Well Penny got turned into a human. Then in the fight with Cinder got gravely injured to the point there was no time to heal her. So she had Jaune kill her so she could think of Winter and give her the maiden powers.
idk I kind of figured penny was either going to die again or be left behind to protect mantle but then they took the people out of mantle so her fate kinda got locked in imo, since being the maiden meant she never had any chance at living her life for herself even as a human
but she protected her friends even if she like... doesn't know it bc it looks like they all disintegrated but apparently they just went to the spirit world it looks like
I don't have confirmation but usually when there's a big tree of life/world tree type place it's heavily spirit world connected, especially given the implications that the vaults are not of this world
Yeah Penny and Pyrrha were parallels right up to the end although I think Penny's death was infinitely kinder visually And I mentioned this in my own plurk but Penny was 100% ready to give Ruby the powers earlier but she couldn't this time because she thought Ruby was already dead.
Also you know...that's an interesting point...I think this volume, more than any other so far, also kinda shows how...narratively the Maidens were sort of "squeaked in" without 100% fitting? Like they added the Maiden storyline in Volume 3 because it was the last idea Monty had pitched about RWBY and because they found a way to make it work in his honor.
Like originally what would have been at play in these stories was just the relics which would have been pretty neat and tidy since Cinder just would have been "powerful" and Penny and Winter's whole deal either would have way less important or like...not present at all. Penny might have been meant to stay dead post-V3.
But instead they managed to wrangle the story of the Winter Maiden into a little arc about personhood and friendship. It doesn't 100% work since like yeah, bringing Penny back just to almost kill her again via the virus and then definitely kill her a second time does seem a weird narrative choice but in this context I can kinda see why that happened.
although I think Penny's death was infinitely kinder visuallyAnd I mentioned this in my own plurk but Penny was 100% ready to give Ruby the powers earlier but she couldn't this time because she thought Ruby was already dead.