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Deucalion and Pyrhha. Myths and legends of all nations. 1914.

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Pyrrha singing Mirror Mirror

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Nightmarish Maiden

“Are you my target? Negative. You are hereby ordered to assist me in my hunt, or face immediate execution. Will that be of any issue? Negative.” A dreaming huntress' body, possessed by innumerable hostile Grimm. She follows the singular command of her Queen, to hunt down every Maiden on Remnant. Her armor restrains the Grimm, and perhaps this is liable to leaks.

Weapon: Siopiló Cerebus:

This armor recalls the unending heat of the Underworld just as the muzzle of a hound. No matter how much the vessel might wish to plead, its cries and howls will always be muffled and unheard. After all, what could an empty container have to say?

Its tale has yet to be told...

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I never actually make posts here anymore but uh I wanted to pop in and say I think there's a pretty good fuckin chance Pyrrha might make an appearance this volume

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Analysis: Did the Death of Pyrhha raise the stakes?

I want to start this by saying that people who were smarter and more qualified than me have talked about other problems with the character of Pyrhha and the writing behind her, and also with other things like the Arkos dynamic. But this has been something I've been thinking about for a long time, and I wanted to ask the question in the title: Did Pyrhha dying really raise the stakes of the series? The answer after I've come to about this is no, it didn't, but we as an audience believed they had been. Let me sort of explain what I mean by this, and use some other series as an example.

When Pyrhha died, we knew very little about her. We knew she was an arena fighter and was one of the best of the best. We knew that this had left her to be mostly friendless, and wanted to be viewed as normal, based on her interactions with Jaune, we can tell she felt good that someone was seeing her as a person and not The Invincible Girl. And we know that Pyrhha is socially awkward, with her habit of apologizing for things that aren't her fault, and the sort of awkward way she would say ' Hello again.' But beyond that, anything for Pyrhha is a head-canon or a bit of a deeper reading of what's present. We didn't know if she had a family at the time, what her goals were at Beacon, and for the rest of her life. We know the above things, and that she liked Jaune. An important thing to note is for the most, we are told these things. We are told she doesn't really have friends, and we are told people put her on a pedestal. But we aren't shown this. This is less effective as we have no context for this.

I think a lot of people will agree that when characters die in fiction one of the saddest things is the fallout other characters go through as a result of their death emotionally. When I think of some of the saddest deaths in fiction, it's usually not the death itself, but the way people around them react. One of the best examples of this for several shows ( spoilers for all will be here, hence the spoiler tag) is the death of Maes Hughes from FMA and FMAB. Maes Hughes was a supporting character, but we knew a lot about him. He was Mustang's best friend, supportive of the Elric brothers, and a loving husband and father. We also know he was very supportive of Mustang's plan to advance and change the world once he had more power. Importantly, for the most part, these things are shown to us. We see Hughes on the phone gushing about his wife, we see Hughes showing tons of photos of his family. They didn't have to tell us ' Hughes cares about his daughter' because we knew that. And so when he died, it was devastating to the audience because we had to see how everyone reacted, and these were characters we knew also. Everything from Mustang crying and saying ' It's a terrible day for rain' to Hughes's daughter crying and asking ' Why they're putting dirt on daddy' at the funeral. These are characters who we cared about, and so seeing them in pain was awful to experience.

But with Pyrhha, we don't really have that. I forget the exact volume, 6 or 7 but even when seeing a redheaded woman talk to Jaune at Pyrhha's statue when they leave flowers, we don't know who that is. We don't know if that was her mother, her sister, an aunt, or just someone who had known Pyrhha. Everything about that ( unless RT has revealed on social media) is speculation, and while a good scene, it doesn't really solve the problem I mentioned above, we don't really know people like a family who would be the most affected by the death of Pyrrha.

Jaune and Ruby were both affected by the death of Pyrhha, with Jaune reforging his armor to be a tribute to her. But the problem is, at least to me that it doesn't feel deep enough. Using a different example, the death of Peter Parker in Infinity War. Some of the first words Tony says in Endgame are ' I lost the kid.' At first, Tony is not willing to risk his wife and child on the chance of bringing back everyone else, because he got incredibly lucky. We've seen the arc of Tony, and this, while maybe selfish is understandable, he's always made the sacrifice play, and so seeing him saying for once he won't is satisfying. But then he sees a picture he has with Peter. Trying to play it off as curiosity, he sees if he could actually invent time travel, and then he does. It's subtle, and it's not tossed in our face, but it's there that the death of Peter really affected Tony and played into his survivor's guilt.

One could say that Jaune wants to kill Cinder for what happened to Pyrhha, and that is a fair example of growth. Volume 1 Jaune probably couldn't fathom taking a life, and by Volume 5 he was trying to murder Cinder in the battle of Haven. But Ruby saw her die. And other than activating her silver eyes ( Another issue others have talked about is how she doesn't really wonder what the silver eyes are) I can't remember really her ever commenting on it. Contrast this with the death of Penny, which is some of the best voice acting the series has for Ruby.

Really small scenes could have helped a lot with this. Some of the examples of things I think could have helped-

When Jaune is calling out team attacks, he accidentally calls out Arkos or a move which relied on Pyrhha, only to realize she wasn't there, and there's a brief moment of silence as it sinks in all over again. ( Example: Shotaro from Kamen Rider W calling for Phillip in the last episode but Phillip wasn't there)

Jaune or someone else does a move in combat that Pyrhha had taught to them. Some of the others see it happening, and they briefly see Pyrhha with them. ( Example: Kakashi seeing Minato in front of him when Naruto performs the Rasenshuriken)

Let the characters talk fondly about Pyrhha with a sense of wistfulness. An example of this would be a difficult battle, and then after the battle, they say something like " If Pyrhha had been there with us, well that would have been easier." Tense silence, and then someone, maybe Jaune chuckles and agrees. It's okay to talk fondly about those who are no longer with us. ( Example: The Justice League cartoon when in an alternate world, Flash is dead and Green Lantern and Hawkgirl talk about him with playful annoyance.)

No one really talks about what her death means for them or how outclassed they seemingly are. An example of what I mean is in Kamen Rider Ex-Aid when a character named Kiriya, or Kamen Rider Lazer dies. The characters are told he died because he 'knew too much' and so a lot of time is spent in uncovering what it was he knew. It became a meme of sorts in the fandom about ' the real reason Kiriya died.' On top of that, the characters lament on how it's concerning that their enemy has a Level 10 form while the highest they can reach is Level 5 as an example.

Pyrrha's death and the fallout from it ultimately remind me of the Justice League movie. We're told the world misses Superman and is a worse place without him. But the DCU hadn't spent enough time building up a Superman the world at large would mourn for, or a Superman who did so much for the world that in his absence, things fell apart. I felt the same way with Pyrhha's death, we were told that it mattered more so than anything.

Now that I talked about what I feel is the emotional failure of the death of Pyrhha, I want to move into the other side of it, raising the stakes. Yes, killing a character is a great way to raise the stakes. It's the most lethal version of The Worf Effect (TVTropes some it up very well, basically a character we know to be strong losing to a new character to establish the new character is strong, IE Thanos beating the Hulk as Infinity War opens). But I feel that Pyrhha was not the right character to do for this for the following reasons

We don't really know strong she is. We are told she was a prodigy, but we are never really shown what that means. The only fights we see her in are CRDL, students at Beacon, and while she does beat them all, this is also the only extended fight we have for them, so we don't exactly know how difficult it would be to beat them. Mercury, but he threw the fight purposefully to get information on her, so we have no idea how they would have stacked up if they fought. ( I think she would win but still) Penny, which even if the fight ended in tragedy is the best possible matchup for her since her Semblance lets her control metal, and the fight which ultimately cost her life in Cinder. We knew Cinder had the power of half a Maiden and got the other from killing Pyrhha, but we don't really know what 'half a Maiden' amounts too because we don't know how strong Cinder was before becoming a Maiden, so it's impossible to say what the amp was. I'm not an expert power-scaler, but killing a character to show someone is strong works if we have a much better sense of how strong they were. The example of this is the death of Jiraiya against Pain in Naruto. We know how strong Jiraiya is as a member of the Three Sanin, which by the narrative would roughly put him on par with Tsunade, the head of the village at the time, and Orochimaru who had trained Sasuke. Jiraiya dying shows the audience that Pain is stronger than the current Hokage and protector of the village, and most of the cast. We never got to see Pyrhha sparring with RWBY or other members of JN_R to show how much stronger than them she is. If we had seen this, and then Cinder killed her anyways, it would have been much more d effective and plant a question in our mind: " How can the main cast hope to defeat Cinder?"

Killing Pyrhha wasn't really an objective for the villains, and it was more so good luck that happened along the way. Sure, Mercury gathers data on Pyrhha, but it seems like Cinder wanted to destroy Beacon more than get Pyrhha out of the way. Even the set up of Emerald making Pyrhha kill Penny amounts to nothing, as in the same volume, Pyrhha dies before the consequences of this can be addressed. Pyrrha was in the way of what Cinder wanted, and Cinder killed her which can be an effective set-up, but in my opinion, it's more effective if the villains have been planning specific things, like toppling a public figure like Pyrrha. In BNHA, people try to take out All-Might, and for good reason, he's seen as the Symbol of Peace. Small scenes could have built this up for Pyrhha also. After Mercury gets information on her, just have the villains make small statements about how she's in the way, and that they have to do something.

Pyrrha being chosen to be the Fall Maiden doesn't really make the most sense. From a set-up perspective, it does, the villain killing the hero before they can achieve a powerup, and said power-up is the hero's best hope. ( Examples of this being the Muteki form in Kamen Rider Ex-Aid) But we're not shown why Pyrhha was chosen. As I said above, because we don't really know how strong she is, it could have been Weiss, or Yang, or Blake, or Nora because we don't know what qualities she was chosen for. On top of that, both Glynda and Winter were there, and arguably more powerful than Pyrhha, and would have been better choices. The set-up for me just doesn't work, and so by extension to me, Pyrhha's death felt like they wanted her out of the way, and needed a reason.

This was an incredibly long-winded post, but I hope I was able to get my points across. What do you think?

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|| Lol now it makes way, way more sense why jaune wanted to kill oscar/ozpin in the opening. Like dude just imagine what jauney boi's reaction be when he found out the story, that the worth of pyrrha's death is nothing ( like her sacrifice didn't help them or the humanity sort of like that) cause they couldn't even beat salem.