Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet Episode 9: Blood Ocean is Mythic Quest at its best. Along with Episode 5: A Dark Quiet Death and Episode 8: Brendan, Episode 9 shows that the new show from Rob McElhenny, Charlie Day, and Megan Ganz is something special. Hopefully it gets a second season that embraces the dramedy style more than the straight comedy that the first few episodes were going for because the more serious episodes have so far been much more compelling and consistently entertaining.
Even if we don't get a second season, in many ways Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet Episode 9 could work as a series finale. Most of the conflicts were resolved, there was genuine character development, and the final scene in particular was very effective. Poppy was the star of the episode and finally got some of the recognition she deserved for her hard work on the game and her commitment to Ian's vision.
Ian, in an effort to distract himself from his strained relationship with his son (the PewDiePie parody Pootie Shoe) comes up with a new idea for Mythic Quest called "Blood Ocean." He doesn't know what it means yet, and so decides to stab his own finger and walk into the ocean. The wound gets infected, but then he realizes that "Blood Ocean" could be a disease in the game. Ian then barges into Poppy's house late at night and the two get into a heated argument.
Ian's narcissism and ego is getting on Poppy's nerves. Ian compares the two of them to The Beatles, likening Poppy to Ringo Starr. This enrages Poppy, and she starts tearing into Ian with a slew of insults. She also brings up how Ian is messing up the Mythic Quest game just like he messed up his son, though she regrets going that far. Poppy stays up all night to develop the "Blood Ocean" disease for Mythic Quest in an attempt to make up with Ian, and Ian makes Poppy co-Creative Director to finally acknowledge her work.
The final scene of the episode is a callback to Episode 1: Pilot, where Ian gave a speech about the shovel they were adding to the game. This time, Ian gave a speech honoring Poppy, having her stand and salute with the shovel in hand while "Welcome to the Black Parade" by My Chemical Romance played in the background. It was a powerful moment for the show and the perfect way to cap off the character arcs for both Poppy and Ian in the first season. Ian is not nearly as self-centered as he was before, and Poppy is finally getting the recognition she deserves in a male-dominated workplace.
Unfortunately, the after-credits scene somewhat robs this moment of its impact, as it shows that it doesn't take long for Poppy and Ian to be at each other's throats. They are at the office at 3am, along with assistant Jo, and decide to wake David up to complain about having to work together. Presumably, this growing conflict between Ian and Poppy will be a focus of the second season, but it would have been nice if they were allowed to have their moment first.
David's arc was also resolved in this episode, as he started standing up for himself more. This included trying to take control of a meeting from Ian, and confronting corporate. Mirroring real-life attempts by the video game industry to unionize, the Mythic Quest developers start a union and make some demands of David. However, all they want is overtime pay for when they work overtime. David agrees to this and calls corporate to go to bat for his employees. Corporate responds by firing him, though Ian is able to make some phone calls and get David his job back pretty much right away.
Other characters didn't have quite as much resolution to their stories, but there was still some closure. Ashly Burch's Rachel appealed to Brad about Dana, who quit her job as the in-house streamer as she couldn't handle the hate. With another QA tester already having been hired, Dana was unable to go back to her old job and had to leave the Mythic Quest team entirely. Brad gives Rachel a speech about how he has always wanted to be like Scrooge McDuck from DuckTales, and listens to her pleas about Dana. He eventually promotes the other QA tester to a made up position so that Dana can have her old job back, but he tells Rachel that he now "owns" her.
This is another story that will likely be a focus in the second season, that being the conflict between Brad and Rachel. Hopefully the second season offers Brad some more character development beyond his love of money, but we won't hold our breath. The show seems content on having Brad be a one-dimensional jerk, which seems like somewhat of a waste of Danny Pudi's talents, but oh well. His newfound power over Rachel could lead to us learning more about him in season 2, plus it will be interesting to see how that impacts the "will they/won't they" vibe between Rachel and Dana.
The only character that didn't really get much attention in this episode was CW Longbottom, but his season 1 conflict was already resolved before this episode. Hopefully there are more varied storylines with him in Mythic Quest season 2, if it materializes.
Finally, we'd be remiss if we didn't point out the brilliant Episode 5: A Dark Quiet Death callback in this episode. We learn that the pole where Bean engraved "Doc + Bean" is actually in Ian's office, and he later engraved his own name on it. When he made Poppy co-Creative Director, he had her engrave her name in the pole as well. Doc and Bean were so great in Episode 5, so hopefully they pop up in some capacity in season 2 as well.
Overall, Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet is one of the best reasons to subscribe to Apple TV+. The first half of season 1 struggled a bit with the comedy, but the more serious episodes all hit it out of the park. Episode 5 is especially good, but Episodes 8 and 9 were also great television. One's enjoyment of the show may largely depend on how much they know about the video game industry, but there's enough here that even more casual observers will come away amused.
Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet is available to stream now, exclusively on Apple TV+.