S03E08 - A Wanted Mammal

"A Wanted Mammal" is the eighth and final episode of Season 3 of We Can Fix Pawbert. It picks up in the moment "No Time to Die" left off, with Leodore Lionheart broadcasting from the City Hall press room and Mayor Winddancer bound in a chair behind him. Luther and Pawbert reach the building still in prison grays and half-wrecked from the train, while Nick and Judy work the manufactured crowd in the plaza below.

Synopsis

Leodore Lionheart broadcasts from City Hall's press room with Mayor Brian Winddancer bound behind him, and demands the mayor's resignation. In the plaza, ZPD officers Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps work a manifest of paid agitators and expose the shell company that hired them. Luther and Pawbert Lynxley, still in prison grays, enter through an unsecured service door and fight their way up through the building. Luther accepts a gray wolf in ZSI tactical gear as an ally. The wolf turns on him inside the press room and puts both on their knees. Lionheart identifies Luther as one of the wolf guards who took mammals to Cliffside Asylum four years earlier, and Luther admits it on live television. Lionheart then exposes their relationship to the city. Nick climbs onto a bench and turns the crowd by pointing out what Lionheart has just confessed on camera. The plaza empties. When the traitor's attention slips to the window, Luther disarms him and clears the remaining guards, and Winddancer headbutts Lionheart and kicks him into the camera rig. The broadcast cuts to static. ZPD takes Lionheart into custody. Chief Bogo shreds the complaints filed against all four, and Director Ramshorn tells Luther his undercover career is over and that a ZSI-ZPD liaison post waits once internal reviews conclude. Pawbert declines Nick's offer to disappear and returns to ZCF with roughly eight months left, where he resumes therapy with Dr. Venn and writes the day's count in his recovered notebook.

Plot

Lionheart broadcasts live from the City Hall press room, standing before the city seal while every screen in Zootopia carries the feed. Mayor Winddancer sits behind him with his wrists zip-tied out of frame, a bruise on his cheek from the transfer out of the safe room, and the gray wolf from his own security detail stands at attention beside the podium. Lionheart delivers an ultimatum: Winddancer resigns and Lionheart takes his rightful place. Through the windows, the plaza looks packed with mammals demanding his return, and only Lionheart knows how many of them he paid.

Down in the plaza, Nick works the crowd from a manifest of those payments. He picks off a wallaby leading chants at the fountain, and when the wallaby bolts, Judy puts him on the pavement. An aardwolf at the east entrance tries to turn the surrounding mammals against ZPD instead of running, so Nick reads his name, his address, his fee, and the shell company that paid it, then invites the crowd to check the public registry themselves. The company was incorporated three days earlier and dissolved that morning. The aardwolf's support evaporates and Officer Fangmeyer walks him away. Officer Higgins arrives with Delgato and the Razorbacks, Captain Hoggbottom and Officer Truffler among them, and the rest of the plants come down one at a time until the chanting is patchy and the signs start to drop.

Luther and Pawbert reach a service door nobody secured and let themselves in. Luther is running on nothing: cracked ribs, a knife wound that has only just stopped bleeding, vision that blurs when he turns too fast, and no weapon, having lost his service pistol somewhere in the fighting on the train. Pawbert asks again why this has to be him, and Luther says only that it is personal and promises to explain everything afterward. They take three positions on the way up. Luther clears a three-mammal corridor junction alone and takes a jackal's semi-automatic off the floor. At a barricaded checkpoint on the second floor, Pawbert refuses to hang back and hurls a fire extinguisher into the barricade to open the distraction Luther needs. In the third-floor stairwell, Luther is a half-second slow against a binturong with brass knuckles, and Pawbert sweeps the mammal's legs and drives an elbow into his gut, fighting on his own initiative for the first time.

Rounding a corner on the third floor, Luther meets a gray wolf in ZSI tactical gear with his paws raised, who offers a badge number, the Special Activities Division, and Ramshorn as his handler, and says he was assigned to Winddancer's detail. When a badger charges Pawbert from behind, the wolf drops him cleanly. Luther gives his own name and his cover, and they take the press-room door together, the wolf handling both guards while Luther breaches. Pawbert reads something wrong in him and cannot name it, and there is no time left to try.

Inside, the wolf's weapon travels past the guards, past Lionheart, and stops on Luther. He has been Lionheart's the whole time. Luther holds his aim on Lionheart until the wolf shifts his own barrel to Pawbert's chest, and then he sets his weapon down and kneels, and Pawbert kneels beside him. Lionheart names Pawbert as Milton's son, places Luther as one of the wolf guards who took mammals to Cliffside Asylum four years earlier, and tells the city that the Special Activities Division has been on his payroll for years. Asked on camera whether it is true, Luther says it is: he followed orders, he did not know the full scope, and he helped drag those mammals away. Lionheart then puts their relationship on the broadcast as well, and Nick and Judy's with it, framing all of it as proof that the mammals who condemned him were never any better.

Outside, Nick climbs onto a bench beside one of the giant screens and tells the crowd to listen to what Lionheart is actually saying. He names himself and Judy as the officers who closed the Night Howler case, points out that Lionheart has just confessed on camera to imprisoning mammals without trials and to keeping ZSI agents on his payroll, holds up the manifest, and offers a choice: stay and chant for him, or go home and let ZPD work. A gazelle leaves first, then a beaver carrying his kit, then families and groups, and within minutes the plaza is half-empty and the signs are on the ground. What remains is a smaller, quieter crowd nobody paid, standing under media lights that have not packed up either, still owed an answer about Cliffside.

Lionheart's lemur staffer reports the collapse, and Lionheart crosses to the window to see it for himself. The traitor's attention follows, and Luther takes the moment. He twists the weapon out of the wolf's paw and lays the grip across his temple, then clears the room: two shots that drop the honey badger and a painted wolf, the margay's arm forced past the joint until it gives, the second painted wolf driven head-first into a camera stand. Pawbert takes the fleeing panther down with a thrown chair, and the jaguar raises his paws rather than test any of it. Winddancer stands up with his wrists still bound, headbutts Lionheart hard enough to break his nose, kicks him to his knees, and finishes with the signature kick from his acting career, which throws the lion into the camera rig and cuts the broadcast to static across the city.

The pack collects on the City Hall steps as ZPD floods the plaza and processes Lionheart last. Judy reaches Pawbert first and holds on, crying, telling him they were always coming; Nick sits down on Luther's other side and gets a laugh out of him at the cost of his ribs. Luther then tells Pawbert the rest of it, that he has carried the shame for four years and never asked whether the mammals he took were innocent. Pawbert does not offer forgiveness. He tells Luther that the wolf who did that would not have spent the four years since trying to undo it, that they will deal with the rest of it together and later, and that he loves him past anything he could have done wrong. Nick points out, half seriously, that the door is open and Pawbert could disappear tonight. Pawbert says it is not an option, that running would make the trial and the testimony and the waiting meaningless, and that he has about eight months left. Judy promises weekly visits. Luther, on his way into the ambulance, hands him the number as something he can count down to.

Winddancer holds a press conference in the lobby, still bruised, and names Hopps, Wilde, Luther, and Pawbert Lynxley as the mammals who did their jobs. The next morning, Director Ramshorn tells Luther his undercover career is finished, that the Special Activities Division is being dismantled, and that every operation he ever ran will be reviewed. The money behind the coup was not Lionheart's, and Dixon is already pulling on the backers. A ZSI-ZPD liaison post will be waiting once the reviews conclude. At ZPD headquarters, Chief Bogo reads out the complaints filed against all four and feeds them into his shredder, takes a second stack from Clawhauser, and shreds that too. Then he runs through the ZCF aftermath: most of the escapees are back in cells, the bought guards and the crew who wired the building are in custody, and Warden Ironsnout has been relieved pending the facility review. Half the conspiracy case, he says, is Pawbert's memory of what he saw inside. Cattrick and Kitty are in the wind, and their files go back on Nick and Judy's desks.

Pawbert returns to ZCF on Day 127 after a day and two nights in ZPD holding. Officer Kett processes him through intake, notes that the breach gave him an opening he did not take, and tells him his cell has been cleaned. Dr. Venn runs their first session since the breach; Pawbert calls the whole thing a field trip, she calls it deflection, and then she tells him she is proud of him. The pack visits later that day, and Pawbert reaches across the painted line to take Luther's paw. That night in Cell 3C-17 he writes the day's entry in the recovered STAY notebook: the wall going back up, Luther's cover blown but Luther still here, his siblings gone, Milton back in maximum security, Lionheart in a black site. He could have run more than once and chose not to. Eight months, and he is going to make it. He sets the notebook on the shelf beside his mother's photo, lies back in the dark, and says the count out loud one last time: finite, but enough.

Key Moments

• Lionheart broadcasts his ultimatum to the city with Winddancer bound behind him
• Nick arrests the wallaby chant leader; Judy takes the wallaby down when he runs
• Nick breaks Terry Sandclaw in front of the crowd by reading out his fee and the shell company that paid it
• Fangmeyer, Higgins, Delgato and the Razorbacks sweep the rest of the paid agitators
• Luther and Pawbert enter through an unsecured service door and fight through three positions on the way up
• Pawbert throws a fire extinguisher into the barricade to break the second-floor checkpoint
• Pawbert drops the binturong in the stairwell, fighting on his own initiative for the first time
• Luther accepts the gray wolf in ZSI tactical gear as an ally after the wolf takes down a badger charging Pawbert
• The wolf turns on them inside the press room and forces both to their knees at gunpoint
• Lionheart identifies Luther as one of the wolf guards who took mammals to Cliffside Asylum
• Luther confesses to Cliffside on live television
• Lionheart exposes Luther and Pawbert's relationship, and Nick and Judy's, to the whole city
• Nick addresses the plaza from a bench, invoking the Night Howler case
• The crowd walks away and the manufactured movement collapses
• Luther disarms the traitor when his attention drifts to the window, then clears the remaining guards
• Pawbert drops the fleeing panther with a thrown chair; the jaguar surrenders
• Winddancer headbutts Lionheart, kicks him to his knees, and lands his signature kick
• The broadcast cuts to static as Lionheart crashes into the camera rig
• The pack reunites on the City Hall steps; Judy embraces Pawbert
• Nick makes a pun about the Special Activities Division acronym
• Luther confesses his Cliffside guilt to Pawbert in full
• Pawbert responds with unconditional love rather than forgiveness
• Nick offers Pawbert a way out of the city; Pawbert refuses
• Luther sets the count at eight months before the ambulance takes him
• Winddancer names Hopps, Wilde, Luther and Pawbert Lynxley at his press conference
• Ramshorn ends Luther's undercover career and holds a ZSI-ZPD liaison post for him pending the reviews
• Ramshorn tells Luther the confession took courage
• Bogo shreds the complaints filed against all four and delivers the ZCF aftermath status
• Bogo confirms Cattrick and Kitty are in the wind
• Judy hugs Bogo, who has no idea what to do about it
• Pawbert returns to ZCF on Day 127; Kett processes him back through intake
• Pawbert calls the whole thing a field trip in his first session back with Dr. Venn
• Dr. Venn tells Pawbert she is proud of him
• Pawbert takes Luther's paw through the partition at visitation
• Pawbert writes the Day 127 entry in his recovered notebook in Cell 3C-17

Key Lines

Characters Introduced

Locations

• City Hall — the press room, the plaza and fountain area, the service corridors and stairwells, and the front steps
• ZSI Headquarters — Ramshorn's office
• ZPD Headquarters — Bogo's office
• Zootopia Correctional Facility — main entrance and intake, Dr. Venn's office, the visitation room, Cell 3C-17

Items

• STAY notebook — recovered; the Day 127 entry is written in it and it goes back on the cell shelf
• Laminated photo — recovered; back on the shelf beside the notebook
• Paid agitators manifest — carried by Nick, pages distributed to Fangmeyer, Higgins and the Razorbacks, held up to the crowd, then booked as ZPD evidence
• ZPD service weapon — stated lost on the train; not carried into City Hall
• Jackal's semi-automatic — taken at the first City Hall junction, carried up through the building, surrendered at gunpoint in the press room
• ZSI wolf's sidearm — taken when Luther disarms him; two shots fired, then used to cover the jaguar
• Fire extinguisher — pulled from a wall bracket and thrown by Pawbert at the checkpoint barricade
• Winddancer's zip ties — on his wrists from the broadcast through the press conference
• Complaint stacks — shredded by Bogo

End Credit Song

"For Good" (From 'Wicked'), Kristin Chenoweth & Idina Menzel

Glinda and Elphaba sing "For Good" at their last parting in Wicked; each tells the other that knowing her has changed her permanently. Two confessions in this episode make the same claim. Luther admits on live television that he was one of the wolves who took mammals to Cliffside Asylum, and Pawbert does not forgive him. He answers with a measurement: the wolf who did that would not have given the four years since to undoing it. Pawbert has come as far the other way, from a lynx certain he was beyond saving to one who turns down an open door and goes back inside to serve out eight months. The duet form carries the rest, since neither of them changed alone and each is the reason the other did.

Notes

• Mayor Winddancer's signature kick references his action star past.
• Pawbert's exchange with Luther — "I love you more than anything you could ever do wrong." / "I don't deserve — " / "That's just love. Nothing you can do about that." — is a direct homage to the Disney+ series Andor. In the show, Maarva Andor tells her son Cassian, "I love you more than anything you could ever do wrong." The line captures the same theme of unconditional love in the face of moral failure, with Pawbert — himself a reformed criminal — now offering that same grace to Luther.
• The title is a pun on A Wanted Man (Jack Reacher). All Season 3 episode titles pun on James Bond, Jack Reacher, or Jack Ryan titles.