Spy×Family Season 2

Episode 32

You've been roped into a fight in a crowded corridor on a ship. Your opponent has a sickle on a chain; you have three charges to guard and a single sharp object at your disposal, along with your hand-to-hand skills. Who do you want to have your back? If your answer is anything besides “a child with mind-reading abilities,” I doubt if things would go as well for you as they do for Yor this week. Although Anya doesn't do anything in a physical sense, her wide-eyed and slightly stilted comment about Yor and her opponent being a circus act saves the day.

Of course, her presence also risks derailing Yor completely, although arguably that could have happened even without her showing up in person. Shaty's comment about the Forgers just being camouflage for Yor has hit her hard since it was true in the beginning. She married Loid to stave off the suspicious eyes of the government, both in service of her assassin gig and simply because in the series' mid-century world, single women are inherently suspect. But that's not something she's thought about in a long time, because she's truly happy being Mrs. Forger – she likes Loid (possibly in more than one way) and she loves being Anya's mom, a role she's been taking seriously. It's no longer comfortable for her to consider them as mere camouflage, and seeing Shaty with her child is driving that home.

That means that when she spots Anya in the crowd, her first thoughts aren't “Oh no, she's seen me,” or “Good thinking, kid!” Instead, she notices that her legs feel heavy, and while it takes her most of the episode to figure out why, we can make the educated guess that it's because something has become more important to her than her work. She doesn't want Anya to get hurt due to her proximity to Yor's job, and she doesn't want her to see her mother kill someone. She'd presumably have these thoughts about Yuri as well, but when he was a little boy (and she was just a teen), the need to provide for him would have outweighed those issues. Now she's got a husband who can keep them fed and housed – and Yor herself has a lot more to lose.

It juxtaposes nicely with Loid's existential crisis in this arc. Previously he's balanced his spycraft and fatherhood easily because he's had Yor almost since the beginning while Anya had school and he had an “office” to keep the two halves of his life separate. Stuck on a ship in the middle of the open ocean and without his wife to help, Loid is suddenly in a much more difficult position. He can't keep those pieces apart anymore; he's Anya's sole caregiver and a spy through and through, unable to turn off his anxiety and observational skills. To a degree, Anya's aware of this and using it to her advantage as she watches him struggle to be a “fun dad;” but she's also five years old and trying to keep her parents from learning the truth about each other. Since Loid doesn't understand this, he's very close to a full-blown mental meltdown, especially given that he thinks this trip is a mission to relax. He may be very smart, but he hasn't figured out that if you make something a mission, relaxation isn't likely to follow.

Anya may still be the beating heart and driving force of this series but Yor's and Loid's newfound thoughts are the foundation of this arc. Since neither of them has the full picture Anya is privy to, they've got a lot more to work through. Seeing how it affects Yor is one of the strongest elements of this episode. Even if she doesn't give up contract killing, she needs to find a way to balance it in her mind and looks like that's going to come to a head next week.

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Spy×Family is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.