The way that the show is written is honestly annoying.
It’s like the writers wanted to write a racism subplot, but partway through the writing process, they said “Hey, the way that this racist character acts is similar to how [insert relevant party/individual here] acts. But that can’t be right, [insert relevant party/individual here] is a good person. They wouldn’t act like that… Right?”
They write their villains the way they do because they don’t want to make their audience uncomfortable with how society works. They don’t want to say “Hey, these conditions are what led to an extremist like Adam to come about. If we fix these conditions to make sure that that won’t happen again, that would be a good thing.” But that would require them to look at the systemic racism that is in our society, and realize that they also participated and benefited from that. On top of which, they would also have to make their audience see that, and that makes both parties uncomfortable, so they use it as cheap sympathy points for Adam, and don’t address the problem at all.
Or take Cinder. The literal child slave. Instead of using that as a moment to say “A person’s dedication to order over justice is what leads to a person like Cinder” they basically use it as (again) cheap sympathy points to maybe open the way for Cinder to get a redemption arc. Unless this is going to be used later for Cinder to blow up at our main characters by pointing out how more dedicated they were to order rather than change, then maybe that would work? It’s hard to say. Marvel kinda has this problem with some of their villains in their movies. A character like Vulture was screwed over by Stark and had to resort to what he did to get by. But because he was cool with child murder, we don’t have to question the notion that Tony screwed over people. I personally blame the Pentagon for getting their grubby hands all over the project. Or take Zola from Civil War. A character who rightfully pointed out how the Avengers didn’t even stick around to help, and were basically only there to clean up a mess that Tony made.
The writers don’t want to feel uncomfortable with writing their villains. While, yes, the idea of “The villain has a point” is a common trope, it’s there to make the heroes try to figure out what to do in order to make sure that another version of that villain doesn’t happen again. This is arguably what happens in Black Panther. Where T’Challa realizes that ignoring what was going on in the rest of the world is what led to Killmonger, and thus goes to the states to fix things so that another Killmonger doesn’t have to happen.
We don’t even get any major implications that Hazel’s last request of “No more Gretchens” is actually going to stick. Especially since we don’t know how to avoid another Gretchen. As far as we are aware, Gretchen was her own person who volunteered to be a huntress, but got killed in the line of duty. How exactly is someone supposed to stop that from happening again? The only way to do that is to get rid of the Grimm.
Let’s be real: If the overarching message of the story was more about “Don’t let negative emotions consume you, because they can destroy you (in this case, literally)” then that would have honestly been a great take-home message. But because they wanted to do so many things, the overall message gets jumbled. Blake outright states in Volume 1 that Sienna’s tactics worked. If her subplot was more about trying to find out how to fix things rather than just determining that her “capitulating to the racists is how we earn their respect” is the best way, then we would have had an actual story there.
In addition to all of that, so many of the villains are actual victims. Salem was abused by her father and subsequently an asshole god who apparently is too incompetent to console one grieving woman. Emerald was a starving kid on the streets. Mercury is the son of an abusive mercenary. Cinder is an ex-child slave. Adam was branded. And our heroes, while also not having that great of home lives either, are kinda privileged in comparison. Yang and Ruby have a home. Blake has two loving and very caring parents. Weiss was an heiress. Vomit Boy comes from a family that can comfortably support seven kids. Oscar also has a family. The only ones that don’t fall into this category is Ren and Nora, the literal orphans. Like… Yes. Yang and Ruby have some missing moms and a dad who was “Too busy with work [Volume 5]” or “shut down [Volume 2]” so yeah, they didn’t have much there. Blake, despite having a loving family, left that to fight racism and had an abusive mentor/boyfriend. Weiss comes from a broken family. And Oscar has to deal with the idea of becoming Ozpin… Sorta. We got robbed of that because mister Jaune “Got four episodes to himself before Blake or Yang got any episodes at all” Arc had to be sad™ about Pyrrha. Again, Vomit Boy is the only one to come from pure privilege.
The main point of all of this is that the writers aren’t doing anything new with their story. A lot of this is the same as we see in a lot of movies or tv shows. The heroes uphold “order” instead of seeking out justice.
Like… These guys have literally nothing holding them back. No Pentagon money to make ‘Murcia look good. No corporate backers there to make their product be better. No money from the army to make their tactics look heroic. No network censors to stop any LGBT+ Representation. No network execs telling them to not make the civil rights group’s more forceful tactics be shown in a positive light. They could literally do whatever they want. And instead of something new, they decided to do a lot of the same that we’ve already seen.
And like… That’s a shame. This show had so much potential to be something unique. But instead, it’s just… Your run of the mill action show. Except it’s kinda worse because the advertised main characters almost always take a back seat to Jaune. And like… Really… At this point, it’s kinda apparent that the writers (or at least, Miles) didn’t want to write team RWBY. It almost seems as if they find writing team RWBY to be a chore. Because with how much attention Vomit Boy got, it’s almost as if they wanted to write Jaune: The Series instead.
But let’s face it. Literally only white incels would want to watch another show about some bland white guy with a sword being the big hero. We’ve seen that already. We’ve seen that a lot. And with how they seem to be structuring things, it almost feels as if they’re going to reveal Jaune to be some distant descendant of Salem to tie him into the main conflict when people signed on to watch a show called RWBY for RWBY.
I’d like to imagine Miles pitching a Jaune spin-off, and that series getting like… ZERO attention from people who aren’t white cisgender straight males. And Miles being all “What? Where are the women? Why don’t they like this series?”
IDK, I just think it would be cathartic to see Miles have it shoved in his face that people aren’t a fan of Jaune.