Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Episode 40

GREAT

100%

of 7 scoutsrecommend

Review Summary

Watch for Hohenheim's gripping backstory and the chilling lore revealed, offering critical insight into the homunculi and Father's expansive, ominous plans.

Animation & Style

Character Writing & Lore

Pacing

World Building & Setting

👀 SPOILER-FREE SUMMARY

Brotherhood slams the brakes on its present-day momentum to deliver one of the most crucial lore episodes in the entire series. This is a full-dive origin story, pulling back centuries to reveal the foundational events that shaped the world the Elric brothers now inhabit. The tone shifts dramatically — contemplative, mythic, and deeply unsettling. Ancient alchemical ambition, the dynamics between a nameless slave and a mysterious entity trapped in a flask, and the seductive promise of immortality all take center stage. The pacing is deliberate and measured, trusting the audience to sit with the weight of what's being revealed. If you've been hungry for answers about who — or what — is pulling the strings behind everything, this episode is essential viewing. It recontextualizes nearly every major conflict in the series.

🔥 KEY MOMENTS

⚠️ Spoiler Alert!

Olivier's Power Play

Olivier Armstrong walks into Central and flat-out confesses to eliminating General Raven, then leverages the situation to convince Führer Bradley to give her Raven's seat on the military council. It's an ice-cold gambit that cements her as one of the most dangerous players on the board.

Hawkeye's Coded Warning

Riza Hawkeye delivers a carefully disguised message to Roy Mustang, revealing that Selim Bradley is a homunculus. The subtlety of the exchange underscores just how deep the enemy's surveillance runs and how precarious their position has become.

Slave Number 23

A sweeping flashback to ancient Xerxes reveals that Hohenheim was once a nameless slave designated 'Number 23.' He forms an unlikely bond with a strange being — the Homunculus in the Flask — created from his own blood, reshaping everything we know about his origins.

The Fall of Xerxes

The King of Xerxes demands immortality, and the Homunculus obliges by engineering a nation-wide transmutation circle. The entire civilization is consumed in a single catastrophic alchemical reaction — the original sin that set every event of the series in motion.

Hohenheim's True Nature Revealed

In the present day, Hohenheim meets Izumi and Sig Curtis, offering to treat the damage from Izumi's failed human transmutation. He reveals himself as a living Philosopher's Stone, a walking testament to Xerxes' destruction and a man carrying the souls of an entire nation.

📍 ARC CONTEXT

Arriving at the series' midpoint, episode 40 pivots sharply from the escalating political conspiracies and battlefield tensions of recent episodes to excavate the deep history underlying it all. The preceding stretch intensified the Elric brothers' entanglement with the military's darkest secrets, and this episode provides the ancient context that makes those revelations hit harder. Everything established here becomes the narrative bedrock for the final act's escalation toward the series' climax.

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