Yor obliterates Keith’s heavy with a single kick, but he still has a dog. But when he tries to sic the shepherd on Yor and it bears its teeth, Yor out-intimidates it and sends the dog running. Keith runs too, but Yor stays with a still frightened Anya, then hugs and comforts her. The talking-to can wait until they get home. What a good mom.
Mister Dog has another vision that Anya picks up on: one of Papa suddenly no longer being in the family, and Anya discovering Loid’s lifeless body in a pile of rubble. There’s a clock tower and a bell that tolls just before an explosion. Anya has to stop this future from happening, but she can’t tip Yor off to her powers, so she mounts Mr. Dog and runs off on her own yet again.
Yor calls the cops to arrest Keith’s unconscious comrade, and that tips off WISE, who descend upon all of the student-terrorists but Keith. They thumb their noses at their initial interrogators, but then Handler walks in and asks them what they want. When they say “war”, she delivers a truly chilling speech about what war really is:
Have any of you actually killed a person before? Have you ever been killed by anyone? Have you ever lost a limb in an attack? Have you ever heard bones being smashed? Have you ever smelled festering flesh? Have you ever seen your parents or siblings crushed in a crumbling building right before your eyes? Have you ever seen a piece of your lover’s flesh stuck to a wall? Have you ever been so hungry, you tried to bite into a tree? Have you ever stewed human flesh in a pot? Have you ever had someone close to you deny your enemy’s humanity so they could continue the killing, only to become so mentally broken after the conflict is over that they weep with regret and shame, vomit, and then eventually…take their own life? Apparently, you’ve learned nothing of war at your university … you utter children.
America has a history of university students protesting recent wars deemed unnecessary that were started by those who don’t truly grasp its costs. My own mom was tear-gassed and four of her classmates killed at Kent State protesting the Vietnam War.
Perhaps out of a sense of national zeal and boredom being on the sidelines, these Ostanian students decided that war would be fun and are trying to start one with Westalis. Well, as Handler makes perfectly plain even to them, there’s nothing fun about war. All the glory and nobility turns to ash and maggots without fail.
That Handler has such a sobering speech like this in an episode where a grade-schooler riding a big floofy dog preserves the peace by scribbling ketchup on the door rigged with a improvised bomb really gets to the heart of Spy x Family’s essential duality. Half of it is family slice-of-life and comedy, but the other half is the very serious, sometimes desperate struggle to prevent war from destroying that family, and millions of other families.
I love how Anya works through the problem, along with obstacles like not knowing how to read an analog clock, or all the wires on the bomb being black, all while Mr. Dog lends a helping paw or boost when needed, even if he’s not 100% wise to what’s going on. It’s entirely likely that smart as he is for a dog, he can’t make as much sense of his future visions as Anya can, making their collaboration vital.
With her ketchup warning heeded and the clock tower explosion prevented, Loid returns to the family in Mr. Dog’s vision, Back to the Future-style. WISE and Loid then turn to protecting the foreign minister from the still-at-large Keith. This is accomplished, like so many other gambits, by Loid disguising himself as the minister and leading an unwitting Keith on a wild goose chase.
Keith, who is unassailably a villain due to his desire to not only start a war, but his willingness to discard his beautiful, intelligent, and loyal dog as a bomb, thinks he’s got the minister right where he wants him, but gets wise to his tail when WISE agents shoot at him (and honestly, really should have been able to hit him, even in a moving vehicle. Those Ostanian cars ain’t that fast).
When Keith catches up to the “minister’s” abandoned car, he sends the dog after him while continuing in the car. He soon finds out that Westalis’ foreign minister is extremely spry for being a “60-year-old geezer”, as he’s able to evade the shepherd.
Eventually, Loid is done running, rips off his mask, and turns his gun on the lunging dog, to whom he apologizes for getting it mixed up in the affairs of humans. Handler AKA Sylvia’s words solidified his resolve to prevent war whenever it threatens to spring up. Loid may never know that Anya saved his life and began the effort to save the peace from these misguided students, but he sure as hell is going to finish it.