[DreamSword]

Episode 11: White Sands

This episode is all about conflict. Both internal and external.

The reason Wraith was abducting women of the Allen family is revealed: Many of them inherited the same power of being able to teleport via The Reflection, and such, Wraith brought them all together as a means of reaching out to more Reflected much easier.

The result is that hundreds of Reflected from across the United States are instantly teleported to the White Sands of New Mexico to hear Wraith speak. He gives a speach about everyone banding together to help mold the world into a place where the Reflected are accepted, and, rather realistically, while many are either on board or left to contemplate, there are just as many who have no intention of putting up with any of this and attempt to leave.

Wraith, however, anticipated this, and also anticipated how the US government would react to a bunch of Reflected gathering in one place at once.

Armed forces are sent in to dispel the situation, with every intent of using force should no one comply with their demands. This is already enough to get people to start panicking, but then Wraith strikes first, causing a riot to break out.

So you can see that the entire situation is incredibly dicey, with everyone responding to the ensuing chaos in their own way. Those aligned with Wraith of course fight the army in an effort to show the valiance of their cause, Team X-On does their best to keep both sides to fighting eachother to avoid bloodshed, many other Reflected and Soldiers fight in self-defense, and I-Guy and 9nine, being perhaps the smartest out of everyone there, just stay out of the situation in its entirely.

While all of this is really interesting for me to see play out in its own right, the biggest takeaway in this entire episode for me was how this episode also asked a question that I never thought about, but boy am I glad that it did.

Said question being: What if one of the survivors of The Reflection were hit by both the light and the smoke at the same time?

Because as it turns out, Eleanor was one such person, and highlights just how much Wraith is directly connected to her. He very much comes across as a piece of her broken psyche come to life, and with her accepting his words, hands reigns over to him as the dominant personality. Suddenly, the two sharing knowledge and Wraith being able to appear to her no matter where she was suddenly makes sense. Heck, Ian's' friends getting killed could be seen just as much as Eleanor's' negative feelings lashing out against Ian just as much as Dead Wing does.

The next episode is the finale, and it looks as though things are already getting wild. Excelsior!