#vidros

Just so we're all up to speed, I covered Episodes 41 through 49 here , here, and here. But if you're not in the mood to read that: this arc introduces Aeos, the previous Supreme Kai of Time, who has now returned to take back the position from Chronoa. Aeos believes that there are too many alternate timelines now, and Chronoa's refusal to deal with them has only made things worse, so Aeos and her four attendants take over the Time Nest to resolve the problem instead. Aeos's solution is to hold a big tournament with warriors from different timelines, and the losing teams get their timeline erased.

This all gets thrown into chaos when Demigra shows up, having recently gained a power boost from the Dark King energy once held by Fu. I'm not sure if this was just a coincidence, or if Demigra somehow manipulated the Aeos/Chronoa dispute to his advantage. Anyway, he tries to seize control of the Time Nest and destroy all the fighters who oppose him, which culminates in this climactic beam struggle against Goku, Bardock, and Future Gohan.

Just so we're clear, the Bardock and Future Gohan we see here are variants from other timelines, recruited by Aeos to serve as her attendants. Bardock was the "Hooded Saiyan" who occasionally helped Goku during the previous arc. Gohan hails from a world where Trunks died fighting 17 and 18, while he survived.

Anyway, the Father-Son-Grandson Kamehameha ends with Bardock daring the boys to push even harder, which leads to Bardock turning SSJ4, Goku going Ultra Instinct (again), and Gohan turning SSJ2. This overwhelms Demigra and he dies.

However, before Demigra is beaten, Aeos and Chronoa have this nice little reconciliation where Aeos points out that Demigra only got this far because of the multitude of alternate timelines. Even if he's defeated, some other menace will just rise up to replace him. She asks Chronoa how she can continue to support sparing the timelines if this is true, and Chronoa replies that a lot of good has come from the alternate timelines as well, and she's willing to trust the heroes to rise to the occasion. Then they hold hands and do some sort of time stuff, which might have helped tip the scales against Demigra, but I don't know. When it's all over, they use the Scroll of Eternity to restore everything to the way it was before Demigra attacked.

Goku is satisfied with this outcome, but he has one last bit of business to discuss with Aeos: Goku wants the Super Space-Time Tournament to be restarted, since he never got to finish his match with Xeno Goku earlier in the arc. Aeos agrees, and this time it's just an exhibition, with the fighters who still want to fight having 1v1 matches with no brackets.

We get some brief glimpses of the other matches, like Piccolo vs. Pikkon, Master Roshi vs. Grandpa Gohan, and so on, but none of these amount to anything. This episode spent a decent two minutes re-telling the beam struggle from Episode 49, which could have been used to show a little more of the cool fights they teased instead.

Credit where it's due, Goku vs. Xeno Goku actually gets some time, and there's some cool spots, like SSJ4 Goku trying to use a Warp Kamehameha on UI Goku, only for UI to try to float over to avoid it. Then 4ku snares him with his tail, but UI-ku is still too nimble to be trapped for long.

As everyone watches, Aoes reflects on how Goku impressed her, and I think the implication is that Goku's the one who convinced her not to erase the other timelines, at least for the time being. Then there's a credits sequence, like this is a big finale, but it's not.

They do the finish of the Goku/Vegeta fight from DBS: Super Hero, and it's UI Goku who wins. Sound booking, but I wish they could have come up with a different way to end it. I mean, Aeos's tournament was already a rip-off of the Tournament of Power, and Demigra's invasion was just a retread of his invasion in Xenoverse 1, and now this. It's tough to find anything really fresh in this story.

With the match settled, Aeos announces that she'll be leaving again to survey the alternate timelines for herself. She says she wants to re-check everything to re-evaluate her decision, and warns Chronoa that if she finds she had it right the first time, she'll be back to erase everything like she intended. Chronoa seems to accept this. Maybe she's confident that Aeos will see things her way, or maybe it's just that Chronoa has no choice. This arc suggests that Chronoa cannot, or will not, challenge Aeos' authority. I guess with Aeos leaving, Chronoa is reinstated as Supreme Kai of Time, but they never explained why Aeos left the job in the first place, or what claim she had to take it back. There's a lot of unanswered questions in all of this.

Aeos's four attendants will be joining her on her new mission, including Vidros, who proposed to Yamcha during the tournament. So what about that? Well, it turns out Vidros can't marry Yamcha right away. Her people have a tradition that says she can't marry until she reaches a certain age, which is still a dozen centuries away. So she intends to go with Aeos and return for Yamcha 1200 years from now. D'oh!

This did not go over well with the fandom, who were pretty hyped for the idea of Yamcha getting the girl. I think we all knew that there'd be some kind of catch. They weren't going to marry off an established character in a web series for crying out loud. I choose to look at this in a positive light. Yamcha's still got a fiance. And just because she has to wait 1200 years doesn't mean that he has to wait the same amount of time. Aeos might do her a solid and bring her back to the present day so she can still marry Yamcha during his natural lifespan.

At least Vidros had some sort of character arc in this story. I have no idea what this alternate version of Piccolo was supposed to be about. He just shares some meaningful looks with Gohan and that's it. Future Gohan says goodbye to Xeno Trunks, Bardock takes a last look at his son, and they all head out.

I seriously wondered if Episode 50 was going to be the finale for the entire web-series, since this arc seemed to wrap up the last plot threads of the whole show. Most of SDBH was about Fu's rise to prominence, and then he got defeated with the help of Demigra and Aeos's team, who settled all of their business in this arc. So this seemed like a pretty good stopping point, but no. There's an Episode 51, which promises a whole new arc that will probably take another two years to finish. I guess Super Dragon Ball Heroes will be around for a while longer.