Episode 7 – Black Butler: Emerald Witch Arc

There’s a reason we learned about Finny’s past in this season. A creation of deranged scientists, Finny’s life in the underground laboratory shares some imagery with both Sieglinde’s magic workshop and the mysterious dungeon where Ciel was held in his past, and all three places and events seem to have been in service of some nebulous “advancement.” Finny is a superhuman, Sieglinde is creating spells for beleaguered werewolves and witches, and Ciel is to be a sacrifice to summon a demon. Blending science fiction and fantasy, all three young people’s pasts and presents are involved in something dark and arcane, but it is Sieglinde’s that truly brings Finny’s science fiction and Ciel’s fantasy together.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology,” wrote Arthur C. Clarke, “is indistinguishable from magic.” And what better way to hide a terrible truth from a captive little girl than to call upon folklore and call science “magic?” Sieglinde has believed her entire life that she’s a witch, that her feet had to be bound and broken in service of her people, the witches and werewolves, and that she was duty-bound to create a “miasma” to enable them to live in peace. Seen from her perspective, it’s a lovely fairy story, casting Sieglinde as the heroine who will save everyone.

But the truth, as we learn this week, isn’t anything so pretty. There are no werewolves, just men in masks; no witches but women in old-fashioned dress. Sieglinde doesn’t owe anything to an ancestral witch; she’s a captive being forced to synthesize dangerous chemical weapons. It’s not miasma she’s brewing, but something very similar to mustard gas.

There’s something particularly reprehensible about trapping a child and telling her tales to make her create weapons of mass destruction. Sieglinde must have suspected at least a little that she was a captive, at least after Wolfram tells her this week that she’s never allowed to leave the village. And make no mistake, they did trap her: that foot-binding ceremony isn’t about paying homage to an ancestor, it’s about making sure that there’s no way she can ever leave. They’ve crippled a child for their goals, and that is disgusting. Wolfram and the other unmasked“wolf” do seem to genuinely care for Sieglinde (which is more than we can say about the village elder), but that doesn’t mean they’re any less complicit. Even Sebastian is aghast when he realizes what’s going on, and if you’ve horrified a demon with your cruelty, then you’re pretty damn irredeemable.

Even before we get to the horrible reveal, this episode makes some stellar visual choices. Wolfram’s body language screams about his discomfort, but what really works is the slow transition from fantasy to science fiction. When Ciel and Sebastian turn up at Sieglinde’s window, it’s like a scene from Peter Pan, Peter (and Tink?) coming to take Sieglinde away to Never Never Land, her ultimate fantasy. When Sieglinde collapses, all of a sudden, it’s clear that the werewolves are wearing clothing – something that wasn’t noticeable before. The reveal that beneath the witch’s altar is a lever exposing another elevator continues the slide towards the modern, werewolf-free age, and then we’re slammed into it headfirst when Ciel discovers the radar room.

Radar wasn’t developed until 1935, and mustard gas is primarily known as a weapon of the First World War, 1914-1918. So obviously we’re mixing periods here in service of a point. But isn’t it interesting that Sebastian says that beyond the door lies “the real” outside world? Sieglinde has been living in a false 15th century for her entire life, but maybe Ciel and Sebastian have been living in their version of reality as well. Certainly, this series as a whole has explored Hamlet’s old saw about more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. I don’t mean to suggest that the entire 19th-century world the story takes place in is a closed world inside a larger, modern one, because that would be a bit much even for Black Butler. But to a world that’s never known the horrors of chemical warfare, it might feel that way. Here’s hoping Sebastian can stop the elder and the werewolves from blowing that door wide open.

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Black Butler: Emerald Witch Arc is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.