Adora's training goes awry when Light Hope begins to glitch out, and she heads out with Swift Wind to repair a transmission tower that should fix her. Meanwhile, Bow and Glimmer attempt a rescue mission for Entrapta and end up taking Catra hostage instead.
Tropes:
- Armor-Piercing Response: Catra briefly drops her mischievous act when Glimmer, fed up with Catra's actions, tells her that it's now obvious "Adora didn't run away from the Horde, she ran away from you."
- Asshole Victim: After Catra taunts Bow and Glimmer throughout the episode, she more than earned Scorpia accidentally stinging her.
- Big "NO!": Scorpia has a brief one near the end when she accidentally stings Catra.
- Brick Joke: Swift Wind suggests doing loop-de-loops as a solution to his and Adora's problem. It later pays off when she fixes the watchtower.
- Butt-Monkey: Kyle gets stuck with Entrapta as her new robot goes berserk, and Catra orders him to "take out" Entrapta, though it's made clear she has absolutely no expectation that he would actually succeed in this even if he tried.
- Call-Back:
- Scorpia encounters the same problems with Dryl's castle that everyone else did.
- The Force Captain badges turn out to double as locators, which might explain a few things from the first season.
- Double-Meaning Title: The episode is full of examples of things and people being tied and bound in various senses.
- Catra spends most of the episode tied up.
- Adora needs to bond with Swift Wind while putting a relay tower (that's meant to connect Light Hope to her planetary mainframe) back together (which she at one point tries to do by binding it with rope).
- The bond between Bow and Glimmer gets exploited by Catra to mess with them, but it clearly also strengthens them both.
- For all that Catra has tried to sever the bond between her and Adora, touching on it is the one way Glimmer manages to get to Catra.
- Scorpia is clearly bound to Catra, and Catra relies on Scorpia to come rescue her even as she disparages The Power of Friendship.
- Possibly in counterpoint to all of the above, Entrapta is equally happy working for the Horde as for the Alliance - alone among the characters, she's without any ties.
- Facial Horror: Light Hope goes... a bit funny-looking when she glitches.
- For Science!: Entrapta's response to why she's willingly working for the Horde, saying that she would return to the Rebellion, but the Fright Zone has much more in the way of scientific equipment to utilize. Plus, she already moved all her stuff to the lab.
- Forgot to Gag Him: Catra is captured, but she uses her words to thoroughly frustrate Glimmer and Bow while making the former use up her magic. This is handwaved when Glimmer does actually tell Bow to make Catra stop talking.Bow: I tried, but she bites.
- Furry Reminder: In case you forgot that Catra is half-cat, this episode has her constantly hiss and scratch at her opponents, flop about like an obstructive housecat, groom herself in a Funny Background Event, lick Glimmer's arm, and bite Bow.
- Gravity Screw: The remnants of the watchtower that Mara broke are all floating about the place, and they evidently have been for a thousand years. When Mara breaks stuff, she breaks stuff.
- Handy Cuffs: Several of Catra's antics as a captive (particularly activating her homing beacon) were only possible because she had her hands tied in the front.
- Hypocrite: Catra mocks bonds between friends since Entrapta joined the Horde, but she was still relying on Scorpia, who considers Catra a friend, to save her.
- I Am Not Left-Handed: During the climax, Glimmer reveals that she was exaggerating how much power she had used up. She uses what she has left to save Bow before punching Catra in the face.
- If You Taunt Him, You Will Be Just Like Him: Catra spends the entire episode reveling in this trope, with Bow constantly reminding Glimmer that they need to treat Catra kindly and not stoop to her level. Subverted in the end, after Catra manages to break Glimmer's last bit of self-restraint by gloating a little bit too much.
- Innocently Insensitive: Entrapta states how happy she is working with the Horde, clueless to the fact that she is talking to people who are fighting against the Horde, and who were trying to save her, and how much of betrayal of trust this is.
- Internal Reveal: Bow and Glimmer find out that Entrapta isn't a hostage — she's working for the Horde willingly.
- Made of Iron: Bow, Glimmer and Catra fall off a cliff and hit the ground pretty hard, but none of them seem at all banged up by this.
- Nightmare Face: Catra gives this terrifying feral-like facial expression
◊ after pinning Bow to the ground. - Pity the Kidnapper: Catra drives Bow and Glimmer up the wall when she's their captive.
- Play-Along Prisoner: Catra seems to be having downright fun as Bow and Glimmer's prisoner, picking at their insecurities and wearing out Glimmer's store of magic.
- Ragnarök Proofing: Light Hope mentions she's been low on power since Mara wrecked the planet, but it's only after a thousand years she's starting to show signs that it's a problem.
