Rude, Red, and Royal
Challenge accepted.
Written by Kiersi Burkhart
Directed by Connor Pickens & Dustin Matthews
Directed by Connor Pickens & Dustin Matthews
"We heard you like to play games."
— Ruby Rose
Team RWBY go to meet the Red King... at least, that was the original plan.
Tropes in this episode include:
- Bizarrchitecture: The inside of the Crimson Castle has a strange warped layout that the wall or a ceiling can be also a floor.
- Call-Back: As the toy soldiers are about to be decapitated, one of them repeats Leo's final moments from "Haven's Fate". Like Leo, he's dragged off-screen by the ankle, his hands desperately holding on to the ground, and he repeatedly begs for mercy.
- Cheaters Never Prosper: The Red Prince barely hides the fact his game is rigged. His red soldier pieces are much tougher and more menacing, while the opponent's white pieces are in bad condition, have very little motivation to fight, and will take a dive at the Prince's subtle command. His critical error is using Ruby's team-mates to replace the missing white pieces. Since they're highly trained Huntresses, the three trounce his red pieces both in single engagements and through combination attacks. This inspires the white pieces to fight harder on Ruby's behalf. The game falls apart once the locals learn that most of Team RWBY is human, whereupon both red and white pieces turn on them.
- Cliffhanger: At the end of the episode, the Jabberwalker's extremely disturbed by Neo's Semblance, which undergoes an evolution in front of it. As she produces clones of herself, it tries telling her to stop. It eventually yells "No!" off-screen as all the clones bear down on it.
- Come with Me If You Want to Live: The Red Prince tries having his soldiers decapitate Team RWBY, but the Curious Cat tells the prince to stand down and persuades the team to escape with him. With the soldiers pursuing them, the Cat sneaks the team down a secret exit the soldiers aren't aware of and safely away from the castle.
- Disproportionate Retribution: The Red Prince's reaction to his soldiers bringing him a green sword is to have them beheaded behind the bushes, which horrifies Team RWBY.
- Dog Pile of Doom: During the fight with the board game pieces, several of them dog pile and pin Yang with their weight. Once Ruby rallies the team, Yang uses her Semblance to break free.
- Establishing Character Moment: The Red Prince is a cruel, capricious, paranoid, childish, and unstable ruler, a fact made abundantly clear in his first scene: he's immediately offended when Team RWBY mistake him for the Red King, dismisses and discards Penny's sword simply because it's green, has the two soldiers who claimed credit for the gift beheaded, and accuses Team RWBY of being infiltrators out to steal his crown for knowing that it's his birthday (a fact he announced seconds after his arrival, and which has been advertised all over the town) before capitulating to Ruby's request of playing a game to improve his mood.
- Fantastic Racism: The Red Prince and his subjects have a violent hatred of humans; as soon as Ruby admits that she, Weiss, and Yang are human, the Prince goes berserk, and the soldier pieces, including the white pieces who had taken Team RWBY's side once they started gaining ground in the game, attack Weiss, Blake, and Yang en masse. After the heroes have defeated the soldier pieces and won the game, the Red Prince assumes they cheated because they're human, and orders them to be decapitated and thrown into the Abyss. It's implied that the reason they have such a disdain for humans is because of a prior human having something to do with the disappearance of the prince's father, the Red King.
- Flipping the Table: The Red Prince kicks over the table when he loses, nearly catapulting Weiss, Blake, and Yang into the abyss.
- Follow the White Rabbit: At the end of the episode, after recognizing the cat that helped them as the Curious Cat from the fairytale, team RWBY decide to chase them to ask for help to get to the Tree.
- Glad I Thought of It: The two soldiers who gift one of Penny's swords to the Prince claim that they found it themselves, and when Weiss tries correcting them seconds later, another soldier pushes her down. This actually ends up working in Team RWBY's favor, as the Prince is enraged that his soldiers tried to gift him something green and has them decapitated.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The Red Prince's choice to shrink Blake, Yang, and Weiss down to replace Ruby's missing soldier pieces for the game to mess with her ends up biting him in the ass, since the girls are trained fighters who easily overpower his board game's forces individually, and have no compulsion to take a dive for him like the white pieces.
- Horrifying the Horror: Having already been introduced as a monstrous being by the standards of the environment, the Jabberwalker becomes terrified of Neo's Semblance, and it's desperate attempts to stop her from cloning herself go unheeded; when she turns the clones on it seconds later, it repeatedly cries "No!" off-screen.
- Incredible Shrinking Man: To replace Ruby's missing game pieces, the Red Prince magically shrinks Weiss, Blake, and Yang to fit on the board. After the game finishes in chaos, Ruby flees with her still-shrunken teammates sitting on her shoulder with Little, who's bigger than they are.
- Killed Offscreen: The two toy soldiers that claimed to have found Penny's sword to the Red Prince are decapitated off-screen behind the bushes. While their bodies aren't shown, the axes used to behead them are seen dropping and their pleas are silenced immediately after.
- Luminescent Blush: Blake vividly blushes when Yang cheers her for defeating one of the red pieces in the chess game.
- Me's a Crowd: Neo accidentally begins creating physical clones of herself when she activates her Semblance. After a moment's surprise, she has the clones attack the Jabberwalker en masse.
- Moral Myopia: The Red Prince is allowed to do whatever he wants, given his royal status. He is especially allowed to do whatever he wants on his birthday. At least, that's his attitude towards getting his own way, beheading people who annoy him and cheating at games. He cheats liberally during his board game with Ruby, but when she wins anyway, he accuses her of cheating, and automatically assumes all humans cheat.
- Mordor: The Jabberwalker appears to be looking for something. It runs through the familiar landscape across a bridge into a realm that appears to be the completely opposite. Its vegetation is withered, the grass can cut through skin, it exists in darkness and has dark soil, and there's broken pieces of technology lying around. Unlike conventional reality, the terminator between the darkness and the light is abrupt instead of diffuse, and descends into a glowing white abyss that resembles the Void Between the Worlds.
- Next Tier Power-Up: Neo immediately uses her Semblance upon arriving in the realm. After transforming into Ruby and Cinder, she momentarily loses control of her Semblance, as it expands to an area effect range and starts creating clones of herself. Although initially shocked, Neo swiftly recovers, takes instant control of her new abilities and attacks the Jabberwalker en masse.
- Off the Rails: The girls' attempts to follow the story of "The Girl Who Fell Through the World" to reach the tree without issue fail in this episode. The Red Prince doesn't exist in the story and replaces the Red King. While the Red King was helpful to Alyx, the Red Prince is self-absorbed, petty and cruel, which forces them to flee his castle as enemies. As a result, they aren't sure what elements of the story will remain the same, and what elements will be changed. Weiss complains that they must be in the "stupid" tale's "stupid sequel".
- Oh, Crap!:
- The two soldiers who shamelessly take credit for gifting Penny's sword to the Red Prince are immediately terrified when the Prince discards it angrily because the sword is green.
- When Little advises Ruby to tell the Red Prince that he's as wise as he is "small", all of Team RWBY freeze in fright. Fortunately, the Red Prince takes the remark on his size as a compliment.
- Outside-Context Problem: Team RWBY proceed to the Crimson Castle on the basis that they should follow Alyx's path in the fairy tale to successfully reach the tree and go home. All they need is the Red King's help, as he helped Alyx. However, they discover the Red King is gone and has been replaced by the Red Prince, a character that didn't exist in the original tale. They're unprepared for his selfish, cruel and deceptive behaviour, as well as the way everyone in the castle reacts with horror, fear and enmity towards them the moment they reveal that three of the team are human. Only then do they begin to realise the Ever After isn't exactly the same as the fairy tale.
- Self-Duplication: After landing in the Ever After, Neopolitan discovers the ability to create copies of herself with her semblance, which mimic her movements and allow her to gang up on the Jabberwalker.
- Sore Loser: The Red Prince loses his temper over the fact Team RWBY won't let him do whatever he wants, and win the games he plays, on his birthday. After he learns they're human, it makes things even worse, which leads the team to flee his castle.
- Twitchy Eye: When Ruby, thanks to Weiss, manages to get ahead in her game with the Red Prince, the Prince's eye starts twitching convulsively before he claims that it's perfectly fine. The tic gets worse and worse as Ruby gains more ground in the game and provides more information, culminating in the Red Prince finally losing his temper once he learns that three of Team RWBY are human.
"I don't know how that went so wrong."
— Ruby Rose
