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Episode 5: The Kindness of Strangers
- While the Nomad is a Nice Guy, there's a reason why people are scared shitless of him. After the Undertaker pushes him too far, the Nomad brings everything in the room alive and threatens to kill him. Luckily, the Nomad's kindness breaks through and he stops before things go too far. However, this leads to Paranoia Fuel as the Undertaker is terrified that the objects the Nomad brought to life, and returned to inanimate form at the moment, could come back any second to continue their work.
- The Undertaker himself is a Maniac who destroys potentially living beings and even tries to dissect Nomad to study his source of his power.
- This episode contains flashbacks experienced by the Nomad when he rests within an abandoned castle. A benevolent and elderly king gets possessed by a demonic crown (which eats the wizard trying to empower it first), and he turns the verdant land he governed into the wasteland it is today. Furthermore, he turns a guard into a minotaur and sets him loose on his people when the subjects rebel. And the kicker? That king is El Rey. To add fuel to the fire, that minotaur he created became one of his four governors that each hold dominion over the four corners of Nowhere, doing whatever they want provided they answer to El Rey. There's no dialogue throughout this scene, and it's positively haunting.
- In the B-plot, a monster severely injures Skout, and Toth abandons the search to bring her back for treatment. And during the resulting conversation with Don Paragon, he stabs one of his men in the stomach for critiquing his plan to become a governor.
- Given that El Rey transformed his right-hand man into a minotaur, it kind of makes one wonder if he will grant Don Paragon's wish in the worst way.
- Toro is Affably Evil, but still apparently a massive Blood Knight with a "Killosseum" for bloody gladiatorial combat. He also threatens to come to the Oasis and punch Don Paragon to death if he finds out that he's hiding the Nomad. Don Paragon's fear of him seems to be quite justified.
- Toro's Champion tearing up a train track with his bare hands! Not to mention his willingness to cause potential civilian casualties.
- Pretty much all of “Compass”.
- The episode starts with the Nomad and Skout being pursued by Toro's champion. No matter what they do, they can't lose him - due to a compass that the Champion uses to track magical beings.
- Everything about Toro's champion. While the show has gotten dark in the past, even characters like the Ranchhand and the Undertaker had their funny moments. But there is nothing funny about Toro's champion. He’s not Affably Evil, he’s not an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain, nor does he make use of any puns.
- The Champion killing the Nomad's rope, which ties into his mentioned that he's killed before and his desire to fight the Nomad.
- Without Skout to rein her in, Toth's drive to capture the Nomad has descended into fullblown obsession and Sanity Slippage. She is shown effectively holding innocent civilians hostage and threatening to torture them if they don't tell her what she wants to hear. Even the Dandy Lions are becoming disturbed by how unhinged Toth has become in her mission.
- Right after defeating Toro's champion, Red Manuel shows up and at first it seems like a case of History Repeats, with the Nomad getting away and Red Manuel being comically injured in some way. Then Red has his Not-So-Harmless Villain moment and tries to kill Skout - which results in Nomad pushing her out of the way and Taking the Bullet, collapsing to the ground as the screen blacks out. Tellingly, there's only silence over the credits.
- Even after Taking the Bullet, the Nomad and Skout are still pretty much screwed. No one else knows where they are, Skout is pretty much unarmed, and Red has every intention of killing her.
- The giant spider that nearly eats the Nomad and Melinda.
- The last shot reveals what happened after the end of "Compass"; Nomad has been caged and dragged to the Oasis, with Don Paragon's evil grin the first thing he sees.
- Don Paragon's megalomania and sociopathy is on full display, as evidenced during his monologue to the Nomad. He cheerfully reveals that Skout is in the dungeons, but not to be handed over to El Rey. Instead, once El Rey gives him magic, Don will try turning her into a pinata.
- When the Nomad is trying to communicate his issue with Don Paragon hoarding water, one of the people in the crowd thought that the Nomad wanted to drink their blood .
- This episode introduces us to El Rey, who appears to a beaten Don Paragon as a flock of talking ravens. After Don explains what's happened, El Rey blots out the area around the aspirant Governor, the eyes of the ravens all turn red, and the King lets loose in a grisly (and mercifully offscreen) attack ... which results in Don Paragon being eaten alive, without a single body part spared or a drop of blood remaining. Toth, who bears witness to this, is visibly haunted by what she's seen. What's worse is how unnervingly calm he is.
- Just the way El Rey speaks through the ravens is unsettling. It all accumulates into one sentence.
El Rey: I don’t get upset, but I am. Quite. Hungry.
