Blanton Silver is sworn in as President under Kara Brandt's adoring gaze. At a mortuary, attendants prepare Wade's body, which starts to shrivel unnaturally. General Petra Bellweather shows up without warning and informs the attendants that it will be a closed casket.
At Fort Salem, General Petra Bellweather is furious: the Mycelium is poisoned, the President has been assassinated, and Anacostia and Sterling are missing. She orders a Fetch placed on all of Silver's Cabinet. Just then, a smug Silver comes in and announces that signs of the Witchbomb were found at the site of the bombing. He has brought a bunch of uniformed mooks he calls Citizen Oversight. Headed by a Col. Jarrett, they will be staying on base to keep an eye on things. Petra fake smiles and says she appreciates patriots, witches or otherwise.
The Camarilla are hosting a formal event to celebrate Silver getting sworn in. The host, Alban Hearst, sings "America the Beautiful" with his newly implanted voice box. He unveils the evening's entertainment: three glass cages with a pair of witches in each one, Anacostia and Sterling included. They will duel to the death for the guests' amusement.
At the Cession, the group attempts to ambush the Marshal, but he NoSells their work with his own and orders them to go to bed. Next morning, the Marshal informs the group that the Council will meet with them after Yule. They learn that President Wade was assassinated and that they have been framed for it.
Kara, who turns out to be Hearst's sister, teases him about his weird-sounding voice and tells him that the company feels he has wasted enough of their money on his weird projects. Unless he proves them wrong, his time there might end soon.
Khalida tells Adil that she is leaving with Alder. They are going to look for the other stewards of the first song.
Petra learns about Izadora being able to reconstitute Penelope back in human form. Unfortunately Penelope needs more time before she can appear in public, so she cannot help prove she was not murdered.
At the Cession, Petra pops up and reunites with her daughter. She also brought Wade (whose death was faked) and M. They share a Yule celebration.
Scylla takes the heart of a goat and asks for everybody's help. She buries the heart and sings to it. Nothing happens at first, but then luminescent flowers bloom, forming the letter R.
Tally and M bond over feeling between worlds and not belonging. M talks about their own backstory of having to choose between traditional gender roles at conscription, and feeling like they didn't fit either. But things eventually got better and now they feel like they are seen. Tally has a vision of Raelle alive and bringing the world to an end.
It's Anacostia and Sterling's turn to fight, and their opponents are two members of the Spree, including Scylla's ex Vira. The Spree dude loses almost immediately. Vira makes Sterling stab himself in the gut. Anacostia uses a Windshear to disintegrate Vira's face.
Wade and the gang watch Silver give an inaugural speech instead of an eulogy during her "funeral". Wade is disgusted. On top of things she has to leave, so she can't stay to tell the Council that the unit is innocent, or even let them know she is alive. Silver ends by promising to end the Salem accords and getting rid of witches.
Tropes used
- Admiring the Abomination: When watching Vira use her Work to make Sterling stab himself, Alban Hearst is impressed by her Spree work.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Kara Brandt, Alban Hearst's sister, taunts him by reminding him that their parents were horrified by "your little experiments". Then she pretends to wonder whatever happened to the dogs in their neighborhood.
- Big Brother Bully: Kara Brandt is revealed to be Alban Hearst's sister. She goes out of her way to mock his singing voice, knowing he had a recent voice box transplant. She also brings up how horrified their parents would be at his current experiments.
- Call-Back:
- Vira, Scylla's ex and tomato thief from "Homo Cantus" reappears as one of the witches abducted for a fight to the death.
- In "Oh Elayne...", Alban is seen next to a young woman who is Strapped to an Operating Table. It is implied her voice box will be extracted and transplanted into him. In this episode, he sings "America the Beautiful", showing off his new voice and his struggle to control it.
- Came Back Wrong: Petra wants Penelope to appear in public so that the Bellweather unit is cleared of her murder, but the latter is not quite ready to be shown in public. She is kept in a cell, absorbs the milk from a glass instead of drinking it, and while quite docile, she has to wear mittens because she often gets violent impulses.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: In self-defense and raging for Sterling bleeding out in front of her, Anacostia rips Vira's face to shreds with her Work.
- Death Faked for You: At the last minute, a golem was used as a decoy for President Wade and it was "killed" (not that it was really alive) in the bombing and buried. Wade is very much alive, but must remain in hiding. She laments that this is the first Christmas her grandchildren will spend without her.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Kara refers to Alban Hearst as "Albie", using the diminutive not in affection but to make him feel small.
- Enemy Mine: Attempted by Anacostia when she and Sterling are paired against Vira and some unnamed guy in a "Army vs. Spree" deathmatch situation:Anacostia: We don't need to fight. We can make our own plan.
Vira: Plan is you die and we live (does a Windstrike that throws Anacostia to the wall). - Golem: President Wade was not killed during the explosion. Ahead of time, a golem was made in her image. Thanks to M acting quickly after losing contact with Sterling and Anacostia, the golem was put in Wade's place as a decoy.
- Gravity Screw: The group tries to ambush the Marshal, but he breaks down their work and whistles a spell that requires the group to grab on to door frames, walls whatever, to avoid falling sideways.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The design feature in the Witchplague strain that kept Penelope alive so she could spread the infection all over the place worked so well that despite being subjected to both the Witchbomb and Abigail's weather work, she remained alive in the atmosphere's moisture. When it rained after the attack on the base, Izadora collected the samples and used them to reconstitute Penelope's human form.
- Involuntary Battle to the Death: The Camarilla abducted Sterling and Anacostia and put them in glass cages. At a Camarilla party, Alban Hearst reveals that they and two other pairs of witches will fight to the death for the entertainment of the guests.
- Lounge Lizard: Invoked by Alban with his performance of "America The Beautiful", complete with his purple velvet tux.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Tally talks about feeling like she is between worlds without belonging to either. M shares with her how difficult it was for them, as a non-binary person, to pick between the traditional paths set out for men and women, and how traumatizing it was that neither felt right.
- Only Mostly Dead: The Witchplague strain was designed to keep Penelope alive as a host to spread the infection. In fact it worked too well, as a fully sentient Penelope remained "alive, in a sense" as Izadora puts it, in the moisture contained within the atmosphere. This allowed Izadora to reconstitute Penelope.
- Parental Abandonment: Part of Nicte's backstory. Her mother was a Dodger like Scylla's parents, but unlike them, she left her child behind and never returned.
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Vira used a spell to force Sterling into stabbing himself with a knife.
- Sex for Solace: Implied. Wade is sad during Yule because she can't contact her family, which includes four grandchildren. The Marshal tells her to just buy them twice the gifts next year, making her chuckle. They get a little flirty. A later scene shows them walking off together and kissing.
- Unknown Relative: Kara Brandt is Alban Hearst's sister. Their connection had not been revealed to the audience until this episode. It's not established whether they have different surnames because one changed their name to hide their relation or if Brandt has been married at some point.
- Somber Backstory Revelation:
- Upon conscription, the non-binary M was forced to choose between basic training with women or learning to make weapons with men, as there was no clear option for someone like them. Fortunately for M, Alder recognized their strengths and encouraged them to go for War College, where they thrived and became Sekhmet coven's leader.
- When Nicte was five, her mother Dodged and left her with her grandma. She never came back for her daughter. As far as grandma ("the crankiest witch you've ever seen"):Nicte: She told me that if my mom was ever gonna come back, it'll be on Yule. And that all I had to do was sing the Yule song until the sun came up. I always fell asleep. It's the longest night of the year, what kid wouldn't, right?
- Wham Episode: The bombing at the White House did not kill the President. Her death has been faked and she is in hiding. The Witchplague strain that was designed to keep Penelope as a living host to infect as many as possible did such a good job that she ended up surviving, even if she is not quite herself yet. And newly sworn in President Silver promises to dissolve the Salem Accords and rid the world of witches.
