S05E20 - Without Options

"Without Options" is the twentieth episode of Season 5 of We Can Fix Pawbert. It follows "Tundratown Requiem", bringing the pack straight from the Tundratown fight and the burning of Reptile Ravine to the Zootopia Correctional Facility visitation glass. Milton Lynxley is the only mammal left who can hand them the root access codes to the weather walls, and he has spent years in maximum security preparing to sell them.

Synopsis

Pawbert Lynxley and his pack visit his father Milton at Zootopia Correctional Facility. Milton admits he has fed Vladifrostok commander Mikhail Icener fragments of weather wall intelligence for over a year, including The Root's location, while withholding the root access codes as insurance; he took the arrangement believing his contact was a rival he could manipulate. He now offers the real code in exchange for ZSI extraction to a non-extradition country, and the location only once he is out. Luther Pawthorne clears it with ZSI Director Costa and the mayor, and Milton gives up the code: BUILT_BY_LYNXLEY, Ebenezer Lynxley's brand on the system he stole from Agnes De'Snake. Costa sends Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps to Mr. Big's compound and assigns field agent Shaw to guard Luther and Pawbert at Pawthorne Mansion. Icener's forces ambush the convoy in the Marshlands and wipe out the escort. Milton takes a dead agent's weapon and downs three attackers before he is mortally wounded, then tells his killers that Pawbert has the codes memorized. They execute him. A second team is already at the mansion. Shaw, shot on the perimeter, empties her magazine into the air as a warning. Luther fights a rearguard until he is beaten down, and Pawbert, after killing an arctic fox operative, opens the gun room and surrenders to spare him. Pawbert is drugged and both are taken. Nick and Judy arrive to find Shaw dead and the house empty; Costa radios that Milton is dead too.

Plot

The pack comes through the ZCF checkpoint at night, none of them having slept in nearly a day. Luther's throat still carries bruising from Roskova's grip, Pawbert moves stiffly from the escape through the Tundratown tunnels, and Nick has said almost nothing since carrying Mr. Big's body out of the mansion. Milton is already seated behind the visitation glass. Prison has aged him without loosening his posture, and his gaze crosses Luther, Nick and Judy before it settles on his son. He has not seen Nick or Judy since the events six years ago, has not seen Luther since Lionheart's escape from this facility, and has spent all those years refusing every visitor but Pawbert. He has also spent over a year feeding Icener pieces of the weather wall system: secondary systems, old access protocols, and eventually the location of The Root itself. The root access codes he kept back, because Icener wants the Lynxley name erased and will kill him the moment he has everything.

Pressed on why he gave up the location, Milton's composure gives out for the first time in his son's life. He took the arrangement believing he was handling a rival he could manipulate, another Clawrence or another Lionheart, and only learned afterward that Vladifrostok was on the other end of it. He knows what the family built there and how thoroughly it bled the place, and he knows what the Lynxley name means to the mammals who lived through it. His terms are the real code now, ZSI extraction the same night to a country that will not extradite, and The Root's location only once he is clear of Zootopia. Judy asks what refusal costs; Milton tells her Icener wins and the walls come down. Luther steps to the corner of the room and calls Costa, flagging that Milton's claim about withholding the codes cannot be verified from inside the room. He is put on hold. The mayor comes back on the line, and the deal is authorized.

Milton gives up the code: BUILT_BY_LYNXLEY. His grandfather Ebenezer stole Agnes's designs, framed her, buried her community under Tundratown, and then branded the control system with his own name. Pawbert is left shaking at what that means: every district in the city depends on climate control whose master password is his own family's name. Milton tells him this is exactly why he never mentioned it, and holds the location back; he will not hand over both halves and then rely on their word. Pawbert memorizes the code and walks out with half of what the city needs. Milton leaves the facility in civilian clothes for an armored ZSI transport and a four-vehicle escort, then stops at the door and calls back to his son. Pawbert gives him nothing, neither anger nor forgiveness, and Milton looks a moment longer before getting in.

Costa splits the pack over the radio. Nick and Judy go to Mr. Big's compound to help coordinate response teams, while Luther and Pawbert are sent home to Pawthorne Mansion to sleep with field agent Shaw following as protective detail. The convoy runs through a city in lockdown toward Zootopia Harbor. On Mangrove Avenue in the Marshlands, halfway to the water, an RPG flips the lead vehicle and blocks the road, and Icener's polar bears, wolves and snow leopards come out of the treeline into a kill zone they have already prepared. The escort is destroyed in under two minutes.

Rounds punch through the transport's armor and kill both agents riding with Milton. He takes the dead cougar's sidearm and fights, putting three attackers down before return fire opens his chest and gut. Dragged out to die against the wreckage, he tells the squad leader exactly what he has done: the codes are with the son he once tried to have killed, memorized, and they will have to be taken from him. His last words are a taunt that a Lynxley will stop Icener after all, just not the one he expected. He is executed where he lies. The squad leader radios in under the callsign Frost Seven, reports that the son has the codes, and sends his team to find the lynx.

One agent is all the city has left for the last code holder in Zootopia, every unit committed after the Ravine. Shaw goes around the side of the house for her perimeter check and walks into an assault team already in position. Three silenced rounds put her down against the wall — chest, gut, shoulder. She knows she will not survive it, so she angles her weapon upward and empties the magazine into the air. The unsuppressed shots carry to Luther and Pawbert at the front door and buy them the seconds they need to get inside.

Luther shoves Pawbert inside and they reach the gun room on the keypad code 1126, Pawbert's birthday. Luther arms up, issues Pawbert a pistol, orders him to lock himself in whatever happens, and steps into the hallway. He works the entryway and the hall in a controlled retreat, dropping attackers and making the ground cost them, and takes a cracked rib and a graze across the shoulder doing it. Pawbert, watching through the cracked door, shoots an arctic fox sweeping toward the room — the first mammal he has ever killed — and keeps the weapon up while his paws shake. Luther is eventually overwhelmed and beaten badly, then dragged to the gun room door with a pistol against his temple. The squad leader offers Pawbert the trade, and Luther, barely conscious, tells him not to take it. Pawbert opens the door anyway and steps out with his paws raised. They take them both. A needle goes into Pawbert's neck, and the last thing he sees is Luther's face.

Nick and Judy reach the mansion to find the front door destroyed and the house empty. Judy finds Shaw against the side of the building with her slide locked back and her magazine spent, and closes her eyes. Nick reads the fight off the interior — casings across the floor, four of Icener's dead where they fell, blood in places where there is no body at all — and finds two sets of drag marks leading away from the gun room. Every radio on the site has been destroyed, Shaw's and the one in her vehicle and Luther's, so no call for help ever went out. Costa confirms over the radio that contact with the convoy was lost twenty minutes earlier, that the escorts are dead, and that Milton is dead. Judy tells him Icener has both of them. Standing in the wreckage of the house they have shared for years, she and Nick commit to getting them back.

Key Moments

• Milton reveals he has been feeding Icener partial information for over a year while withholding the real codes
• Milton's composure shatters as he admits he misjudged Icener's vendetta against the Lynxley name
• Costa and the mayor authorize Milton's extraction deal
• Milton reveals the root access code: BUILT_BY_LYNXLEY — Ebenezer's stolen claim branded onto Agnes's system
• Milton refuses to give up The Root's location until he is out of the city, leaving Pawbert with half of what ZSI needs
• Pawbert gives Milton nothing at the prison entrance — no anger, no forgiveness, stone silence
• Costa splits the pack: Nick and Judy to Mr. Big's compound, Luther and Pawbert home with Shaw on protective detail
• Convoy ambushed on Mangrove Avenue; the ZSI escort is destroyed in under two minutes
• Milton fights back with a fallen agent's weapon, downing three attackers before he is mortally wounded
• Milton's final spite: he tells Icener's squad leader that Pawbert has the codes memorized
• Milton's dying words reference a Lynxley stopping Icener — just not the one he expected
• Frost Seven radios that the son holds the codes and sends his team to hunt Pawbert
• Shaw discovers operatives at the mansion and is shot three times on her perimeter check
• Shaw's final act: she empties her remaining rounds into the air as warning shots
• Luther and Pawbert reach the gun room on the 1126 keypad; Luther arms up and fights a rearguard
• Pawbert kills an arctic fox approaching the gun room — the first mammal he has ever killed
• Luther is overwhelmed and beaten, then dragged to the gun room door as leverage
• Luther tells Pawbert not to open the door; Pawbert opens it anyway and surrenders
• Pawbert is sedated; both he and Luther are taken
• Nick and Judy find Shaw's body and piece together Luther's last stand from the wreckage
• Every radio at the mansion is destroyed, so no call for help was ever made
• Costa confirms Milton's death and the convoy massacre
• Nick and Judy commit to getting Luther and Pawbert back

Key Lines

Characters Introduced

Locations

• ZCF — Maximum security visitation room; main entrance
• Marshlands — Mangrove Avenue; convoy ambush site
• Pawthorne Mansion — Exterior and side grounds, foyer, hallways, gun room

Items

• Root access code: BUILT_BY_LYNXLEY — Ebenezer Lynxley's brand on Agnes De'Snake's stolen system; memorized by Pawbert
• Gun room code: 1126 — Pawbert's birthday; entered by Pawbert to open the mansion's weapons room
• Shaw's service weapon — Emptied into the air as her final act; found with the slide locked back
• Pawbert's pistol — Issued by Luther in the gun room; used to kill an arctic fox operative
• Luther's weapons — Rifle, sidearm and spare magazines from the gun room, taken up for the rearguard

Notes

• Milton's death completes one of the series' most complex character arcs. Even dying, he cannot help being destructive. His final spite simultaneously helps and endangers Pawbert by making him the only path to the codes while painting a target on his back.
• Pawbert's first kill — the arctic fox near the gun room — marks a threshold the series has carefully avoided crossing until this moment.