The Three (Formerly Blind) Archers - These are the archers Ashi ran into. This episode had quite a few, and they're all worth revisiting, since they came from both old episodes as well as riffs on other heroic tales from pop culture and history: Let's count all of the hidden references to classic Samurai Jack Now the samurai's mission is clear and in the next episode, he's set to get his sword back with Ashi's help.
He was all but ready to kill himself until Ashi reminded him how much he'd done to help people and told him that the brainwashed children he fought were in fact still alive. Jack's folk hero status saved him here again. Ashi showed off her chops fended off his brutal attacks even as he taunted Jack to commit seppuku (or hara-kiri) to atone for his failure to defeat Aku. If a touch more hackneyed as a reveal, the show pulled it off with a spectacular fight sequence.
Contrary to what we predicted last week (but exactly what we said it was when the season premiered), the Green Samurai, officially named "The Omen" in the credits, was revealed to in fact be an avatar of death. Jack's confrontation with The Green Samurai (aka "The Omen") is the beginning of the endĮven with its several relentless callbacks and Easter eggs for previous seasons though, the episode's final showdown with the Green Samurai was by far its coolest sequence. You can bet Ashi will save him at least one more time before it's all over. Ashi saved Jack's life before he defended her from the Green Samurai's killing blow. He was on the brink of suicide, wracked by cosmic forces of death telling him he had no choice but shove a sword into his stomach. More importantly, though, Ashi's dialogue with Jack at the end of the episode showed how far her character has come since meeting him.
The promo for next week reveals that she'll continue to get her hands dirty with the ass-kicking we've come to love, no matter what Jack says about how he has to go it alone. (Reddit went bananas.) Her transformation hasn't always been smooth, but the flashback to her past as a child soldier helped earn the scene where she took a break to swim and make new, earthier clothing out of the foliage around her.
If we have one prediction, these characters will all be back and they'll be fighting alongside Jack, Ashi, the Scotsmen, and his Daughters in the coming weeks.Īs the Archers put it, "A friend of Samurai Jack is a friend of ours."Īshi's nude scene prepared her for vengeanceĪlong the way, Ashi got a verdant wardrobe update in a racy scene that probably couldn't have been done when the show first introduced us to these characters in the early aughts. The archers literally erected a giant statue in his likeness. They formed "S" symbols with their hands and danced the night away in his honor. The rave hammered home the mystique Jack holds among the people Aku has stuck under his thumb. Ashi even encountered Da Samurai (aka Sam-Moo-Rhai), Demongo the Soul Collector, as well as Olivia from the classic episode "Jack and the Rave." The Three Blind Archers - who fans will remember from their classic episode-long fight scene of the same name - came back galvanized as warriors with a temple and mountain community resisting Aku. The Woolies - whom Jack saved from subjugation - mistook Ashi for a servant of Aku and nearly tried to take her out. Tonight we saw the returns of classic Samurai Jack allies as Ashi embarked on her quest to find Jack. Jack's old friends (hey, Three Blind Archers and Da Samurai!) solidified his hero status