A Place of Particular Concern
"What if we're dead?"
Written & directed by Kerry Shawcross
"What is this place?"
— Weiss Schnee
After falling through the Void, Team RWBY awaken in a strange world and must figure out how to survive and get back home...
Tropes in this episode include:
- Animal Jingoism: When Ruby describes having a friend with cat ears, Little freaks out. The mouse village captures Weiss and Blake, but is talked down once Little explains how helpful Ruby has been to it. The mouse leader then apologises to Blake and admits they have issues with cats.
- Character Witness: When Ruby sees a little mouse struggling to pull out a plant, she retrieves the plant for it. She's shocked to discover the mouse can talk, and it returns the favour by help her in turn. Upon their arrival at the mouse village, they find the mice have captured Weiss and Blake. Little's glowing report of how Ruby helped them sets them free, with apologies from the leader. Once everyone is on friendlier terms, Little decides to remain with Team RWBY and help guide them through the realm.
- Dramatic Irony:
- When asked if anyone else could have fallen into the void, Weiss says she doesn't think so. The viewer knows Jaune was the very last person to fall into the void, having been caught in the collapse of the gateway.
- While updating the team on what happened, Weiss tearfully states no-one came back from Vacuo to help them. Unlike the viewer, she doesn't know that Vacuo's portal is one-way only due to her instructing Ambrosius to give people exiting the portal "a one-way ticket to Vacuo".
- Empathic Environment: When Ruby begins crying, it starts to rain, and when Blake rallies the group and confidently suggests a course of action, the sun begins shining brightly. Once Weiss reveals Penny's fate, it's pouring when Ruby regains consciousness.
- Faint in Shock: Ruby faints upon learning of Penny's death from Weiss. When she comes round, she does her usual trick of focusing on something else, but the fullblown rainstorm they're in exposes how she's really feeling.
- Funny Background Event: Little can be seen trying to fan a passed-out Ruby awake while the rest of the team discuss what happened to Neo and the other people.
- Genre Savvy: A discussed example. When Ruby mentions Blake's cat ears to Little and sees the mouse panic and hide, she apologies, stating that she should have known better because she's seen lots of cartoons. The mouse leader also mentions the cat & mouse problem to Blake when apologising for trapping her and Weiss.
- Grows on Trees: Ruby first meets Little when they're trying to pull a plant out of the ground. Ruby does it for her and is surprised to see that it's a hunk of cheese.
- Heroic Safe Mode: Weiss focuses on finding the others, refusing to talk about what happened until they're together. As soon as they are, she breaks down crying and reveals Penny died.
- Internal Reveal: As the last person in the team to fall, the others are heavily reliant on Weiss to fill them in on what they missed at the end of Volume 8. Weiss reveals what she thinks she knows, a conversation she's spent the entire episode dreading.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: When faced with three armed opponents, the Jabberwalker retreats with an ominous comment to "Wait. Return."
- Level Ate: At least one of the landmasses visible at the end looks like a giant, hexagonal cake topped with candy.
- Mistaken for Afterlife: Yang initially assumed she was dead, but the bizarreness of the world (and the rest of the others arriving) leads her to conclude otherwise.
- Never Given a Name: The mouse that Ruby meets says they're too young to have a name yet, so Ruby nicknames them "Little".
- P.O.V. Cam: The beginning of the episode until Ruby wakes up on the beach is shot entirely from Ruby's perspective, showing her view of the events of "The Final Word" and her brief experience in the void.
- Scene of Wonder: At the end of the episode, Blake parts a curtain of vines and looks down onto a vast, fantastical patchwork map, and finally admits that she believes they're in a fairy tale.
- Talking Animal: The mice of the Ever After can talk, much to the protagonists' surprise.
- Unnaturally Looping Location: When Ruby first wakes up on the beach, she decides to try and head for the high ground the giant tree is on. However, she finds herself trapped walking the same straight path over and over again, unable to travel anywhere else. She eventually gives up, sits down and starts crying until she meets a mouse that can help guide her way.
- Visual Pun: The plant Little's people enjoy eating is a root plant that is pulled out of the ground like carrots or potatos to reveal Swiss-style cheese. The leaves, however, are clearly modelled on Monstera adansonii
, which is often nick-named the Swiss Cheese Plant. - The Wonderland: The Ever After exists somewhere in the Void Between the Worlds. Team RWBY reaches it by first creating a temporary void-realm in Volume 8 that is entered by passing through doors that look like mirrors, which is how Alice enters the Looking-Glass World, and then falling into the realm, similar to how Alice falls down a rabbit hole into Wonderland, which is the first book. The landscape itself is laid out like the Looking-Glass World, but elements of both books are used to flesh it out. Additionally, the setting and characters also take inspiration from other Alice-similar portal fantasies, such as The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.
"I think we're in a fairy tale."
— Blake Belladonna
