Holy shit. Well shit hit the fan, hard! The first half started off slow, but there were plenty of hints of worrying signs and uncertainty building up to the climax of the episode, and that’s when everything just blew up.
Everything began spiralling out of control when Luca had stopped Lara from kissing him and told her he wants to take it slow. But Lara doesn’t understand what it means to do that, and on top of that, she’s running out of time. So she’s in a rush, urgently searching for true love… except true love isn’t necessarily going to reveal itself when you want it to. If we could do that, then everyone would find their soulmates sooner than later. It takes two to tango. And since neither of them are on the same page, let alone the same pace, Lara’s hopes were dashed, and now she’s reaping the consequences of trying to force that “true love” to prosper. She doesn’t want to hurt Luca, but she has no control over that Fish Dagger, so she finds herself utterly helpless and at its mercy. The only thing she can do is simply push him out of the way, which did in-fact save his life. Considering how precarious their situation was, Luca was lucky he had only gotten away with a scratch.
Heck, so much happened in that scene that I’m not even entirely sure when Lisa had appeared, or whether she had pulled Lara out of the way. After-all Humans can’t see the Fish Dagger, and it was about to consume Luca because of Lara’s self-doubts and impatience to find true love. The mess it made again is going to catch the headlines, and as if that wasn’t already bad enough, the fish is now touching the water. I don’t know if it needs to be completely submerged or not to trigger whatever doom its threatening, but all we know that things are NOT good right now.
Needless to say, I think it’s been pretty apparent to everyone from the start that Luca isn’t Lara’s true love.This episode seemed to solidify that further as Lara was really pushing herself to make things happen, rather than letting things happen. The other problem was that she was getting all sorts of advice about how to pursue and how that love reveals itself. What she was told wasn’t wrong per say, but the context of the time needed was the key part that was left out of all of it. The only thing I think that was safely applicable was Leo’s point that if someone doesn’t make a move, they’ll go nowhere.
And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the writers dropped the bomb on us that Grace is not well. Sick enough that she’s breathing out blood. While it’s not the first time she had been sick and on the deathbed before, the first time it was Mari who had managed to save her. This time though, it feels different. As we had seen, changing the water and giving her some usual fish treatment isn’t going to save her this time, that is if she has any hope of surviving this at all.
We don’t know what the cause is yet, but frick. Frankly things are not looking good right now. She had sensed things were going south with Lara and became immediately aware of the danger. But the timing of this couldn’t have been possibly worse for her with Kota and Lisa on her heels. It’s especially bad since the two of them have also figured out some things about her, one key feature being that she’s neither Human nor Mermaid. (Though truthfully this didn’t surprise me. I thought it was pretty clear, especially given her role as the Witch and before she transformed into her beastly form that she wasn’t either one.) I will say though, she looks really cool! Especially with the way she had protected Mari from Kota. She was able to successfully lure him away knowing that she was the target. However there’s another reason why she had to leave and rush to Okishima. She’s trying to beat Lisa and Kota to the punch, and yet at the same time, there’s something happening there too. I’m kind of curious whether the shell belongs to the one mermaid watching Lisa and Lara visit two episodes back. Someone seems set on waking up!
Hopefully this means we’re finally at the point where we’ll get to learn about Grace! She has been such a mysterious character that has intrigued me deeply right from the get go! So I’m excited to learn more about her backstory and intentions!
Last but not least, Mari has been relatively discreet about it, but there are hints that she is feeling lonely and perhaps even jealous for having to constantly hear about Lara talking about her feelings about Luca. We can see that Mari has a lot of mixed feelings, and probably doesn’t fully understand why she’s feeling this way. All of this stuff is probably hitting harder now that she has finally acknowledged just how precious Lara is to her, and how much it meant to see her come back after deciding to disappear on them. And now that Lara has been taken away by Lisa, Mari and Luca must go on the chase. Hopefully this whole incident will help her find clarity to that.
I’m not sure how far along Luca managed to track them, but hopefully the two of them will be able to figure out where the party is gathering!
Extra Note: The whole scene of Grace’s transformation was crazy good I watched it like a dozen times over and over again. I seriously loved every second of it. It reminded me of Studio Ghibli stuff!
