First of all, I need to say that this episode is THE BEST looking episode in the entire series. It really blew the budget or created new expectations for the style and all the hard work of the animators. 10 out of 10 for the animators!
Sadly the Achilles heel of this show is the writing team who were either prevented from writing more adult themed stories or had no idea what to write. Take this episode for example, it is the first for 7 animal savior themed episodes in a season of 20 episodes, only 2 of which have a supernatural element to it. You have: The condor, the whales, the elephant, the tiger, the dolphins, the yeti, the werewolf. I am sorry, but it makes the Johnny Quest world seem very full of uninteresting human characters. While the original show had great villains almost every episode.
That wouldn't be such a bad thing if the villains were written better. Take Estella for example, she seems like a interesting greedy villain inspired by Jade. I love that she STRINGS the Quest team along with that fake story but real artifact?! Where did she get that if her "grandpa" never came back and he was... a bird researcher!? Did he do some tomb raiding on the side?
Next, he has the dumbest reveal in the whole season. Literally like a child being distracted by ice cream, she leaves safety and start to minecraft a giant piece of gold in front of everyone!! Her plan?! Well she had no plan, she was just a really bad tomb raider.
If in the first episode, we didn't even meet the villains or understand why they dressed up like a Scooby-Doo themed story, this one writes a compelling villain before dropping her out-of the sky like a condor did this episode.
Do you want to know how to fix her?! Make one of the helpers/guides the son of a diserter of the village who didn't know how to get there but had the stolen artefact. Have him follow them and call for a helicopter full of mercenaries ready to invade the city.
These kinds of sloppy writing is a precursor for the next ones... sadly. Thank God for the voice actors who did an amazing job.
