Recap / SPY×FAMILY - Anime: S02 E09

Tropes that appear in this episode:

• All Love Is Unrequited: Fiona has a HUUUUGE crush on Loid and is jealous that she doesn't get to play his wife for Operation Strix. And considering their spy careers, it's unlikely that he'd ever reciprocate those feelings.
• Apology Gift: Bond brings a bag of peanuts to Anya to apologize for what he did to the Penguin.
• Badass Decay: In-Universe. Nightfall accuses Twilight of losing his edge for playing house.
• Betty and Veronica: Yor is the sweet-hearted, loving and clumsy Betty to Fiona's efficient, professional and grim Veronica. Agent Twilight the Archie has no desire to switch wives and is perfectly content with his current Betty.
• Call-Back:
  • Fiona brings up Anya's forgotten magnifying glass as an excuse to visit the Forger house.
  • Anya cares deeply for the penguin plushie because it was a gift that Loid gave her.
  • In Mission-01, Twilight assumed the Identity of Robert the secretary of an Ostanian official to recover some Blackmail pictures of the official. Once he acquired the pictures, "Robert" dumped the blackmailer's daughter on the night she thought he was going to propose, and the following day he was assigned to Operation Strix and assumed the identity of family man Loid Forger.
  • In Mission-02 it's stated that the reason Twilight had a problem with finding a fake wife for Operation Strix is because the WISE female field agents that fit the criteria were away on missions of their own at the time. In this episode, it's revealed that Nightfall has a crush on Twilight, and having missed the opportunity to pose as his wife, she schemes to have Twilight/Loid get a divorce from Yor so that Nightfall can go from being Ms. Fiona Frost to become Mrs. Fiona Forger.
• Cuteness Overload: Yor experiences this when Anya nuzzles her face into Yor's dress and asks to be coddled.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: Fiona is more than willing to become this if she were Anya's mother to transform her into an efficient girl who can advance Operation Strix.
• Education Mama: After Anya spills her hot cocoa, and Yor cleans up the mess, Fiona, in her mind, says that if she were Mrs. Forger, she would train Anya to not be so clumsy in the first place, and then she would, according to an Imagine Spot Anya sees, literally whip Anya into a "Stella earning machine within a month."
• Empathic Environment: The world turns cloudy with a chance of rain as soon as Yor lets the ominous Fiona into her home.
• Flashback: Fiona recalls a time when Twilight instructed her to bury her emotions so they wouldn't get in the way of her work.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: She's regarded as one of the most disliked agents in WISE on account of her uneasy personality and her willingness to hurt others to get what she wants.
• Gilligan Cut: Yor promises her daughter that she'll fix the penguin plushie and make him good as new. She does such a horrid job that he looks "deader than dead".
• Goal in Life: Fiona's heart's desire is to become Agent Twilight's bride and live happily ever after as his devoted and successful wife.
• Green-Eyed Monster:
  • Ms. Frost has bitter jealousy towards Yor for getting the privilege of playing Twilight's pretend wife and longs to get rid of her.
  • Played for Laughs in the second skit where Bond gets jealous of Anya spending more time with her penguin plushie.
• Jealous Pet: Bond is jealous of Anya's new Penguin plushy and destroys it in her absence. It's a Plot Parallel to the conflict between Fiona and Yor.
• Murder the Hypotenuse:
  • Defied; Nightfall did entertain this as an option, but has decided it would be too risky. Instead, she plans to squeeze Yor out with psychological warfare.
  • Bond resorts to tearing up the penguin for stealing away "his" Anya.
• Removing the Rival: Fiona's current goal is to usurp Yor's position as Loid's wife using any weakness she can exploit.
• The Reveal: Fiona reveals some of Twilight's past personas have included a national defense agent named Lionel, a black market operative named Lawrence, and an official secretary named Robert.
• Seen It All: Nightfall proudly thinks to herself that she knows all of Twilight's tricks and mannerisms after seeing him work for so long. She's Instantly Proven Wrong when she is surprised by Twilight adding milk to his coffee.
• Shipping Torpedo: Fiona casually brings up how Loid complains about her at work (a bold lie) before the man himself interrupts them. She didn't get to finish what she was saying, but Yor assumes the worst anyway.
• Social Climber: Agent Nightfall is described as an ambitious woman who will backstab or exploit anyone to get to the top of her work.
• Tears of Joy: Yor sheds these when her husband assures her that she's doing a wonderful job as a wife and mother.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: In-Universe example. Anya is watching a cartoon featuring some cutesy-looking animals that appear to be playing war, when a gunshot rings out to her surprise. The screen then shows a mortally wounded penguin being comforted by a polar bear, her telling him to leave her behind and him bursting into tears when the penguin expires. As Anya starts to cry, Loid picks her up and says it's time for her to go to bed while stating: "why is this cartoon so dark?"
• Whip of Dominance: When Anya reads Fiona's mind when she's thinking about how she'd discipline Anya if she were her mother, both the audience and Anya are treated to an Imagine Spot of Fiona dressed in a Gestapo-like dominatrix setup, and forcing Anya to study while cracking a whip around her in an impossibly high speed. This naturally terrifies Anya, who starts plotting against Fiona from that point forward.
• Wicked Stepmother: Anya is horrified to hear Fiona's thoughts on using cruelty and rigidness in order to turn her into a "Stella grabbing machine" if she were her mother.

---