This episode was more straightforward than most Re:Zero episodes, but there were still some very interesting details in it, including Subaru honouring a fallen foe and a very important detail regarding Petelgeuse.
The episode opens with Emilia rushing to the chapel where the wives are, and it flashes back to Subaru whispering to her that the key to defeating Regulus lies with his wives and that they are the key to his little kingdom. Upon arrival, Emilia pleads to Regulus’s wives that they’re going to defeat Regulus but that they’ll need all of their help. Given Emilia knows that the wives have been beaten down, she acknowledges that she knows winning or losing a fight isn’t what determines who’s in the right and indicates if she loses here that she knows Regulus will trample over something precious to her. Emilia looked across the room to see if anybody reacted, and then Wife Number 184 asked if that precious thing is her life? Wife Number 184 then replies that for them life is really are there is after Emilia suggested there was more to life than just life being precious and that they don’t dare wish for anything more, showing just how fearful they are of Regulus. Emilia then changes her approach and asks for Wife Number 184’s name, saying that she doesn’t know anything about her, so it was selfish of her to ask for a favour, which noticeably affected Wife Number 184 if you had a look at her eyes. But still, Wife Number 184 responds that she has nothing further to say to Emilia as she is not even their husband’s bride anymore, so she’s different from them, which prompts Emilia to say that she’s a half-elf since she wants the wives to know that she has faced hardships even if their circumstances are different, sharing something they did have in common with their like of daisukiyaki. When pressed about what she’s trying to say, Emilia responds that they’re different, and that’s fine, again asking for Wife Number 184’s name and sharing that her name’s Emilia and that she’s different from them in many ways but is confident she shares things in common with them as well, which is a good way to try to connect with someone and build bridges with them. When Emilia puts it out there that she wants to help them, Wife Number 184 responds in frustration about why Emilia would go to the trouble of making them feel human after all this given that as long as they keep him satisfied, he won’t kill them, which is what they have believed all this time is the way they should be approaching things, prompting her to ask Emilia just what she even knows about them. Emilia responds confidently that she knows that they’re kind, that they’ve been trying their hardest, and that they’re all crying for help, saying everything about Wife Number 184 was pleading, “Help me”, both through her eyes and voice, so she’ll help them, but first they must allow themselves to be saved. It just shows how much kindness and compassion that Emilia had that she could soften Wife Number 184 like this.
This leads to Wife Number 184 asking if there are any of them among Regulus’s wives that love their husband, and none of them do, with most of them having disparaging things to say about Regulus, and Wife Number 184 finally reveals that her name is Sylphy and says that they all hate Regulus’s guts but didn’t have the courage to speak out and proclaims that they will help Emilia after all the effort she put into understanding their plight. After an offscreen talk in which Emilia explained the situation, some of Regulus’s wives questioned whether they really are the key to his kingdom as they doubt he’d entrust something like that to them, and when they put it out there that she may be mistaken, Emilia has full confidence that Subaru is right on matters such as this. Emilia then draws out one of her lesser spirits, which goes though Sylphy’s body, and that gives her the idea to listen to Sylphy’s heartbeat, which confirmed the existence of a second heart belonging to Regulus that he affixes to those he considers his brides. It then flashes back to Regulus and Subaru, who underestimates Subaru so badly that when Subaru reveals he knows that he is using his brides as his Authority, Regulus reveals that he has total confidence about the situation as even if his wives wanted to betray him, they’d have to stop the hearts of all his wives to defeat him. Clearly, Regulus is toying with Subaru since physical domination is not enough, and he wants Subaru despairing before he kills him.
Back to Emilia and the wives, Sylphy is emotional after having learned what Emilia found out, and she reached for a piece of glass thinking that killing herself is the only way to defeat Regulus since their hearts need to be stopped. She scraped herself thinking that that wound is proof of her freedom, and when Emilia posits that there must be another way as otherwise Regulus would have even more victims, Sylphy responds that there’s no way he’d give them an out as the only one Regulus is capable of loving is himself, and the rest of the wives also pick up shards of glass with the intent of killing themselves, leaving Emilia to think quickly to freeze them, saying that she can stop all their pulses as she herself had the experience of having been frozen.
At the same time that was happening, Subaru had gotten up and stopped pretending he was close to death, taunting Regulus about how he’d be the type to monologue against a dying opponent, which infuriated Regulus and got him attacking Subaru again with him dodging the attacks since Regulus just throws attacks straight at him with no regard for strategy. Subaru and Regulus then see that Emilia has frozen the chapel, and Regulus starts freaking out how normal humans wouldn’t do something like taking the lives of all those innocent brides, and Emilia having arrived, launches an attack on him, telling him to consider that the divorce paperwork from all his wives. Regulus then breaks free from the ice and starts taunting them as his Authority is still working as normal, so he thinks Emilia may have miscounted the number of lives she took or something, but it was really that Emilia had Regulus’s heart in her own chest since he still considers her a bride with all his yapping about not suitable for a bride and such in a previous episode, which shows he still considers her one of them. Regulus still thinks nothing of the situation and believes that Emilia and Subaru have checkmated themselves, and he then taunts Subaru, suggesting that he kill Emilia now to see whether his heart will have anywhere else to go. Emilia then makes an ice blade, which gives Subaru the idea that Emilia is going to kill herself, but he was probably mistaken, and she was planning to freeze herself as well, which is likely why she said, “But”, before Subaru interrupted her. Subaru was completely out of ideas, but then Regulus continues taunting him, saying he recognizes Subaru as the one who made the broadcast about having killed a Sin Archbishop and that killing a failure like that doesn’t mean he could kill him, and Subaru finally gets the idea after thinking back about how the shadow hands could phase through objects that the issue of Regulus’s heart will be solved by using Invisible Providence on Regulus’s heart. It appears he called it Unseen Hand this time to honour Petelgeuse as a worthy opponent given how much suffering he had put him through instead of disrespecting him as Regulus does given he has called it Invisible Providence every other time before this.
Regarding why Emilia said so that’s where you were, Geuse, when Subaru used his Authority of Sloth, we know Subaru’s entire body resets when he dies, so this means the soul is the seat of memories in Re:Zero. Given Satella can read Subaru’s mind and know whether he intends to reveal Return By Death or that he has lived more than one life, perhaps it indicates that Satella’s soul is the vicinity of Subaru’s soul, and that is how she reads his mind due to close proximity.
We’ve seen in Episode 8 in Season 1 when Puck used Shamak on Subaru that Subaru saw himself in a dark world where Satella was grabbing his heart, which was a memory from when he tried to reveal RBD to Emilia. You have to pause to see this as it doesn’t linger on this for long. Episode 20 also had Satella whisper “Aishiteru” to Subaru when he tried to reveal Return by Death, and that was also likely ’cause she froze the time of the world and pulled Subaru’s soul to where hers was so that she could whisper that to him. Satella being able to his read Subaru’s mind and thoughts suggests that her soul might currently exist in a pocket dimension in the vicinity of Subaru’s soul, and the closeness of their souls is what allows her to do that and also pull him into another dimension.
So if my hypothesis is correct, Petelgeuse’s soul may be currently in this dark world/dimension, and that is how Emilia sensed his presence, not ’cause she recognized Subaru’s Authority to be Geuse’s. This indicates Petelgeuse didn’t completely die and that his soul is where Satella is in the pocket dimension within the vicinity of Subaru’s soul. This explains why Sirius was convinced that Petelgeuse had returned after Subaru used Invisible Providence in Episode 53, and it’s ’cause, like Emilia, she also felt Petelgeuse’s presence. I would never have guessed that that moment in Episode 53 was foreshadowing, but I guess this is Re:Zero, and you can’t rule out something like that being foreshadowing. I would never have thought that Petelgeuse would actually get his wish to be with Satella after he was defeated. I’m glad he got a chance to be happy after he was driven insane by Pandora.
Anyway, as Regulus yaps, he doesn’t realize that his feet are wet, and Emilia starts attacking him, leading him to ask what they’ve done to his Authority of Greed as it’s clear Crunchyroll botched the translation with its text asking why they have the Authority of Greed. Subaru then responded that Regulus got counterattacked by an enemy he took too lightly, which shows he indeed was showing respect to Petelgeuse on this occasion by calling it the Unseen Hand instead of Invisible Providence since he got the inspiration to use his Authority on this occasion ’cause of Petelgeuse. Emilia then gives Regulus 53 punches for all of the wives that suffered under him, and then when she launched an Al Huma on behalf of herself, it was revealed he can still use his Authority by stopping his own heart temporarily to maintain some invincibility like before but with a time limit. The reason he was completely invulnerable before was that since his heart was gone from his body there was no need to stop it since it was if he had no heart in the first place.
A battered Regulus then suggests that Emilia and Subaru are playing unfair by ganging up on him. He then spouts a whole bunch of contradictions, which makes Emilia pity him, and as Subaru sees Reinhard descending from the sky, he suggests Regulus can get the 1-on-1 fight he wishes. Reinhard then arrives in fiery fashion while any normal human would’ve died from re-entering the atmosphere like he did. Regulus messed up royally by sending Reinhard to the moon instead of outward to the stars since that allowed him to come back. Reinhard then sends Regulus up into the sky, and Regulus then does more of his unhinged rants and then pictures in his head all his wives laughing at him in their final moments as an act of resistance to him, showing what a truly pathetic man he is, before Reinhard sends him down to a pool of water at ground level, breaking the ground and resulting in a vertical shaft being made as Regulus uses his Authority to prevent him from dying from being crushed by the impact of the rocks. As the water starts filling the shaft, he remembers that the Wife Number 79 position was originally meant for someone else and that Emilia was the one Fortuna and Pelgeuse adored. He said that the thought of Emilia getting to avenge them makes him want to vomit. Emilia can’t quite put where she has seen Regulus before as she is sure she has before, which she also thought in Episode 51. Regulus then intermittently uses his Authority to avoid drowning quickly, and this guy just never stops talking/thinking, and then finally the colour from his eyes fades, and he dies.
Previously, I put it out there that the reason Emilia might not remember Regulus was due to trauma and also ’cause she actually saw very little of the fight with Regulus in the first Sanctuary trial, and given she could remember Fortuna dying by Petelgeuse’s hand, it probably wasn’t due to trauma but that she saw so little of Regulus and also ’cause what little she saw of Regulus was when he was with Pandora, and given Pandora erased herself from Emilia’s memories, that affected what little she remembered of Regulus although she still subconsciously recognized him.
At the end of the episode, Emilia unfreezes all the wives she put in suspended animation, and she said she hopes everyone’s all right with Subaru remarking that’s what Reinhard is for. It then flashes to the Wilhelm and Theresia and Garfiel and Kurgan fight with Garfiel emerging out of the black mass in his beast form, so now we know what the focus of the next episode will be.
It’ll be interesting to see how that fight goes, and I very much look forward to seeing next week’s episode. I thought it was satisfying seeing a guy as terrible as Regulus get his just deserts and how Emilia won over the wives, and I’m curious how this Petelgeuse reveal will be relevant in the future. If you have anything to add, feel free to do so.