Jibaro
Episode 9 of Love, Death & Robots Season 3 begins the final episode of this volume with a group of soldiers trying to thwart a siren, who dances in a lake and turns all the soldiers against one another. Interestingly though, one of the soldiers is actually deaf and as such, the siren has no effect on him.
With all the other soldiers killed, this deadly battle soon turns into a fight for survival. The soldier flees, heading off alone into the wilderness to try and escape.
That night, while the soldier sleeps, the siren approaches and dances around him, eventually resting a hand over him and sleeping alongside the man.
In the morning he awakens, startled to find this strange woman by his side. As she dances off, the soldier gives chase. She ends up atop a waterfall, where she dances around the knight, weaving her body this way and that.
As she begins kissing him, her lips pierce his and in this bloody embrace, the knight kisses her forehead… before headbutting her and knocking her out. While unconscious, the deaf knight takes advantage of the siren and begins ripping the treasure from her body. After peeling off all the trinkets, he takes off with a bag over his shoulder while the siren tumbles into the water and back whence she started from.
The water turns red and as the stream picks up and gushes through, the deaf knight takes a sip of the water, not realizing that it’s somehow connected with the siren. In doing so, he inexplicably gets his hearing back and charges through the endless wilderness, leaving the gold behind while clutching his head.
The sound is too much and he eventually finds himself back where he started from. The siren rises up, shaking and eventually shrieking in his direction once more. The soldier heads out into the water, and dances himself into oblivion, tumbling down to join the numerous other deceased in the water.
The Episode Review
The water effects in this episode are absolutely outstanding. Artistically, this is one good looking episode and the idea of a siren going up against a deaf knight is beautifully realized, especially when everything turns into a one on one fight.
On top of that, sound is used as a really clever tool in this chapter, with the use of silence against the shrill piercing of the siren making for an absolutely fascinating duel. Seeing the knight get his hearing back, partly I think due to greed and drinking from the water, is a nice way of cleverly ending this fight, although one could argue that this episode may have been better had they both decided to embrace one another romantically, allowing this doomed romance to be the end of this knight who ends up bleeding out after trying to embrace this siren.
As it stands though, the final episode bows things out with a suitably ambiguous ending and leaves plenty of food for thought over this world and how the siren came to be. The final episode is perhaps not the strongest of the season, but it’s still a solid way to round things out on a high.
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Episode Rating
(4)
“this episode may have been better had they both decided to embrace one another romantically”
You’re completely missing point. If that happened, it would completely ruin the episode. The episode is a pretty overt representation of the Spanish conquests of the Americas. Specifically Pizarro, the ransom and execution of Atahualpa and the stolen gold that was melted down and shipped back to Spain.
“The final episode is perhaps not the strongest of the season, but it’s still a solid way to round things out on a high.” Dont dismiss it like that, do research, see the dynamics of the setting. Everything is political under the sun, so entangle the dynamics and tension.
Just listen to the lyrics of this song Oubau Moin Song by Lucecita Benítez. There’s much to be said about Puerto Rican folklore.