I'm watching the Interrogator animated series on Warhammer+, and this is my review. There are spoilers in this post, so don't read on if you haven't seen the show and have a good memory.
Easily the best episode yet. In fact, probably calling it the best episode yet is underselling it, because that implies that its greatness is constrained to just this series. This is a work of art. The disjointed storytelling works in favour of the narrative, and the narrative really progresses in this one (although I'm not exactly sure where to, but that's a strength of the episode.)
The episode is sort of split into two parts. There's the politics phase, and the psyker phase.
Sometimes I want politics in my sci fi, and sometimes it gets provided to me but it turns out to be boring or over-thought or both. This episode gets it exactly right, though. As is its habit, it takes notes from film noir and fits all the politics it needs into one quick scene, keeping it simple and succinct.
Duke Klore (which due to the British accent sounds exactly like "Juke Claw" to me, which I thought was a pretty cool sci fi name) is the head of a powerful House (presumably House Klore) on Gheisthaven. He suggests to Jurgen and Baldur that the only reasonable thing for them to do is to admit that they assassinated the governor, and in return he'll ensure that their public execution is swift and painless. The fact that the governor's assassination was by Inquisitorial mandate doesn't seem to matter now that the Inquisitor is dead.
Jurgen and Baldur are obviously not going to accept it, so why bother including it as a story beat? It might seem like a blank story beat, but it demonstrates that a prominent and rising house within the power vacuum of a post-Rift Gheisthaven need Jurgen and Baldur to be dead. It also introduces us to the power structure of Gheisthaven. I didn't know it had powerful houses that wanted to rule. I didn't know that several houses were fighting to grab power. You'd probably get to this conclusion eventually, if you gave it enough thought, but making it clear in one quick scene is nice.
The end of the episode delves deeper into the psyker experience than we've seen yet. It's a powerful and disorienting sequence. As far as I could tell, Baldur and everybody else in the cell block gets fried by a burst of energy from Jurgen. I'm assuming the show wouldn't dispose of Baldur that way, so my guess is that I'm misinterpreting the visuals, but they're really effective visuals.
At the end of this episode, I have basically no idea where anyone stands, and yet I know almost everything there is to know about the story. It's a great midway point, and I'm desperate to see where the story goes.
All images in this post copyright Games Workshop.