Shadows House S1E9: "A Birdcage and Flowers"

This review (and the one after it) was commissioned by @Aris Katsaris. As he ordered four units of text for two episodes, each episode will receive a dedicated post.


Last time on "Shadows House"...erm...well, I normally like to give a summary when coming back to a series after a long hiatus, but in this case I don't think I understand what's going on well enough to explain it. Short version: human children enslaved by shadow children in a big spooky house, currently undergoing a debut ritual, and each master-slave pair may be destined to fuse into a single being or something. If you want more detail, you're going to have to just go back and skim the previous reviews.


To start off, "A Birdcage and Flowers" explains a bunch of things about the debut arc, including Edward's motives and restrictions, the purpose of the entire ritual in the first place, and more. These explanations also - for possibly the first time in this entire series - allow me to infer a few things about the Shadows Family's nature, place in the world, and agenda.

Basically, this debut ceremony is different from all the previous ones. Edward had some wild new theories, and he managed to talk the Lord Grandfather and his inner circle into letting him have a chance to prove them. Specifically, Edward thinks that by putting the Shadow and Face through this kind of cooperative-competitive puzzle solving exercise, he can spur the manifestation of entirely new soot-powers that will make the new Shadows family members stronger, more versatile, and a greater asset to the clan. However, his proposal has drawn a lot of scrutiny on account of the dangerous levels of autonomy it might encourage the Faces to develop, as well as the even-more-dangerous possibility of Faces cooperating with each other moreso than they do with their masters.

So, he needs to make sure there isn't too much genuine cooperation among Faces, while also making them each rescue their Shadows in the same arena using their social, physical, and mental skills to their fullests. Hence, the many incentives for betrayal even amidst teamwork.

As an extra complicating factor, there is a conventional wisdom among the Shadowses that a debut must weed out the unfit. If Edward's new programme doesn't fail at least one or two pairs, then - even if it does succeed at bringing out new powers - it is likely to be dismissed for failing to carry out their eugenics policy.

Of course, it doesn't seem like the Shadowses have any mathematical or (pseudo)scientific rubric for determining genetic quality. It's all just feels. If they're doing a risky, newfangled debut ritual, and it ends up NOT weeding out any unfit individuals, then that means it's not working. If this was a traditional debut ceremony, then they probably would just be pleasantly surprised if everybody passed.

So, Edward is in a really difficult position here. In order to conform to the clan's pressures and allow his project to be greenlit, he's had to make compromises that reduce its hypothetical effectiveness in the name of politics and ideology. The irony being that - as far as we can tell - Edward's ultimate motive is driven by that very same ideology. He wants to make the Shadows Family more powerful and capable. Talk about self-defeating.

So, the garden maze they've been going through is a mess of weird half-measures and contradictory incentives, pushing the debutants toward cooperation and competition simultaneously in ways that don't serve anyone's agenda that well. And then there's the intrusive need to make sure someone fails in order for this to be taken seriously, which...well, it's no wonder Edward has been on the brink of a nervous breakdown this entire time.

Interestingly, the Lord Grandfather himself seems to be less sceptical of the whole project than any of his courtiers are.

Which, like everything else I just went over, has major implications.

Also, while in the throes of excitement, we see one member of the peanut gallery unconsciously pull back the soot layer on her face to reveal the human skin underneath, and the other Shadowses around her react with a hurried "hey, be careful, your Face is showing!" Also, while her face is exposed, we also momentarily see...um...this:

Yeah.

...

So, putting this together, what can we infer about the Shadows Family and their situation?

First of all, they don't really have their shit together nearly as well as it seems. In fact, I get the impression that they're a very new society - possibly a very new form of life altogether - with an extremely limited understanding of themselves, what they are, and what they can do. They're still figuring out how to use their (theoretically innate) powers properly.

If the Lord Grandfather really is the progenitor (rather than merely the oldest living member) of this species, then it makes sense that he'd be more open to suggestions of how to do things differently than the others. He has the outside perspective. He can think back on the choices he made and wonder if perhaps he could have made slightly different ones and gotten a better outcome. For him, the rules are not fundamental truths of the universe like they are for Shadows raised under them; they're just some ideas he had.

Again, if he IS their progenitor. He might not actually be that. But I think he is. I can't say why, exactly, it's just the vibe I get from him.

In either case, I very much doubt that they built this huge, ancient-seeming house and grounds. Or, if they did, then it was done by magic, and the design deliberately made to look older than it actually is.

The obsession with strength and power, and the fear of disloyalty, suggests to me not only newness, but also weakness. The Shadowses believe themselves - correctly or otherwise - to be in a precarious situation. Whatever exists beyond the walls of the Shadows House grounds, they fear it. I have a feeling that one of the things they fear the most is "other humans," based on the paranoia they seem to have about their own Faces. The aristocratic aesthetics they surround themselves in, the appearance of rulership and control, definitely seems less like something they naturally developed and more like a fantasy they're trying to sell themselves on.

Granted, they must rule *something* in order to have the resources that they do. But I have a feeling that it's really not that much, and that there are bigger fish within sight of it.

...

Now, we don't know why Edward decided that it should be Kate and Emilico, specifically, that it would be best to set up to fail. But there was one little detail in the first couple of episodes that I happened to remember.

When that older Shadows lady reveals her skin without meaning to, her fellows warn her that "her Face is showing." Meanwhile, we see Edward hiding and presenting his Face at will, under conscious control. And we also have been explicitly told now that each master and slave are destined to be fused into one, with (presumably) the Shadows personality governing the body of the zombified human. So, the skin under the dark sooty/shadowy layer should be that of their personal slave/host.

But...Kate already has human skin under there. Despite Emilico being on the outside.

Then there's the way that Kate and Emilico don't seem to have an empathic link like the other Shadows/Face pairs do.

This could mean a few different things. It could just be that I was misunderstanding the scene screencapped above, and that that wasn't actually human skin that Emilico revealed under Kate's soot there. If I'm not misunderstanding, though, then...does Kate know that she's already claimed a host? That she's not what the other debutants are?

Definitely some kind of conspiracy going on within the upper ranks. With Edward having gotten a directive from one faction to get rid of the pre-bonded Shadows that another faction slipped in among the new crop for whatever murky reasons.

Then there's the fact that the more advanced forms of "scorches" seem able to possess and puppet people that they get their hands on. And that (as we saw with the tongue-tentacle a couple screencaps ago) the Shadowses aren't necessarily limited to the human form. Like, they themselves are just a more sophisticated form of the same soot-based life as the scorches and friends. Intelligent rather than animalistic parasites.

But then, if the Shadowses are just intelligent, human-shaped soot creatures, why do they need human hosts at all? They seem able to get by just fine as free-living organisms, unless Emilico isn't actually unique and they all have a dead body or something to animate for now. They use their Faces' expressions to communicate, sure, but in most cases where we've seen adult Shadowses talk to each other they don't bother doing so, and rely solely on voice tone to convey their feelings.

...the exception is Edward. We've seen him use his human host's appearance in order to decieve people not in the know as to his true nature.

And, going by the impression of weakness and vulnerability the Shadowses have started to give me, well...that might actually be it. The whole point of grooming their human "Faces" is so that they can infiltrate broader human society and prevent their clan's true nature from being discovered.

As for how naive the Shadows children themselves seem to be about all this...well, there's still a lot to be revealed. But this isn't the first time I got the impression that the Shadows children themselves are almost as much victims of the system as their soon-to-be hosts.

...

That was a large number of words talking about a few cumulative minutes' worth of this episode. Time to explain what actually happens to the damned debutantes now!

After having his tortured, semi-reluctant partnership with Lou for much of the challenge, and being given her gardening shears out of gratitude from both her and (surprisingly) Louise when he helps them finish first, Ricky has a strained reconciliation with John and Shaun. Involving a revolving door, only openable if a latch is lifted on both sides simultaneously, they both need to get through in order to reach their respective goals of "rescuing Patrick" and "getting out." And that is made more urgent midway through by the arrival of a giant boulder.

This (at least, until the boulder happens) is probably the best illustration of Edward's vision for this debut being hopelessly garbled. The obstacles he designed to bring out the most shadow powers require cooperation, but that's ideologically discouraged.

The arrival of the rock, meanwhile, is ultimately solved by John reapplying the "splash things with soot and then make things explode" power he earlier broke himself out of that box with.

This, incidentally, is the performance that makes one of the observing Shadows adult lose concentration and show her Face involuntarily. It seems like Edward's ideas are being vindicated, despite all the stumbling blocks he had to put in front of them.

This sequence also spurs a realization in Ricky. When John and Shaun see him with Lou's gardening shears, they assume he stole them from her. He and Patrick's "betray early, betray often" strategy is not very good game theory, and he pays the price for it with precious minutes now. Later, when Ricky and a rescued Patrick run into Emilico, they decide to change their strategy and help her rescue Kate. Which...well, the Shadowses are really shooting themselves in the foot by conditioning all new members to be selfish and untrustworthy, but apparently they still think that good is dumb and that this sequence reflects poorly on all involved.

Surprisingly, none of the audience seem to think there's anything off about Rum and Shirley. Including the latter's apparent catatonia. Rum rescues her from a complicated stinging nettle trap and impresses the audience.

The last master to be rescued is Kate. Edward really, really set them up to fail (while "technically" being fair). Kate's cage is suspended above a thorny hedge by a crane. She'll be dropped eventually, when her soot builds up in the locking mechanisms of the cage-chains. Turning off the crane requires a key; that's literally the only way to do it. The key was one of many items offered at the beginning of the maze, and it turned out that no one happened to take it.

None of the other masters were stuck in traps with such narrow, luck-based possible solutions. Or in ones as guaranteed to injure or soil them should they take too long.

Emilico manages to save Kate, though. First by using the garden shears passed on by a self-examining Patrick and Ricky to get through the thorn hedge, and then by climbing up the crane itself to try and grab Kate when the final chains release.

It doesn't work out quite the way Emilico had planned. But, fortunately, as her plunge from the window in one of the early episodes demonstrated, her body is remarkably resistant to falling damage. She's able to cushion Kate's fall while taking only some scrapes and bruises herself.

You know, that weird toughness - which the other "Face" children do not share - is making me wonder if Emilico is something different from the others just as her master is.

Anyway, the episode ends there. The first place victors of the debut are the Louise-Lou pair, with John-Shaun on schedule to probably come in second. Shirley-Rum, Patrick-Ricky, and Kate-Emilico are all still hard to assess, given their unknown distances from the exits. Edward's experiment seems to be a success, but it may not be successful enough to outweigh a lack of applied eugenics, or the dangerously cooperative atmosphere that it fosters.


Next episode, "The Final Pair," is supposed to finish the debut arc.