WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Promised Neverland Season 2, Episode 9, now streaming on Funimation and Hulu.
The Promised Neverland Season 2 just gets worse and worse as it keeps going. Frankly, it's baffling how it ended up so bad. Episode 9 only continues further down this path, rushing through the story's ending while offering multiple confusing changes from the manga, and even seemingly abandoning one of the anime's few potentially interesting changes.
The War On the Royal Family Is Gone
Norman's "Martha" moment at the end of Episode 8 turns out to be enough not only to stop him from committing genocide but to stop him from killing anyone. This is very different from the manga, in which he comes to regret attempting genocide but decidedly does not regret slaughtering the royal family, the story's true villains whose oppressive rule kept the other demons reliant on the farms.
The royal family has not shown up at all in The Promised Neverland anime, and with only three episodes left, it seems unlikely they could be addressed in any meaningful way. In the manga, Sonju and Mujika are able to repair the demon world by filling in a power vacuum, but if that power vacuum doesn't exist, it makes no sense that their presence is expected to just fix everything.
The Old Demon's an Evil-Blooded
Episode 9 confirms what appeared to be happening at the end of Episode 8: the blind old man demon, whose name turns out to be Vylk, is an "evil-blooded." Whereas Sonju and Mujika have had to live in hiding because of persecution, Vylk has managed to go about his business in ordinary demon society for 700 years. He could have helped at any point until now but just... didn't.
To be fair, he had good reason to fear what would happen if this secret was exposed, but having another evil-blooded character hiding in plain sight makes Sonju and Mujika even less important. The fact Vylk also just happens to have on him the rest of the map and the cure for Norman's seizures is also just way too convenient.
The Changes to Isabella's Story Are Already Abandoned
It appears that the scene in Episode 4 where Isabella was tasked with finding the kids just meant nothing. Either that or its meaning will be tossed aside in 30 seconds of exposition as The Promised Neverland Season 2 too often does with important plot points. She still hasn't found the kids but she's already been promoted to Grandmother, making one of the few changes from the manga with actual narrative potential feel entirely pointless.
Vincent's a Traitor
At least the thought behind this new plot twist makes some sense. Fan theories that Vincent was secretly a traitor were fairly common when The Promised Neverland manga was still ongoing, but it turned out he was just genuinely faithful to Norman all along. He didn't really have a major role in the story, so giving him something more important to do makes sense, especially in such a pared-down adaptation.
However, there are two major problems with this twist. The first issue is that Vincent, along with the rest of Norman's followers, has had such little screentime or character development that there's simply no emotional response to this twist. The second, more insidious issue is that making one of the only prominent Black characters a villain in a series that already has issues with anti-Black racism is just not a good look.
New episodes of The Promised Neverland premiere Thursdays on Funimation and Hulu.
