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W.I.T.C.H: The Magical Girl Show which Greg Weisman wrote the second season for.

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pokepal148:
Local school ski trip gets interrupted by giant snake man.
Lazy, unfunny, synopsis writer finally finishes an episode.

When I said I was dreading this episode I didn't expect that it would take me this long to get back to this. But whatever. We're here. We're doing this.

We open with Phobos giving Cedric two tasks. The first task is that he try to gather information from the townspeople in Meridian for information about what happened to his sister, which seems like something that they should have figured out ages ago. He's had 13 years since she disappeared, plus the 3 years since I wrote the last update, and he already knows that she's on Earth. She was basically a newborn when she was brought to Earth. I don't think it takes much to figure this one out.

Regardless, Detective Cedric is on the case I guess which brings us to his other task: Defeat the guardians by separating them from Will so they can't transform. Some of the more astute viewers out there will note that Phobos kind of accidentally tried that last episode with the Tracker, to which some rushed writer who probably had to deal with a billion rewrites for this episode will tell you to stop asking questions.

We cut to the school where Matt and Will are making googoo eyes at eachother. Will turns to Cornelia and we get the following exchange:

Will: "I think Matt likes me."

Cornelia: "Well what makes you say that?"

Will: "He's not looking at me."

Both Cornelia and the audience sigh in unison.

Later in the cafeteria the girls and Elyon are talking about an upcoming ski trip the school is taking. Another topic of discussion is that there's a new student from Switzerland in the school. This mysterious new student waltzes in and basically every male side character, even Irma's creepy stalker, swoons all over her. It's discovered that Sandra is planning to attend the ski trip and since Sandra and Matt made goo goo eyes at each other Will decides the girls are going on the Ski trip too.

After Cornelia and Elyon stop at Cedric's bookstore, partially to swoon over that hot, totally not secretly an evil snake man book store owner, and partially because the writers needed a way for Cedric to know where they are.


I for one find all of this gratuitous exposition most interessssting.

Caleb is in this show too so we get set up for a subplot about the girls thinking he doesn't know how to have fun or something as well as more of him being the straight man for the Girl's antics. Blunk stows away on the bus because he's in the show too and it's off to the hills.

This whole Will being jealous of Sandra plotline feels pretty out of place for a show that despite being based on a comic series from an italian magazine based on girls was adapted to primarily appeal to a primarily male demographic. I suppose when your main cast consists of five girls, a socially inept rebel leader from another world, some weird gremlin garbage goblin thing, and the incompetent tyrant and his snake friend it makes sense that this is the well they'd come to but still. You would think that considering the writers are already essentially trying to appease Disney's demands to put a circle shaped block in a square hole in terms of demographics for this show they would try to find plotlines for the show that are more easily relatable for their primary intended audience but that's not what we're going with.

And with all the snowboarding and skiing in this episode taking up this show's already meager animation budget, there isn't much room for the cool fight scene with Cedric to make up for it. The whole show has had something of an identity crisis so far. It just doesn't have the animation budget to sustain the kinds of action scenes that it needs to appeal to its primary demographic, which is a problem that absolutely plagues the show's first season.

Caleb somehow managed to convince Yan Lin to drive him to the Ski resort so I guess she's in this episode now. Maybe we will finally learn more about her. We can learn all about her days as a guardian, or how she adjusted afterwards, and… she is literally only in this episode because they needed Caleb to get to the ski resort so they could resolve his subplot that doesn't really add much to the episode isn't she.

Will challenges Sandra to a ski race to decide who will get to sit next to Matt on the bus ride back. It's been established throughout the episode that Will doesn't know how to ski so the natural question is how does she intend to win the race?

The answer of course is by cheating. She attempts to convince Cornelia and Taranee to go along with this but they refuse. She then turns to Hay Lin who reluctantly agrees to use her powers to help Will win.


Just a lovely chat with the friendly neighborhood snake man.

Cedric manages to capture Blunk after the girls find out he tagged along. He attempts to interrogate Blunk for information but then sees Hay Lin and Will flying along and decides to follow them instead. Cedric causes an avalanche in an attempt to keep the other girls distracted while he goes after Hay Lin and Will. All of the side characters are conveniently able to get inside so only main characters get buried under the snow… or just conveniently trapped in weird air pockets. That's how Avalanches work right?


There is no escaping a determined Jehovah's Witness.

Honestly I don't have much more to say about this episode. It's just so bland. The only really interesting thing to say about it is that Will never really gets any kind of comeuppance on her attempts to cheat within the episode which is surprising for a kids show. Sandra is never seen again which is kind of a bummer. A better episode could have probably made decent use out of having a more antagonistic character in the school who isn't completely incompetent like Ulriah and his goons.

I could joke about how Caleb conjures up a helmet out of nowhere when he goes snowboarding or joke about the scenes where the skis Yan Lin gave him disintegrated but I'm just not feeling it. The world building on Meridian is probably the strongest part about the first season and while it is nice to have a break form that now and then to keep Earth relevant, the Earth stuff has to actually be interesting and it just isn't.

The episode ends with something interesting however which leads me to a theory I have about it. The girls and Caleb discuss the fact that according to the portal map, no new portals have formed recently. They take this to mean that Cedric hasn't returned to Meridian.

However we know this is false. Cedric was on Meridian at the start of the episode which communicates to the viewer indirectly that he has some way of traveling between Earth and Meridian without using a regular portal. Either the writers fucked up or we have a mystery on our hands. Or it could be both. That's always possible.

pokepal148:
It's a good day to be a rebel on Meridian. Several of the supply convoys that Phobos's forces have been running got raided by rebel forces and they've made off with all sorts of food and supplies. It's really interesting to see the rebels in action. The show does a really good job depicting them.


It’s also dress like a pirate day for the rebellion.

The rebels return to their base in the Infinite City. I don't believe I talked about the Infinite City when it first appeared a few episodes back. It's this cool underground temple thing under Meridian that stretches out such a large distance that nobody actually knows how large it is, hence the name. Its entrances are also hidden and between that, the sheer size of the place and the fact that it has a bunch of hidden passages it's the perfect place for the rebels to hide out in. One of those passages was where the girls met the Ancient One. I didn't see the need to mention it then because in that episode it was just how the girls got to the ancient one and it only appeared for long enough that Caleb could give some exposition on it.

Either way it is where we find Caleb and the rest of the rebels sharing a bunch of food with his rebel friends. Caleb gives a motivational speech about how they will need many more victories like this one if they want to topple Phobos. Aldarn, who was Caleb's rebel friend from the first episode, asks if Caleb can return to Earth to collect more of that "chocolate" stuff for the little ones, and Caleb pledges to do so tomorrow as they continue their happy celebration.

Someone who isn't happy about all of this however is Phobos. With Cedric, his main source of competent help, spending a good portion of his time on Earth, the rebels have been free to pillage and plunder his convoys as much as they want. In addition, He and Cedric, despite having just dumped poor Raythor into the Abyss of Shadows a few episodes back, still suspect there may be a spy within the castle who is feeding the rebels information. While more than likely the spy is Vathek from a few episodes back, I'm still holding out hope that the spy turns out to be Donald Gleeson and we get to hear him randomly shout out "I'M THE SPY!" again with absolutely no build up or foreshadowing whatsoever.


I don't know why I even bothered embedding that. Nobody with a remotely modern browser can see it.

Because Phobos is seemingly incapable of coming up with his own ideas around here, Cedric proposes his own idea. Since the spy probably won't end up revealing himself as easily as General Hux did in the bad Star Wars movie, they should attempt to confirm the presence of a spy by spreading a false rumor that something of some kind of significance has been found. When a Rebel comes looking for it, they will have both a captured rebel and confirmation of the spy's existence. Phobos agrees to this plan and claims that he knows of just the item to spread a rumor abou- hold on a second?

Phobos is actually contributing to this week's evil plan? What madness is this? Could this be the beginning of Phobos beginning to come to his own as a villain instead of relying on the plans of poor Cedric, who is seemingly singlehandedly carrying the weight of Phobos's whole evil empire on his big muscular snake shoulders?


Cedric is in focus here because he is the real power behind Phobos’s throne.

We finally cut to Earth where the girls have reached the top of an apartment building where a portal formed. We get some character banter that mentions Taranee's fear of heights and Cornelia being annoyed they couldn't just fly to the top of the apartment and have to climb the metal fire exit thing on the side because of her decision to wear heels today. Caleb and Blunk come through the portal as they arrive. Caleb, whose mother didn't teach him that he should always look both ways before spouting exposition, lets slip that he's paying Blunk to find him portals right in front of the girls. Will is not happy about this and closes the portal despite Caleb's protests, trapping him on Earth.

I don't really have time to get into the Earth b-plot for this episode because, in something that is unusual for this show (at least in the first season) there is actually alot of important stuff going on or being set up in this episode. Long story short, Hay Lin signed the girls up to put on a play for the school's drama week or whatever. The theme for the play is supposed to be mythology so the girls have to choose a myth to make a play based on. Like I said, there's alot of stuff going on here. I already expect this whole thing to become even more of a wall of text that nobody is going to read than usual so I kind of wanna keep things moving.

We cut back to Meridian where Cedric has summoned the Captain of the Guard to deliver some good news: The Seal of Phobos has been found. We don't know what the Seal of Phobos is but based on the reactions of the captain and the men with him it seems to be super important. Cedric claims the Seal was found in a place called Torus Filney and gives very specific instructions that within 3 days a detachment of soldiers are to be sent to retrieve it. He also states specifically that this information is not to be allowed to become public knowledge.

So naturally everyone who is anyone is going to find out about this. We have Trill from a few episodes back gossiping about it with the other castle workers and, in a neat little bit of worldbuilding, we even get a cameo from Frost, a character who won't get properly introduced for another two episodes. One of the guards is sitting at a table with Vathek and feels particularly expositionary today. He claims that the Seal can open anything, including portals through the Veil. Vathek immediately leaves the castle to bring this information to the rebellion.


You would think the guy who clearly goes to the same tailor as Caleb does, doesn't bother to follow the castle's dress code, AND was a prime suspect the last time you all thought there was a spy would be your number one suspect this time

Back on Earth, the girls turn to Yan Lin, the show's resident Chinese stereotype, to see if she knows of any good myths. I'll be honest, I was expecting to come in here and take the opportunity to spit a bit of fire about Yan Lin and especially how her voice sounds like a super stereotypical impression of a Chinese woman but a quick google search reveals that her voice actress is actually Chinese American so that kind of puts a damper on that.

Either way, she lives up to her stereotype and pulls out this show's adapted version of the real world Chinese myth of the four dragons. TLDR: There were once four dragons who decided to use their power over the elements to save a bunch of people from a drought. Someone named the Jade Emperor got pissed about this and locked them in four mountains.

This version adds a Nymph named Xin Jing who joins her power with the power of the four dragons to create the jewel talisman that would eventually become the Heart of Kandrakar. In the comics this is only part of the origin of the girls' power but in the wild west anything goes world of Season 1 this seems to be the whole story for now, largely because of Kandrakar's reduced role in Season 1.


Like Will, The nymph Xin Jing is also pretty useless compared to her dragon powered friends.

As the girls set up the play, Blunk and Caleb meet in an alleyway. Blunk apparently learned offscreen that the Seal of Phobos was found. Caleb resolves to find the seal first and sets out to Meridian, but not before giving Blunk more exposition.

As was mentioned two episodes back, Phobos is searching for his younger sister. As a flashback starts playing, Caleb reveals that the person who took her from the castle in order to protect her was a woman who also stole the Seal of Phobos and used it to breach the veil and escape to Earth.


I'm sure we will never find out anything more about this character who is presumably still on Earth.

Strangely the woman is shown dropping the seal which ends up in a sewer grate. I'm sure that isn't something that will come up later in the season. After finishing the lore dump, Caleb departs leaving Blunk behind.

After a scene where the girls are rehearsing, we cut to Caleb climbing up a hill with a hooded figure. The figure of course is Cedric, who instead leads Caleb into a pit of quicksand before setting out to find the spy who is now confirmed to exist.


Cedric seen here in his Organization XIII cosplay.

Fortunately Caleb was smart enough to leave a note for Yan Lin explaining where she was. Given that Yan Lin has two functioning brain cells, she immediately deduces that this is a trap and informs the guardians. I actually really like her reasoning for assuming it is a trap. She knows that Phobos would not wait before retrieving the seal if there was any kind of indication that it was actually found.

However the girls are due onstage for the play so Yan Lin teaches Will how to create mystical doppelgangers of themselves called Astral Drops to fill in for them. The Astral Drops were used heavily in the early parts of the comics so the writers could handwave the girls being absent for long periods of time. It got to the point where the writers eventually wrote them out of the series which I suspect is in part because of how much they were overused. The TV show on the other hand goes out of its way to basically nerf them by making Astral Drops dumb as bricks. They also do not retain the memories of their creators and so are extremely limited in what they can do.

So basically the play is going to be a complete trainwreck and the girls should be thankful that the side plots on Earth have little to no continuity this season.

They set out to find Caleb and after reaching Meridian and flying over a run down looking village, they arrive at the sandpit. It attempts to grab Will's leg. The other guardians, aka the ones who are actually useful in a fight, manage to pull her out and a pair of children explain to deliver some exposition in this otherwise story-light episode.

Apparently the sandpit has been swallowing people from the village up. When Cornelia asks the obvious question of why they don't just rope it off or something the boy replies that it moves. The girls are able to get inside of the pit where they reach a cavern underneath it. There they find Caleb, along with one of the sand pit's less fortunate victims, which bear a striking resemblance to the redeads from Ocarina of Time.


Depicted: The one person who ever reads this thread patiently awaiting the next update.

The whole sand pit thing may seem kind of like a kind of eh thing to pad out the episode's runtime when you read about it but the whole thing is actually really well executed, especially considering the limited amount of time this part of the episode has left. It was legitimately one of the most memorable parts of the first season for me as a kid.

There's alot of stuff that isn't really explained about it which is refreshing given how otherwise exposition heavy this episode is. The sand pit has clearly been around for a while in this world but at the same time, while Phobos and Cedric make use of it in this episode, it doesn't seem to be something that they have any real control over. It is possible they created it given that Cedric knew of its existence and where to find it but it is just as likely that this is just something like the Abyss of Shadows that exists in Meridian and that they are aware of and willing to take advantage of.

What you do see of the sand pit is kind of dark, especially for a kids show. It appears to swallow its victims, trap them in the walls in the caverns beneath it, and let the victims slowly starve to death. It is possible that the sandpit is alive somehow and this is how it consumes its prey.

Taranee realizes that Disney's S&P office doesn't care if she fucks up a possibly sentient sandpit so after the girls free the people imprisoned inside of the cavern who are still alive, she lets loose with blasts of fire, absolutely trashing the interior of the cavern. Once the girls reach the surface she turns the surface level quicksand pit into glass.

With Caleb saved, the girls return to Earth to wrap up the earth subplot. Principal Knickerbocker gives a comical detention sentence that will never be talked about in the show again and all is well on Earth. All is not so well on Meridian however where Cedric has returned and summoned the captain of the guard to ask for the identities of everyone who left the castle in the past day. This scene takes place in the same alleyway where the woman who took the princess used the seal.

This is so the camera can pan down through the sewer grate to reveal that the Seal of Phobos is still down there, waiting to become relevant in a future episode.


After all these years, Phobos never thought to shine a light around the Seal’s last known location.

Wrap up / TLDR

I like that we got some degree of tension between the girls and Caleb. Caleb's desire to use the portals to help the rebels on Meridian has come into conflict with girls trying to keep the portals shut. It's an interesting dynamic and I wish the show would spend this half of the season before things pick up exploring that more.

Meanwhile Blunk's ability to sniff out portals makes him useful to Caleb so Caleb is willing to keep him around.

I really like this episode. I know I harped on it alot for having alot of exposition but the show is really good at making its exposition and worldbuilding interesting. It's just bad at evenly distributing it so we get alot of episodes like last week's year's where there's little to no world building and lore because it all got dumped here instead.

pokepal148:
I feel like mentioning something that doesn't really fit in the episode proper.

The show has dropped some hints already that Yan Lin has dealt with Phobos before but it has been really coy about giving any kind of details. Yan Lin clearly knows a lot about Phobos for someone who is from Earth while Phobos's dialogue during the first two episodes implied that Will's team is not the first set of guardians he's had rise against them.

This however raises the interesting question of where the other four guardians from Yan Lin's generation are. It's a mystery that the show subtly brings up by consistently hinting at Yan Lin's history with Phobos or hell, just by keeping her around despite the fact that her comic counterpart was written out of the main cast at literally the first opportunity once she gave them the portal map they got in the show a feel maps. The fact that Yan Lin continues to be a part of the show should theoretically give the girls a connection to her generation of guardians that their comic counterparts did not have. Which thus raises the question of why Yan Lin won’t contact them.

This is actually something that will eventually be addressed during the second season. One of the advantages that the TV show has over the comic is that the comic is multiple arcs ahead of the TV show. According to an archived TV.com forum thread I found here which features people that were involved with the show, when they started writing the second season they had access to everything up to the 27th issue of the comic which was midway through the third arc. I can infer that they at least had access to everything up to the 19th issue of the comic during the writing of the first season due to what I’ll call a very specific reference to something in that issue that was in one of the earlier episodes. I’ll explain what that reference is in about 30 years when we get to the episode where the significance of that reference is revealed.

In a nutshell: The writers know what's coming and they are absolutely setting up some stuff that won’t get paid off until Season 2 right under your nose. The fact that they are doing it as subtly as they are is absolutely incredible.

pokepal148:
This is another filler episode but it is one I feel like I can talk about more quickly.  Especially since I don’t have to make my own screenshots anymore because I found a way to get them from the Wiki instead. For anyone who hasn’t tried to embed images directly from a wiki to the forums, it’s a fucking pain in the ass.



We start in Phobos’s throne room where Phobos and Cedric are chatting again. Cedric apparently sent a recon team through the veil to find out where Caleb is hiding on Earth. Phobos, not knowing the difference between past and present tense, tells Cedric to remind them to be careful.

Buddy, Cedric said “sent”. That means they’re already on Earth. Also, as we’ll later learn, the recon team is just a pair of lurdens. They’ll be lucky if the government doesn’t assume they’re aliens, capture them, and send them to Area 51 or something.  I don’t think I mentioned what lurdens are. These are Lurdens.


Talk about Incognito,

Phobos orders Cedric to eat because that’s apparently his fetish or something and we cut to the next scene. Will is getting yelled at by her mother about her grades. She is forbidden from going to a movie on the weekend. Cut to the next day when she’s with her friends and they are all getting hyped up for said movie. The movie stars Vance Micheal Justin who is a celebrity the girls all like. Will says she’s totally coming despite her mother’s wishes. The group mentions they’ll have to wait in a line for 6 hours.

We cut to Caleb who apparently got separated from Blunk while looking for a portal. He is unknowingly being followed by the recon squad that was mentioned earlier. He runs into Cornelia who is fawning over a poster of Vance. We get an amusing scene with them together where Caleb has no idea how to deal with the girl he likes being in love with a poster of a guy dressed like an elf. Cornelia says he’s part of “a tribe of incredibly good looking pixies.” who fight evil or something. She leaves and we find out what Blunk got up to.


Man, they’ll let anyone be an uber driver.

Caleb decides to try and take the taxi back to where Blunk got it only to find that he doesn’t know how to drive it. Despite this he is able to inadvertently use it to escape the recon squad. They return to Meridian and Phobos commands Cedric to send The Tracker through the portal. We get a scene where Hay Lin is trying to convince her parents to let her go to the premiere and we cut to Caleb just dumping the taxi in a convenient alleyway. A portal opens in front of them and the Tracker and his dog thing, the Sniffer emerge from the portal.



sometimes this show gets some pretty cool shots

Caleb and Blunk manage to elude the Tracker and tries to hide out at Irma’s place, where Irma got stuck babysitting her little brother and gleefully takes the opportunity to leave Caleb and Blunk in charge instead.

Hay Lin convinces her parents to let her go to the premiere and the girls set out to wait in line. The Heart of Plot Convenience Kandrakar lights up to notify them of the tracker’s presence and Will gives the cheesy line “It’s evil calling.” We cut to the tracker and sniffer picking up the scent of Blunk. We know this because the tracker apparently talks in this episode, which is something I will never speak of again.

Let’s talk about the Tracker for a second. He’s got a sick ass design as you can see above, he has a little dog called The Sniffer who helps him out, he has this green glowy ball and chain, some bats he can unleash from his cloak and most importantly he doesn’t fucking talk in 99% of the episodes he’s in. IMO it is a core part of what makes him a memorable part of Phobos’s little rogues gallery as opposed to someone like The Captain of the Guard from last episode who will never be seen again iirc or Raythor, who I’ve made a point to mention as much as possible as a bit of a meme despite the fact that his only accomplishment is getting dropped in a hole. And also because he comes back next season.


In the arms of an angel...

We’ve basically reached the action point of the episode and it is a neat setup. Basically one of the girls has to stay behind to hold their spot in line while the rest go to deal with the tracker. Sadly they need to bring Will along to transform so they can’t just leave the dead weight behind of they leave cornelia behind instead. However they later have to have someone swap with Cornelia so they can use her powers and it goes on like this for the whole sequence. It’s kind of fun. It almost makes you ignore the part where Irma’s voice comes out of Will’s mouth again at one point.

It also helps that this episode actually has a decent animation budget.

Yan Lin shows up at Irma’s place to warn Caleb, having been informed of the situation by Hay Lin. It’s a good thing too as the girls are ultimately unable to stop the tracker so Caleb is forced to take darastic measures and use a skateboard to get past the tracker and head back  downhill to the theater, which is where Blunk claims the portal is. You know things  We’re going to ignore the fact that they previously saw the Tracker come out of a different portal because I really like where they put this portal.


You know, I’ve seen dead pixels on IMAX screens before but this is ridiculous.

With Caleb able to lure the tracker down to the theater we get a big showdown between Caleb the Tracker in the theater itself, which everyone assumes is just some pre-show entertainment, although we got a cool cameo from Uriah and his gang. Caleb is able to get The Tracker through the portal and get back out before the girls seal it. They then un-transform to take their seats in the theater, only for everyone but Hay Lin to sleep through the movie, no doubt tuckered out from all the action scenes this episode had.

It’s especially amusing since Irma and Will’s mothers have found out that their children have gone against their wishes and attended the premiere. Fortunately for Irma, her relationship with her mother isn’t that much of a recurring plotline in this show. Will is not so lucky.

Wrap up / TLDR

This is another fun episode, even if it doesn’t really add much to the world of the show outside of introducing Irma’s comically bratty little brother and Hay Lin’s parents. It is nice to see the Tracker again though even with #speechgate. He gets much more time to shine than he did with the Labyrinth and despite a certain… mishap he makes good use of that time to establish himself more firmly as a memorable part of the show. It feels weird to say it but this is actually his last appearance for the season which IMO is a waste but we’ll get plenty more of him in season 2 when I get around to it in 2053.

I could harp on Caleb suddenly knowing how to use a skateboard but it actually kind of makes sense. That skiing episode showed that he is skilled at snowboarding and way back in episode 3 when he was talking to Aldarn about what he saw on Earth one of the first things he mentioned is that he saw a group of teens skateboarding. It’s a shame that the writers clearly don’t know that there’s a difference between snowboarding and skateboarding because I feel like there’s a fun episode they could have done with Caleb learning how to skateboard for himself.

Overall, this is the kind of filler that the season needs more of. Just some good old fashioned fun. We have one more fillery episode before things pick up again as I recall but after that the main plot for season 1 will finally start picking up.

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