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

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
Kazarion recalls his time before being transferred to the Death Watch, prior to returning to the Blood Angels. In the present, Kazarion and his team continue their search for Orpheo, facing further hordes of mutated enemies. In the course of the battle, Coro and Raphael are killed.

OUR TAKE
Huh, didn’t think it would take nearly half the season to see some deaths. Last episode, I noted my grievance of not being able to really tell most of these guys apart, aside from Raphael due to him wearing a pretty distinguishable helmet from the rest. Now we start picking some of the guys off and they have to go with the one guy with the big skull helmet! Well, thankfully they made sure to finally give Kazarion some more character development so I can actually pick him out of a crowd. My lack of Warhammer experience or knowledge has continued to leave me at a bit of a handicap when covering this series, which only becomes increasingly clear as to how insular and hard to penetrate this franchise’s lore is, but there seems to be some discernable story coming through now that we have a clear protagonist to follow. But because of the aforementioned impenetrable lore, I have to provide some context here.

Because of the genetic conditions that the Blood Angel chapter has, members go through phases of the Red Thirst and Black Rage, things that I imagine are easier to deal with in battle when you are amongst others who understand those conditions and how to deal with you when they come up. Kazarion, having needed to transfer to a different chapter which supposedly did not have others of his disposition around, felt disconnected and alone, even once he returned and rejoined the Blood Angels prior to this mission to save Orpheo. And I guess his character arc will be finding his place amongst his chapter again? This episode is the first to not cut to what’s happening on the Sword of Baal, so clearly they thought they needed the whole runtime to focus on this emotional conflict. You know, on top of the very physical conflict against all these weird mutant zombie people. And hey, massive graphic and bloody fights can be very well used to symbolize big and relatable emotions…though I’m not sure that’s what we’re meant to look for here.

Honestly, I’m just glad to be able to talk about some character development finally. Giant mech armored vampire space marines fighting alien mutant zombies is cool and all, but you really need an emotional core to make you feel like you’re there with these guys. Or maybe the people who bought this streaming service don’t need that and they’re fine as long as they have new lore to dump into the existing lore. No judgements there, it’s just what I seem to be observing. I wonder if we’ll be learning more about Kazarion moving forward, which we definitely have the room to do with more than half the season left.