WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Season 1, Episode 10 of Fire Force, "The Promise."
The previous two episodes of Fire Force saw the rot within the Special Fire Force, Company 1's Lieutenant Rekka, exposed and, in Shinra's finest moment yet, extinguished -- with a little help from a group of mysterious assassins nicknamed the White Clad (also known as White Hoods) who officially call themselves the Knights of Ashen Flame. So does, as it turns out in this latest installment, someone from Shinra's past.
Rekka and the White Clad work for an even more mysterious figure, the Evangelist, who equipped Rekka with insects capable of forcibly transforming people into Infernals. During his fight with Shinra, Rekka's ranting revealed that the Evangelist's long-terms goal is to return humanity back to the primordial flames of the great god, Sol. Or, in simpler terms, set everything on fire for the hell of it.
Episode 9 deals largely with the fallout of this discovery, beginning with an assembly of all eight Company captains at the Amaterasu thermal power plant, which Shinra is also invited to to give his own personal account of events. Presided over by Raffles III, the Imperial ruler of Tokyo, this is the first we've seen the Force's Captains outside of Ōbi, Princess Hibana and Leonard Burns -- the 8th, 5th and 1st's leaders, respectively.
Military man, Gustav Honda is Captain of Company 2; Dr. Giovanni -- sporting a Plague doctor's mask -- is Captain of Company 3; Sōichirō Hague is the scarred Captain of Company 4; the stern-faced Kayoko Huang is Captain of Company 6 and, finally, Company 7's Captain is Benimaru Shinmon, who possesses the rare trait of both second and third-generation Ignition abilities. This earns him a nervous grin from Shinra, impressed at being in the presence of one of the Force's strongest members, but Benimaru soon lets on that he only attended the meeting so that he could tell everyone what a waste of time it was and leave.
After his diva moment, Raffles III tells the remaining Captains that putting a stop to the Evangelist's "heresy" is of the utmost importance. He also impresses to Shinra the significance of his Adolla Burst -- something Rekka, and others, have shown acute interest in. Unlike the majority of pyrokinetics, Shinra's fire is "pure," derived straight from the source.
Spying on the proceedings is an uninvited guest: Joker, the grinning, chain-smoking vigilante who has been lurking on the fringes of the main story since his first appearance. He approaches Shinra during a moment of quiet contemplation for the young Fire Soldier. Joker had been the one to tell Shinra that his brother, Shō, presumed dead when he was one-years old, was alive and well. Here, he adds another bombshell: Shō has been raised to serve the Evangelist. More specifically -- as a scene at the very end tells us -- Shō is the ringleader of the White Clad cult, putting the brothers on a direct collision course.
New episodes of Fire Force are available every Friday on Crunchyroll and as SimulDubs on FUNimation NOW.