Samurai Jack Season 05 Episode 05 Review

Man, another amazing Samurai Jack episode. Now, admittedly, while not as good as the last episode, Samurai Jack Season 05 Episode 05 was still an amazing that seemed to be the spearhead for what’s going to happen in the final 5 episodes.

Yep, that’s right, we’re halfway through the season, and only 5 episodes away from the ending. Trust me, it breaks my heart too. But, if we’re lucky, the quality of the episodes will continue, and Jack will finally get the ending he deserves.

Now, moving onto the episode itself, this episode pulled an Episode 02 and started out in a very interesting way. And by “interesting way” I mean the return of the Scotsman, along with his MANY daughters (I choose not to ask…) and an entire army at his side to try and kill Aku. You knew he was going to fail, but I think all of us were curious on how it would end. So…when the army (save for the daughters) died, and then the Scotsman tore Aku a new one…and then Aku totally vaporized the Scotsman…I was shocked….and then he came back! “Celtic Magic!”

But truly though, this episode was about Ashi learning the real truth about her “father”. And who better to be her guide than Jack? This episode went far in showing not only how brainwashed Ashi was, but also that Jack was just as harmed by the truth as she was. You believed her when she begged Jack to tell her what to do to fix this, and yet,  you believed Jack wholeheartedly when he said there was nothing to do, that hope was lost, and that Aku couldn’t be stopped.

Of course…that’s not stopping him (or the writers for that matter) from allowing a small victory. In this case, a towns children was brainjacked into being a monstrous army (that sounds familiar)…so naturally Jack and Ashi had to stop it. While the main villain was on-the-nose, it did work for the most part, and his basic recount of Ashi’s life (unintentionally of course) was very powerful as Ashi fought through the pain to get free.

Just when you think though that the episode is going to get a happy ending, Jack thinks he and Ashi killed the children. Yes, it was odd that he didn’t even check on them, but after all Jack had been through, the pain and thought of loss on that scale was very believable. And the twists kept coming with the return of the rider, who spoke this time. Is this rider the envoy to the dead? Is Jack giving himself up to die? Questions abound.

Now, I can’t give Samurai Jack Season 05 Episode 05 a perfect score, let me explain. While I LOVED the return of the Scotsman, it felt off that the whole point of that was to “kill” him and then make him realize he needed Jack to finish off Aku. Since he’s basically one of Jack’s best friends in this time…shouldn’t he have known that? Also, the villain was a bit on-the-nose. And finally, while this episode did have some good visuals, it didn’t really compare to the spectacle of episodes 02-04. But overall though, this still was an amazing episode filled with great storytelling, great voice acting, and an epic twist.

Oh, and who else liked “Pimp Jack”? That outfit was funny…I wish he had made it through the episode with it.

Check out our review of the next episode!