7th Time Loop: The Villainess Enjoys a Carefree Life

Episode 12

This episode opens with a bang. While it would have made more sense for Rishe to be pioneering the various ways black powder could have helped Coyolles fix its mining industry woes, I think most of us knew that they'd be going the fireworks route instead after the whole firefly scene last week. And given what Rishe is trying to show Michel, it does work in context. Michel is hellbent on only understanding his invention in a destructive setting, and explosions for mining are still explosions and only one step away (in his and possibly Arnold's minds) from its wartime applications. But fireworks exist only to be beautiful, something that in no way is associated with battlefields. By showing the two warmongers in her life that black powder has a purely aesthetic application, she's forcing them to see that it's possible to make anything pleasant, the gunpowder version of poisons being medicinal in the correct dosages and situations.

Arnold, the implication is, was onto her the entire time. And to be fair, it's been consistently difficult for Rishe to pull one over on him for the whole series, although I don't think we should read that as him being smarter than her, but rather a way to show just how close attention he's paying to her. By the time the fireworks hit the skies, Arnold has already agreed with Kyle to form a partnership with Coyolles, something that he presumably intended to do all along; he's just the sort of person who won't let anyone see what he's thinking before he's good and ready. It does still work in his and Galkhein's favor to make sure that Coyolles knows that he doesn't have to make this deal. He's doing it because he wants to and sees value in both what Coyolles has to offer and what Rishe thinks. The fireworks just solidify his decision rather than pushing him into making one in Coyolles' favor.

Would he have come to this conclusion without Rishe? I highly doubt it. Whether she fully understands it or not, any changes in Arnold are mostly her doing. Yes, at first she paints it as a choice made to save her skin and to avoid suffering as she did in her previous six loops, but as we can see from the ring scene at the end, she does care about Arnold. She very quickly went from viewing him as a villain who continually causes her death to a man who has suffered at the hands of his father. From the moment she saw his scars and really talked to him, she understood that he was acting out of pain all those times she died at his hand, either directly or indirectly. To truly change her fate, she has to change his first, and who better to do that than someone who knows how wrong everything could go?

This final episode puts the final nail in the coffin of the series' title – Rishe is anything but a villainess, and she never has been. But even if she was, her actions show that maybe some people go down the path of evil because they feel like they don't have any other options. Both Arnold and Theodore show that, and it's only through Rishe's steadfast belief in them that they're able to change. That they can change feels like the entire point of the story: Rishe herself is the living embodiment of how someone can keep learning and growing, and the Hein brothers can start down that path because of her. We may not all get seven-time loops to figure it out, but that doesn't mean we can't change. Even the most destructive things can become beautiful if you see them in the right light.

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7th Time Loop: The Villainess Enjoys a Carefree Life is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.