Re:ZERO Episode 48

Re:ZERO Episode 48

Love Me Down to My Blood and Guts

I hope you’re ready for an extra-long review today because there’s a lot I want to cover with regards to Re:ZERO Season 2 episode 48. This episode was an absolute mess, and yet it was the best episode of this season of Re:ZERO. It was a mess because of how many seemingly important pieces of information were casually dropped during the biggest action episode of the series.

Before we get into the content of the episode and all of the new information that comes with it, I do want to touch on one thing first: Whether or not we’re in the correct timeline. I think a lot of people, myself included, have assumed that we’re in the correct timeline for a few episodes now. Everything has been going right for Subaru, and a lot of important developments have occurred. However, I now have some doubts.

There are really two things stopping me from definitively claiming this to be the correct timeline. First, is the snowstorm that’s beginning to envelop the Sanctuary when Emilia exits the tomb. That’s a bad sign because it means the Great Rabbit isn’t far behind. However, as I’ll get into later, I do think there’s a viable way to avoid the coming massacre.

Second, and most troubling, is the apparent death of Ram. Again, I’ll cover this a bit more later on, but if Ram really did die at the end of the episode, I don’t see this being the correct timeline. Unless Subaru gets a new checkpoint after her death, I can’t imagine that he would continue forward while knowing that he has the ability to try again. That’s just not who he is.

The Final Trial

Emilia’s second and third trials seemed pretty easy compared to her first. I’d say her second trial was the easiest though. She didn’t really have to confront anything painful in that one. She just had to accept that something she dreamed about wasn’t reality. That’s not so bad when reality is going relatively well anyway.

Luckily for Emilia, she could basically use her same logic for completing the second trial and the third. That logic is that while the future is unknown, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Would she have liked if the second trial was real? Sure. But since she doesn’t know the future, her current future might turn out even better. And since the third trial only showed possible futures, it doesn’t definitively mean her future won’t be bright.

Minerva hugging Emilia from the anime series Re:ZERO Season 2
Minerva hugging Emilia

One of the most intriguing things about this part of the episode that focused on Emilia, at least to me, was her interaction with Minerva at the end of the final trial. Minerva mentions that she knows Emilia’s mother. This seems to imply that Emilia’s mother is one of the witches, which I think many of us have suspected for a bit.

I’ve had a lot of theories regarding Emilia’s connection to the witches. I theorized Emilia and Satella were the same person, that Emilia was Echidna’s daughter, and that Emilia was Satella’s daughter. Based on how Minerva started crying when she heard how strong Emilia was, at this point, I think Emilia could even be Minerva’s daughter.

That would definitely be a twist. I don’t think anyone would have said Emilia was Minerva’s daughter before this episode. But it kind of makes sense now. After all, Minerva and Emilia are both tsundere-types who make excuses about why they’re helping people. Like mother, like daughter.

Echidna is Alive

Alright, so this next theory of mine is pretty hot and I’m not really convinced that it’s true. But, what if Echidna wasn’t actually dead? First, I’ll explain the theory. After that, I’ll go through why I’m not really all that confident in it.

Later on in this episode, Garfiel mentions that one of the deceased witches was a vampire. He uses this alleged fact to come to the conclusion that vampires can die, and therefore he can kill Elsa. But what if he was misinformed about the death of said vampire witch? After all, Pandora is still running around unbeknownst to most people who believe all the witches are dead (or sealed in the case of Satella).

With that in mind, when Emilia sees Echidna’s body, she doesn’t recognize her. She states that this should be Echidna’s tomb, but that she doesn’t recognize the body as belonging to Echidna. And on top of that, we don’t actually get to see the face of the body in the tomb. So, isn’t it possible that Echidna is alive and elsewhere as a vampire and the body in the tomb isn’t hers?

Now, why do I think this isn’t likely to be correct? Well, there are a few things standing in the way. First is the fact that Garfiel does say the vampire witch is dead. Second, as Rain. in my Discord server pointed out, we never saw Echidna’s face in any flashbacks, so her true appearance may not be what we recognize her as from the tea party/trials.

But to me, the most convincing piece of evidence against this theory is actually something I brought up back in my review of episode 28 that some people called me out for. Back then, I mentioned that Carmilla was named after a vampire. So, if any of the witches was a vampire, it would certainly be her, right?

Garfiel is Immortal

I know the title of this section is “Garfiel is Immortal,” but I have no real evidence to back that up. There’s just a bit of circumstantial evidence. However, something I am convinced of is that Elsa is dead for good (unless this isn’t the correct timeline).

To explain this, it’s better to start off with why I believe Elsa is officially dead despite being an “immortal” vampire. Did you notice that before she was crushed, the wound on her neck didn’t heal? Per her own words — and what we witnessed prior — all of her injuries automatically heal immediately. So what was different about the wound on her neck? It was dealt by Garfiel biting her.

Why does this matter? If you know anything about vampires in pop-culture, it’s probably that they suck the blood of their victims from the neck. So, I believe what happened here was based on that in a way. Garfiel drank Elsa’s blood, thus removing her vampiric ability to heal.

Elsa Granhiert from the anime series Re:ZERO Season 2
Elsa Granhiert

I said I don’t have proof that Garfiel is immortal. But if him drinking Elsa’s blood removed her immortality, it makes sense to me that it would grant him immortality. I feel like the immortality has to go somewhere. It’s not as if he’s casting a spell that nullifies it. He’s removing it from her body, which means it would have gone into his own body.

A lot of people probably wouldn’t want Garfiel to be immortal now because that would make him too overpowered. But if you consider that Subaru’s group has only defeated one Archbishop by this point and has fought zero witches, I think there’s plenty of room for the power ceiling to be raised. Even with that immortality, Garfiel still isn’t standing a chance against someone like Pandora. He might be on par with Regulus at that point.

Maylie Saves the Day(?)

At the start of this review, I mentioned that I had a possible way for Subaru & co. to stop the Great Rabbit from killing everyone in the Sanctuary. The solution goes by the name of Maylie. What is the Great Rabbit? A mabeast. What is Maylie’s specialty? Controlling mabeasts. So is there really any reason she couldn’t stop the massacre from happening?

Of course, there are some logistical questions here. How is Maylie going to get from the mansion to the Sanctuary in time? And why would Maylie help to stop the slaughter? But, I think those can both be answered reasonably easily.

In regards to the first question, we know there’s a secret doorway within the mansion that leads to the sanctuary. We know that Frederica is aware of it and that she’s in possession of Maylie. As far as the doorway is concerned, it might be an underground passage, but I also think it could simply be a portal of some sort as well. If that’s the case, Maylie could be within the Sanctuary relatively quickly.

As for why she would help, the simple answer is that Maylie doesn’t want to die. At the very least, she would use her power to stop the Great Rabbit from killing her. But I think it’s more likely that she would stop it entirely after seeing that Frederica, Petra, and the others aren’t treating her as an enemy. Maylie doesn’t seem as bloodthirsty as Elsa, despite some of her previous comments about killing Petra.

R.I.P. Ram

The final topic I want to touch on has to do with Ram. And to get this out of the way at the start of this section, I have no idea how Ram isn’t going to be dead after taking one of Roswaal’s fireballs head-on. However, I am fairly confident that she’ll survive somehow. Maybe she’ll be in bad shape and have to be healed by Emilia later on. I’m not sure, but considering how much progress has been made in this loop, I don’t think we’re resetting.

More importantly, I need to say that I hate Ram’s love confession to Roswaal. I don’t necessarily think it was out of place. And I get the feeling that most of us saw it coming. Last week I wasn’t convinced Ram was in love with him, but there were some hints of it in this episode before she outright said it.

Ram confessing her love to Roswaal from the anime series Re:ZERO Season 2
Ram confessing her love to Roswaal

Why I hate this is simply because I thought it felt way too cheesy. There’s no real reason for Ram to love Roswaal other than Stockholm syndrome. It’s not like he’s ever treated her as more than a tool. And she’s always been aware that he was the one who slaughtered the rest of her clan. So her confession felt a bit too forced.

There’s also the fact that this confession came in the middle of a major fight in which she and Puck are facing off against Roswaal essentially for the fate of the world. If Roswaal wins here, that puts him one step closer to achieving his witch-related goal. If Ram and Puck win, it deals a major blow to Roswaal.

Adding a love confession in the middle of all this felt very out of place to me. Especially since Roswaal basically acted like a tsundere in response. He got flustered and did everything a tsundere would do short of calling Ram “baka.”

Conclusion

What do you think of Re:ZERO Season 2 episode 48? Who do you think Emilia’s mother is? Which of the witches do you think is the vampire? Do you think Garfiel received Elsa’s immortality? And how do you see the issue of the Great Rabbit being resolved? Let me know in the comments.

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My review of Re:Zero Season 2 episode 49 is available.

2 Replies to “Re:ZERO Episode 48”

  1. I loved this episode of Re:zero. Before I answer your questions you posed at the end of your review, I have something else to comment about the episode though.

    After watching episode 48, I now see how it ties into The Frozen Bond as the voice, who was revealed to be Echidna, said that if Puck got too close to Emilia that he would cease to be himself, and this episode reveals that Puck’s memories were also sealed when he entered into a contract with Emilia, meaning it wasn’t just Emilia whose memories were sealed. He has now regained his memories about Hector, which is why he said Roswaal speaks a lot like somehow he once knew, making him backward-facing, which lends more credence to Roswaal imitating Hector to constantly remind himself of the beatdown Hector delivered to him over 400 years ago.

    And there is definitely something up with Echidna’s face given that Emilia didn’t recognize her. It seems there was a purpose to the flashbacks hiding Echidna’s face other than showing that Echidna is a sketchy character after all. Maybe the face of Echidna’s physical body doesn’t match what we’ve seen in the tea parties/trials given what we see in the tea parties and trials are Echidna’s soul, so she probably changed her face physically somehow.

    I don’t think Minerva is Emilia’s mother. She and Echidna probably both knew who Emilia’s mother was though. Echidna probably hated Emilia’s mother, and that hate transferred over to Emilia. I still think there are 11 witches/warlocks because it appears that Subaru’s name is a major part of the lore of the series on witches. For those who don’t know, Subaru is also what the Japanese use to refer to the Pleiades star cluster. Six of the stars in that cluster are visible to the naked eye, and there are six dead Witches of Sin. The Pleiades star cluster is also referred to as the Seven Sisters, and there are seven witches bearing the name of the seven deadly sins in Re:zero. Vainglory and Acedia are historical sins, and vainglory and acedia aren’t popular terms in modern times, with people using vanity to mean the same thing as vainglory and melancholy can be used to describe acedia, so Crunchyroll probably just went with the modern terms. Given the presence of Pandora and Hector in the story, Tappei is clearly drawing from historical sins for the lore of his story. My point is that there are eleven stars in the Pleiades star cluster with nine of them having names, making it fitting that there might be 9 Witches of Sin. Two of the stars have yet to be named, and as such, I propose there might be two secret witches that have some other concept applied to them instead of sins. Given that Pandora also referred to Emilia as “Witch’s daughter”, meaning that Echidna might not have said that to insult Emilia and maybe that Emilia’s mother is one of those yet-to-be-determined witches. I think the reason Minerva was crying was because Echidna’s first trial allowed Emilia to regain precious memories with Mother Fortuna, and Minerva just teared up because of that, saying there is some good from Echidna’s evil plots after all. Emilia had been living in fear for much of her life, and now she can finally move forward with some fond memories and renewed determination.

    I guess Carmilla could be the vampire since she is named after a popular vampire, but I believe another witch is also a vampire.

    No, I do not believe Garfiel received Elsa’s immortality. There were probably just limits to her regeneration.

    After Garfiel astutely determined that Elsa was a vampire and Elsa herself revealed that to be true with her having fast regeneration, I began to have doubts about Pandora undoing her own deaths, believing something was amiss. As such, I rewatched Episode 44 and saw some interesting things, and assuming that White Fox did not mess up in animating that battle, I have arrived at a different conclusion than most of the fandom.

    The ice formations from Emilia’s attacks remained where they were when they hit Pandora. They were not undone when Pandora was shown to be living after supposedly being killed. With this information in mind, since Pandora’s Authority of Vanity/Vainglory selectively rewrites reality based on cause and effect with her undoing something removing the direct evidence of something happening, I believe that Pandora is a vampire with lightning fast regeneration and that she can be killed if she takes enough damage. In my opinion, it’s just a matter of her facing someone strong enough to deal enough damage to her until the limits of her regeneration have been reached. Maybe she is an original vampire or something, which could mean that her regeneration abilities have an incredibly high amount of uses, making her harder to kill than most other vampires.

    I don’t know how the Great Rabbit mess will be resolved, but maybe Puck and Emilia form a contract again, and Puck goes into his true form and wipes out all the rabbits at once.

    1. I don’t think Subaru’s name has anything to do with the number of Witches. I think that’s just a tie-in to the rest of the names used for both the witches and the archbishops. All of the witches (with the exception of Carmilla and Satella) are named after astrological bodies like asteroids and moons. Carmilla is named after a vampire and people associate her with the asteroid 107 Camilla — but her name is Carmilla, not Camilla. Satella’s name seems to just be a reference to the word “satellite,” which is still in-line with the other witch names since moons are satellites.

      The Archbishops are all named after stars within constellations so far. Betelgeuse is the red star in Orion, Regulus is the brightest star in Leo, Baten Kaitos is the star in the middle of the Whale’s stomach. So Subaru being named after the Pleiades star cluster seems to follow that pattern. He has the Sloth witch factor, after all, so he’s not so different from the Archbishops.

      I’m not convinced that Garf is immortal either. But there was some evidence for it. There was a shot focusing on Elsa’s neck not healing from where Garf bit her, which implies she no longer has her vampiric healing. And right afterward, there was a shot focusing on Garf’s neck and there was no visible wound from Elsa biting him, implying he healed somehow. Now, it could just be a temporary thing. Maybe drinking the blood of a vampire temporarily transfers their healing ability to you. Vampire mechanics work differently in every series, and even in basically every myth about them.

      And lastly, I do think that Pandora is a viable candidate for the vampire witch. I mainly discounted her for two reasons. First, we did see at least a few times that she was able to reset things, not simply heal herself. Second, Garf mentioned the vampire witch was dead, which I don’t think Pandora is. It’s possible that he was wrong though, as I mentioned when theorizing about Echidna being the vampire (which she probably isn’t).

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