Spy x Family, Episode 12, Penguin Park Review: Wholesome and Funny Conclusion to the First Cour.

Rather than continue by explaining the previous episode’s cliffhanger of the dog’s vision of the Forger family, Episode 12 of Spy x Family, “Penguin Park”, is instead a filler episode.
While this might be disappointing for some, I do think it is for the best because the explanation about the dog comes with an entire story arc that would be better to be seen in its entirety, rather than just cut off right as it starts.
So, we will have to wait for the explanation in the second cour, three months from now.
As for the Tomoya Kitagawa directed episode “Penguin Park”, it does start a bit tediously because, while there is some new stuff, like the elderly agent giving Twilight new missions to take, it’s mostly just recapping Operation Strix, Anya’s telepathy, and Yor being the Thorn Princess, all of which we learned long ago.
Thankfully, the episode gets much better after this recap, as the true story of “Penguin Park” begins with Loid coming home exhausted, only to hear the neighbours gossiping about his late nights, believing him to be having an affair.
Wanting the image of his fake family to stay intact, Loid suggests a trip to the aquariam to Yor and Anya, hoping to complete all of his other missions before then so he will not be interrupted.
This causes him to look like an absolute wreck on the day of their trip, yet he pushes himself forward, wanting to maintain the Forger family’s image for his mission.
He projects his facade of a family man to the neighbours, only for Anya to humously almost squander it again, as she robotically states how everything about her family is normal.
Upon arriving at the train station, Twilight again sees a summons from the elderly WISE agent and goes to tell her he cannot accept this mission because of the aquarium trip, only for the agent to reveal that the mission is coincidentally at the aquarium.
This results in the funniest moment of the episode, where the agent misinterprets this as meaning Twilight is prepared for the mission and giving it to him, all the while Twilight just tries to say no and buy a drink.
In the end, however, Twilight cannot refuse because intel about chemical weapons that could be used against his country of Westalis is being smuggled through a penguin at the aquariam.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if he accepted the mission just to keep the elderly agent quiet because she was speaking about their covert operations way too loudly.
Upon reaching the aquarium, Loid’s concerns are doubled when they come across the neighbours who were bad mouthing him and Yor invites them to stick togethor.
Then, his concerns are tripled when he sees that the penguin park at the aquarium is the largest in the world with 200 penguins, so it will be almost impossible for him to find the penguin with the smuggled intel, not unless he knows a telepath or something.
Oh, wait, he does!
Anya quickly deduces which penguin has the smuggled intel by reading its mind and seeing it coughing, pointing it out to Loid, who makes the excuse of going to buy some drinks again, before knocking out a new hire at the penguin park and posing as him to get to the intel.
Twilight manages to get the penguin, while amazing the boss of the penguin park with his skill while he is posing as the new worker.
However, as he takes the penguin away to grab the intel, he is interrupted by an enemy agent trying to get it as well, with Twilight quickly deducing his identity, after which a fight ensues.
The agent gets away and Twilight is forced to give up the pursuit to get the intel from the penguin, leaving it up to Anya and Yor to take down the enemy.
Anya smartly acts as if she is being kidnapped by the agent, giving Yor motive to kick him up into the ceiling, amazing both Anya and Twilight once more.
Loid then returns to his family, gifting Anya with a massive plush penguin, saying that he spent the entire time he was away trying to win it for her, when in reality it only took one try.
This gets the suspicious neighbours off his back and, aside from Loid still feeling overworked, all is well for all of the characters… well, except for the new hire at the penguin park who Twilight did an excellent job pretending to be.
Too excellent of a job, however, because now the new employee is being promoted to the job of chief with absolutley no experience.
We then get the final few moments of the episode, which, in my opinion, is a culmination of everything Spy x Family tries and succeeds to be: Funny and wholesome.
In this scene, Anya is playing with her new plush penguin, who she imagines is being recruited for a spy organization much like Twilight’s.
After Anya eats the split peanut that will complete Penguin’s recruitment, pretrending that the plush ate it, she leads him on a trip of her secret spy base (her house).
This initially ends poorly, when Anya is scolded for trying to go into Loid and Yor’s room, which is fair considering there is a lot of secret intel, belonging to Twilight, and a lot of knives and poisons, belonging to Yor, inside.
Yet, things pick up with Twilight and Yor acting like they are Anya’s plush toys and the young girl leads them outside on a mission, embarassing them all in, as I said, a funny and wholesome moment, ending the first cour of Spy x Family extremely well.
“Penguin Park” was a good way to end the first cour.
It may have had a tedious start with the needless recap, but it picked up with the aquarium storyline, and the wholesome and funny ending.
Now, we just need to wait three months to see the second cour, where we will finally learn about the dog who had a vision of the Forger family, along with other storylines, some of which are among the best arcs of Spy x Family. 
It will be a joy to see.