if we were to imagine this as the actual finale to Volume 9, there are some details that stand out to me in not the best way. First of all, if we really were meant to check in with those who actually got to Vacuo just this one time right before Team RWBY came back, it kind of undercuts their mourning of them or making peace with them being gone when they’re about to have that all reversed in a matter of minutes. It’s actually something that the Beyond stuff may be able to remedy somewhat if it focuses on them, but it’ll still be supplementary anyway. Speaking of, a scene showing Tyrian and Mercury releasing prisoners seems to be hinting at bringing in antagonists from the “After the Fall/Before the Dawn” side story novels, which follow teams CFVY and SNNN on their own adventures in Vacuo approximately around the time of V6-7. And while I like nods to side content as much as the next guy AND have felt concerned about Salem’s forces running out of named characters to follow, this may end up making those side books required homework to follow who these new characters are and why they matter, which…is just not a problem this show needs on top of the dozens it’s facing at the moment.But the biggest thing is the apparently total destruction of Vale that occurred…off screen. If we are able to get the remaining seasons of this show animated by some miracle, I pray that this is not true. I have no idea if this was scripted and storyboarded before things got shaky at RT, but to have the final battle happen at Vacuo of all places would be, in my opinion, a huge mistake. Out of all the characters that we’ve seen in the show itself, the only major one that has any meaningful connection to Vacuo is Sun, and while he gets plenty of expansion on that in one of the books, that’s not enough. The battle HAS to make its way back to Vale at some point, for multiple reasons including as the remaining Relic, but the most important being that it is where the story began for Team RWBY, JNPR, CFVY, the teachers, what’s left of STRQ, and plenty more. It may be too much to ask for at this point, but it will forever feel like a wasted opportunity to not settle things there.Perhaps I’m being a bit entitled to be asking for anything when the company is on its last legs and the people making it are working into overdrive in order to finish what’s left to show us for however long they can. I say this while being mindful that everyone left working in the final days of Rooster Teeth are all putting in whatever they’ve got left to keep the passion and flame alive until there’s just nothing left. Just the fact that we got this animatic at all shows that there are and have been incredibly driven people at the helm and on the crew. If you need more evidence of that, it’s that they’re still not done with releasing RWBY stuff just yet! But I also try to be honest about my feelings regarding the show and its story, so hopefully that comes not as an admonishment of their efforts, but as a sign of respect. They’re a company I’ve followed for a long time and I’m following them until the end, which is unfortunately very soon. It’s Rooster Teeth’s last birthday tomorrow, so let’s try to give them a good one.