The Promised Neverland

Episode 8

From the moment Isabella tells Krone that she's been selected to be a Mom for a new opening at a completely separate farm from Grace Field, both Krone and the audience know this is the end of the road for her. Isabella's devious grin, which is absurdly effective and gets enough screen time this episode that it ought to earn top billing in the credits, says it all. Isabella plays it off like an achievement and an honor, and she encourages Krone to go meet with the ostensible head honcho of the Moms, who is known only as “Grandma”. She may as well be a cat playing with its prey for a while before finishing it off for good, and Krone is smart enough to catch on right away, so she snags the evidence she found in Ray's bed as a last minute gambit. She also makes another play, just in case things go south; she has a package, including a strange looking little pen, placed in a drawer for the kids to find. Then she goes off to meet Grandma.

Krone's death is a haunting and beautifully directed sequence that goes a long way toward repairing some of the shoddy characterization she's been stuck with all season. Grandma makes no secret of the promotion being a sham, and the minute a pair of hulking demons come to make a meal out of her, Krone's time is up. Her life flashes before our eyes, and in a wordless sequence of stark black-and-white, we see young Krone as the only girl to be depicted with any color, and she seems to have been as eager and excited in her youth as Emma, Ray, and Norman were until they learned the truth behind their idyllic upbringing. We only get one shot of young Krone seeing the secret of the demons as she's selected to become a Mother-in-Training, but it's all we need to see how much this single moment shatters her entirely. She was broken by the system.

From then on, she dedicates everything she has to climbing the ranks and achieving the most recognition that she possibly can within the means she's been given. Only in her final moments does she have to reckon with the fact that such a path could never end in anything but destruction This is a system that rewards obedience, compliance, and silence. Krone spent her entire life trying to be a woman like Isabella, but her final moments reveal to us what Krone probably knew all along: she was always more of an Emma. Proud, strong, and innately opposed to any forces who would try to control her without respecting her, Krone was doomed to fail in the same way that Emma would if she were presented with the same choice and no support from her friends.

None of this context erases the problematic way that Krone's design and animation have twisted these elements into stereotyping and racist caricature, intentional or not. Personally, I do think that Krone as a character has finally been given enough depth and empathetic nuance to make those problems worth fighting through to engage with this story. In her death, Krone reveals that her “gift” to the kids was a begrudging admittance of her own failure, something that has the potential to help them escape Grace Field and “destroy” the world of the demons once and for all. So many of the issues surrounding Krone's characterization come from how aggressively she was painted as a dangerous Other. Now she's been realigned as closer to Emma and the other kids than any of them could have ever guessed. If Emma was ever offered the chance to follow in Isabella's footsteps, even if it were to try and fight the system from inside, I imagine the tragedy of Sister Krone isn't too far afield from what could have happened to her.

With Krone out of the way, there's nothing standing between Isabella and the children, and she immediately makes it clear to Ray that she's been holding the power over them all along. She knows he betrayed her, she knows about their impending escape plan, and she even knows Don and Gilda have joined in their rebellious shenanigans. With her unnervingly confident grin never wavering, she locks Ray away while she pursues Emma and Norma, who are about to commence their patrol of the wall. She explains to them that she's happy to finally meet them, since this is the first time they've ever truly spoken to each other honestly. She's no longer “Mama” in this moment. She's just Isabella, come to tell them that she truly loves them, and that she wants nothing more than for her children to live in blissful ignorance, because the quick and painless death that Conny experienced is the most merciful end any of them could ever hope for. The kids balk at this. Emma proclaims that she'd rather die free than live in ignorance, and she bull-rushes Isabella while Norman makes a run for the wall.

Isabella snaps Emma's leg in two for her troubles. The most indelible moment of this entire episode has to be how Isabella lovingly cradles Emma and softly shushes her in the moments after Emma breaks out into screaming sobs. We feel Emma's pain, and we see the true horror that lies in Isabella. She's still using her most maternal voice as the episode ends, when she tells Norman that the schedule has changed, and he only has a day until he gets shipped off to be a delectable meal for the unnamed One she serves. The irony of it all is that dropping the façade of being their “Mama” didn't do away with the tender kisses and the loving smile. She'll still do anything it takes to keep her kids safely inside the walls of Grace Field. Only now, she's more willing to break them into pieces to do it.

Rating: A

The Promised Neverland is currently streaming on Crunchyroll, HIDIVE, and Funimation.

James is an English teacher who has loved anime his entire life, and he spends way too much time on Twitter and his blog.