Thomas & Friends Season 21 - A Most Singular Engine (Review)

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

Season 21, Episode 2 - A Most Singular Engine

Before viewing, I made the assumption that this episode would be about entirely different characters from the last story all together, but was pleasantly surprised when I noticed that there was indeed actual continuity between episodes!
It does feel like that the creative team, in their complete greatness, are retconning the episodes to feel like Railway Series books.
Last year, the Daisy quadrilogy felt like it could be neatly packed into a book together.
These two would definitely be the follow up.

I love that from the start, Daisy is still not quite forgiving of Diesel, and she is very testing in behaviour, saying that she is a much more quality kind of engine than Diesel is.
It just goes to show that the malevolent nature of race again doesn't just lie between steam engines and diesels, but Daisy puts herself on a pedestal compared to Diesel, which is more than enough to make him cross and he very quickly decides that he is going to get his own back.

We're two episodes in also, and none of the main cast have featured as the lead in the episode, but more so as supporting cast.
In this episode, Thomas and Percy act as a sounding board to Diesel as they express Harvey is the most unique engine on Sodor, which gives Diesel the idea to set up a rivalry between the two so they become hateful of each other.
This was a very reminiscent moment to Diesel's debut in Season 2 when he spreads lies about Daisy and Harvey.

It's inevitable that they soon run into each other, but I love that Sodor's such a big complex that not everybody knows who everyone else is. It adds so much more realism.

They cross paths and have a bit of a chin-off, but soon realise that they can be good friends, foiling Devious Diesel's plan.

Overall, this was a really nice episode, and a great follow-up to the previous one.
I'm all in favour for more of these unlikely character pairings and would love to see more of them in future.

7.5/10