Shadows House Season 2

Episode 8

It isn't often that a mystery pulls the wool over my eyes as well as this episode of Shadows House did. Of all of the people I suspected of being Master Robe, Maryrose was absolutely not on my list, although perhaps she should have been with her prominence in the ending theme and the fact that she and Barbara are peers. That means that Maryrose has been watching Barbara be ill-used for her soot capabilities from the moment she developed them, and she saw how Barbara and Barbie changed after Christopher left. Symbolically speaking, her associated flora is another clue to her motives as Master Robe: she wears purple roses, which mean “first love” and her name is a flip of rosemary, which as a flowering herb means both “love” and “remembrance.” So if she decided to take matters into her own hands, she's very likely driven by her love for Barbara (in whatever sense you prefer) and her memories, both of what happened to her age-mate and of her time as a morph, the pupal stage of the Shadows family.

The idea of a more self-aware Shadow is one that puts the entire existence of the Shadows and their way of life at risk. The system works because the Shadows are able to reinforce the myth of “living dolls,” something that we've seen Louise buy into wholeheartedly. In fact, Kate's statement early in the first season that Emilico needs to eat should have made us wonder right from the start how she was aware of that, because in hindsight, it really sets her apart from her peers. Benjamin could be believed to know because he's so into body building and strength training, and he could have extrapolated from there that Ben needs to be taken care of, but no one else has that awareness until someone tells them to pay attention. Kate's words to Emilico therefore absolutely foreshadow Maryrose's reveal this week that Kate remembers her time as a morph and is fully aware that Emilico was kidnapped and turned into a “doll.” It also explains why she gave her her own distinct name; even if Shaun is right and the Shadows take on their dolls' original names Kate knows that Emilico is an entirely separate entity from herself and would have therefore given her her own name to allow her some small piece of her own identity. (And again, this could still feed into Sarah naming hers Mia, if she's hiding her own memories of morph-hood from everyone else.)

Although Patrick doesn't explicitly remember morphing into Ricky, he may be harboring some repressed or latent memories of the fact, because he absolutely sees Kate and Emilico as separate people, something that some of the others don't consciously recognize. (Or recognize at all.) This opens up the question of how many of a morph's memories are taken from them, and whether Lord Grandfather is simply making assumptions about it or if it's a way for him to weed out those Shadow children who don't meet his criteria for adulthood. Barbara seems to be being kept in the Children's Wing to take advantage of her soot volume, but Maryrose may be deliberately staying there to enact her plans…or Lord Grandfather is biding his time until she slips up and he can get rid of her.

Maryrose is clearly playing her cards fairly close to the vest, and that does have its pitfalls. She doesn't seem to have taken into consideration that Kate does trust her peers and simply isn't revealing anything until she's got all of her ducks in a row. We've seen Kate thinking hard about what to tell whom, and while the whole morph thing was a surprise, it's also the biggest deal of all the things she's figured out. She's not going to say anything until she's certain, and that's something John seems to understand about her. Louise is the one most likely to take it badly, but Patrick may find it something of a relief, because he knows that it's Emilico and not Kate he likes. Whether Maryrose was just trying to get a rise out of Kate or actually believed that her mean words would drive a stake between them and was testing them remains to be seen, but now that the morph's out of the bag, something's going to have to give.

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Shadows House is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.