Last week we continued our journey into the desert as the second leg of this race had well and truly started. Where most competitors chose to make the small detour to the watering hole – which seems like the smart decision – Johnny and Gyro made a mad dash for the harsh desert and already dealt with a strange character’s attack on their camp before an even stranger series of BoomBooms appeared. These BoomBoom bandits seem to be the ones murdering contestants and although Johnny and Gyro managed to escape their weird magic (stands), the BoomBooms later managed to trick Mountain Tim into believing that the murderer he was looking for was Johnny Joestar. With that setup, we move into episode 4.
It seems like distance from the problem is a good cure for the attack on Gyro as the magnetic effect fades and all the metal releases from his leg. And with their pursuer close behind them, they need to hurry up. What they don’t know is that their pursuer is in fact Mountain Tim. One quick thing I noticed in the opening that I didn’t spot earlier on because I had no context for it, but when it starts out on the hoofprints in the sand, we see that one of the hoofprints has that little indent that is used to figure out who the murderer is. That’s a cool little detail.
When Mountain Tim catches up to our two protagonists, they should be drawn towards each other by magnetism. That’s why he’s catching up so quickly. This is about to go from bad to worse and on top of all of that, the BoomBoom brothers are still lurking nearby. And neither father nor brother seems to care much that Andre BoomBoom is slowly dying due to the numerous wounds he’s received. At last we get a reasonable character – at least for the time being. Mountain Tim realizes something is up and it probably isn’t hard to see at this point that whatever power is at work, it’s also causing harm to both Johnny and Gyro, so hopefully this will let him be calm enough to turn this into a conversation instead of an arrest. Things are finally looking like they might stabilize. I’m liking this Mountain Tim character much more than I expected.
This is where we learn more properly where stands come from. Mountain Tim – who is 31 in the present timeline – gained his powers from a place called Devil’s Palm in the deserts of Arizona when he was 16. His military unit got lost and they eventually made their way to wherever stand powers are granted. His rope trick came from this place. Stands are explained here as latent powers or cursed abilities. Tim’s ability allowed him to survive his stay in the desert due to dew growing on his rope and feeding him water. But cutting the conversation short are the BoomBooms who appear to make things more difficult.
And with everyone stuck in a pretty desperate situation it is up to Johnny to make a bullet spin and kill their enemies. Johnny is close to learning how to use the power properly after all, he managed to spin a cork in the previous episode and doing the same to a lead bullet is the next step. And he manages to do it. But not quick enough. No, that’s not it. He does it wrong. Instead of just spinning the bullet, he spins his fingernails and the sand around him, killing BoomBoom senior in an instant. And he doesn’t just do this trick once, but he manages to reproduce it only moments later. And instead of learning how to use the spinning power that Gyro has, Johnny instead awakens his dormant stand powers. And to make things even worse, before leaving the last BoomBoom out to die in the desert, he calls them inbred as well. Probably true, but still harsh.
I’d almost forgotten about the snooping that Johnny had accidentally done the previous episode, where he learned that Gyro has a history to him. He seems to be a wanted man with a very high price on his head. But being wanted doesn’t make you a bad person. And Gyro has so far seemed like a good guy. I wonder if this causes issues with Mountain Tim though. Either way, our first truly big crisis is averted and we’re ready to continue our journey through the desert. Thanks for reading!
