The Ritual of Blood Bond was something of a necessary evil for us as storytellers. We didn’t have time to show that it would even WORK on someone as stubborn as Frigg, we hadn’t set it up beforehand as a means of breaking unruly charges, and there was no plausible way we could use dialogue to even explain what exactly it was.

But if all Frigg had to do was hold onto her stubbornness for as long as it’d take the team to rescue her, then there would be no ticking clock and the stakes would feel lower. Sure, Scarlett gets through Frigg’s armor a bit here with the “You don’t have a friend in the world” tack, but would any of you really believe that conventional brainwashing could render Frigg past saving before the Peacemakers broke her out? Doubt it. At least this way there’s a chance of losing her.

We’d already muted some of the tension by showing flash-forwards with Frigg fighting alongside the others and looking no worse for wear, which was one reason we opted not to do any more flash-forwards after the end of this volume.

Tomorrow, we head right into Chapter 6. I’ll be saving the guest strips and other bonus content for an inter-volume intermission between Chapters 6 and 7.