RWBY Spoilers Thread

4xAm hoping that Salem will make Grimm dogs with Grimm bees in their mouths so when they bark they shoot bees at you.

Anyone else kinda surprised that Maria of all people was the one to suggest abandoning Argus?

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Jan 27th 2019 at 9:58:39 AM

No. Makes sense for an old person to be the least idealistic one in a group like that.

Maria: "These people are in danger!"

Maria to Maria: "But we need to get to Argus, and Cordovin will get totally fired for screwing around with their giant weapon."

Edited by VutherA on Jan 27th 2019 at 11:13:35 AM

Not exactly an end-of volume battle, was it? Still, awesome final shot, if nothing else.

Still, I'm not sure what the big surprise of the finale was supposed to be? Cordovin letting the kids go to Atlas? We all expected that. That Atlas is a floating city? We've already seen the floating islands of Lake Matsu, so it's not a game-changer. Besides, speaking purely as a sci-fi fan, I've been hoping for floating cities ever since we learned Gravity Dust was a thing way back in the early days of the show; that's why the floating islands of Lake Matsu excited me — it made it more likely that we'd see floating cities.

I'm now expecting a floating continent.

(Edit: I didn't mean to post my reaction post; I'll post that on the other thread next week.)

No. Absolutely not.

What we need to do (once the volume has finished for the general public) is have a proper discussion about what we do on a permanent basis from Volume 7 onwards. If we decide to keep doing it, the notice needs to stay so that people get used to seeing it there long before the next volume kicks in. If we decide to expand it to all the work's non-Recap subpages (which some people have said to me they want to see happen — but, again, this needs to be discussed properly), then we need to add that message to all those pages long before the next volume gets started so people have a proper amount of time to get used to it.

If we decide we're not going to do it any more, only then should we remove it.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Jan 27th 2019 at 4:54:26 PM

I figured no one would actually go through with it, but it was good that someone mentioned the pragmatic solution of using the chaos to make a quick exit.

Yeah, I remember theorizing around episode 4 that either Salem was going to come to our heroes or our heroes were going to be going to Evernight some time in the next volume or two; I was leaning more towards the latter after Tyrian and Watts were sent to Atlas and Salem stayed at Evernight, but I guess it just wouldn't do to drop that kind of bombshell except in a finale episode.

A fair number of people on reddit seem to think this means we're in the endgame, but I think we're actually headed towards a false climax where Ruby attempts to confront Salem hoping to petrify her long enough to stuff her into the Atlas relic vault (one suggested way of getting rid of her), only for her eyes to do nothing/merely stagger Salem because either silver eyes don't work on her or Ruby's power isn't (currently) strong enough to have a significant effect on Salem. Cue a Curb-Stomp Battle and Ruby being carried away by flying monkeys and Salem getting away with the relics of creation and knowledge, because there's still one more Kingdom and two more relics left.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Jan 27th 2019 at 2:14:13 PM

Here's a comparison someone did with the Ruby's memories to the actual show's shots.

I do wonder if the final shot of Summer was a memory or her imagination.

Given that the writers have been handling questions from the fandom regarding whether or not Ruby can defeat her by using her silver eyes, I can see them deciding to set up a false climax to kill that idea for the fandom. That said, if that does happen, I would expect it to (much later) in the storyline be revealed that the silver eyes are necessary to achieve the solution, but back during the false climax (when it failed) the circumstances were completely wrong for it to have ever have stood a chance to succeed (at that time).

However, from the writers' perspective, it would achieve the outcome of giving the fandom an 'answer' to that particular question and create a Red Herring situation that the silver eyes should be ruled out of the true solution to the story entirely.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Jan 27th 2019 at 8:58:17 PM

Yeah, I never really thought there'd be no role for Silver Eyes, but rather than they would end up playing into the plot in a completely different way from the most obvious route of just purifying/petrifying Salem with them. I think it might be able to undo some of the extra stuff she's done to herself since her falling out with Oz (the Tainted Veins and forehead mark, which might come from something similar to the parasitic Grimm she gave Cinder) I would presume in a bid to become more powerful, but going off how Ozma literally reduced her to ash and forced her immortality to reconstruct her from nothing, I think the corruption from the pools of annihilation may be too deeply integrated with Salem's soul to be gotten rid of. OTOH removing the "extra stuff" might be enough for Talking the Monster to Death to be within reach, while also making Salem considerably less dangerous.

Then there's the matter of the Gods; silver eyes didn't visibly harm the God of Darkness, but it did make him flinch, and I could very well see it serving as a means of nullifying his power and magic in general; it obvious doesn't harm magic users in the same way it does Grimm, but given magic is apparently aligned with the aspect of darkness. That's one potential route to prevent a second snap if the Gods end up turning antagonistic, and given the implication that Salem and Ozpin being able to have magical kids together was an oversight on the part of the Gods, that could also be true for silver eyes.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Jan 27th 2019 at 4:00:41 AM

I think it was memory. I noticed the following things about the flashbacks:

• The first scene contains the little cart that Yang was dragging Ruby in when she almost got killed searching for her mother. She's wearing the bunches, too. This is significant because Yang told Blake that she doesn't know how much Ruby remembers from this time and thinks that Ruby was too young to understand what was going on. This is a very strong hint that Ruby remembers much more than Yang thinks she does (something I've always suspected).
• The flashbacks start off with the appearance of happiness (but see my above note about the potential timing of the first vision with Yang's near-death story) and increasingly slide into more tragic incidents where she couldn't protect life (Pyrrha, Jaune secretly training during Volume 4, Penny's torn body, Cinder destroying Pyrrha's body...).
• The Leviathan suddenly starts ignoring Team HERO to focus on Ruby. Either it's either interested in the thing hovering right by it or it can sense Ruby tapping into the silver eyes. Yang even lampshades the moment by wondering why it did that. If true, I do have a theory about that.
• One of the flashbacks is the end of Volume 2 — right where Yang announces she's going to bed, which is just before the Volume 2 Stinger kicks off. That's very interesting. It's certainly a tease for people who have been asking whether or not that stinger will ever be referenced again.
• In the flashback, Summer is standing where her grave is, and where her 'ghost' is standing in the Red Trailer and Volume 1 opening credits. I wonder if this is the last time and place Ruby ever saw her mother alive? I'm guessing she used to love watching the sunset/sunrise from that location, hence the grave being located there — a spot she loved. I've actually believed this for a long time, but I only bedded it in as a theory during the Volume 3 opening episode where there was a really good sunset over the cliff. We cannot see the left side of her body, however, so I wonder what's on that side of her body. That's the part of her body that was cloaked off in the photograph as well, so my guess is that it's her weapon that's being hidden from us.
• There's a noticeable difference in how the flashbacks of episode content and the flashback to non-episode memories are handled. Flashbacks of episode content are artist renditions of the scenes the audience saw. Flashbacks of non-episode memories are done in animation style and appear to be from Ruby's perspective. Note there is a height factor involved in these scenes — the first scene of Taiyang, Yang and the cart is looking upwards towards Tai, and Tai's gaze is clearly looking downwards to the camera angle. It's the same in Ruby's vision of her mother — there's a height aspect at work, Ruby's looking upwards at her mother, and Summer's gaze varies between looking past Ruby and looking at Ruby. I'm assuming Taiyang is standing behind Ruby somewhere.

My conclusion? It's memory. And it's the very last memory Ruby (or the family as a whole) ever had of her mother, which is why the grave is located there, and it's why Ruby keeps being drawn back to that spot. Technically, Summer never came home. But, in spirit, she remains standing on that cliff forever.

By the way, I've heard the writers say that the scene of Ruby talking to her mother's grave at the start of Volume 3 were Monty's last animation scenes, which is why they inserted the sunset in the form of his signature into that scene. That's a hell of a scene, if so.

Well, most of your first paragraph was more or less the theory I was stating when we had that argument a while back about it, so I guess were trying to say a similar thing but in different ways.

Regarding the second paragraph, I've been convinced from the second we saw her for the very first time that this is a third eye. I'm not expecting it to be the red eye of the Grimm (she's already got that), but the empty socket of the God of Darkness, who had a skull for a heard in his dragon form. It should potentially be a counter to even the silver eyes if it's been granted to her by the God of Darkness.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Jan 27th 2019 at 9:04:27 AM

Oh, glad to have that cleared up. Sorry for being a bit nasty, and apologies again for bombing your inbox with PMs.

I'm thinking it's what lets her have some seemingly innately sense of where Grimm are and what they're doing (hence why she knows of Cinder's status), and possibly where her Grimm magic comes from, though I kind of envisioned it as being more something that resulted from self-experimentation versus a grant from the God of Darkness. I've been going back and forth on that particular theory and right now I'm disfavoring it because it seems like Salem is coming out to fight personally due to her mistakenly thinking Ozma is gathering the relics together in Atlas intending to summon the Gods and take his chances with them.

It's not simply frustration driving this, she was originally just going to send her followers to Vaccuo until she heard Oz was taking the relic to Atlas, and she obviously knew Oz would be back eventually, and even mused about what he might be planning in volume 4. Since nobody besides Raven, Cinder, and Yang know what happened in the vault, Salem presumably doesn't realize that Ozpin is doing this because there's no way to reseal the relic. That would imply she doesn't want to see the world (and herself) destroyed, because there's no way the present state of Remnant could be regarded as "united", and the most likely thing for the God of Darkness to offer her for ensuring Ozma fails would be release from her immortality.


Edit: Okay, random theory time: It's going to turn out that Summer was an incredibly reckless and often thoughtless person, and that her death occurred during an attempt to directly confront Salem that she embarked on against Ozpin's advice, and she got a lot of other hunters killed in the process.


With her memory of Summer Rose being the trigger for Ruby's powers, the narrative is just begging for something to be revealed that completely upends Ruby's view of her mother kinda like how learning Rose Quartz shattered Pink Diamond was a Broken Pedestal moment* in Steven Universe thereby preventing Ruby from being able to use her power at a crucial moment, resulting in the catastrophe that finally breaks Ruby.


* that was Double Subverted when he learned that she didn't shatter Pink, only for the Truth To Be Even Worse

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Jan 27th 2019 at 6:37:53 AM

Interestingly, while it's set up to look like Ozpin taking the Relic to Atlas is what's changed her mind about dealing with Atlas before Vacuo, it seems to me that truth lies with Tyrian's conversation with Emerald and Mercury: Ironwood is on the verge of making a decision that Salem cannot afford to have him make. That's why Tyrian and Watts are going to Atlas, and it seems to be why Salem is building an army that can fly — that Stinger has more to do with Ironwood's fleet hovering above Atlas than it does with Hazel's message about Ozpin (although she might be feeling that Ozpin going to Atlas means her plans need to be speeded up).

That said, knowing Rooster Teeth, I won't be surprised if we find out in Volume 7 that the reason why Ironwood's air fleet is deployed is because he received Qrow's letter and is preparing to defend the second Relic from Salem — in other words, it's a cliffhanger that goes nowhere.

If I reword what you say here in the following way:

Edit: Okay, random theory time: It's going to turn out that Summer was an incredibly reckless and often thoughtless person, and that her death occurred during an attempt to directly confront Salem that she embarked on against Ozpin's advice, and she got a lot of other hunters killed in the process.

And that is exactly what I think. Whatever the mission was, Summer made the decision to keep going to the bitter end, and the end was indeed bitter.

I don't think she was reckless, or that she got a lot of people killed in the process. I think she had one of those 'I'm going to do this my way' moments that Ruby's been full of in Volume 6. I used to think it was 'backfired horribly' situation. However, given Maria's back story and the conversation in front of Pyrrha's statue, I think Summer engaged in actions that she knew she wouldn't come out alive from.

As I said, I think Summer's been haunting Volume 6, and part of Qrow's problem is that Ruby keeps giving him déjà vu moments to Summer. So, I think Ruby (at the moment) is in danger of repeating her mother's decisions... and that path is going to lead her to the truth about how her mother died, and a massive breakdown. When she comes out the other side, she won't be following in her mother's footsteps any more, she'll be her own person instead.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Jan 27th 2019 at 11:59:14 AM

I hope that Summer fought on Ozpin's advice because he genuinely thought to have finally found a solution, which then failed. Summer's death to be another of his mistakes would be interesting. The show didn't explore the countless mistakes he made that much or some of his more extreme actions, like how he ended the Great War as the king of Vale.

Edited by bandersnitch on Jan 27th 2019 at 4:03:34 AM

That's a theory until explicitly stated.

I think the scenario Salem is worried about is one in which Ironwood snaps out of his whole "MOTHER ATLAS STANDS ALONE" routine and calls on allies (specifically Vaccuo) for help defending the city when Salem launches her assault; Atlas alone is going to be tough enough, but multiple kingdoms getting involved would be disastrous.

Considering how much effort Salem has devoted to keeping her presence a secret only to decide she's joining the fight in person now, and considering just how extreme her reaction to the news was, I'm not sure how it could not be Ozpin taking the relic to Atlas that triggered this.

I think that Maria was mostly playing devil's advocate to motivate the team to flip her off.

It's not Vacuo that will save Atlas. You're thinking in terms of the Four Kingdoms, but remember that even Ozpin couldn't unite all of Remnant after the Great War. There was one kingdom made for people who he couldn't bring in, and who have every reason to hate Atlas, and now Atlas is going to need Menagerie's support while a certain Corrupt Corporate Executive does everything he can to screw things up and maintain his own labor force.

Ozpin was almost certainly either the King of Vale or the power behind the throne, and the KoV was offered the crowns of all four kingdoms after his victory and turned them down, presumably because, Oz felt that uniting humanity by force would just prove Salem right.

My own theory is that the start of the breaking point for Ruby is the loss of someone else important to her, probably Qrow, which prevents her from being able to access her powers and leads to Ruby being carried away by Salem's flying monkeys along with the relics of knowledge and creation. Then she learns the (incomplete) truth about Summer's death from Salem, who gives her a half true account of how Summer died...At Ozpin's hands. The actual truth of what happened is far more complicated*, but Ozpin isn't around to defend himself.

* My specific theory (The Corruption one) is that Summer asked Ozpin to kill her because she believed she needed to die for the good of the world, and more or less forced his hand by attacking him when he initially refused.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Jan 28th 2019 at 12:30:58 PM

I also believe that the death of someone she cares about will be the start. However, I believe that's Maria's role to play, especially since she is substituting for Summer right now in the sense that she's stepping into Summer's shoes to teach Ruby about silver eyes. I think that was one of the significant moments of Maria's talk about her father — being mentored in the silver eyes by her silver-eyed parent is exactly what Ruby's been deprived of, and Ruby was obviously hanging on every word that Maria mentioned about being trained by her father.

And, yes, I did spot the Wicked Witch of the West reference in The Stinger regarding Salem's 'flying monkeys'.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Jan 28th 2019 at 10:04:57 AM

I personally think Maria's death will end up being, ironically, the catalyst for Ruby's eventual recovery while Qrow's will signal her fall; the show deconstructed both of the previous characters—Qrow and Ozpin—who've acted as mentors for Ruby, and I think Maria's ultimately going to turn out to be an equally flawed mentor.

I specifically think that while Maria has been great at getting Ruby to take charge, she's also inadvertently encouraging Ruby's biggest flaws of recklessness and overconfidence, and she's blind to that (pun intended) because she doesn't know Ruby nearly as well as Qrow or Ozpin do. I think she's also may be making the classic mentor's mistake of projecting herself onto her student; Maria feels like she was a coward in the past, and so encourages Ruby to be bold and brave as a way to vicariously atone for her cowardice, which isn't something that really reflects Ruby's needs as a student.

The flaws that Maria's teaching brings out end up directly leading to the circumstances that sees Ruby reach the breaking point. After said breakdown, which I think will be so bad as to push her into the arms of mentor #4 (Salem), Maria realizes where she went wrong as a teacher, and ends up perishing in the process of correcting her mistakes.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Jan 28th 2019 at 5:16:42 AM

Overall, which chapters in this volume were your favorite? Same question, about least favorite chapters?

Three and Six were my favorites, while Thirteen was my least liked.

Can we say that Ruby is a bit of an idiot for carrying the Relic of Knowledge with her when she went out to try and petrify the Leviathan?

She knows already that the Relic attracts Grimm, and she's going in super-close proximity to a giant Grimm when it is supposed to be being distracted by the others.

Granted it worked out for her in the end, but it still seems like a completely obvious mistake to bring it with her.

That depends on if having it on hand was part of the plan or not.