RWBY Vol 8 Chapter 10 – Ultimatum
It’s that time again. RWBY Vol 8 Chapter 10 – Ultimatum – premiered on RoosterTeeth.com on Saturday Feb 27th so Clare, Sophie and Nathaniel braced themselves for a big episode and dived in!
RWBY Vol 8 Chapter 10 – Ultimatum Synopsis
As the fog of war covers the kingdom, Atlas nears its breaking point
We got to see the phenomenally dramatic result of what Oscar (Aaron Dismuke)/Ozpin (Shannon McCormick) did at the end of the previous chapter – was that anything close to what you were expecting?
S – I had no idea what Ozpin was going to do, at first I thought the bomb had been set off and was even slightly confused as to why the Grimm were being destroyed but not the city (please don’t judge me).
N – I didn’t expect that much power from his attack but as soon as I saw the explosion I knew it was Oscar/Ozpin, mostly because we’d had no build up to the bomb itself. The last time we saw it it wasn’t even near the whale, they wouldn’t leave the story so open but still I was amazed when we saw what they were truly capable of. His cane is amazing after this episode its definitely on my list of things to make.
C – I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting but that was incredible. Kinda like the Remnant Nuclear option. I loved how we saw the effects from all over the city with the Grimm being vaporised, the way the Schnee Manor was illuminated so brightly. It showed just how much power was locked away in that cane of Ozpin’s!
As we saw after the explosion of Monstra Neo has the lamp and knows the password – she offered it to Cinder (Jessica Nigri) in exchange for “what you owe me”… any guesses as to what that might be?
N – I agree with Clare and Sophie it’s all about Ruby but can we just take a step back to admit how cool it was to see her skipping through the aftermath.
C – Unless Cinder agreed to forfeit her shot at Ruby to Neo so she could get revenge for Torchwick I really don’t know.
S – Pretty much what Clare said, she wants Ruby. I’m not sure what else she has suggested she wants.
Marrow (Mick Lauer) and Winter (Elizabeth Maxwell) appear to be drifting apart from the rest of the Ace-Ops team, do you think they will make the right choice and turn against Ironwood (Jason Rose)?
C – I really hope so after the broadcast Tinman makes at the end of this chapter. Hell, I would hope even the rest of them would draw the line at bombing innocent civilians into a crater in the ground, but if anyone is going to take a stand I do believe it will be Marrow and Winter.
S – They need to! They can’t let Ironwood get away with what he is threatening, RWBY took a whole new dark turn this episode.
N – I hope so, after seeing how Ironwood acted towards Winter, I’m starting to worry about her safety and if anything happens to her I think we could see a huge effect on Weiss especially after the fact we’ve slowly seen her family working together and bonding more.
What did you think of the scene with Watts (Christopher Sabat) and Cinder on the rooftop?
N – I love and hated this scene, Cinder acted like a complete badass which I thought was awesome, I know Watts hit the nail on the head but did she have to start crying I really did think she was going to show some change.
C – It was a LOT but damn if Watts wasn’t bang on the money. And it seems like it actually got through to Cinder for once so I will be really interested to see where the two of them go from here.
S – Well I don’t usually root for Watts but what he said wasn’t wrong. Maybe he did manage to get through her thick skull. Honestly though I’m disappointed she is still here.
That trip through the subway, seeing the evacuated citizens of Atlas, looked like it had an effect on Emerald (Katie Newville), seeing what she was partly responsible for. Do you really think she can be trusted now or are you with Yang (Barbara Dunkelman)?
C – I want to hope that we can. She’s been moving further and further from Cinder and Salem all volume, and now she’s seen the actual human cost of what she was part of she has changed more. I think we saw that from Ren’s look at her emotions.
S – HA no! No way would I trust her! Even with Ren being a walking lie detector. Emerald will go running back to Cinder the second she can. She may not be team Salem but she is definitely team Cinder.
N – I would like to think that she could change but she has been on team Cinder for a long time, there’s going to be a lot of trust to build up again. I think eventually she will have to face either Cinder or What Emerald’s done. The subway was just the start.
Our heroes are finally back together but their moment is shattered by the emergency broadcast of Ironwood shooting down the SDC ships Whitley sent to save the people of Mantle. How do you think the reunited teams of RWBY and JNOR are going to respond to Ironwood’s Ultimatum?
S – Maybe they will come up with 2 plans, instead of heading their separate ways because they don’t agree, they actually go separate ways because they agree that these 2 things need to be sorted out.
N – I don’t think we’ll see them split up again. I think they may show their differences but will work together after what happened last time they went separate ways, hopefully during this time working together they will slowly work through the various issues that the teams have between each other.
C – I am hoping that first of all they find a way to get Penny to her dad to fix whatever Watts did and stop her from going to the Vault and destroying herself. I really don’t want them to split up again, but I can’t see them making a unified choice between saving Mantle and dealing with Ironwood.
Ironwood has officially gone past the point of no return. His twin obsessions of recapturing Qrow (at the expense of everything else) and using Penny (Taylor McNee) to open the Vault propelled him to do the unthinkable and threaten to bomb Mantle. Did you ever think he would go this far?
N – I can’t stick up for him at all this time, he’s not even thinking a little bit tactically now. He is just focused on Penny and Qrow, his finally completely snapped and over the next few episodes he will do anything he can to get them. I don’t think the bomb will be the end.
C – I had a sick feeling he was going to do something reprehensible, but gods I never thought it would be this. He has to be stopped. And quickly. I kinda hope that Qrow and Robyn will be the ones to do it.
S – You could see he was spiraling out of control, I was shocked that he would go as far as to bomb Mantle just to get Penny back. His obsession with Qrow needs to be explained too, maybe it’s because he thinks Qrow could stop him?
On a brighter note, what were your thoughts on the moment between Blake (Arryn Zech) and Yang?
N – there’s been slight hints throughout the volumes however in this volume there has definitely been quite blunt hints and this episode was no different. Sophie won’t agree with me but I’ve been shipping these 2 for ages and I think it’s a really cute relationship and I think their personalities go hand in hand. I think for a lot of fans this was a bright moment in what was quite a dark episode.
S – As much as I don’t ship Bumbleby (please don’t hit me. I think the team dynamic would change too much) it was actually a nice moment in otherwise a really dark episode. We had all that drama and OMG moments. It was nice to see them reunite and have a quiet 5seconds!
C – I thought it was really sweet, and a much needed counterpoint to everything else that’s going at the moment. I wouldn’t mind them together as they do balance each other out, but not at the expense of time devoted to the main story, which is much more important right now. I always get angry at shows for having big romantic moments when the world is literally falling apart around people’s ears. Like… time and a place people and this is neither!
RWBY Vol 8 Chapter 10 – Ultimatum – is available to stream now for RTFirst members on RoosterTeeth.com and will be available to non-FIRST members on Saturday March 6th. You can check out our discussion of the previous chapter HERE.
