♪Travel friends. They're friends to the very end.♪
Credit: Storyboard artist Kellye Perdue
Credit: Storyboard artist Kellye Perdue
Written by Alex Horab
Storyboarded by Kellye Perdue & Sam Spina
Storyboarded by Kellye Perdue & Sam Spina
Mirror Tulip fights for her right to make her own choices.
Tropes:
- Ankle Drag: Just as Jesse and M.T. are leaving the train, Agent Sieve grabs her by the ankle and tries to drag her back.
- Call-Back:
- One-One recognizes MT once he gets a good look at her, since he did get to briefly meet her when Tulip took her out of the mirror world in "The Chrome Car".
- The tape of Jesse's memories include scenes from previous episodes.
- Catch-22 Dilemma: Jesse came back to the Train entirely to get M.T. off. M.T. needs a number to open an exit, and needs to be a passenger to get a number. One-One simply can't conceive of bending the rules for her, forcing her to trick the system by reflecting Jesse's number on her hand.
- Chekhov's Skill: Alan Dracula's Eye Beams (as well as his constant craving for grass). When Sieve grabs MT by the ankle right as she's halfway through the door, she grabs some grass from the ground and throws it back through the portal door to get Alan Dracula's attention. He then uses his eye beams to finish off Sieve.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: M.T. has been chased throughout Book 2 by the Mirror Police, trying to find her place in the world, and Jesse couldn't take her with him when he left (though not for lack of effort). Here, she manages to trick the train into letting her out by reflecting Jesse's new number, and with Mace and Sieve both dead, she can look at her own reflection without worry.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Seeing Jesse's number reflected on a mirror gives MT the idea to reflect the number on her hand so she can leave the train.
- Evolving Credits: The Cartoon Network ending card for the first nine episodes shows M.T. staring at her hand with a frown as the barren ground below passes by. In this episode, the background is now the lake and she's smiling.
- It's Personal: Sieve wants to kill MT to avenge Mace, as opposed to any sense of duty or adherence to the system.
- Karmic Death: Like Mace, Sieve also meets his end when trying to murder M.T. in cold blood, specifically when Alan Dracula blows him up as he's trying to keep her from going through the door.
- Killed Off for Real: Sieve, courtesy of Alan Dracula.
- Line-of-Sight Name: Upon looking at her reflection on the lake, M.T. renames herself Lake.
- Logic Bomb: The train assigns numbers to passengers to measure their progress in solving their problems. But when Jesse's problem upon return seems unsolvable—getting a train denizen who can't get her own number off with him—Jesse's number begins glitching out, One-One can't process this, and the Number Car starts to collapse. M.T. finally solves the dilemma by reflecting Jesse's number onto her own hand, which not only solves Jesse's problem and zeroes out his but tricks the system into generating an exit door for both of them.
- Loophole Abuse: As mentioned above, M.T. manages to trick the system into thinking she has a number on her hand by reflecting Jesse's number.
- Meaningful Rename: Once she's out of the train and in the real world, MT chooses to rename herself "Lake". While it's also a Line-of-Sight Name, it's nonetheless meaningful because she previously feared seeing her own reflection anywhere due to the Mirror Police chasing her, including the surface of a lake (from which they did attack her in "The Map Car"). Now that she's off the train and her pursuers are dead, she can enjoy the sight of a lake and any other reflective surface without worry. It's also fitting because she herself is reflective just like a lake's surface.
- Moral Myopia: Sieve is enraged at M.T. for destroying Mace, even though they both were relentlessly trying to kill her first.M.T.: I only killed Mace because he was trying to kill me!
Sieve: And I'm finishing it for him! - Mundane Solution:
- One-One refuses to wake Jesse because it involves a lot of steps. M.T. just flicks him on the head.
- After all the effort M.T. goes through to get assigned her own number like a passenger, the solution (or at least, a loophole good enough for One-One to allow) was using her mirror-chrome skin to reflect Jesse's new number onto her hand.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: Seeing One-One's Logic Bomb, Sieve suggests to him that the problem would be solved by grinding M.T. to nothing. One-One briefly considers it, as it is a way to escape the loop, but Jesse interjects to point out that the train is supposed to help passengers, thus trapping One-One in the loop again.
- Numbered Sequel: In-Universe, the tape produced from Jesse's train memories is labeled "JESSE COSAY 2", obviously because there's already a tape labeled "JESSE COSAY".
- "Pop!" Goes the Human: When hit by Alan Dracula's Eye Beams, Sieve inflates like a balloon and explodes into chrome goo.
- Readings Are Off the Scale: Because of the supposedly unsolvable nature of Jesse's problem that brought him back to the train, Jesse's new number rapidly shifts between non-natural numbers (Square Root 2, Pi, 49/13), non-numbers (Hg [the abbreviation for mercury] and ;P), and complete gibberish (the 12th root of 2 written backward).
- Refusal of the Call: One-One rejects M.T.'s demands to leave the train by pointing out how she's exactly where she belongs and how well she guided Jesse through his character development, implying that she could have a higher calling doing the same for other passengers. However, Jesse's file listing him as "in process" causes enough of a distraction that the train of thought is abandoned.
- Revenge: After M.T.'s killing of his partner, Mace, Sieve decides to take vengenance on her.Sieve: There's no escape, sliver!
M.T.: (gasps, then angrily groans) Leave me ALONE! I won't go back!
Sieve: I'm not taking you anywhere. I'm taking you out. You killed Mace. No more badges. No more protocol. - Sure, Let's Go with That: When M.T. claims she has a number because Jesse's number is reflecting on her hand, Glad-One is considering accepting it but hasn't fully made up his mind, when Sad-One simply chimes in with, "Yeah, sure, whatever."
- Take That!: Glad-One comments that M.T. has "co-star billing" when she shows up in Jesse's memories. Sad-One then adds:Sad-One: But you'll probably be paid less because Hollywood breeds gender inequality.
- Wham Shot: Jesse's train file labeling him as being "in process".
