Thundercats Episode 8 – The Duelist and The Drifter takes the story to a more personal, individual level as it focused on Lion-O. With the team attempting to use the Book of Omens to power the Thundertank, Lion-O ventures off to gather supplies. e happens upon two very different characters, one a worry free wanderer, the other an unflappable swordsman.
Read on to find our review of Thundercats Episode 8 – The Duelist and The Drifter. The Episode
Panthro and Tygra attempt to harness the power of the Book of Omens by hooking it to the Thundertank. Meanwhile, we see that Lion-O has gone off to find supplies for the team. On his journey he happens upon a swordsmen’s town and a character called The Drifter, a care-free wanderer. Who warns him to avoid this town.
Lion-O ignores the warning and attempts to buy supplies with Thunderian currency. But his money is no good there. He is pointed towards a stone slashing competition, where the deepest cut in the stone gets the win. Lion-O uses the Sword of Omens and easily slices the stone in two, earning the victory prize. As he is buying supplies he is baited into a duel by The Duelist; A wandering swordsman who claims the losers’ blade as his prize.
As he is preparing to fight, The Drifter warns him that he will lose to the Duelist. He challenges Lion-O to split the willow he is chewing. As Lion-O attempts to attack, The Drifter moves about effortlessly and avoids Lion-O’s assault easily. The Drifter tells Lion-O that the willow may be weak, but it binds the wood used to build entire cities. He tells Lion-O of a sword maker who thought his perfect sword made him a great fighter. But The duelist challenged the sword maker and defeated him, taking the blade as his prize. We see that the sword maker is actually The Drifter. Lion-O pleads for his help, but The Drifter is not interested.
Lion-O meets The Duelist for their fight, and he finds himself easily outmatched. The Duelist claims the Sword of Omens as his prize. Lion-O, determined to win the blade back begs The Drifter to help him forge a new sword, but The Drifter has no interest. Still determined, Lion-O attempts to make a new sword. The Drifter intervenes, as he sees that Lion-O is clueless in the craft. In the course of an afternoon, he forges the impatient Lion-O a new blade.
Lion-O challenges The Duelist for all his swords. The Duelist demands Lion-O’s life if he loses. In the fight, Lion-O fights more strategically, matching The Duelsit blow for blow. But suddenly Lion-O’s sword breaks and he is left helpless. But The Drifter reminds Lion-O to act as the “willow”. Suddenly Lion-O can easily avoid the attacks of The Duelist and defeats him quickly. As he celebrates, The Duelist attempts a sneak attack, which is repelled by The Drifter, who defeats him with the willow itself. Disarmed and defeated, The duelist fleas.
Lion-O gives the swords to The Drifter and thanks him for his help. The Drifter will “wander” once more, but now to return the Duelist’s blades to their rightful owners. Lion-O returns to his team with a bunch of new supplies.
Review
It was going to be hard for any episode to follow last week’s action packed episode. So episode 8 decided not to really try to top it. Instead, they went the pure filler route. The episode itself served no purpose to further the story at all. However, like all the episodes in the new show, it was handled, mostly, with care and grace. The writing of the episode itself remained strong, and individual character focus episodes will help flesh out the Thundercats into fully realized characters.
Once again, the animation remained top notch. Other series could really stand to learn from WB here, as they don’t shy away from spectacular designs for even the most fleeting of set pieces or characters. The voices for The Duelist and The Drifter were also pretty fantastic choices. While I’m not sure who they were, they didn’t come off as cheesy as they easily could have been.
But all that said, this was nothing more than a stop gap episode. The crutch of having the Thundertank broken down being the start of a filler episode will wear thin quickly. And after setting up a huge quest for the Thundercats, we’re left to watch Lion-O, by himself, wander into a situation that was pretty random and halted the momentum of the last few week’s of shows.
Bottom Line
While well written, the episode could easily be skipped when revisiting the series on DVD or re-runs. There was nothing of importance happening here and halted a lot of the momentum that had built up after last week’s set-up. Again, not a bad ep, but easily my least liked episode so far.
Overall 7 out of 10
- Thundercats Episode 8 Review
Thundercats Ep 8 - The Duelist and The Drifter Discussion
Use this as a countdown, live discussion, and post ep recap place to talk!
Thundercats 108 The Duelist and The Drifter airs tonight at 8:30 PM on Cartoon Network.
I'm excited for this next episode. Thus far the episodes have been a nice blend of incorporating/bringing new characters into the mix and expounding upon the original characters and their stories within the new mythos. It's not all win, but nothing ever is. That being said, I'm still extremely happy and have very little to offer in the way of complaints or criticism. I'm just pleased to see a childhood memory resurrected and brought to life once again. My only real complaint? I wish I had a son to share it with! In good time.. ;o)
Will be nice to see a new episode as it airs (missed the previous two episodes, and had to watch them online). Should be interesting to see where they take the story in this episode. I think it's safe to assume that this'll be another episode for Lion-O to learn an episode in.
Ok, now I'm kinda tired of the "whiskers" in every episode.
Geez lion-o got whooped already! Where's the live discussion
Show just finished on the east coast. Great episode!
My mom found the sword maker's voice familiar. She thinks it's a person who played a teacher on Boy Meets World years ago, which if she's right, is probably intentional due to Lion-O being voiced by Will Friedle. Anyone can confirm or whatever on that?
Some quick thoughts.
The Drifter makes me think of the Chesire Cat, if done by Studio Ghibli.
The Dualist's design is like a weird cross between Sesame Street's the Count, and Final Fantasy's Gilgamesh.
I loved the little contest! Trial by Stone, anyone?!
Snarf is still adorable.
I like the multiple designs for currency; the little scroll-looking pieces were a nice touch.
I wish I knew who played the Drifter.
I liked how it didn't take long for Lion-O to realize that the Drifter was talking about himself in that story; the writers could have dragged it out, and them not doing so made for a nice change from what could have been a cliche.
I also loved the little exchange between Tygra and Panthro at the beginning of the episode.
A small note that I though
All in all, a very fun episode, with beautiful animation, and a pretty good lesson for Lion-O to learn too.
I can't wait until next time!
Great episode, if a bit of a lull compared to the previous two. Had some very anime-ish moments to it (mostly during the big fight). I loved all of the little nods to characters from the original, along with some new species. The turtle and parrot were my two favorite background characters/species.
The episode was very Lion-O centric, but they got some good Snarf bits in there too. I love how they're handling the owner/pet relationship. Especially Lion-O responding to Snarf like he understands him. Also, Snarf's little bit where he mimmicked them fighting was absolutely hilarious. Had me laughing so hard my eyes teared up a little. Snarf needs a 6" scaled figure and a life-sized plush ASAP!
Not much of the other main team, but it was nice to see they weren't forgotten about in this episode. I'm already looking forward to the next episode. It's just too bad it won't be airing next week...
Episode was great. But that's the season finally. I along with with lion o of savannah (my cusion) feel that was not worthy of a season finally. I mean really that was the season finally. Last weeks should have been this weeks season finally and this weeks should have been last weeks, or even the fourth episode.
this would have been a great episode to introduce Haichiman???????
Right....... or did you see him?????
hmmmmmmmmmmmm............
I would call this episode filler. I would also call it well done and entertaining. It did bother me that Tygra was working on the thundertank instead of Panthro though.
Right....... or did you see him?????
hmmmmmmmmmmmm............
Thundercats Ep 8 - The Duelist and The Drifter Review
I think the one in purple with the oriental accent and sayings was a reference to..... well maybe?????
Mr. Feeny was William Daniels (who played KITT on Knight Rider btw), but the Drifter was Stephen Root (the stapler guy on Office Space).
Also the Duelist was Miguel Ferrer.
another great episode, love the angle they taking.. snarf talked! realize lion-o is still young and snarf is a baby who have yet begun to talk
I dug the ep yet again. But, it didn't continue the "every week gets better" streak since ep 4.
I'm just surprised how not annoyed I am by the filler eps. There is something new and entertaining buried in each ep enough to keep it going.
Definitely dig the duelist. Want to see a toy of that with a sword case you can add swords to over time from different toys.
My favorite episode so far! Finally Lion-O gets to win without the Sword of Omens! It was already starting to get tedious seeing the Sword of Omens win every fight for Lion-O. It was refreshing to see him win with his own skills instead of magic powers.
Damn Good episode. It didn't keep the pace of previous ones, but it felt like it didn't need to. It felt like a breather episode, a chance for the established status quo to finally set in. And yet it's not like the characters themselves have stopped. We see that they're trying to use the Book of Omens to navigate the Thunder Tank, which is pretty cool and a great way to not only keep the macguffin subdued without writting it out, plus it showcases the heroes' creative thinking.
Lion-O's charatcer has been more firmly established, and I like that his impatient nature wasn't the main problem, it was his straight-forward attitude. Though the impatience and ego were both touched on, they are not viewed as something he needs to rid himself of completely. Yes he was humbled, but the moral was to be a better fighter, not a better person, which I liked. I like that we can have "flawed" heroes who are maybe a little cocky and antsy, but it's not a damning quality.
The drifter was a neat character. Excellent voice, and while I liked his actual ability to just drift along the winds, I have to ask.... um, how? Was he always like that, or did losing his sword make him... light or something? I dunno. The duelist was okay. Interesting design. Charatcer was very standard villain. I liked how his very ornate design, along with his intricate sword backpack put him visually at odds with his surroundings. Everything was very subdued, worn-out, plain, while he was very busy, colourful, clean. Lion-O seemed like a visual in-between point.
Also I seriously enjoy Snarf now. He reminds me of my French Bulldog. Hyper, fat and adorable.
Now that I have learned this was not the season finale, I have watched the episode again, and have to say I enjoyed it more. I like how Lion O is still learning life lessions from friends he meets along his journey instead of from his fellow cats. I look forward to the book 2 episodes, which according to comcast won't be for awhile. In 2 weeks they start book 1 episodes again. I guess ill wait and see. I am also looking forward to the next wave o figures. Hoooooooooo
And I agree with split lip, snarf reminds me of my pug Prince.
Sabercat - With regards to your signature, would you please remove or change it! I find it very offensive ........
This episode didn't feel like filler at all, every episode seems to develop the characters more and more, for a series aimed at kids, Thundercats 2011 far surpasses anything I've witnessed before. The character Drifter was superbly defined. I read somewhere that one of the producers mentioned that the tone of this series aims to treat each episode as more of a movie and by calling it a movie means that they are going to make 'filler' episodes like this resonate at an epic scale, then I say keep these fillers coming in, I think they're wonderful.
Let the main plot reveal itself slowly, we need to explore the world of Third Earth, I find it more exciting than the Clone Wars universe.
I liked this episode. It felt like a crossed between a Chambara and spaghetti western movie.
I also notice a samurai in the begining when Lion O enters the town...Hachiman maybe?
I'm actually enjoying these off shoot episodes more than the main arc. I thought the Drifter was a fantastic and very original character much like the flower people.
if so do you know your sig says your a thundercats ho? I mean im not affended by anything either of you say but thats just me. Why so defensive over Ronald?
80's cartoons like Heman and Thundercats might have had a homoerotic undertone. Why bring into the equation my favourite fastfood clown mmmm
sorry edited out post. don't see a delete button.
My DVR didn't record it!!!
Episode 8: Download link (178 MB)
I thought it was a good episode. It takes a break from the main plot, but further develops Lion-O's character. Don't forget, like in LOTR, the first 13 episodes will mostly be about Lion-O's spiritual journey, where he matures to be a good king - most likely culminating in the next two-parter "Lion-O's Trials".
We'll I never been more happier to find out that I was wrong about this being the season finale. Thanks for info. Sorry about the miss spells BB Shockwave.
Whiskers = B*ll*cks in my view.
But yes it is very much like the way fake swearwords are used in Battlestar Galactica, Farscape, Ewoks, Pirates of Dark Water, & Judge Dread.
Thanks for the link.
But yes it is very much like the way fake swearwords are used in Battlestar Galactica, Farscape, Ewoks, Pirates of Dark Water, & Judge Dread.
Thanks for the link.
Also, thanks for the info on who played the Drifter. Strange, I looked up his roles and didn't find anything I particularly remembered, but there was still something familiar about it. Huh.
Solid episode.
Because it's a kids show I'm willing to give it a pass on the somewhat heavy handed lesson of the episode and how fast the 180 came in the duel, as well as the duel itself not being the best choreographed from a pure swordplay POV.
That said, everything else was great. I enjoyed it quite a bit. The Drifter is a great character, the town was interesting and full of little homages (Sectaurs guy in the crowd at the stone), and several of the story elements really worked. In addition we need some episodes where Lion-O learns to be a better swordsman.
Thundercats Ep 8 - The Duelist and The Drifter HD Screen Caps
Enough with the grammar nazi's folks. That crap won't fly here. Keep it on topic and keep it civil.
Thanks for the link Shockwave. When is the next episode? My guide doesn't show anything.
I loved it. Sure it was a filler, but at least Lion-O learned a life lesson and matured a bit with it. So far I haven't been let down one bit by this series.
Snarf reminds me of Pikachu... the looks, the voice... CUTE!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooo!