The Gift II: The Giftening
Commander Peepers: The gift has made him... happy.
When mysterious gifts begin appearing on Lord Hater's ship due to the courtesy of Wander, the Watchdogs end up turning into happy, gift-loving zombies. Lord Hater has to avoid the gift spree and find a way to escape before he ends up becoming zombified as well.
Tropes appearing "The Gift II: The Giftening":
- Affectionate Parody: Of a Zombie Apocalypse.
- Bait-and-Switch: The episode starts with two Watchdogs piloting Lord Hater's spaceship, and both damaging a huge spaceship and crashing on a bigger, trash truck. The shot turns into a screen and Lord Hater shouts at them for incompetence, and the episode proper begins.
- Berserk Board Barricade: Hater barricades himself in a cabin to escape Wander.
- Big Damn Heroes: The Watchdogs come to Lord Hater's aid just as Wander and Sylvia are about to give him a gift.
- Big "NO!": Lord Hater shouts this as Wander and Sylvia leave and the episode ends.
- The Cat Came Back: Hater can't escape Wander, no matter where he runs.
- The Corrupter: Wander and Sylvia, in a sense. They are the ones delivering the gifts after all. Subverted when it turns out that they unselfishly signed all the gifts as from Lord Hater.
- Genre Shift: Since this is from Hater's point of view, this turns a jolly Christmas special into a Survival Horror Slasher Movie.
- In Medias Res: "The Gift" begins shortly before this episode, and the full story consists of both episodes taken together.
- Let's Get Dangerous!: After the Watchdogs get some positive reinforcement from those gifts (thinking they were from Hater), they gain the competence of a highly-trained SWAT team.
- Lower-Deck Episode: This episode is "The Gift" told from Hater's point of view.
- Madness Mantra: The zombified Watchdogs say "Haaaappyyyyy...".
- Matchlight Danger Revelation: Hiding from Wander and Sylvia inside a crater, Hater strikes a match and discovers that they are inside there with him.
- Offscreen Teleportation: Wander and Sylvia take it to Droopy levels in the montage of Hater fleeing from their attempt to "gift" him
. - Overly Long Scream: Multiple times during Hater's Chase Scene.
- Patient Zero: A Watchdog who got a gift from Wander, though he's put into quarantine before he can spread it. Unfortunately for Hater, Wander already went ahead...
- Silence Is Golden: For Wander and Sylvia anyway. They don't speak a single word except when they're captured, giving a surprised "Whoa!" when they are done so. For this trope reason they are also Demoted to Extra, just like in the other Hater-only episode, the Brainstorm.
- Screams Like a Little Girl: Downplayed? It sounds more like a grown woman's. This occurs during the Chase Scene when Hater enters a cave. Using his thumb as an torch he sees Wander and Sylvia waiting for him. And this is his reaction.
- Too Dumb to Live: Downplayed. Sure, making Lord Hater angry is pretty stupid, but all the Watchdogs did was go to the wrong conference room.
- This is played straight with the Watchdog who put a Wander picture on his room, though. How could Hater not get mad at that?
- Villain Episode: The clearest episode yet. Wander and Sylvia are relegated to Continuity Cameos, and this time they only speak one word, the somewhat audible "Whoa!" they give as the Watchdogs wrestle them and tie them up.
- The Voiceless: Wander and Sylvia don't have any dialogue in this episode, aside from an audible "Whoa!" when they get tackled by the Watchdogs. They do speak in the sister episode, however.
- Wingding Pupils: The Watchdogs get Heart Symbols in their eyes after getting their gifts. When the gift is removed from one of them, the heart morphs into a splat.
The Gift
It's a special holiday time of year where once every 365 Yuletidian cycles, a cluster of interstellar temporal neutrinos collides with a passing dimensional space vortex, resulting in a massive chronal jet stream, which Wander and Sylvia use to travel through the universe in one day by delivering presents to everyone they've met the past season. However, it later gets shook up when Wander decides to sneak onto Lord Hater's ship and give some presents to him and the Watchdogs as well, hoping to spread happiness to the evildoer's army.
Tropes appearing "The Gift":
- An Aesop: Treating others nicely may inspire them to treat people kindly.
- Big "NO!": Hater lets one out after he sees the note Wander and Sylvia left for him. It is soon followed by a...
- Big "YES!": After Hater decides to command the Watchdogs to invade a nearby town after they gain competence.
- Break the Cutie: A very brief one occurs. Seeing the Watchdog army invade a small town for Lord Hater's reign thanks to their newfound confidence that Wander gave them was enough to reduce even Wander to tears. Fortunately this doesn't turn out to be the case.
- Christmas Episode: Obviously set on Christmas (even the background music explains), but is somehow never mentioned.
- Continuity Cavalcade: The episode begins with Wander and Sylvia delivering presents to basically everyone they've met in the season (and thus the whole show because it's the first season).
- Fake-Out Fade-Out: The episode appears to end right where "The Giftening" ended and the view cuts to black...but then Sylvia cries out, "Hold on, Wander, do you know what this means?!" and the view cuts back to them as the episode continues.
- Gender Equals Breed: Subverted. Demurra and Drakor are shown to have kids, two girl humanoids and and one boy dragon, but the girls each have a horn like Drakor while the son doesn't.
- "Drakor Jr." also has an iris and sclera, unlike his father, who has only has a pupil and sclera. Of course, the kid's iris is red like his dad's sclera; and his sclera is white like his mom's.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Both Wander and Sylvia talk about all the events of "this season... of our lives!"
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Sylvia gives Wander this when she realizes he gave Hater the gift he needed. Hater even sarcastically thanks Wander for his useful gift which he is going to use to conquer the universe.
- Once More, with Clarity: Many scenes from "The Gift II: The Giftening" are repeated, except from Wander's point of view.
- "Pan Up to the Sky" Ending: The episode ends with a pan up to a shining star in the night sky, a la the star of Bethlehem.
- Rapid-Fire "No!": By Hater as the ornament people crowd over him.
- Running Gag: Wander reciting in Slarnian language (really a strange alien gibberish) the phrase "A little nice makes naughty think twice."
- Season Finale: The unofficial finale of season 1.
- Shout-Out: Wander argues that being nice to Hater will make Hater's heart grow three sizes.
- Synchronous Episodes: Shows "The Gift II: The Giftening" (which, despite the name, was the earlier episode) from Wander and Sylvia's perspective, then the story continues slightly past where that episode ended.
- Tears of Remorse: Wander sheds these near the end after realizing his plan went horribly wrong.
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