When I said last week that there must be a third test because too many people would otherwise have passed, I didn't think that would
literally be the premise for Serie doing the third test herself, and that she'd just triage them instantly.
It does go to show, though, that these tests are designed to weed most people out, and if the tests themselves don't do that, Serie will just do it herself. (And yeah, as others said, now I'm curious as to what the third test would have been if most of them would have died from it. And if that's the test, and they realize that needless loss of life is not ideal, then
why have that test in the first place...?
)
Serie not passing Frieren, when she admitted that Frieren is the reason so many got this far, is the epitome of petty. Not that I think Frieren particularly cared that much anyway, given she knew Fern would pass. It's especially petty, as others pointed out, given that Serie herself is clearly using the magic suppression, and even the field of flowers, spells that she criticizes Frieren for.
I kind of wonder now about those they didn't show failing. It seems weird, in terms of the sequence of things, to first cut some people off, then reveal the people we care most about, but leave these others unaddressed until next episode. I suppose one option is that the others will pass, and they'll just start the next episode with a "here are those who passed" scene, but even that seems a bit high to me. (I suppose they could do that and then have flashbacks for the others somehow.) I guess we'll see.
Here's to hoping next week's episode ends with an announcement of a second season and that they'll be back on the road again. In the end, I did like this arc well enough, but it still feels so far like a really long detour, and I'm not yet sure if any of the characters we met are going to be relevant in any of the rest of the plot after this or just forgotten (I guess we'll see). It fleshed out Frieren and Fern a bit more, and that ongoing character development (including the various flashbacks) is really what made it work for me. It still, though, basically has the sense that the author had this whole journey roughly planned, and then some editor came to them and said "slow down, this manga is way too successful to end so quickly!" so then they created this contrivance to introduce a whole lot more characters all of a sudden. Otherwise, they presumably would have introduced the characters more organically along the way. Like I said, though, it was still interesting, and I guess we'll see what they do with it going forward.