You May Not Have Noticed This About Ironwood's Final Moments

Do you agree or disagree with my interpretation?

Yeah, now that I think about it, you're right. James was under the impression Ruby and friends wanted to do anything but open the vault, so of course he would assume Salem is behind Atlas falling.

It makes me wonder if he was so far gone he thought Winter was on Salem's side. Between Ozpin, Qrow, and Lionheart, it wouldn't be the first time someone he trusted wholeheartedly betrayed him.

This never occurred to me. When he hung his head in defeat, he was also probably realizing how badly he screwed up.

Ironwood also shed a tear when he fought against Winter, the person he viewed as a daughter figure, right-hand and only of the few that could actually trust. Feel free to take as you want, even when his eyes had not longer light, that didn't meant he wanted to fight Winter.

Yeah, a slight misunderstanding leading to bloodshed. Sounds like a typical thing of humanity to me.

James: I’m about singlehandedly save atlas Later: Damn communication skills got hands

I always saw it as him thinking RWBY's faction has the staff. But he thinks they're devoted to a suicide mission of fighting Salem, and will pull the nation down with them. He doesn't hate team RWBY for the baseline motivation of saving everyone, he fights them because he's certain of the end result. That's why he specifies "I know what's best for Atlas." Also why he tries to rationalize with Winter, instead of just angrily calling her a traitor. If he really did think Salem's faction had the Staff at the outset, the show should have given us a stunned reaction shot when he was listening to Cinder explain everything to Salem. But I think that would have been a worse way of doing things. The conflict between our protagonists was between hope and overwhelming fear; not because of a miscommunication contrivance. (Although, I still would have liked to see James's reaction to hearing Ruby was killed; assuming he was conscious).

Really solid observations!!! If you’re open to it I’d love to see more videos like this. Your videos often point out intelligent foreshadowing, setup, interwoven themes and other elements of RWBY’s writing a lot of people miss.

To your point, Emerald and Winter worked together to kick his ass. Emerald was at this stage a known terrorist.

Anyone else kinda want Ironwood alive for volume 9 and onward 👀 Man needs some serious help and so on

Interesting theory there. Let us also not forget that his Semblance allows him to set his will and go through with whatever he has planned If he's willing to do whatever's necessary to retrieve the staff, then it's also likely his judgement becomes severely impaired while under the influence of his Semblance which, as has been officially confirmed, he can't switch off. Much like Qrow, it's always active and can and will affect everyone around him, and not always for the better.

Ironwood: Has the literal BFG Also Ironwood: "CHAAAAAAAAAARGE!!"

Considering he just got tricked, fought, and locked up by ALPN(E) + Winter (and that he was conscious when Winter locked him up), after Ruby said Penny would come open the vault for him, I think Occam's Razor would dictate that he thinks Penny helped RWBY and/or Winter get the Staff and that they used it. It's not impossible that he thought it was Salem, but seeing Winter in the vault and showing no signs of surprise indicates (to me) that he figured out their plan

You know, I hadn't completely thought about this at all when watching this episode a couple of times! You're interpretation actually helps it make sense to me!

I would then ask what he thought about the glowing portal that he could never reach. I would also question why he killed Jacques if he thought that Salem already won.

The Atlas arc basically boils down to a tragedy of miscomunication

You know ever since they released Ice Queendom I had a thought of them possibly doing an Ironwood centered spin-off volume. In it we can see what he had to go though while Team RWBY and company were making their way to Atlas. In it we can get much more detail on things like Ironwood's semblance, the growing divide between his forces and Robin, and what exactly Whatt's and Tyrian were doing as well.

Regardless of what you think of Ironwood's fall, or the writing of Volume 8 in general, I think everyone can agree that Jason Lei Rose is a great actor.

I like your Interpretation, something that lot of the more, well toxic members of the Fandom don't seem to understand is that the Semblance isn't always like a Super Power, sometimes its a curse and sometimes it can consume and control you, Qrow's Semblance is a Curse and it has consumed him but then he was pulled out of it by Ruby and the others but in the case of Ironwood he was consumed by his semblance and his general paranoia and no one was their to pull him out since he either forced them out or he drove them away with his actions Very good interpretation mate