The Untamed, Episodes 41-45

[galaxysoup]

BOY A LOT HAPPENS IN THESE EPISODES


Episode 41

• HAY LOOK ANOTHER FLASHBACK


• Well this all adds some serious context


• Is Meng Kid... playing evil guqin music???


• Wow. Meng Kid sure is playing the long game, here!


• Poor Nie Kid! ;__;


• Ew ugh Psycho Goth Smirkface, who let you back in?


• UH OH BUSTED


• Hang on, is that Suibian?? Is this whole secret chamber some kind of weird trophy collecting thing with added dismemberment?


• Oh man, Lan Big Bro... he so desperately doesn’t want this to be true, and he’s still doing his utmost to see it uncovered. It must be hard to be a Lan.


• I love how smart Wei Wuxian is. Have I mentioned that I love how smart Wei Wuxian is?


• So... Wei Wuxian’s resurrection really was just a wildcard event? It genuinely was Mo Kid, messed up and angsty, doing a bit of resurrecting all by his lonesome? I really thought it would have been more tied into someone’s manipulations, but if Meng Kid wasn’t behind it, I don’t know who else it would have been.

Episode 42

• Well I don’t trust Meng Kid letting them in to the treasure room one inch


• DAMN Jin Wife! D: D:


• I hate him but my god Meng Kid is masterful at twisting circumstances to his advantage and using victimhood and social convention to weasel out of things.


• Also every time Lan Wangji jumps in to defend Wei Wuxian I :D


• WELL SHIT the first time he holds a sword in years, and it totally blows his cover, oh Wei Wuxian it just never goes your way, does it?


• Poor Baby Jin must be having so many confusing feelings right now. He hates the Yiling Patriarch, but the man in the mask has been good to him and protected him and they’d even gotten to a kind of joking relationship, and now he has Meng Kid’s dumb poison dripping in his ear.


• Augh Wei Wuxian trying to push Lan Wangji out of the way! AUGH Lan Wangji refusing to stay silent when Wei Wuxian tries to say he didn’t know anything! AUGH LAN WANGJI showing that he remembers everything Wei Wuxian said to him ;__________; (Everyone else standing around: gaaaaaaaaaay what an inspiring communist brotherhood)


• BABY JIN NO STABBING RELATIVES IS NOT HOW YOU DEAL WITH CONFLICTING EMOTIONS


• Look, Lan Big Bro may have terrible taste in friends, but I love that he insists on protecting Wei Wuxian until the truth is fully revealed. I feel like he and Lan Wangji both went down a similar self-reflection path in the aftermath of Wei Wuxian’s fall.


• Music as a murder weapon, I love it!

Episode 43

• Poor, poor, Lan Big Bro.


• Poor, poor Lan Wangji! So stubborn even as he’s being punished, my heart ;__;


• The. The bedroom the Clan Leader shared with his wife is called. The ‘Frigid Chamber’? Netflix subtitler, are you joking right now?


• To say the Lan Bos’ parents had a complicated relationship is putting it MILDLY jesus christ


• Holy hell Lan Wangji has needed a hug for like. His entire life.


• AHA so someone else DID make Wen Ning go crazy just before he killed the Jin Bros!! Meng Kid, you devious asshole, that was a hit on the brothers standing between you and the throne.


• I really appreciate the way this story is set up. I feel like it would have been tempting to have the whole thing play out as a cat-and-mouse game between two different geniuses – Wei Wuxian and Meng Kid, both of whom have had to face a lot of nasty talk about their beginnings and abilities – and have all the other plot points as incidental background noise. It’s so much more satisfying to have this slow evolution with Wei Wuxian’s character evolution taking center stage and the two of them only very subtly shown in contrast.


• I love that internal voice over almost-dialogue between Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji! So much of their communication happens in glances and microexpressions, it’s really sweet to get to hear it spelled out.


• Lan Big Bro, you are a surprisingly good actor for someone related to Lan Wangji and from a clan that doesn’t allow lying


• MIANMIAN! YES I LOVE MIANMIAN!! And she’s raising her little girl on stories that Wei Wuxian is not terrible!! And she’s still a stone-cold sword-carrying badass!

Episode 44

• Wen Ning. Sweetheart. What are you doing.


• Burial Mounds D: D: They’d built such a nice little community there D:


• I wish someone would stop and acknowledge how much Wen Ning has lost and how abandoned he is now. I mean, he’s got Wei Wuxian as a friend, but they hardly seem to spend any time together and he doesn’t have anyplace to go. I know he can’t physically cry any more, but I’m pretty sure he can still feel feelings.


• That remote guqin string move is super cool!


• Oh teenagers... tied up and left in a cave and they still try to pick fights with each other! Wei Wuxian’s face, omg.


• Surrounded by a whole bunch of angry cultivators calling for Wei Wuxian’s blood? The more things change, the more they stay the same... I like the contrast between the big impressive Nightless Palace battle and this smaller, dirtier copy, mostly led by people who don’t even rate character names.


• Oh, Nie Kid... never change!


• Who has the mojo to cancel out that many high-level cultivators’ powers? That’s a move we haven’t seen before!


• I like that the teenagers are the ones trying to speak reason to their elders here. The kids are all right.


• I love you Nie Kid and the way you keep deferring to Wei Wuxian in front of all those other cultivators. I doubt it’s on purpose, but I love that his friendship is still solid and that it’s doing the work of making people listen to sense. Never change, kiddo.


• I love that the answer to so many problems in this show is music played badly on purpose! I’m not making fun - it works with the story without seeming ridiculous. I just think it’s hilarious and great.

Episode 45

• WEI WUXIAN YOU ARE SO TRICKSY I LOVE YOU


• WHOA Su She the loser was actually responsible for some badassery?? Villainous badassery, sure, but still!


• EVERYONE IN THE CAVE: Omg if Wei Wuxian is willing to be bait maybe he isn’t evil? LAN WANGI: *internal screaming because Wei Wuxian is only wearing an undERSHIRT*


• A-YUAN WAIT JUST A RED HOT MINUTE


• IF LAN SIZHUI IS A-YUAN THEN WHY THE HELL DIDN’T LAN WANGJI SAY ANYTHING TO WEI WUXIAN


• Lan Sizhui remains the Nice Ghostbuster of my heart because he’s so kind - he was so gentle with ‘crazy’ Wei Wuxian, and he’s engaging with Wen Ning seriously and considerately even while his friends are snickering in the background


• Wen Ning bought him a butterfly I’m going to cry


• Jfc guys, when someone’s crying that hard you give them a hug, even if they’re a dumb teenager acting badly!


• I love the teenagers in this show so fricking much, even the ones who barely have character names are terrific!


• Psycho Goth Smirkface WHY WON’T YOU GO AWAY


• Okay this whole Jin Dad flashback part is gross and makes me uncomfortable. Did... did Meng Kid really arrange for his dad to be sexed to death...? And... and past...?


• HELLO SURPRISE INCEST o.0


• Jin Dad WORST DAD

Comments

[frith_in_thorns]

On the topic of WWX being a complete wild card... it's subtle, but the storyteller in the very first ep mentions that someone *paid* him to tell stories about the Yiling Patriarch for three days straight outside Mo's Manor, presumably until the idea was very much swirling around in the air... (In fact, you can also see *who it was*, I very much recommend going back and watching that bit and the small scene of WWX walking out of town with that in mind, but possibly not until the end of the show if you want to keep it unrevealed for now.)

(I find it funny that I'm the opposite of you - I completely fell for the golden core misdirection but figured out Ah-Yuan very fast and also noticed Too Much from the first couple of eps when I went back to rewatch them :D)

[rheasilvia]

I completely fell for the golden core misdirection but figured out Ah-Yuan very fast and also noticed Too Much from the first couple of eps when I went back to rewatch them

Yep, same here! :-) (Though I think the golden core thing passing me by might have been partly because of some factors that meant I just didn't want to think about any of that at all, thank you very much. *g*)

[galaxysoup]

I do sometimes have a 'willful blindness' thing going on when it comes to shows, especially shows like this where I'm watching it pretty rapidly and know ahead of time that there will be twists and turns and surprises. As long as it's not a jump scare, I like being surprised by storytelling! So I often won't try too hard to figure out the big mysteries on my own.

[rheasilvia]

Look, Lan Big Bro may have terrible taste in friends, but I love that he insists on protecting Wei Wuxian until the truth is fully revealed.

That is indeed something I respect him for very highly... although TBH, I absolutely do not understand how he could have misjudged Slime Guy so severely, for so long. It's honestly bizarre to me. Older Nie, I can understand, but Older Lan should be a better judge of character.

I love you Nie Kid and the way you keep deferring to Wei Wuxian in front of all those other cultivators. I doubt it’s on purpose, but I love that his friendship is still solid and that it’s doing the work of making people listen to sense. Never change, kiddo.

I love him so much!

I love that the answer to so many problems in this show is music played badly on purpose!

LOL! I never thought of it that way, but yes. Very true!!

MIANMIAN! YES I LOVE MIANMIAN!!

She is awesome. The one reasonable person in the entire bunch, really.

Su She the loser was actually responsible for some badassery??

I know! I kinda love that. :-)

Jfc guys, when someone’s crying that hard you give them a hug, even if they’re a dumb teenager acting badly!

Yeees. Very low on hugs, that poor kid's life.:-(

[galaxysoup]

I absolutely do not understand how he could have misjudged Slime Guy so severely, for so long.

I give him a bit of a pass for that one, personally. I've seen others have similar reactions, so I know that it's a bit of a fandom in-joke that LXC is nice but kinda dumb, but on my own I didn't really take it that way. I mean, with a slight perspective shift, we'd all be saying that about LWJ and WWX. I feel like Lan Xichen is actually responding to Meng Kind pretty much the same way LWJ did to accusations against WWX - in fact, he's actually being more reasonable about it. Maybe it's a Lan Bros thing!

v

I do love that she basically goes 'F this' and goes off to find her own path, but I would also love to watch the AU version where she joins the Lans or somebody else and is Herself there too. :D I feel like there are a lot of other characters who would have benefitted from her presence during the time skip!

[trobadora]

Augh Wei Wuxian trying to push Lan Wangji out of the way! AUGH Lan Wangji refusing to stay silent when Wei Wuxian tries to say he didn’t know anything! AUGH LAN WANGJI showing that he remembers everything Wei Wuxian said to him

Not gonna lie, that's my favourite scene in the entire show. When it first aired I watched it on repeat at least six times.

Look, Lan Big Bro may have terrible taste in friends, but I love that he insists on protecting Wei Wuxian until the truth is fully revealed.

Same here.

Jin Dad WORST DAD

Yes. And there's a lot of unpleasant people in this show, but he's easily the one I hate the most.

[galaxysoup]

When it first aired I watched it on repeat at least six times.

FOR GOOD REASON :D

And there's a lot of unpleasant people in this show, but he's easily the one I hate the most.

Seconded very hard, with a heartfelt ew. :P