Spy×Family Season 3

Episode 41

We rarely get to hear much of Handler's side of the story. That does make sense – even in terms of side characters, she's in the background, which, as a spymaster, is precisely where she ought to be if she's going to do her job. She's low-key terrifying in Loid's memories, but is mostly seen behind her desk or behind the scenes otherwise. That's why it always feels like a treat when we get an episode focused on her, and this week, we're that lucky.

I don't know that “lucky” is a word she would use, though. Training baby spies is not an easy feat, and although we know she's very, very good at it (see: Twilight), it's also like pulling teeth. Case in point is her current protégé, a young man who's been with WISE for two years and is probably around the same age Loid was when he started – late teens or early twenties. He's also astoundingly gullible for a man of intelligence, which I'd pooh-pooh more if I hadn't watched my dad, a very smart man who started in advertising, fall for ads more times than is strictly good for him. Just because you work in a field doesn't mean you can avoid all the traps…

The name of the trap this time is “propaganda,” and like most wartime materials, it's aimed at fomenting dissent to make peace a less attainable goal. In the case of this episode, it's a targeted smear campaign against an opera singer attempting to bring East and West together…or is the idea that he's a good guy a whitewashing campaign designed to make him look better to fulfill his stated mission? Don't ask the new guy, because he falls for every single line the news outlets print…even the ones Handler finagles in an attempt at damage control. Watching her grow more and more exhausted while this guy bounces around the office like an over-caffeinated teenager really drives home the point that even if she's not out in the field, she's doing serious hard work. She's also really deadly with an improvised whip.

Her earnest yet tired attempts at raising the next batch of spies are a good foil for the second half of the episode, which pairs Anya with Henderson. Like Handler, he's trying very hard to teach his students, but unlike her, he's really not sure how to go about it. That goes double for Anya, who's unlike most of the other kids at Eden – if only because she's at least a year younger than they are. (And, you know, the telepathy thing.) Both Anya and Henderson try to say what they think the other wants or needs to hear, but they both also keep missing the mark. All of Henderson's well-meaning lectures about being a good student go right out of Anya's head the minute “tea snacks” are mentioned, and her attempts at sounding mature head in the opposite direction. Despite some great Anya faces, it's not as funny as this series can be, although it still does move things towards Henderson's past, which we'll get later on. (I can't decide if it'll be at the end of this season; I hope so, because that'd be some great bookending.)

More to the point, Anya is growing up in a totally different world than any of the adults around her. Handler calls the assassin in the first half “a ghost of the war,” meaning that he's still stuck in his days on the battlefield. That's a fair assessment, but I'd argue that all of the adults in this series are ghosts of the war. We don't know what drove Handler to espionage or Henderson to education, but they're both conscious of what happened in the past – and Handler's working to prevent it from happening again in the future. Loid is still bound by his memories, too, and although Yor is much less mired in it, she, too, is still actively carrying out killing work – and Yuri's certainly involved in what could be seen as part of the war machine. Anya knows about all of this, but like her conversation with Henderson, she doesn't understand it. That's good; she shouldn't have to. But it makes her a direct foil for all of the adults around her, and even for the kids like Damian, who have unhappy childhoods.

Does SPY x FAMILY sometimes feel like it focuses on the “family” bits to the exclusion of the “spy” elements? Sure. But as these last three episodes have shown, that may be the point.

Rating:

Spy×Family Season 3 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.