I’m anicritic, and Re:zero was the first anime that got me feeling passionate enough to write about on other bloggers’ comment sections. I like thinking about how scenes connect with previous ones and enjoy diving into characters’ minds to interpret what scenes actually mean and whether there is more underneath the surface of what is immediately presented, and since Re:zero is a series with tons of small details (There is not a single filler moment in this series), hints of future events, and callbacks to previous character and plot moments, that makes it the perfect show for me to cover. As such, I won’t be covering everything in this premiere but just what interests me most and details I believe will need to be remembered. I’ll also be sharing my perspective on a number of things with a trauma-informed perspective since I forgot about the woman I wanted to marry for most of my life for a sustained period of time due to my trauma, which I believe is heavily relevant to this episode and perhaps the season in general.
After Joshua delivered his message to the Emilia camp, Subaru makes a good point that he’d hate to owe a debt to Anastasia knowing she’s a very shrewd businesswoman. Emilia mentions that Priestella would be underwater when it rains without the tall walls and watergates that control the water level, prompting Subaru to think of it more as a water prison. I can tell at this point that Crunchyroll’s translation is really bad at this point despite not knowing Japanese since the conversation there was mangled with Emilia saying that the city would be underwater when it rains, which cannot be true once you’ve seen how the city is set up. Given that once they arrive at Priestella Subaru again complains that he gets the sense that it’s a prison and Beatrice notes that the city was designed to be a trap, it’s clear that the setup of this arc involves Priestella being used as a trap as otherwise they wouldn’t be so heavy-handed about it.
Although Sirius’s whole introduction was the highlight of the episode for most fans of Re:zero, what most interested me was how Garfiel was written this episode. As we know from the Sanctuary Arc, Garfiel was proud to be the strongest person there and the defender of the Sanctuary. Here he saw just how much weaker he was compared to Reinhard, not to mention Reinhard unintentionally pissing Garf off by calling him impressive for his age, which rubbed more salt in the wound. Later on in the episode, Garfiel informs Subaru that he’s taking a step outside since he’s unhappy about not being the strongest. When outside, he has hallucinations of Elsa due to having killed her and also ’cause he came close to dying against her. And it is fantastic writing for Garfiel to be written like this since he clearly demonstrated a fear of death in his first season. I have to hand it to Tappei for being a master of writing his characters to be consistent with what came before. Given Garfiel originally stayed in the Sanctuary ’cause he became scared of the outside world due to seeing that his mother’s carriage had been caught in a landslide, it was clear he had a huge fear of death. This is further backed by how Garfiel backed off after Subaru said that he knows hell and looked at Subaru’s eyes, which shows Garfiel believed that that is indeed the case, a callback to Season 1 Episode 12 when Wilhelm said that Subaru’s eyes indicate that Subaru is well-versed with death. So it is very fitting that Garfiel, who fears death, is struggling with seeing hallucinations of Elsa when she is long dead since it was probably his first kill, which was traumatizing for him. If you’re confused about Garfiel showing no visible signs of being bothered by his killing of Elsa or his stoic behaviour in the Breaktime episode following that in Season 2 telling Maylie that it’s okay to cry, trauma does not always happen close to instantly and can take months to manifest.
In Episode 48 (Episode 24 of Season 2) Garfiel, while fighting Elsa, eventually got a lucky break when the ceiling fell down on Maylie, which distracted Elsa, allowing him to savagely bite into Elsa’s neck repeatedly and do enough damage to stop her regeneration, allowing him to deal the finishing blow. Garfiel who took pride in being the strongest of the Sanctuary, likely had some trauma over defeating Elsa in this way since it took Elsa being distracted rather than him winning a pure man to woman fight. The reality likely dawned on him that he wouldn’t have won a fair fight, leading to him thinking he isn’t the strongest, and hence, weak as the hallucination of Elsa said. If Garfiel only had these hallucinations rarely, he will likely have them more often now that Reinhard has shown how much he outclasses him. Garfiel wants to be the strongest ’cause he fears death and ’cause he’s a young teenager and who hasn’t developed a healthy self-esteem yet. Clearly from Subaru’s struggles with RBD and now Garfiel, Tappei has shown he has a very nuanced view of death with Garfiel in having both have trauma for killing Elsa and also being reminded of his mortality due to the circumstances of his victory over her, and this should be applauded.
I have also long believed that Episodes 12 and 13 contrasted Crusch and Priscilla’s approach to acquiring power with the context gleaned from Episode 16, and Episode 51 has given what I believe is more ammunition to support this thought. Before I bring up the relevant contrasts, I first need to state outright that I believe Priscilla is a lot less whimsical than she lets on. Every bit of Priscilla’s interaction with Subaru in Episode 16 was well thought out and cannot be simplified to Priscilla being a creature of her emotions or that she was looking for entertainment. On a lot of occasions Priscilla says that it’s for her entertainment or that it’s amusing, I suspect she just doesn’t want the people involved to know what she’s really thinking. You can’t always trust what a character says at face value.
This is backed by Priscilla calling Subaru her appa handler to Marcos and then following through with that by calling Subaru her manservant to Emilia. This sequence of actions shows that Priscilla saw significant value in Subaru after he dared to defy her and try to protect her anyway despite her needing no such assistance and how he taught her that appas have red skin, even considering him in some extent part of her camp due to some possessiveness.
Priscilla was notably the only Royal Selection candidate in Arc 3 to give Subaru help in the way of pointers after his outburst at the castle without asking for anything of monetary or strategic value in return. When she said that she appreciates Subaru’s desperation but that Subaru had not thought things through with how his actions amounted to cornering his ally, benefiting his enemy, and losing all control in the process, she basically straight up told Subaru that his actions weren’t helping Emilia and were unbecoming.
She specifically said that Subaru was better off dying for using the sort of approach he was using. Contrast this with Crusch wanting Emilia to withdraw from the Royal Selection as compensation for helping out and Anastasia wanting to see what sort of information she could learn from Subaru in his vulnerable state, Priscilla was basically being somewhat selfless and acting out of the goodness of her heart, however shocking that may be.
Priscilla basically gave Subaru a chance to redeem himself in her eyes after his outburst at the castle in Episode 16. That’s why she told him that his desperation wasn’t helping Emilia and then immediately posed a situation to him that would require for him to be disgustingly desperate with her asking for him to lick her foot. She was basically hoping for him to pass a test in which she had already clearly given him pointers, and Subaru still failed miserably, which Priscilla most likely saw as being extremely disgraceful after all the effort she put in to make the interaction favourable for him with her hinting at what she actually wanted to see from him.
I believe the reason Priscilla decided that SHE would strike down any camp Subaru was a part of, not that she would have any camp he was a part of be struck down, is that he did something that insulted her to the core, and for someone as extremely proud and confident in herself to the extreme as Priscilla is, it would be to show that she was wrong about her womanly instincts in some way, and that would be that Subaru showed that he was pathetic and not worth her time after she would go as far as to try and make Emilia jealous by grabbing his arm and suggesting that Subaru was her (Priscilla’s) manservant at the Royal Palace. Showing that she was wrong to think more of Subaru was shameful to her, so much that she beat the hell out of him, lectured him, and threatened him to strike down any camp he was a part of.
Her wanting to strike down any camp he is a part of shows she wants Subaru to be humiliated to the extreme because it was a personal humiliation for her that she misjudged Subaru, and for a guy who is struggling through his way in the world and acts as a white knight, what greater shame could he face than to have his ambitions be thwarted by Priscilla, the one who had him on his knees and asked him to savour the humiliation of licking her foot, every time he tried to make something of himself? It would be the ultimate humiliation.
This interpretation is backed by Priscilla saying, “Your careless behavior and attitude have lead me to that decision!” It shows that she thought that Subaru would think over the reason for that particular interaction leading to the way it did and that she expected a better response from him. I do note that Priscilla was likely also angry because Subaru abandoned his pride, and for someone who values her pride so much, seeing Subaru lower himself to that level probably disgusted her, but I believe the main source of her anger that bordered on rage was a sense of humiliation due to her pride being wounded, leading to her feeling significant shame.
If Subaru was just a little ant or clown to her, she would not have reacted the way she did in as deciding to strike down any camp he is a part of is far too punishing for just being disgusted at Subaru’s actions. Priscilla decided to personally see to Subaru’s attempts at achieving manhood in the future be denied, castrating him at every turn, most likely as a reminder to herself not to make the same mistake again in misjudging a man to avoid a similarly shameful moment from happening again.
In personally striking down any camp Subaru is a part of, Priscilla also gives Subaru a chance to redeem himself by defeating her, which would prove she was right that he is a man of significant worth. Any way the future goes if she carries out this threat to strike down any camp Subaru is a part of is thus a win for her no matter what the outcomes is, which shows Priscilla had very carefully thought out the entire interaction with Subaru, from her using her fan to hide her lips to hurling Subaru to the door so that Al could take him away, so it had nothing to do with entertainment but was meant to be a test for Subaru, and she had already thought about what she’d say if he failed it.
Given Priscilla had planned out the entire interaction with Subaru in Episode 16, it goes to show that is possibly the case in other scenarios too, not just that one moment. I’ll get back to this point later.
Crusch notably indicated in Episode 12 that she thought that the Royal Selection candidates for there at the castle for a drinking party where they get to know each other before they face each other as rivals. Although she was mistaken ’cause Felix knows how to get around her Divine Protection, I believe it still shows that Crusch is the type to value camaraderie due to how hyped up she sounded about it.
In contrast, Priscilla, if I am right about her being a lot less whimsical than she lets on, specifically is used to or grew up using a divide-and-conquer strategy. Emilia faces tons of discrimination for her half-elf heritage, so taking a shot at her by asking Emilia if she is sorry for being born would play well with a lot of the nobles and even much of Lugunica’s Imperial Knights since kids are raised on folktales of the horrifying Witch of Envy even if Priscilla does not necessarily have a hatred for demihumans and specifically half-elves herself. I’m not saying that Priscilla does or doesn’t fear half-elves since I genuinely don’t know but that there may have been a point to her hurtful words to Emilia.
Even with Priscilla’s interaction with Felt when the former moved to ‘strike’ the latter might not have been ’cause Priscilla lost control of her emotions. Priscilla heard very well that the nobles thought it was an insult that the knights brought a girl from the slums to participate in the Royal Selection with all the talk of her lack of grace and education. Priscilla knew full well that with Reinhard around that she would be unable to commit actual violence, especially towards Felt, and I believe she did what she did to look better in front of the nobles since many of them would like to strike Felt as well for daring to be there even though it wasn’t her own choice to be present. Thus, I believe Episodes 12 and 13 demonstrated two contrasting styles for attaining power, Crusch’s camaraderie and Priscilla’s divide-and-conquer strategy.
As for Episode 51, Season 3’s premiere, Priscilla brought out Heinkel to spoil a family reunion. She may have said that it’s amusing to do so, but I again put it out there that she just doesn’t want people to know what she’s really thinking. In all likelihood, Priscilla brought Heinkel to the gathering ’cause she knows that if the Astrea house were to be united in favour of one candidate that that candidate would be the favourite to win the Royal Selection. That would be why she sought to prevent Reinhard and Wilhelm from making up by allowing Heinkel to take a piss and ruin things for Reinhard and Wilhelm, which is continuing her divide-and-conquer strategy. I don’t believe that she was really going to strike Heinkel with the Yang sword, and that it was performative to prevent people from realizing what sort of person she actually is.
As for Crusch’s side of things, she implied in the premiere of Season 3 that the reason the Emilia camp was even invited to Priestella by Anastasia was ’cause Crusch knew how much Subaru cares about Rem and personally ensured that Anastasia invited the Emilia camp to the Watergate City. Crusch cares very much about camaraderie and building good will, and that is one of the reasons she’s my favourite character in Re:zero. I fully believe Episode 51 also contrasted Crusch and Priscilla’s approaches, much like I propose was the case for Episodes 12 and 13. Earlier on in the episode before Subaru left the mansion, we saw him talk to Rem even though she couldn’t hear a thing he said due to her being in suspended animation, so the episode did well to remind viewers how much Rem means to Subaru.
I have more to say about Priscilla, but now I’m going to bring up some of my own background. When I was in 6th grade, the girl who was a few years younger than me I had wanted to marry since I first met her at my school’s open house said that her family was moving away to a different province. The conversation eventually went to her discussing her university plans since she had planned it out from a young age with help from her mom. She suggested that we meet up again at a specific university, which led to me asking her if we’d get married in university. It’s unbelievable that I would say something like that now, and I wonder how I ever had the courage to do that as a young boy. Anyway, long story short, I forgot that girl’s face over the years even though she was so dear to me. I decided to go to university, not ’cause I had a strong desire for a particular career but ’cause I wanted to meet her again even though I’m not sure how that’d even happen since I no longer remembered her face. I followed a friend into Engineering even though I didn’t have an interest in it, and of course I didn’t do well since I was unmotivated and hadn’t picked up good study habits since school had come easy to me up until that point. At the first sign of struggle when it was clear I was not going to pass the second semester, I decided to drop out since I didn’t want to impact my GPA too badly. As I had it relatively easy up until then, my first schooling failure led to me feeling shame, and I felt I didn’t want that girl I fancied to know about that failure since it’d be ugly. Before I dropped out, I reasoned that I would never see her again since I couldn’t even remember her face, so it made it easier for me to do so. I wanted to think about this failure as little as possible instead of processing it like a normal healthy person, so I thought to myself that I’d forget as much of this incident and that university as possible and even transfer to a different university. As a result, I had some self-afflicted trauma about my worth as a person, and that trauma led to me repressing my memories of that girl since that university was the last tie to her in my memories since I could no longer remember her face, meaning that forgetting about as much as of that experience possible cut away the last connection to her in my mind.
At that different university I took a number of psychology courses, and I learned that shame is one of the most common emotions that can lead to memories being repressed although I didn’t come to realize that my own memories had been repressed until years later. Years later, I met that woman again at my workplace where I was a star employee. I didn’t recognize her since I had 0 recollection of her face even before I had repressed my memories. I was immediately drawn to her although after years of social isolation I couldn’t even have a proper conversation with her. Due to pent up unaddressed emotions I felt regarding her in my subconscious and my conscious mind, I eventually had a mental health crisis and ended up in the psych ward. After spending time there, one of the student nurses made me think back to my grade school days, and I was able to unlock my repressed memories of that woman, realizing that she was the same person from my youth. My point is that deep shame can cause one to repress your memories, and I will now get back to writing about Priscilla.
I know it might be a tough sell since Episode 16 is just one scene from a character that has only showed up in 3 episodes prior to Season 3, but Priscilla’s outrage along with her body language during the scene which included her playing with her hair as well as uncrossing and crossing her legs before she approached Subaru says to me that she thought of Subaru as being more than just a clown or jester and as someone she will make herself presentable for by showing off her feminine features. If that’s the case, perhaps her approaching Subaru with her fan actually doubled as a romantic overture alongside a test of Subaru’s dignity, and that scenario would mean that Subaru’s best response would be to say something along the lines of “Wait a minute. You really want me to lick your feet? I’d say somebody has a foot fetish.” It would be a clever way to turn the tables on Priscilla and take away the inordinate power she had over Subaru during this interaction by reframing the situation as being something Priscilla so desperately wants.
While it may not matter to Subaru whether or not Priscilla was attempting to demonstrate a power move against Emilia when she declared him as her manservant, what matters is Priscilla’s intent. If that was what she intended, Subaru’s loudly declaring himself to be Emilia’s knight at the Royal Selection would be seen as a rejection of her romantic overture. Depending on how badly she was impacted by this perceived rejection, there are 2 ways I suppose she was most likely to respond based on her always behaving as if she’s the most important woman/person in the world:
- Priscilla will downplay Subaru’s achievements the next time they meet and possibly in the future as well as a way to make Subaru seem less of a catch so that it doesn’t seem that she missed out on much by being rejected by him since she felt so much shame about misjudging Subaru. This would be her overcompensating for her initial impression of him being soured by the horribly embarrassing outburst at the castle so as to preserve her ego by telling herself that Subaru was not really worth it. An extreme case of this would be pretending that she doesn’t even remember Subaru so as to outwardly project that Subaru isn’t worth remembering as a means of saving face for the perceived rejection regardless of Subaru not caring about or never having perceived that he rejected her in Episode 12.
- Priscilla was affected so badly by Subaru’s humiliating display at the castle, which called into question her initial good impression of him as a potential lover, that she completely forgets memories related to that event due to the overwhelming shame she felt over her instincts as a woman leading to her settling on Subaru, meaning she forgets all memories about having met Subaru on that day. This is referred to as repression in psychology. Priscilla unconsciously pushes away thoughts about Subaru because of how much that incident traumatized her since it caused her to see that she had made a horrible mistake in judging Subaru to be a potential lover, which calls into question her absolute faith in her own judgement. Her mind thus represses the thoughts to preserve her ego. She would think about his outburst over and over until she subconsciously represses memories of him to get rid of the negative feelings she felt about how Subaru defied her expectations and turned out to be a complete and total loser. In this scenario, Priscilla was negatively impacted by Subaru’s outburst even moreso than Emilia herself despite how shocking that might be.
And after encountering Subaru again after forgetting him, she could still pretend to not remember him after she has actually recovered her memories to distance herself from him because his horrible outburst at the castle was still weighing on her and lowered his perceived value to her so she has to save face after Subaru so loudly declared himself to be Emilia’s knight after Priscilla introduced Subaru to Marcos as her appa handler and called Subaru her manservant to Emilia, rejecting her (Priscilla) so boldly in the process in favour of a silver-haired half elf who is the spitting image of Satella, which would be considered the ultimate rejection. If Subaru is a complete and utter loser, and he chose someone who looks like the biggest monster that has ever existed in that world over Priscilla, then that makes Priscilla the loser to end all losers by association, and she can’t have that, so she has to cope even harder by saying that she can’t remember Subaru until her perceived value of him is great enough that the perceived rejection is not so bad anymore because Subaru has become just too great of a catch.
I know some people will point to Al saying to Priscilla that she loves watching wicked beasts torment weak creatures and her affirming that she does love that as well as well as Episode 25’s title being “That’s All This Story Is About” and Priscilla’s claim of bringing Subaru along as entertainment as being things that directly refute my analysis, but I cannot believe that she took pleasure in watching Subaru get emasculated and was actually horrified. Her extreme reaction in Episode 16 that had her being outraged that Subaru didn’t think clearly about why she made the request for him to lick her feet and declare that she would strike down any camp he belonged to doesn’t jive with assertions that Priscilla thought of him as some lowly peon. If he was some gnat to her, she would not have been so outraged that she threatened to strike down any camp he was a part of, which is effectively castrating him and denying him in all his efforts to achieve manhood. And what’s more is that she said that SHE would strike down any camp he was a part of, not that she would have any camp he was part of be struck down. She made it clear that it was something she would do personally, which shows how much of an affront Subaru’s behaviour was to her. The purpose of personally striking down any camp Subaru is three-fold, to deliver him the utmost humiliation, to remind herself not to make the same mistake in wrongly choosing a man again, and to give Subaru a chance to defeat her, proving that her initial impression of him was right all along.
I personally lean towards Priscilla having genuinely forgot Subaru due to trauma due to my own experience, and now I’ll share how this is relevant to the Emilia situation. As we know from Season 3’s premiere, Emilia didn’t recognize Regulus even though she thought he seemed familiar. I’ve seen some casual Re:zero watchers say it makes no sense for Emilia to forget Regulus and that it was poor writing since she saw him attack Petelgeuse when she was younger, but given how traumatic that incident was for her, she could also have repressed some of her memories, especially since Regulus was only a small part of young Emilia’s memories with most of what was shown of Regulus being from the 1st Sanctuary trial. And that is before going into the entire context of Season 2. In Season 2, Puck broke his contract with Emilia so that she could regain access to her memories, allowing her to successfully take the trials, and it came with a flood of memories since her memories of her actual past had been sealed away at the time. Emilia notably wondered whether she is even the same person after getting them back, so she was having an identity crisis. The triple whammy of the trauma from her memories, her having an identity crisis, and Regulus’s relative insignificance in her memories since it was Pandora that caused her to lose everything likely all contributed to her not remembering Regulus. It is not poor writing but something that can feasibly happen given I forgot the one most dear to me, so why wouldn’t Emilia forget someone who wasn’t a big part of her life since she only saw him briefly attack Petelgeuse given that a year had passed with probably nothing violent happening during that time that could bring that incident to mind?
As an aside, during the scene when Subaru remarked that one of the canals was flowing in the other direction, and Emilia pointed out that a control tower that controls the flow of water throughout the city (probably not filler since Re:zero has no filler), it was revealed that both Garfiel and Subaru have a fear or perhaps trauma of masses of water although Garfiel was able to overcome that when he saved a group of kids without even thinking about it. This will likely seriously hinder Subaru and perhaps Garfiel as well as Subaru works to try to bring everybody to a good end this arc. One of the kids Garf saved named Fred has an older sister named Rafiel, and their mother is no other than the mother he thought was long dead given her carriage had been caught in a landslide. This should be an interesting development although the aftermath of that was skipped, so we viewers don’t know what happened, but this is surely not the last we’ve seen of this plot point, and it looks like Garfiel is set to get bucketloads of character development this arc.
When the Emilia camp arrives at the Wings on the Water inn, I made a mental note that I believe this is the first building in the anime which had its name focused on. Given that Re:zero has no filler, I believe it may have future relevance although I don’t know what that might be. When inside, Otto reveals that Hoshin, one of the founders of Kararagi, built Priestella, and Subaru reasons that due to the entire building structure and also how they have to take off their shoes that Hoshin must have been summoned from Japan like he was to build a city like this with all these Japanese customs and architecture. This is relevant ’cause I believe the anime in Season 1 danced around with clues of another character having been summoned.
As a refresher, in Episode 12, Subaru had no way of going to the Royal Castle since Emilia left without him. He thus decided to hitchhike, probably ’cause he thought of it as being a universally understood signal back on Earth. However, hitchhiking wasn’t invented until well past the Industrial Revolution when cars were invented, so it probably wouldn’t have been invented in Re:zero’s world despite them having dragons. That means at least one of the carriage driver, Priscilla, or Al knew what hitchhiking was and had come from Earth. Episode 13 had Al indicate he knew what Subaru was referring to when he was exasperated from hearing Anastasia speak in the Kansai dialect, a uniquely Japanese phenomenon, and that suggests that Al was summoned from Earth like Subaru had been since Al outright knew what the Kansai dialect is. This is further hinted at when Priscilla in Episode 16 used the English word “chance”, saying that the opportunity she gave to Subaru is what he would refer to as a chance, which shows she did this knowing that Al and Subaru are from the same world and that she likely learned the word from Al. To top it all off, later in that same episode, Mimi is shown eating cheeseburgers, which were invented from Earth, meaning in no uncertain terms at least one person from Earth had been summoned before Subaru to invent them. All of this along with Subaru’s realization that Hoshin had also been summoned show that Al was without a doubt also summoned from Earth.
I have less to say about this, but I wonder what the point of Liliana singing a song about Wilhelm was given Subaru’s reaction to hearing it. The details about their broadcasts will probably still be relevant later in this arc, but why sing a song about Wilhelm’s love life given his wife had died so many years ago? Clearly Wilhelm and Heinkel don’t believe that Reinhard literally killed Reinhard given she died in a White Whale expedition hunt, but we still don’t know all the details regarding what happened. After night fell, Subaru had a talk with Wilhelm, who had learned about himself through his wife since he was just a knucklehead who only cared about wielding a sword back in the day. He says he is the reason for the rift between him and Reinhard and doesn’t know how to approach Reinhard after all these years since he had neglected him, and Subaru just told him outright that Reinhard wanted to hear the story about the White Whale to reassure him that Reinhard wants to mend fences with him. And given Wilhelm had told Subaru he had three regrets in life and named one of them, his rift with Reinhard, I believe Subaru’s chat with Julius implied that the other two are that Wilhelm failed to find the member of the Royal Family that had been kidnapped and that he was away ’cause of that search, leading to his wife, Theresia, dying. It was interesting all three regrets were revealed in one episode. I’m wondering if there is a point to that.
Sirius Romanee-Conti then introduced herself close to the end of the episode as the Sin Archbishop of Wrath and clapped her hands after 30 seconds had gone by since she started talking, at which she had pointed out herself that they all went silent after 30 seconds, and it seemed the whole crowd, including, Subaru fell under her control. One of the citizens under her control specifically said that there are only three times in a boy’s life when he’s allowed to cry, which could be foreshadowing since Re:Zero likes to randomly include foreshadowing out of nowhere. Sirius appears to be able to read the emotional state of the people in her crowd and herds them to one specific emotion so that the damage inflicted on her chosen victim’s body is transferred over to the whole crowd. If Sirius catching people in her spell with her talking is her power, Liliana is probably the counter to this by disrupting Sirius’s emotional manipulation, and that’s probably why Liliana was introduced this arc.
Subaru’s reaction after looping was great. He most likely felt sick to his stomach since it was the first time he had died in over a year and ’cause while he may have been under a trance/spell, he remembered everything that was happening and how absorbed he and the whole crowd was with Sirius’s performance, and how they clapped over Sirius throwing a boy to his death.
All in all this was quite a fun premiere, and I enjoyed writing this despite how much time it took for me to do so since the episode was filled with important connections to make from previous seasons and even from within this episode itself.