Review: RWBY Vol.8 “Refuge”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Picking up after Salem gives her orders to search for the one person who knows how to properly use the “Relic of Knowledge”, we finally see what’s become of Qrow Branwen (Jason Liebrecht) and The Happy Huntress leader Robyn Hill (Cristina Vee) after the events of Vol.7 where the two were wrongly arrested for the death of Clover who died through Ironwood’s bullshit in combination with Tyrian’s jailbreak And given that all of them are in separate high-tech jail cells, there’s lots of tension being built up with Weiss’ unrepentant father Jacques Schnee (Jason Douglas) being confident he’ll be out of this but of course Robyn isn’t having any of his bullshit since Jacques previous dealings with Arthur Watts (Christopher Sabat) from Salem’s inner-circle in Vol.7 played an indirect role in fucking up the Mantle election with murder and deceit. But things take a more interesting direction when Watts is forcibly escorted out of his cell by Ironwood’s guards, while Qrow proclaims a decision he’s wanted to make for years…

Focusing on the “Team-B” side of things Yang and her teammates Jaune, Oscar, Ren Proceed to help evacuate people while cruising on some stolen motorcycles. It’s a thrilling scene that provides levity even in moments of drama and inner-turmoil such as a scene with Oscar coming to grips with the possibility of Ozpin completely taking over his body. There’s even a great newscast scene where the Happy Huntress member Joanna Greenleaf informs the public of mantle about how much Ironwood stopped giving a fuck about their own people with even their own troops pulling out of Mantle and completely ignoring the Grimm problems still afoot.

The whole news scene itself feels like an exposition-dump since it’s just establishing the lack of care and respect Ironwood and by-extension the 1-percenter douche-monkey’s at Atlas have for the people down below, I especially love the speech Yang makes to some apprehensive civilians about letting the Faunus taking the people in for safety within their slums known as “The Crater” with Yang further pointing out that the very Faunus they’ve abused and shit-on are more willing to help them find refuge whether or not they’ll even deserve it. We also get plans formulated left and right as Team A led by Ruby decides to infiltrate the Atlas base with her team by using an abandoned method of mail transport to send themselves to their location, and she even comforts Penny assuring her that telling Ironwood to “fuck off” in her own words was doing the right thing, Progressively, Ren tries to use his “Tranquility” Semblance powers to mask everyone since Grimm are capable of detecting negative emotions, but that seems a lot harder than it sounds when Yang’s B-Team during their convoy encounter a very special Grimm monstrosity with an unexpected surprise…

Our Take

While it’s nice for this episode to help fill in gaps of the unanswered questions since Vol.7, it was also great setting up future episodes as well. Qrow is possibly the most sympathetic in his situation while Jacques seems to have a “victims” mentality never holding himself accountable for his own bullshit like the “snake with a mustache” he is. There’s something oddly foreboding about Watts being dragged out of his prison cell as we don’t know why Ironwood would want anything to do with him after kicking his ass last season. Despite how everyone is now on different teams, I do like seeing the teamwork happening within these different team-ups. It really enforces that even though they’re on different “teams”, these people have been fighting side by side for quite a while. I also like to point out that even without Robyn leading the team, the Happy Huntresses interacting with each other on their own, rather than just when the heroes are around.  This really fleshes them out instead of reducing them to being background characters which really says a lot about Rooster Teeth’s writing.

As for some of the “conflict” within this episode, Penny’s going through her own inner turmoil as she never even asked for being the Winter Maiden and now has Elemental god-powers which is understandable, I also don’t really know where Yang’s attitude is coming from but my guess is that she’s still thinking of leaving Ruby on less than ideal terms. Blake seems to miss her partner, and is worried about her, but is accepting of it. Nora’s face falls and she’s clearly still bitter. And for how contrived this feels, Ren just leaves and isn’t really up for this conversation. Based on observation, Ren seems the most emotionally distressed, but it’s not explained how or why as he was often been the stoic and quiet person of the bunch and seeing him dismiss the people who care about him since Vol.7 feels completely out of character and hopefully they’ll explain why in this season which hopefully they will…

Finally, within Team-B’s convoy, We see another side of Mantle that’s rather unexpected but it might be a less than subtle Donald Trump allegory with the whole “let’s separate the immigrants-I mean Faunus with a wall” schtick. I think my other big complaint is how inconsistent RWBY is when it comes to the threatening nature of the Grimm. One second they’re being slaughtered by four skilled school girls, then the next episode, one Grimm single-handedly attacks them in full force when the story demands it. But here, the cliffhanger ending just played with our expectations in newer ways that will change the battlefield for future episodes to come and I look forward to seeing how they’ll face this new challenge for the rest of Volume 8.