Rise of the Snakes

 Let's start off the show itself with ... an episode with the same name as the season? Yeah, that's not confusing at all.

So, a timeskip has obviously ocurred, as the ninja, now living at the monastary, have grown complacent since the pilot, believing that they have already mastered their abilities, and are now playing videogames and eating pizza. Wu interrupts them, and tells them that they are still far from reaching their full potential, and not to put off for tomorrow what can be done today. Just then, Nya burst in to inform them that Lord Garmadon has apparently been sighted in Jamanakai Village, causing the ninja to rush off.

 At the village, it turns out that the person causing trouble was actually Lloyd Garmadon, Lord Garmadon's son. He is trying to get candy and generally be intimidating, but utterly fails to get taken seriously by anyone, including the ninja. As an empty threat, he mentions the Serpentine, a race of snake people consisting of five warring tribes which, according to legends, used to rule Ninjago before being sealed away.

On their way back, the ninja find that Kai had accidentally taken Sensei Wu's bag, and that it contained an ancient scroll speaking of a prophecy that one ninja would rise above the others and become the green ninja. Each ninja believes that they're destined to be the legendary green ninja, sparking a conflict between them.

To settle the matter, they decide to battle it out at the monastary, but during his battle against Cole, Kai accidentally sets the courtyard on fire, leading Wu to find out that they learned about the prophecy, despite his attempt to keep it from them.

In the meanwhile, Lloyd is wandering through some snowy wilderness, when he inadvertadly opens the icy tomb the Hypnobrai tribe of Serpentine had been locked away in. Their general, Slithraa, attempts to hypnotizes him, but accidentally gazes into his own reflection in a piece of ice and gets hypnotized himself, allowing Lloyd to command the Serpentine.

A bit later, the ninja learn that Jamanakai Village is under attack. When they arrive, they find that the villagers have been hypnotized, but Nya tells them that the staf carried by Slithraa contains an antidote. After some battling, Cole and Nya claim the staff and cure the village, but not before Cole was briefly hypnotized by a Hypnobrai named Skales.

As the episode closes out, we see that Cole still hasn't quite snapped out of his hypnosis.

Various Ovservations:

 -The Weekend Whip! I love this intro, as well as all the other music the guys at The Fold have made for Ninjago.

-Did you know that the videogame the ninja play at the start of the episode actually exists? It was released for the Nintendo DS, so I never had it, but that's a neat tie-in.

 

-It strikes me as a touch odd that Wu states the ninja have yet to reach their full potential. Wouldn't this have been the ideal point to foreshadow their True Potential? You would just need to change a single word!

-Jamanakai Village looks really pretty. It's a shame it wasn't revisited after the movie.

 

-Hold up a second ... Kai believes the Serpentine are just a legend? And everyone else also treats as though there's a real chance they might not exist? There was a big war against them literally just one generation earlier! Nobody remembers that? Even if we assume that elemental masters live longer, and that it can thus have been a longer time, that doesn't work out, as Chen and Clouse were already around back then, and are still alive later on in season 4!

-The mistery of who could be the green ninja was something that I still remember being something everyone watching the series was trying to figure out. I always believed that it was Kai, as he was the protagonist, and even has his whole "Could I be the green ninja?", scene here, plus some stuff later in the season. The thing is, in hindsight I think the show was actually pretty obvious about that being a red herring. Instead, it seems as though Zane is the one being set up to be revealed as the green ninja. When we first see the scroll of the prophecy, he is the only one not seen, until the camera pans down far enough, which would seem like some nice foreshadowing, and there will be some more hints towards this later on.

-The funny thing is, the actual foreshadowing is so blatant that you actually miss it. You see, Lloyd has a green five on his shirt, and he will later be the fifth ninja.

-While we're on the topic of Lloyd, why is he just walking through a frozen wasteland? How on earth did he even get there?

-The ninja already seem quite adept at controlling the Golden Weapons in this episode, being able to use them with the same precision as Wu did in the pilots ... untile Kai loses control of the Sword of Fire, that is.

-Wu can receive visions thanks to some "Spirit Smoke". This would sure have been useful later on, wouldn't it? It would certainly make it easier not to get blindsided by, say, your nephew being possessed, or by the reappearance of the Overlord in digital form.

-Why do the generals of the Serpentine tribes carry their antivenom with them? Can't they take it out of their staffs? It all seems rather careless, no? Maybe it was a tradition from when they lived in peace with humans, so that they could treat humans if an accident happened?

-Also, all that was required to free the Hypnobrai was to pull a random lever that wasn't marked in any way? Who in the world designed this? Maybe they were also under the influence of "Spirit Smoke".

-Isn't it kind of cruel to imprison snakes in an icy cavern? They're cold-blooded creatures, and therefore need warmth more urgently than us warm-blooded folks. It's a miracle any Hypnobrai are still alive!

-When Nya laments that she doesn't have a dragon, Wu just says that her time will come. So ... does he know that she inherited the elemental power of water yet? If so, why did he never tell her? There could be a fifth ninja around right now, if he could be bothered to train her!