Rolling Review: Wandering Witch: The Journey of Elaina (12)

Episode Synopsis

Elaina comes across a place called the “Country That Makes Your Wishes Come True”. There she finds a land composed of various places she’s been on her travels. When she enters the copycat castle of Mirarosé she is greeted by a doppelganger, who asks if she’s friend or foe. It turns out there are fifteen other Elainas inhabiting this land, and one of them is hostile towards all the others.

Review:

You know what this show needed? No, no…not plot or well written characters or anything like that. It needed MORE ELAINAS. You know who said that?!

No one

Ever

Episode 12 is the finale to this show and thank freakin’ goodness for that. Here we once again blow the chance to have Elaina deal with difficulties in her life. On top of that, the various Elaina’s are a weird mix of tropes and “could have beens”. The implication in the beginning makes it sound like these are all Elaina’s that have taken separate paths in alternate universes(?) from the one we are following. That works for some versions out of the sixteen that are shown, but some of them are just….

WTF?!

For the record, Cringy Elaina is my favorite.

Also, we need a group name for this herd of Elainas. Hmm…how about a narcissism of Elainas. Yes, that will do nicely.

The plot of this episode plays out as drab as all the ones before it. Elaina interacts with fourteen other versions of herself and learns that one of the versions (known as “Violent Me”) is out to kill off all the other ones. When Violent Me appears, Protagonist Elaina (a.k.a. our Elaina) fights her to a draw. The fight is uninteresting as far as magical battles go. Just a note: I’m heavily biased by the fact that I saw the Heaven’s Feel: Spring Song movie last month and daaaayyyaaamm does that movie have kick ass fight scenes. Regardless, the most interesting moment is Violent Me Elaina throwing a building with lightning. Sure…we can do that now…

The story around Violent Me Elaina could have had a lot of punch. The show makes a callback to Episode 9 when Elaina went back in time with Estelle. Our Elaina cried about the incident and then went on like nothing had ever happened because she’s a self absorbed jerk (it’s the final episode and I’m tired of this ho. Imma say what I want now). Violent Me Elaina however, took that scenario really hard. It stuck with her and caused her mental strife.

I didn’t want Elaina to suffer, but I have always wanted Elaina to carry something away from all her travels. I wanted her to grow, or at the very least I wanted to be transported to fantastical locales. None of that has happened, and the idea that Elaina could have taken a piece of her travels with her (however painful) was full of promise. Even though we didn’t get the Elaina that suffered, this was the show’s chance to have her confront that suffering. To really accept that the world is a hard place and bad things happen to good people.

Nope…none of that. Instead we get some internal lines about how Protagonist Elaina and Violent Elaina talk it out and understand each other, despite the former never once showing she actually carries scars from Episode 9. Then later there’s some nonsense about Elaina writing her book. Honey…nobody cares…

Summary:

Here in the ultimate episode, we are treated to a narcissism of Elainas and we get nothing out of it. Despite dipping its toes into the idea that Elaina might take something to heart from her travels, the show ultimately throws that out in favor of lightning that can lift buildings. I’m not letting that go. It’s so stupid. Thank goodness this show is done.

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