Love is in the air in Season 5, Episode 8 of "Samurai Jack"

Is that your sword or are you just happy to see me? 

Over the course of the show that bears his name, Samurai Jack has been through a lot. He's been, among other things, beaten, eaten, stabbed, robbed, possessed, captured, and tortured. And through his experiences, he's felt many things: happiness, disappointment, anger, sadness, ennui, self-hate, and even suicidal thoughts. But there's one thing Jack has never experienced in his 50-year struggle against Aku, and that we fans have never seen Jack experience in our 16 years watching the show:

Love.

Pictured: Two people who haven't experienced love in a long time, and aren't the best at recognizing it.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it's to be expected. Despite the range of emotions and experiences listed above, Jack is, above all, a stoic. He'd have to be to have made it this far. But it's not just stoicism that accounts for Jack's reticence about love. He's also something of a lone wolf. He has helped many on his quest, but only had one true friend (the now-deceased but still-spectral Scotsman, who I hope returns soon). As for female companionship, well...the one time Jack found himself growing close to a woman in the future (in Season 1's "Jack and the Warrior Woman"), it turned out to be Aku in disguise. Given Jack's personality, the nature of his quest, and the lingering memory of his ex, then, it's no surprise Jack has never really trusted himself to a woman since then.

The last time Jack fell for a woman, this is what happened. 

So you might expect Jack to continue in this stoic, lonely manner, even with the addition of a trustworthy female companion in Ashi. Which is why it was so surprising that the exact opposite happened. Most of the first half of this episode consists of a series of awkward, affectionate incidents between Jack and Ashi: accidental touches, garbled sentences, and some striking innuendo. ("Something's poking me!" Ashi complains, at one point; it's Jack's sword. Later, Jack sucks venom out of Ashi's leg, an act we saw enough of that it certainly seemed at least somewhat sexual.)

It's a classic study in how two characters falling in love with each other can do so while in complete denial of it happening at all (while also fighting their enemies, of course). And if Jack and Ashi were going to fall in love, that's exactly how you'd expect two stoic warriors, trained from birth to discard emotion for discipline, would react. Their difficulty dealing with these feelings, and the stilted journey they make toward fully realizing them, makes this one of the funnier episodes of Samurai Jack.

"I was just reaching behind you to punch that guy."
"Yeah...me too."

But this is Samurai Jack, so, naturally, the love and the humor unfold in the face of one of the most terrifying, discomfiting creatures Jack has ever faced: a shape-shifting monster from space (whose beautifully-animated landing on Earth opens the episode) made up of countless leech-like insects, able to transform into a giant while simultaneously shooting legions of blood-sucking, venomous parasites at exposed skin. I've always been frightened by the horror genre known as "body horror." As practiced by such experts as Davids Lynch and Croenenberg and John Carpenter, body horror derives most of its scares from the uncomfortable feeling one gets from witnessing terrifying things happen to people's bodies: creatures crawling over (and inside of) people, parasites taking people over, people viscerally transforming into other beings. And this episode somehow expertly combines a budding romance with a profoundly disturbing body horror beast that Jack and Ashi spend the struggle to defeat, and made both of these contrasting elements work.

Of course, they do defeat it. And when they do, exhausted, adrenaline pumping from battle, drawing heavy breaths from the effort, and having already awkwardly interacted romantically during a fight earlier in the episode, Jack and Ashi stare at each other for an eternity in animation terms and then...

...and then, this episode of Samurai Jack closes on not a first, but another second*: the second time the show has ever ended without its trademark end credits. Instead, a song plays**. And the choice of music should tell you all you need to know about how the episode ended: 

It's hard to judge an episode like this. It is obviously very, very different, not only from most of the episodes of this season, but from any episode of the show so far: funnier and lighter (at parts) than this season has been on the whole, and more so even than most of the show's original run was. But that relative levity disguises the remarkable expansion and exploration of Jack's character this episode contained. Jack has been through a lot, and we've seen many aspects of his character emerge from what he has experienced. But love has revealed characteristics of Jack we've never seen before: He can be awkward, modest, and even a bit puritanical (blushing, cracking his voice, and covering up Ashi when she denudes herself after the leeches have swarmed her clothes). Thus, Jack falling in love is of a piece with his contemplation of suicide earlier this season. From both extremes, we now know him better than ever before. As for Ashi, her journey from homicidal maniac to loving partner has been a bit rushed, but she is now a fully realized character in her own right. Both will make the final two episodes of Samurai Jack even more compelling.

*The only other episode I can remember that ended without the show's end credits theme was the bizarre, Benny Hill-inspired, comedic episode "Jack Is Naked" from Season 2.
**I like when creators of modern pop culture reach back into the past (in this case, a 53-year-old song) and introduces it to a new generation. Check out the YouTube comment section (yes, actually look at the comments!) for this video of the song, and see how many references there are to Samurai Jack: