Review: Nomad of Nowhere “Compass”

Even with one, I’m feeling lost.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Skout and the Nomad are still fleeing from the champion…who I guess is just “the champion, continuing this show’s trend of just not giving names to some characters. He manages to keep tracking them down thanks to his magic detecting compass (like the episode title!), giving them barely any time to catch their breath. Nomad wants Skout to leave and be safe, but she’s still insistant on bringing him in herself so she stays.

Toth and the Dandy Lions arrive at the train station and interrogate the miraculously still alive passengers on the somehow still functioning train about dealing with the Nomad, but all they can do is sing his praises for saving them all from robbers. With Toth clearly out to get him, the passengers are hesitant to tell her anything until she gets rough with them, which one of the Lions says is “south of their moral compass” (like the episode title! Double entendre!).

Skout and the Nomad are cornered to an abandoned town where Skout gets to talk about her backstory and her new, conflicted feelings about the Nomad being an innocent guy who’s being chased for no good reason. The champion arrives and introduces himself…as the champion. The chase goes down a well into a dark cave and the two are separated. The champion goes on a monologue about the world being “kill or be killed” and seems to have the upper hand until Skout pushes him down a mineshaft with a cart, supposedly killing him.

All seems well until Red Manuel arrives (maybe he’ll die next!), having broken off from Toth and hoping to take the glory for himself. Skout defends the Nomad with a heartfelt speech, but Manuel goes for the kill anyway….until the Nomad jumps in the way of the shot. Roll silent credits to show this is SUPER SERIOUS!

OUR TAKE

Oh my god, guys! What’s gonna happen?! They really killed off the Nomad three episodes before the finale! This is almost as shocking as when RWBY killed off Weiss last season! Or when Red vs Blue killed off Washington in Season 15! Or all those times Loki DEFINITELY DIED FOR GOOD in a Thor movie!

Yeaaaaaaah no. No, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that’s probably not what’s happening. In fact, it might be SO obvious that the Nomad’s not getting axed that I might just be overstating the obvious by even mentioning it, but it’s just such a cheap cliffhanger move that Rooster Teeth has done THREE TIMES NOW across three different shows! Off the top of my head, this might be leading into a more disturbing use of the Nomad’s powers, but then why not just have THAT be the cliffhanger? It’d certainly get more speculation going then “okay, how are they going to completely negate this tension next week?”

And all of this after a totally lackluster hunt by “the champion”, who turned out to be exactly as boring as I expected. He comes up to “barely passable” as a physical threat, but he is little more than a top to bottom stock fighter guy with no personality or distinctness to him. This guy was supposed to be a sign of the show’s stakes heightening and threats becoming tougher, but he barely put up more of a fight than the Ranch Hand, and he was just a random bounty hunter! This is supposed to be the right hand of one of the major enemies of the series, isn’t it?

This is also without mentioning that, in an episode that was supposedly meant to highlight how much momentum this series supposedly still has in it, we get the worst and the most glaring reminder of how this art style was a horrible choice for this series. Character animation is still choppy as hell at times, scene composition is the boring and lazy (you couldn’t come up with anything for Toth’s interrogation besides having the passengers stare right into the camera? Did the champion really not have a better angle he could monologue in beside standing stock still in profile?) All of this is more than tolerable for something like Camp Camp or X-Ray and Vav, which are comedies first and foremost, but this is often trying to be serious and is in constant crisis with itself when it comes to a scene’s tone.

However, I will say that this episode was a noticeable step up from the last, if by a small margin. Much like how the champion is only barely better as an antagonist than those bandits were. For one, we have Skout further developing her friendship with the Nomad and learning he’s actually not a bad guy, despite what she’s been told. She even makes a stand to protect him, which will no doubt put her in conflict with Toth when they eventually reunite. Toth herself seems to be feeling like she’s at the end of her rope and might have her prize snatched out from under her, so she’s lashing out and falling back on her adherence to the rules, no matter who she hurts. Depending on how news of the champion’s defeat gets out, this could either take some pressure off her by putting her back as the frontrunner as Nomad Catcher (unlikely, considering the many MANY failures of her own doing), or word of Skout’s involvement might cost her everything. Or maybe something in-between. Either way, there does seem to be a clear progression to their respective character arcs that are bound to collide sooner or later, and that’s interesting to me. These two are basically the heart of the show, for better or worse.

Though other than that, this has just been an eye roll or facepalm after the next. Next week at least seems to hint at further elaboration and expansion on the Nomad’s powers and what that glowy chest light is all about, but man if my curiosity has not waned considerably since this story started. We’ve still got a quarter of the season to go, and Nomad is RT’s only scripted animated show on right now, so no pressure.