[Kamen Rider Lucha]

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

It's not really a deus ex machina so much as a great example of how clunky Ryusoulger gets.

It sure was a clunky move. That doesn't make it NOT a deus ex machina though.

I mean, an actual machine literally picked up the characters and dropped them at the foot of a character who solved their unsolvable problem with god-like magic.

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

The way I see it, the only actual takeaway from the scene with Ui's dad for the viewer is meant to be "get piece of monster = save friends", with the exact method they turn that into a cure not being important. Consequently, the show elected to use this as an opportunity to reestablish the Elder's presence in the show, presumably for the purpose of having him remark on the Ryusoulgers growth at the end to wrap the first arc in a nice bow.

I understand that hand-wavy hoo haa was going to be employed either way, whether it was by Ui's dad using science or the Elder using dino magic.

It's just that... dropping the Elder into the last three minutes of the episode (especially when it's the first time we've seen any member of the dino tribe since the premiere), having him awkwardly explain in one line what the fuck the survivors have been up to for the last six eps, and then having him solve a problem he had no idea existed using magic powers we had no idea these dino people possessed is... pretty odd. It was A LOT to swallow.

If they wanted to establish that the Elder was still around, it wouldn't have been hard at all to incorporate him into the beginning of the episode to establish the dino tribe's status quo, have him provide the solution to the poison problem instead of Ui's dad, and then have him be the one to solve the problem in the end.

What's disconcerting is how easy it would have been to make this character's inclusion feel less jarring and convenient, but instead they did this semi-incoherent... well... bullshit.

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At least I think that's what they're going for. Again, very little of how this show is structured ever makes total sense to me.

TBH, I've liked how rapid-fire, stream-of-consciousness the show has felt up till this point. This is the first wall I've run into. I don't think it's indicative of anything more than a writer finding his footing in a new format, but man if it was a disappointing conclusion to what I thought was a great cliffhanger.