WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Black Clover Season 3.
The immensely popular Black Clover anime has entered its third season. Here's everything you need to know to get caught up with Asta's latest adventures.
In Season 3's premiere, Asta's sword is revealed to possesses enough power to completely remove the poison from Father Orsi, his adopted father, and the others who were affected, basically healing them by negating the dark magic in their systems with his anti-magic. The sword also lets him reverse the possession curse under which many of the most prominent heroes fell in the wake of the elves resurrecting themselves.
Vanessa, Asta and Magna are then forced to fight against their fellow Black Bull, Luck, to help him overcome his possession by an elf named Rufel. They succeed, and head back to the the Black Bulls home base, only to find it completely demolished and the other members of their team in tears.
Henry, the Black Bull who owns their base, is able to configure the ruins into a vehicle, and Luck directs them to Hecairo to investigate the three elves he senses there. The possessed Xerx Lugner, Saint of Pure Ice, battles Luck and Gordon as the other Bulls protect the city. Luck and Gordon Agrippa, another Bull, use cannons to direct blasts of their magic at the Elves, but it doesn't work until Asta uses himself as a cannonball. His anti-magic nullifies the possessions, and the Bulls keep moving towards Clover Castle.
As the Castle falls under attack, Julius Novachrono, the Wizard King, is killed by an Elf named Patry, who posses the body of William Vangeance, the leader of the Golden Dawn. Patry takes complete control of Vangeance's body as Noelle fights alongside her siblings to protect the Clover King from the Elves who are looking for him. Nozel tell her that he loves her and is injured soon after, which pushes Noelle to unlock a spell called Valkyrie armor. The spell gives her the ability to manifest water armor.
Langris, possessed by an elf named Ratri, finds the Clover King and defeats him so easily it is honestly kind of sad to watch. Jack the Ripper saves the king by cutting a hole through the wall of the castle and shoving him out of it. Then he figures out how to get past Ratri's defenses. Unfortunately, just as Jack makes a little headway, Ratri goes on a rampage. Luckily, Finral comes to the rescue and knocks him out with one punch.
While this is going on, the final stage of the Patry's plan commences, as he starts using the stone from Yuno's necklace to activate a stone tablet that will send all humanity to the underworld, making the Elven reincarnations irreversible. As the Apostles of Sephira begin to open a portal under Clover Castle that leads to the Shadow Palace, the Elves decide to kill everyone who could possibly interfere with the spell.
Asta and the Bulls stop the massacre before it starts by overwhelming the Elves with their more complex magic. Patry summons Reve, in the body of Coral Peacock Captain Dorothy Unsworth, to deal with the Bull problem. She traps Vanessa, Rouge, Luck, Magna, Charmy and Sally in her dream world as Yami and Jack chase the Apostles into the Shadow Palace. As he destroys a binding spell, Licht reveals Asta's sword as the Demon-Destroyer.
In the dreamworld, Sally tricks Reve into imagining and unwillingly creating exit doors that lead back to reality. Outside the dreamworld, reality has twisted into something distorted because of Baval's Dice Magic manipulations. Asta continues to fight, even powering up as Black Asta, but it isn't strong enough, and he's almost killed twice. Luckily, he is saved by his fellow Bulls both times. The team members trapped inside the dreamworld then reappear as Reve loses control. Once everyone is back Asta breaks the possession spell, freeing Captain Dorothy.
As the battle heightens in intensity, Yuno arrives with magical reinforcements from all over the kingdom. The Bulls and Yuno's army fight together to defeat the Elves and close the Eternal Portal. While trying to help the Bulls make a last stand against the Elves, Charmy reveals her hybrid dwarf-human powers, to the surprise of herself and those around her. However, in the middle of the action, an Elf named Ronne steals Yuno's necklace.
Once Ronne uses the stone, it's revealed he's possessed by a devil named Zagrid, who is behind everything that has happened between the humans and the Elves. Although the Bulls try, they can't defeat him. His Word Soul Magic gives him the ability to make anything he says into reality, and it seems too powerful to overcome. As they fight, Zagrid reveals the source of Asta's five-leaf grimoire and hints that its power is great enough to rule the world.
While Yuno and Asta are fighting, Finral Roulacase and Nero, aka Secre Swallowtail, switch the stone from the tablet to the skull of the statue of the Wizard King. Once the stone is in place, the statue falls apart and reveals that the original Wizard King, Lumiere Silvamillion, has been resurrected. Once Lumiere appears, Nero changes from her bird form into her original human body and they teleport to the Shadow Palace.
After arriving in the Shadow Palace close behind Secre and Lumiere, in a final attempt to kill Zagrid, Yuno uses his Diminish Slash spell to cut the devil in half and Asta uses his sword to sever its heart. Asta ends all of the Elven possessions by cutting down Vangeance and Licht's tree. Once the battle is completely finished William Vangeance asks to see the Wizard King's body, only to find that Julius is alive because he was smart enough to store 13 years of life in a magical object just in case he was ever killed, but his power is diminished because of the age reversal.
In the aftermath of the war, the Magic Parliament begins punishing those responsible for Zagrid's attack. Without any way to prove the devil was behind everything, those involved are punished as regular criminals. Asta is almost sentenced to death for his demonic nature, but is protected by the Black Bulls, members of the Golden Dawn and Julius, who puts his own safety at risk by giving the Black Bulls a mission to investigate the demons in an attempt to prove that Asta is innocent and save him from execution.
In the process of researching a demonic curse that caused both Asta and Secre to grow black horns on their heads the Black Bull's captain, Yami, asks Gordon about his family's curse. When Asta and a few other Bulls go with Yami to visit to his family home, Gordon's grandmother reveals information about Curse of Megicula, a death curse which Gordon's father, Nathan, used for research about death and to advance his healing magic. To help with their investigation, Nathan shows everyone a map of all the active curses in the Kingdom. The most powerful one is in the Heart Kingdom.
While her teammates are at Gordon's home, Noelle visits Captain Dorothy and asks how her mother really died. In her dream world, Dorothy explains that it was a death curse created by a devil named Megicula. It traps anyone who talks about it to be stricken and die, which is why her brother Nozel kept it a secret from her.
Following the clue on the curse map, Mimosa, Asta's friend and Yuno's teammate in the Golden Dawn, secures an invitation into the Heart Kingdom for herself, Asta, Noelle and Finral. Secre also comes along, disguised as a bird. After entering the Heart Kingdom, Asta is kidnapped and forced to fight a Water Spirit named Undine while his friends fight a Spirit Guardian named Gaja. Through teamwork and perseverance, Asta and his friends defeat their attackers.
Both Undine and Gaja are so impressed by their defeat that they introduce Asta and his friends to the Heart Queen, Loropechika. It is revealed that she has also been cursed by Megicula, a devil more powerful than Zagrid, and he is siphoning power from the Spade Kingdom's people. Although she inherited the power of every Heart Queen who came before her, due to the nature and classification system of Heart Magic she is not capable of saving herself from dying within a year without their help.
As she explains the urgency of taking action, the Queen asks for the Black Bull's help gathering and training an army of mages to invade the Spade Kingdom to stop Megicula from taking over the world before her final year is up. At the same time, while scouting the Diamond Kingdom's border, Luck, Vanessa and Magna see a single Spade Knight defeat an entire Diamond army. Captain Yami speculates that the knight was possessed by Megicula.
During a celebration in the capital city, the Captains have a secret meeting where they are informed about the threat of Megicula by King Julian and the Bulls. As of episode 129, the Bulls and the rest of the Magic Knights are training hard, focusing on gathering strength and becoming better warriors to prepare for war.