Man, every week tension is going up! We still get some moments of respite, with small humorous scenes here and there, but those moments became fewer in this episode since the tone became more serious than usual. Well, since episode 1, Steins;Gate 0 is on a new level compared to the previous Steins;Gate title. Week after week we’ve commented on this new tone and mood that’s darker, grittier and more gim.
The episode starts with scenes on a urban battlefield. Rintarou finds himself being escorted by soldiers, but as they make their way towards the next place through corpses, they’re found and attacked again. Then Rintarou sort of wakes up and he’s sitting on a chair in an office talking to someone whose face he cannot see, which makes the whole thing more unsettling because the animation makes reality for him look unnatural. He’s scared and he asks about the place where he’s at and then he wakes up again and he’s in bed, claiming right away those images that he saw were just a dream.
Then, shockingly enough, he gains consciousness yet again! He’s on the lab’s roof along with Hiyajo and she’s staring at him in confusion. He suspects that the strange phenomenon he experienced was Reading Steiner and he rushes back to the party, looking for Mayuri. He’s clearly affected. The next scene, Professor Leskinen, Hiyajo and Rintarou are at the hotel and we get a glimpse of what of each of them got as a present in Secret Santa. 
The first humorous moment is here as Rintarou got some sexy lingerie and Kurisu-Amadeus gets a glimpse of it, inspiring a conversation later on at the table that makes known one of Professor Leskinen’s ultimate goals with Amadeus: to get it to fall in love with someone. Rintarou also gets a strange moment as he is told by Kurisu that he called her back after he hung up on her, but he has no recollection of doing so, which is nice food for thought.
On the way back home, Hiyajo tries to find out more about Rintarou and Kurise’s previous relationship, what exactly were they to each other? But Rintarou doesn’t give her any concrete information.
The Christmas party is over and now a few other relevant things are mentioned. First off we learn that a guest is coming to stay with Ruka’s family. Then, a bit more importantly, Daru finds out that Suzuha originally boarded the time machine with someone, a young girl, who she got separated from in 1998. She’s been looking for the girl since then. Another of the (maybe inadvertently?) humorous moments happens while Suzuha is having a flashback and her memory of Daru is so thin! What a shock.
Later on, Daru discloses this information to Rintarou, asking for his help. The girl, Kagari Shiina, is the adopted daughter of Mayuri in the future. It was a little funny to see Rintarou so concerned over who the father was. Due to the time passing, Kagari would be 22 years old now, so now they’re trying to find her. I must say that was quite an unexpected twist for me, but indeed also quite an intriguing one. I can’t also help theorize, given Kagari’s appearance, that she’s also somehow related to Kurisu?
Either way, it’s kind of implied that the guest staying at Ruka’s house is this woman, if we consider the glimpse we got and Ruka’s frantic tone on the phone, but there’s more important matters at hand, since Kiryuu Moeka is the expert that Daru contacted! What kind of role is she going to play this time around? An ally-turned-antagonist again or something different? I understand Rintarou’s shock when seeing her since it’s hard to forget the horrible way she treated them in the previous timeline.
Finally, there’s also a lot of mention of a time-related artifact being in Rintarou’s proximity, as he got the Reading Steiner moment before. I think they’re trying to tie this back to Professor Leskinen because coincidences don’t happen in anime har har, so they must have been a reason why they showed the professor randomly disappearing in a hallway. I’m really looking forward to more discoveries on next week’s episode! Even though the overall uncomfortable mood of the show is prevalent, the mystery more than makes up for it!