House of Anubis

House of Anubis

Episode 8: House of Flames/House of Passages

By: Carlos Uribe

House of Anubis is a show about an American teenager who goes to a British boarding school. It airs on Nickelodeon.

Spoilers Ahoy!

One of the most pleasant surprises of the summer was the discovery of this show. I honestly wasn't anticipating to like it. I thought it was an interesting idea: a soap opera for kids. What I wasn't expecting was that the idea was going to be well-executed. The drama has well-developed characters and manages to develop it's mysteries better than many serialized dramas aimed at adults. It simply came as a surprise when this show turned out to actually be good. It might not have the sophistication of other shows and it might not be unpredictable but in terms of the actual writing, it manages to stand on it's own against most series. What is a complete and total shock was that I actually want to know what happens next. I'm twenty-years old. I'm not supposed to get involved into the kid shows that I'm reviewing. And yet: this show has managed to win me over. It helps that I knew next to nothing when I started watching it. I came in with very little expectations of the show and it managed to completely impress me. I'm not saying that you should necessarily watch this if you have no kids, but this might be a show you won't find yourself hating it if you do. Adventure Time has a large fanbase and it's a good animated show-but so far, I prefer House of Anubis.

It is such a pity that this is the final episode that I'll be reviewing this summer. There's a chance I'll be reviewing Volume 2 next summer, simply because of how good Volume 1 turned out to be. So what happened in this episode? Quite a bit actually. In fact, the reason I might not review it next summer is because I might not want to wait so long to see the next episode. Let's start with the teachers. It's confirmed in this episode that the teacher that was helping Patricia has now joined the group. They hold an initiation ceremony for him. The ceremony scene is what you would expect: people chanting, wearing robes, and being very ritualistic. It doesn't get very creepy since this is a children's show, but it is effective nonetheless. This is probably the first time that the series confirms that the teachers are members of some sort of secret society. The episode ends with a pretty good shot: Victor taking some kind of potion and toasting to life. Considering that we know he was alive from the time when Sarah was young, that potion is probably an elixir that is keeping him young and alive. It seems to be running low.

That shot I was talking about happened to be witnessed by Fabian, Nina, and Amber. The three had managed to discover a riddle within the item they obtained last episode. The previous episodes would have waited to solve the riddle until the next episode, but this episode breaks with form. It solves the riddle by the end of the episode and it actually leads to them seeing Victor taking the potion. That's because the riddle leads to them taking a special passageway to a secret room. A secret room that looks a lot like a laboratory. It's a skill that this series has managed to obtain that adult shows try so hard to emulate: successfully answer questions with another question. Such as: “What does this thing do?” “Oh I see, wait there's a new riddle in the thing.” The clue-seeking nature of the story has so far managed to keep it from getting old while at the same time giving the elusion of progress within the actual mystery. This is an episode that does end with the characters discovering Victor taking a potion but it leaves it up to a future episode to explain what they saw. The episode leaves the viewer with two major questions from this story: what's the potion (which I predict) and what's the answer to a riddle presented right next to the episode's ending?

While this is all going on, Patricia is working with Rufus (who is called “The Betrayer” by the teachers). She sends him a photo of Joy and almost steals Nina's necklace for him. She gets a tougher assignment from him: she has to get the necklace and Nina to meet with Rufus. Patricia also starts to suspect that Nina is involved with Patricia's disappearance once again. That's because she's told that the necklace is important to Joy's case and it doesn't take a lot to make that leap, even if it is wrong. Complicating matters for Patricia is that the teachers now know that she's been in contact with Rufus. They confiscated her phone and in the meantime manage to discover that he's currently in her contact list. It appears that we won't be getting any closer to figuring out what happened to Joy until Nina gets closer to finding out whatever she's looking for. Oh, yeah, did I mention that we still don't really know what Nina and Fabien are looking for? They don't know either, as they think they're merely looking for treasure. Ah, House of Anubis: how much you love to tease and how effective you are at actually doing it well.