I can't remember if I've sent this before, but in complete fairness to team RWBY, Salems immortality could have been interpreted by the cast as more along the lines of the Grimms Immortality, in that they don't age to death, do get older and smarter but are still quite killable. Queen of the Grimm just being a really old, powerful and smart Grimm rather than full on immortal woman with Grimm facepaint seems to be the logical conclusion to first come to. Ironwood seemed to be thinking the same.
That is fair, though it would have been nice if the story actually had the cast demonstrating an assumption along those lines, rather than leaving it to use to fill in that (very significant) blank. Given that the entirety of Volume 6′s conflict hinges on this revelation — and it’s still impacting the plot in numerous respects today — the fact that such an explanation doesn’t exist in the text is still a big problem. Just because we can come up with an alternate explanation doesn’t mean the story intended that reading and, as a result, isn’t something I’m inclined to give RWBY a pass on.
Especially since so much more work should have been done prior to this reveal (or better yet, change the reveal entirely). Meaning, let’s say for the sake of argument that the story did establish that. The group has a conversation — maybe away from Ozpin where he can’t correct them about any assumptions they make — in which we see them theorizing that Salem must be a really powerful grimm who is ageless as opposed to immortal... that’s still staggeringly bad. Our entire basis for this reading is Oobleck’s conversation with Ruby and that conversation likewise established that she wouldn’t stand a chance against the grimm passing by. So what is a grimm that’s been alive for over a thousand years going to be like? If Ozpin, with his literal magic and lifetimes of knowledge, hasn’t been able to beat her, what does that mean for them, the second year students? Across multiple generations he never once thought to amass an army and overwhelm her?
The underlying problem is that we’re given no insight into the group’s thought process — do they think Salem is immortal? Ageless? Have they not thought about it at all? — but even if we solve that, we’re left with the secondary issue of their reaction to this information. Even if they thought Salem was just ageless they... what? Had complete confidence that they could beat her despite lifetimes worth of evidence to the contrary? That’s some overconfidence that the story should grapple with. Or what, they thought after lifetimes Ozpin was just too foolish to think up “Go attack her with lots of powerful people” as a foolproof plan? (At least we’ve established that Ironwood thought Ozpin took things too slow, perhaps explaining a headcanoned belief that he had yet to try a world-wide army.) That’s also a questionable assumption that the story should acknowledge.
To my mind, either the group didn’t think Salem had ANY significant advantage here (immortality or agelessness), thereby explaining their happy confidence/utter shock at her immortality... but it makes them look both stupid and incompetent for not thinking about their enemy for five minutes. Or, the group (off screen) thought Salem was immortal/had thousands of years to become powerful and... had total confidence anyway. There’s a story there about teenagers thinking they can conquer the world that RWBY never wrote. At the end of the day though, what we’re left with is an extreme reaction to Salem’s immortality that doesn’t make sense unless we do the work of saying, “The group assumed Salem was like the grimm Ruby saw.” Even though as far as we know, Ruby is the only one who learned that information, we never saw her telling anyone else about it, and it’s still weird that the lesson of “You can’t beat them” wouldn’t come up when the ancient enemy is dialed up to 100 with Salem. So the viewer shouldn’t be doing that work for RWBY in the first place, but even if we do that work we’re still missing numerous pieces to get this to hang together.
