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Into the Badlands Season 3: Leopard Snares Rabbit [Spoilers]

It's time to head Into the Badlands again with Leopard Snares Rabbit and peril abounding for everyone. Spoilers to follow.

Things kick off with a carrier pigeon arriving for Tilda/Iron Rabbit  (Ally Ioannides). Because yes, of course a carrier pigeon would make sense in the world of Into the Badlands.

An ambush from the Widow's minions ensues but it's no match for the Iron Rabbit. Well, minions might not be a match, but Nathaniel Moon (Sherman Augustus) shows up to put up a good fight and we get probably the best Hong Kong style wirework fight of the season thus far. Odessa (Maddison Jaizani), Tilda's lady sacrifices herself to allow the Iron Rabbit to escape.

Meanwhile on Sunny (Daniel Wu) and Bajie's (Nick Frost) road bro-trip continues. They're informed the only way across the war torn border is through a tunnel that leads into an archer ambush.

Lydia (Orla Brady) seems to have agreed to become The Widow's (Emily Beecham) viceroy. What her ultimate intention is has yet to be revealed.

Back with Sunny and Bajie, they're led to sniper alley. The setup reminded me of a video game. Sunny orders an attack on sniper alley in a few hours, confusing new (and probably disposable) character Arthur (George Sear) "Baby Face" that he's the new regent.

The Widow interrogates Tilda's brave companion. I'm enjoying the Widow more and more as a villain this season. She tells Moon to torture the companion and figure out who the spy who sent the carrier pigeon to Tilda was.

Lydia takes over her old digs. It was almost as if she never left. Almost.

We get our first look at post revelation M.K (Aramis Knight), though when The Widow cuts him he doesn't embrace his powers. Does this mean he now controls them, or he needs another trip in order to regain his skills?

The tension between Lydia and Moon builds. He calls her out for sending the warning to the Iron Rabbit, and some smexy flirting ensues. Nothing says flirtatious banter like "I'm out for revenge, also I lost my hand to… Bajie." Moon professes his love but is rebuffed.

Back at murder alley, Sunny and Bajie use giant mirrors to blind the sniper archers. Gotta say its a decent and clever way to get through the alley. It turns out there's only one sniper named … Sniper (Dwane Walcott) with the machine gun equivalent of a crossbow. Assault mate Wren (Tasmin Topolski) takes several hits and their advance is thwarted so they high tail it out of there.

Back at camp Bajie uses his mystical powers to ease Wren's pain.

Tilda sneaks up on Lydia and calls her out on her duplicitous game. Lydia lays down some hard truths about playing the game (of thrones? No? Wrong show?).

Sunny prepares to go old school Robin Hood with a wooden bow.

Moon arrives at the front and tells them to open up, regents orders. The supply truck Sunny had sent out to refuel medical gear arrives at the same time, and it's revealed to Moon that Sunny is posing as regent. My favorite part of the exchange is Moon asks one of the passengers in the truck to describe Sunny, and instead of saying something like "he was Asian…" he describes his height, hair color, and sword. This is why I love Into the Badlands. It has people of many different diverse backgrounds, but it isn't about their respective ethnicities, they just ARE people.

Wren wakes up, and Bajie uses his healing voodoo on her again. He also offers her rubbing alcohol to drink. Dude might have a problem. They make the decision that they probably need to amputate Wren's leg… she does not appear to have a say in this.

Sunny returns to sniper alley at night to launch a second assault with some fire arrows.

Also dear god, they go super medieval and SHOW amputating Wren's leg. I nearly vomited. Props to their props and special effects makeup departments I guess?

Sunny tries a new approach, words. Doesn't work. A battle with the mystery sniper ensues and of course Sunny prevails. He shows mercy and takes Sniper as a prisoner of war… Which gets grossly misinterpreted apparently as "murder him right here and now." Arthur is not very good at following orders it seems.

Sunny sees some of his younger self in folks like Arthur. Meanwhile Wren wakes up to her new one legged life and instead of being grateful to Bajie she's furious. Probably rightfully so.

Tilda/Iron Rabbit shows up at The Widow's front gates. She offers to stop raiding the convoys in exchange for Odessa. The Widow tries to lure her back to fight for her forces. Tilda demands M.K's release as a show of good faith. Too bad he at that very moment is being tied down and creepily force fed yellow goop through a feeding tube. This is the second point where I was almost ill during the episode. Whatever was in that nasty cocktail seems to have worked though, because we get the return of dark M.K (complete with three point landing!) and he is ready for revenge. Now if he would just get a haircut…

During Leopard Snares Rabbit I found myself missing the antics of Pilgrim and Cressida (Babou Ceesay and Lorraine Toussaint) but it appears next week we'll be getting more of them. There were a few too many auxiliary characters in this episode for me, but I'm glad to have M.K back. Mostly so we don't have to deal with mopey M.K anymore.

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