Into The Badlands “Raven’s Feather, Phoenix Blood”

So, I’ve been watching and enjoying this series off Netflix, and a funny thing happened about halfway through season three.  As anyone who has Netflix will tell you, there are short episode synopses, much like you might see in TV Guide, that tell you in a very vague way what each individual episode is all about.

About halfway through season three, Netflix doesn’t have any episode summaries for this show.

Draw your own conclusions on that one.

As it is, much of this episode deals with the Widow getting her Gift back from the Master.  That involves knocking her into a dream state where she finds herself confused, dressed in red, and using her Gift to easily dispatch ninjas.

Stupid ninjas cut her anyway.

Now, it’s odd that here, she’s the Phoenix, not the Widow, and she is the sole baron in the Badlands, but she’s doing the sorts of things she always said she wouldn’t do involving Cogs and slavery with Gaius at her side.  The red is different.  And there’s some mystery rebel named the Raven.  It gets a little weirder when the Phoenix/Widow finds Tilde a slave and tries to free her, but instead ends up killing her when Tilde lashes out and the Gift turns on.  She also later kills Gaius because, well, why not?

And then the Raven shows up and it’s the Widow in her usual black.  After a sword fight, we know why: the Phoenix, defeated and dead, was the side of the Widow that was into power and control, all the bad things, and the Raven was her idealistic “good” side.  I suppose that means we may finally have an answer as to whether or not the Widow is one of the good guys.

That’s actually not a bad fake-out since we were clearly led to believe Phoenix was, well, the “good” her.

As for the rest of the episode, it has a lot less of the Widow.  Bajie manages to get Henry to safety when Gaius and Tilde find him, but he leaves the baby with Moon and Lydia to drive off for help in the most badass car he can find, and Sunny finds unexpected help from Nix, one of Pilgrim’s original Gifted followers, who sees Pilgrim is losing his temper a bit more often.

As for M.K., he believes in Pilgrim’s cause.  Sure, Nix is quick to point out it’s not a cause but a man, and I have no idea what Pilgrim’s cause actually is, but M.K. is a stupid punk these days anyway.   He probably deserves whatever he gets after all this.