abruptly I realize that there are only 22 episodes in this season of clear card (which was the only season of clear card until about a month ago) and that the runway is running out very fast
what happened this episode
touya and fujitaka share a heart to heart about family. fujitaka lets on that he's kind of gotten that things are happening, though he doesn't have the power to sense it. sakura receives a mysterious key of nadeshiko's (from england, natch). eriol reveals that kaito was expelled from the english magic society for "losing" (stealing) a powerful relic. his magical video call is cut off when kaito remotely interferes, causing both mages damage to their signature items. momo muses about how kaito shouldn't lose track of what's most important to him.
sakura and syaoran, after sharing an interrupted "tell me anything that troubles you" "no u" moment earlier, are traveling home in a slightly awkward limo. sakura arrives at her house and the two are not troubled at all by sudden 2000s-3D-game-level dense fog, until sakura notices that her house is flipped horizontally. she immediately captures Mirror (a reused name), then uses it to duplicate Flight, so that she and syaoran can share a moment together in the skies. syaoran hugs her tight, promising to protect her smile.
liveblog
again clear card is doing a great job with the secondary characters, letting on that of course sakura's family knows what's going on (even if they don't Know What's Going On). a lot of people outside of the core cast have been basically on standby all season, but seeing their motivations and feelings has been real neat.
this episode sets an record for fastest RTA card capture, with sakura going from noticing Mirror to capturing it in like 30 seconds. arguably, it could be because of her power becoming so strong that she doesn't really need to subjugate cards (especially when they're projections of her subconscious) but also like. we get it you have one episode left
on that note, it was really unclear why sakura putting Mirror to the test was worthy of the OP1 insert song until she used it to clone Flight and strap some wings onto the unwitting syaoran. that was a pretty unexpected and entertaining moment
also note here that momo, despite having like 50 words all season (I wish kero had 50 words all season also) is not perfectly aligned with kaito, with her hinting that kaito might be too far gone in his quest to do something mysterious and akiho-related