WARNING: This following contains spoilers for The Promised Neverland Season 2, Episode 2, now streaming on Funimation and Hulu.
At the end of The Promised Neverland's Season 2 premiere, Emma and Ray realized the two mysterious figures who rescued them from demons in the forest were, in fact, demons themselves. Were they actually helping the human children or was this yet another trap? The follow-up episode confirms that the answer is fortunately the former. Mujika and Sonju rescued not only Emma and Ray but the rest of the kids as well. These demons have zero interest in eating them and prove to be genuinely helpful.
This doesn't mean the kids should let their guard down around demons, though. The vast majority are still a threat. Mujika and Sonju are both outsiders from demon society, deemed "heretics" because their religious beliefs prohibit them from eating human flesh. This doesn't mean they're vegetarians, though; they'll eat anything else, and will help the kids survive by teaching them how to hunt.
Talking with the heretic demons, Emma and Ray realize how little they actually know about the outside world. Based on the dates found in books at the Grace Field library, they assumed human society fell 30 years ago. It turns out demons have ruled this world for 1000 years on the basis of a "promise" that separated the human and demon realms. Travel between realms is prohibited on the basis of this promise, yet finding out there is a human world at all is cause for Emma to celebrate. Now she has a goal, and even if it's deemed impossible, that's reason enough to stir her intense optimism.
Mujika and Sonju have mapped out a whole pathway of underground tunnels and lead the party of human kids through the tunnels. These scenes are cut through in a montage format, showing the different ways the demons help the kids navigate, cook and train with bows and arrows. These brief glimpses are charming, and viewers don't need much more as Season 2 tries to keep up a quicker pace than Season 1. However, there is one lesson that both deserves and receives the episode's full climactic treatment: Emma's first hunt.
Sonju, the demon who saved Ray, is responsible for teaching Emma how to effectively kill a bird for meat. This is quite an emotional experience for Emma, who has seen several of her friends become meat and has been desperately trying to avoid that fate herself. It's only made more intense by the fact Sonju's method of painless slaughter, vampiric Vida flowers that bloom when sucking up blood, is the same used on the humans at the farms. Scary as it is, Emma nonetheless must learn this hard lesson in survival.
New episodes of The Promised Neverland premiere Thursdays at 10 AM EST on Funimation and Hulu.
