ORB 66: S.P.H.I.N.X. Rising
🕑 Added 2022-01-18 22:00:03 +0000 UTCI promise that we don't do the Cobra Commander voice in this episode, although it's tempting. This episode serves a single purpose: to put S.P.H.I.N.X. to bed so the OSI can take center stage and Gary can return to the Monarch... eventually. Meanwhile we get some unrelated hijinks from the Monarch, and Hatred finally makes a little bit of progress in getting Dean to open up.
Comments
Matt Bixler! Hello!
There is a detail in this episode that I have never seen ANYONE reference, and it makes me feel insane. SPHINX Commander looks exactly like Hunter. He's even introduced wearing Hunter's trademark glasses in the middle of the night, which seems like a giant lampshade hanging on this idea. I feel like the bit there is that Hunter and SPHINX Commander are twin brothers or clones or something. I don't necessarily feel like this is a dropped plot thread or anything like that, but it's some pretty apt world building that there would be a very intimate connection between the leader of SPHINX and one of the heads of the OSI, and it's layered even further by the fact that Hunter was always incredibly dismissive of SPHINX's importance, and instead chose to spend his career chasing the Guild. Also it would seem that SPHINX commander is notably taller. That's probably something? There's a ton of storytelling implied just through the design of one character, and while it feels screamingly obvious to me, I've never even noticed it referenced on the wiki, which is where these kind of yarn-pinning connections tend to thrive, and I was dying the entire podcast waiting for one of you to mention it but no dice there either. I've been completely convinced of this from the jump, am I just a crazy person?
T
I think Spanakiopida and Momma's Boys would be my favorite season 5 episodes.