Into The Badlands “Cobra Fang, Panther Claw”

You know, the pacing on the final season of Voltron: Legendary Defender has been bothering me.  Too many episodes seem like the show is just wasting time to fill an episode order.

Meanwhile, the prematurely canceled Into the Badlands keeps coming up with cool fight scenes, plot advancement, and a feeling it may be going somewhere even though it actually isn’t thanks to a premature cancellation.  Draw your own conclusions.

Take this episode for example.  We have basically three plot lines here.  In the first, Pilgrim, M.K., and their army of bath-needing fanatics invade the Abbots’ fortress.  Pilgrim personally takes on the Master, and even though she easily smacked the Widow around, he does the same to her, ultimately beating her even if he does have the advantage of being able to shut the Gift off.

But now I have a question:  even if you take away that M.K. is special (and a jackass) and Pilgrim can turn the Gift off (something he seems only able to do one at a time as he makes his way to the Master and lets his minions fight hers), why aren’t the Abbots winning?  They all have the Gift, yes, but the Abbots also have years of training.

Instead, well, they lose, and Pilgrim, keeping the Master alive but unable to heal herself, sets out to wake up the Gifted jerks sleeping thanks to the Master’s acupuncture.

You know, I know the Master ain’t exactly one of the good guys, but I still trust her and her people a hell of a lot more than I do Pilgrim and M.K.

So, that’s one.  Over in the second, Bajie takes his group to an Abbot safehouse to re-up the Mad Witch’s sleep drugs.  And it seems the Black Lotus are looking for her for…reasons.  Granted, those guys also know how to turn the Gift off, and they have hand grenades.  So, it isn’t too hard to find her, knock out Sunny with a grenade, stab Bajie and the Witch, and leave with Sunny, with Bajie…breathing his last?  C’mon!  Bajie is the best character on this show!  Don’t you dare!

Oh, and then there’s the for-sure death that isn’t the Mad Witch, and that would be Baron Chau.  After capturing Gaius and TIlde–seriously, does Gaius suck at fighting or something?–the Widow and Nix got there to deal with her.  Let’s give Chau some cool points for holding her secret hideaway at an abandoned carnival.  That just means the Widow and the Baron can have a final sword fight flipping around a merry-go-round that ends with the decapitation of both one plaster horse and Chau.

So, I guess that’s the end of the Badlands civil war.

You know, if Pilgrim’s new army leaves it in decent shape for anybody.