| The Feud | |
| Season 2, Episode 52 | |
| First Aired (CAN) January 29, 2024 | |
| First Aired (USA) January 29, 2024 | |
| Episode Guide | |
| previous "Parting Ways" |
next "Thomas in Trouble" |
The Feud is the fifty-second episode of Sodor High School: Thomas and Friends Tales, and serves as the Season 2 finale.
Synopsis[]
Thomas and Percy tell Emily, Annie, and Clarabel about a fallout the had when they were younger.
Plot[]
One frosty day, Thomas, his sisters, Emily and Percy are playing a game of Uno in the Brighton home, but Percy is distracted and not playing properly. He says he has a lot on his mind and Emily guesses he's thinking of James, causing everyone to go silent. Emily gets frustrated by how everything has gotten so bad and wishes things would return to normal, and Thomas comforts her by saying it will in time. Percy is reminded of the falling out he and Thomas had nine years ago, back before Thomas met Emily for the first time, and Thomas begins to tell the girls the story of what happened.
Back then, Thomas had just gotten a haircut, and boasted about it to Percy and Toby when meeting them at a small cafe called the Awdry Corner. His friends are happy with their hairstyles but Thomas considers his haircut the only splendid one for people like him, and goes to get a smoothie. Toby worries that something will ruin Thomas' hair, and Percy hopes to be there to see it.
One day at Ffarquhar, where the local train brings coal for the branch line engines to a siding near the bike stand the kids use, Thomas arrives and is in the middle of locking up his bike when he sees Percy coming. Thomas warns Percy to be careful when some Troublesome Trucks gang members cut him off and send him flying off his bike. A train is on approach and when the driver sees Percy, he slams on the brakes. However, the coal trucks he was shunting roll forward into the buffers and when a latch comes loose, Thomas is buried in an avalanche of coal. Percy can't stop himself from laughing about the situation and how Thomas' hair is now ruined before ignoring his friend's demand to get him out and riding away, leaving the workmen to dig Thomas out. Once he was free, Thomas went home to get cleaned up.
Afterward, Thomas blamed Percy for the incident and while Toby was amused by the ordeal, he soon got worried when they start arguing over it. Eventually, Percy calls Thomas a disgrace and Thomas swears that Percy will get his just desserts one day, which Percy doubts.
In the present, Emily asks why Percy laughed at Thomas in the first place, and he says he was just young and foolish and thought it was funny at the time. He gets Thomas to admit the same, even if he had coal dust stuck in his ears for weeks. Thomas then gets back to the story…
Days go by as the feud got worse, Thomas still believing that Percy got him into that mess on purpose, leaving Percy furious with Thomas for thinking such a thing. As a result, they stop talking to each other. Toby voices his concerns on the matter to James, but the redhead just says to leave them alone to settle things, which is how he solves his problems.
One morning, Percy was riding his bike towards the station again. Thomas was there talking with Jim and Clyde and glared coldly at Percy when he saw him. Percy tried to stop, but his brakes were out so he jumped off his bike; unfortunately, he landed in a pile of coal behind the buffers leaving him completely covered in coal dust. As crews went to help him, Thomas laughs at Percy for looking disgraceful and walks away, leaving Percy fuming and raring to pay Thomas out.
Emily stops the story again to ask why Percy wanted revenge when Thomas had nothing to do with his accident. Percy says his anger made him perceive Thomas as the bad guy; he then answers Emily's follow-up question about the coal saying it had spilled out of the hopper thanks to a clumsy worker. Thomas remembers him and starts to compare him to a different worker only for Percy to stop him before the girls start asking more questions; when Emily asks how he knew they had more questions, Percy says he can read facial expressions. With that, Thomas gets back to the story.
Following Percy's accident, he kept his distance from Thomas. They talked to anyone in Ffarquhar but each other when Percy visited, Thomas insisting that Percy caused the incident.
One morning, Percy was heading to school tired of feuding with Thomas and wanting to be friends again. As he rides to school, he hits a low hanging branch and hits it sending him flying off his bike with the branch coming down and crushing his bike. On top of that, he finds a nasty scratch on his knee from the fall. He ends up being late to school but isn't punished when he tells the staff what happened, and he even gets his knee patched up. Thomas, unsympathetic to Percy's injury, tells him it's his own fault for not paying attention; this hurts Percy and diminishes his desire to make up with Thomas.
Later in the week, as class was finishing up one day, Percy asks Toby about what a drip is due to hearing James calling Diesel that. Thomas, feeling ignored, butts in and explains how it's an insult; when Toby questions how he knows it, Thomas mentions that his father told him. Percy then uses the word to insult Thomas, and he turns it on Percy before storming out. Toby tells Percy he shouldn't have done that, but Percy is apathetic to his choice of words and leaves, leaving an irritated Toby to ponder what it'll take to end his friends' feuding.
Since it's been raining earlier in the day, the ground is covered with puddles. Thomas, paying little attention to them as he rides his bike, grumbles about Percy and is so focused on thinking of insulting nicknames to give him that he skidded through a giant puddle and loses control. He ends up crashing into a thick mud puddle and gets stuck. Thomas cries for help and Percy, who was riding nearby, pulls up. However, he refuses to help Thomas for calling him a drip and is about to ride away when Thomas apologizes and begs him to help get him out. Unable to reject Thomas' plea, Percy grabs his hands and after much effort, pulls Thomas out of the mud. Thomas thanks Percy and after a brief laugh over being a drip, the boys go home leaving Thomas' bike in the mud with the intent of bringing their parents to get it out later.
Thomas and Percy finally end the story and Emily smiles, hoping things with James with work out in the same manner. Thomas says it's hard to say while looking out the window, wondering if James was doing or thinking the same thing as them.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the English Channel in the middle of the night, a large, old-fashioned pirate ship is sailing towards the United Kingdom. On board the deck, several crew members are busy either scrubbing or partying. One of the crew's three commanders, Sledge, parties while another, an eighteen-year old young woman named Laura, a commander who abandoned her original life and joined the crew when she was sixteen, is at the helm. Sledge tries to get Laura to join in the festivities, but doesn't seem to realize that he's annoying her. The final commander, Leon, emerges from the captain's quarters and tells Laura to keep going straight and they should reach land by dawn. As Laura dreams of achieving her destiny in the form of treasure, the first mate, a twelve-year old boy named Skiff, tells the crew that the coastline is within sight before going to inform their captain.
Inside the quarters, Skiff finds the captain charting the ship's course and tells him the good news. The fifty eight-year old man, Captain John Silver, eagerly awaits the chance to find the thing he and his crew have been searching for; the lost treasure of the feared pirate lord, Captain Calles.
Characters[]
- Thomas
- Emily
- Percy
- Annie and Clarabel
- Captain John (Debut)
- Skiff (Debut)
- Leon (Debut)
- Sledge (Debut)
- Laura (Debut)
- Toby (Flashback)
- James (Flashback)
- Clyde and Jim (Flashback, do not speak)
- Molly (mentioned)
- Terence (mentioned)
- Duck (mentioned)
- Bertie (mentioned)
Trivia[]
- The episode's plot is based on the chapters of the RWS book, "More About Thomas the Tank Engine", specifically "Thomas, Percy and the Coal" and "Drip Tank".
- This is the only episode of Season 2 released in 2024.
- This is the final episode to have major input and writing from the original writer. Starting with Season 3, outside the very rare episode, most of the episodes will be written by the co-writers.
- One week has passed since James and Molly left the Island of Sodor in the previous chapter.