Overlord S03E08 Review: TPK

Overlord, Season 3, Episode 8: A Handful of Hope

I'm not sure why, for a good chunk of this episode as it played out, I thought this was going to delve into a more comedic or light-hearted route. Maybe it's the fact that everything ended well for the humans and goblins of Carne Village that made me lower my guard. Maybe it's the fact that we already had a fill of brutal deaths of likable, good-aligned characters (the asshole swordsman notwithstanding) in the previous episode. Or maybe it's because as Team Foresight enters the arena, they end up being greeted with a hilarious scene of Aura hamming it up as the MC of the coliseum, while Ainz Ooal Gown shows up in what could be best described as a goddamn bathrobe.

I think it's that latter part.

Of course, the humans have no chance against Ainz, that much is clear -- last episode showed that even the nameless, non-sentient mook-of-a-mook-of-a-mook Old Guarders were able to wipe out a far more experienced team than Team Foresight. But the question, this time around, is whether Ainz will find it in his non-existent heart to forgive them? After all, he forgave Tuare, he befriended Gazef, he forbade the harming of Nfirea and Enri, he found enough kinship with the Swords of Darkness guild to avenge them, and he had been shown to at least be lenient about humans.

And yes, Ainz does kind of think that he has a 'valid' reason to slaughter them mercilessly for daring to set foot into his base (that man loves his Nazarick) but on the other hand, the basis of that reason is the random, out-of-nowhere question he asked them while in his Momon guise, hardly a valid yardstick for him to determine whether Team Foresight is really driven by greed (honestly not that horrible of a motivation considering the fantasy setting they are in, and how most monsters tend to be) or if they have an ulterior, more noble motive. Like Arche's whole goal. That's what makes the conflict in this episode so interesting, because we have an enemy that Ainz ends up truly unwilling to forgive because they said the wrong thing, but unlike most of the people that Ainz overwhelms and overpowers with his immense, world-breaking powers... these people aren't evil. Hell, they aren't even douchebags! I don't think Ainz really ever felt quite as villainous as this, honestly, because even during the Lizardmen arc we mostly just saw Cocytus, and both of them draw the line at actually enslaving or genociding the race -- and Ainz brought some of the named Lizardmen back, in any case.

Here? Here it's just utter brutality and quashing these people's hopes, and it's very, very interesting and bold writing. I have a feeling that we're really cashing in on the "where's my soul" storyline as Ainz starts to really lose whatever part of the human he once was and is embracing his undead-overlord persona more and more. It seems that Ainz favouring and sparing humans will be the exception rather than the rule.

That said, though... what an awesome undead overlord, with Ainz's first line to Team Foresight for tresspassing in his domain something along the lines of "if maggots show up in your food... do you not kill them?" And the subsequent scene where, after some tense exchange of words, Hekkeran ends up trying to bluff his way into saying that they had "permission" to come from one of "Ainz's comrades". It didn't actually take until reviewing this episode that I realized that Ainz genuinely thought one of his IRL guild-mate friends might have possibly sent Foresight to the tomb, and I was wondering why Ainz over-reacted so much during my first viewing. Perhaps it's something that flowed better in the original light novel?

Regardless, though, the fact that the "giant comrade" sent them but refers to Ainz as Ainz and not Momonga gets Ainz utterly pissed-off and refuses to listen to reason anymore. He noted how he was initially opposed to the plan of getting patsies to die to further Demiurge's plans (which we see the extent of in the post-credits scene) but he doesn't care anymore. The scene of Ainz utterly furious is amazingly voice-acted and animated, honestly. "Come at me, humans!" he shouts, and, of course, he utterly curb-stomps everything that the Workers throw at him without even trying.

One of the cooler sequences in this scene is how Arche notes that Ainz doesn't have any magic with her magic-eye talent... but then Ainz removes one of his rings, and the sight of Ainz's supreme magic power ends up overwhelming Arche so much she vomits on the ground.

And then people start to die. Hekkaran, despite the only one who seems to be able to stand up against Ainz (albeit with the caveat that Ainz is dicking around with a sword-and-shield combo) ends up getting in the way of a strike meant for Imina, and gets paralyzed for his futile "save my love" act. Imina and Robberdick basically take the time to tell Arche to fly away and go while they buy some time to delay Ainz. They try to appeal to Ainz's sense of comradeship with his own guildmates and ask him to please spare that girl...

And Ainz actually agrees! And he'll spare her... but only by virtue of telling Shalltear to "teach that girl fear, and then kill her without pain",  because a fate worse than death awaits everyone else.

It's a particularly unnecessarily scary scene, but par the course for Nazarick's denizens. Shalltear ends up showing up and chases Arche around as she tries to fly away from the coliseum... and then she ends up feeling true despair not just because Shalltear's a scary, powerful vampire, but because escape was never an option since they were never outdoors, just within a fake open-area in Nazarick's sixth floor. Meanwhile, Ainz beat Imina and Robberdick off-screen, and tells Robberdick that he's going to experiment with mucking around with the powers of a divine caster -- the specific example given being "I'm curious if I manipulated the memory in your mind and replace the 'god' you worship with another being, will it affect your powers?"

We also learn that Hekkaran and Imina are fed to other insectoid denizens of Nazarick, and that Entoma had divided up Arche's corpse efficiently, with the head given to a certain demon, the skin given to Demiurge, the limbs to another group of undead, and that her voice is now used by Entoma as her replacement voice.

To further kick the audience in the feels, right after the scene that Entoma describes how Arche's body was split apart and "not wasted", we cut immediately to Arche's twin little sisters, talking happily  about how cool their sister is and how they can't wait to meet her again. Considering that their parents are pieces of shit that's likely to go utterly bankrupt in the next couple of weeks, it's not looking good for them, huh?

And after the credits roll, we cut to the Emperor of the Baharuth Empire with his retainers, and he talks about how they have to cover up this Worker incident, having used it as a method to gauge the strength of this mysterious Ainz Ooal Gown... but then as they talk about covering things up, Aura and Mare just lands on the castle's courtyard on a fucking dragon, and it's clear what the 'plans' that Ainz mentioned earlier in the episode is -- Aura and Mare tells the Empire that they have to apologize to Lord Ainz, or they'll kill everyone, and as a testament to that, Mare just creates giant fissures on the ground that swallows up the entire group of troops surrounding them (and also I think one of the Emperor's Four Bodyguards or whatever? Told you they aren't going to be important).

Yeah, so this whole Worker arc, is ultimately just a way to give Ainz and the rest of Nazarick a justified reason to attack the Baharuth Empire. Ainz claims that Demiurge has been pulling the strings although the Emperor also thinks that they are the ones that sent the workers? It's all interesting, but I, for the most part, am just interested in the direction that the writer is taking the character of Ainz Ooal Gown in. This is certainly a direction of the character that isn't completely not foreshadowed, but the sheer savagery and uncompromising attitude Ainz has towards the Workers might be a sign to how he might very well embrace his mask as an unyielding, inhuman supervillain. Good stuff, honestly.