Review: Warhammer 40K – Angels of Death “The Honour of Angels”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Kazarion continues to be overtaken by the Black Rage as the Blood Angels make their way find Orpheo. Orpheo, meanwhile, has been paralyzed by the Tech-Priest, Castia-Theta-9 who explains her plan to him: she is luring the other Blood Angels to their location all for the sake of helping her retrieve an artifact full of strange knowledge she prioritizes over everything else, even the lives of the soldiers that died to find her. Nearby, the Tyranids rally their forces to complete their own plans to escape the planet.

OUR TAKE

After seven dreary and longer-than-they-feel episodes, the Blood Angels have finally found Captain Orpheo. Mission accomplished, yes? Well, with three episodes left, obviously there’s still far more to do, especially now that we know the full scope of what is going on now. Not only is there the potential threat of an alien scourge about to escape into space, but one of their own side seems to have gone off the deep end and put the acquisition of some vague cube above all their lives. One of the things that I was made aware of early into my research of Warhammer 40K was that there aren’t any clear “good” sides in this franchise. Now, in this show’s scenario, the zealous and literally blood thirsty Blood Angels are definitely preferential to the hordes of mutated insect aliens that want to conquer the galaxy, but they are by no means stocked with especially virtuous people. This series codified the term “grimdark” for a reason, and it has definitely been on display in this season of red being the only visible color. All this to point out that what may have started out as plain ol rescue mission for a missing captain has evolved into something more layered and more morally complicated.

I’m still a newbie to all of this, so I have little to no knowledge of tech priests and the like, but I know a metaphorical armor piercing conversation when I see one, which I definitely noticed in Castia’s discussion with Orpheo. Orpheo has not been a consistent presence in this series thus far, having only briefly appeared in the first episode before we even knew his name, then in the prequel episode to characterize him as the closest to an upstanding leader the team had, and then we find him on the operating table, paralyzed and at the mercy of a librarian gone mad. Of what little we know about Orpheo is that he is loyal to his men and, above that, his mission to the Emperor. Whatever works for that cause works for him, and while he may have hesitated putting his angels in further harm’s way, all it seemed to take to convince him that needed to prioritize the retrieval of this cube was that it might help this cause. That’s not a judgement on his part, that’s just what his character is. Now, let’s see where the story goes with its remaining three episodes.