Be warned: Spoilers ahead for Knights of Guinevere Episode 2.
For those that are out of the loop, Knights of Guinevere is a psychological horror series surrounding the escape and awakening of a former Disney princess analog Princess Guinevere and her two “knights,” blue collar-worker and dreamer Frankie and jaded engineer Andi. When the pilot released, I was already fascinated by the world that creators creators Dana Terrace, Zach Marcus, and John Bailey Owen built. With the release of the second episode, they have done it again. I was hoping that Knights of Guinevere would have more to say than sticking it to Disney. What I wasn’t expecting was that this story would feel like a plotline from Cyberpunk 2077 but with Park Planet (the Disney theme park pastiche) serving the same role as Arasaka Corp.
The creators themselves stated that the second episode of this show would a litmus test of who would be down for this show and after watching Knights of Guinevere episode 2 twice my testing strip turned blue because I will be seated for the rest of season.
This episode picks up the following day after the pilot. Andi’s arm is still broken, Arthur the giant robot that Gwen killed is still very dead and the cops are on the hunt for the aforementioned Gwen. After Andi’s arm gets placed in a futuristic cast, both she and Frankie make a bargain with Sparky to fix Gwen. During their negotiations, it’s revealed that Sparky is not just a boatman with a drug business. He is a kingpin with his hands in all the seedy places of M7 including the “clinic/chop shop” that he gives them access to in order to fix Gwen.
It’s pretty straightforward until things go south. Gwen is not only damaged on the outside, but on the inside as well. She glitches out hallucinations that have her lurching from abusive memories of her time with Orville and Olivia Park to her current reality and the princess fantasy simulation she’s trapped in. While Frankie and Andi argue, Gwen has an episode and escapes into the drug fueled rave upstairs. Like a glitchy onion, she has layers.
The same goes for Frankie and Andi in this episode as well. You could be forgiven for thinking that these two were trapped in unfortunate circumstances and are trying their best, which is true but is only half of the story. You see signs that Andi is not the buttoned up goody-two-shoes that’s down on her luck and Frankie as simply a blue collar worker who didn’t have the same opportunities as Andi. Both have skeletons in their closets that not even a lifelong friendship can make either willingly reveal for fear of hurting the other.
Too often I see people being classified as either victims or perpetrators of violence and Knights of Guinevere shows the truth: it’s often both. The victims of abuse often are perpetrators. The way they use whatever power that can get their hands on, protagonists and antagonists alike, is varied.
When the episode’s antagonist and all-around creep Armend snatches Gwen off the rave’s drug-fueled dance floor and took her to the bathroom was a moment that made me gasp. And when he sized her up and discussed her body supposed “inadequacies”, chief among them that she was lacking her breasts, it made me want to punch him. Good thing Frankie does that for me a well-choreographed, well-animated smackdown.
The animation is gorgeous the fight between Frankie and genuinely awful Armend is. In fact the entire episode is a delight to see how intricate. (incomplete sentences) One of the highlights of the episode was meeting back-alley doctor Krash and his introduction shot is a medically accurate way of taking off his latex gloves which is like hitting a triple axel in animation terms.
The lighting a just shy of feeling over composited in places, but overall my previous concern about the choppiness of the shots is not present. There’s one shot with Gwen throwing Armend across the room where I couldn’t quite make out how she got his arm. However, there are two shots I absolutely adore: one where Gwen is attaching the robotic arm she stole of a man’s body to herself and when Frankie looks disgusted after Armend says “Joke’s on you. I like a girl who puts up a fight” (which was my exact reaction too).
Beyond the shock of seeing casual drug use and gore, the most horrifying thing in this episode is unflinching portrayals of misogyny and its impacts throughout the episode (which I think are the real litmus test). There is a callous disregard of women’s bodies, human or android, in this episode. The scene where Gwen gets snatched off the dance floor and taken to the bathroom by Armend made me physically sink. However, the highlight of the episode for me was the vindication when that misogyny was met with deserved violence.
I appreciated the side-stepping of the trope that a women who’s abused that behaves “badly” because of said abuse is badly punished for it because she went “too far”. In wake of horrifying cases like the Cornell 7, it is refreshing to see multiple female characters respond to sexual harassment and misogyny with kicking the man’s ass (or in Gwen’s case, going even further.)
For a second episode, Knights of Guinevere lays a lot of cards on its table and they are all lovely. Time will only tell if it keeps up this level of quality through the next six episodes, but for now it’s starting off great.
Knights of Guinevere is currently airing on Youtube with new episode coming out every three months. See y’all in January.
