Astrid and Lilly face off against a monster that forces its victim to relive their worst childhood memory on loop (until they're trapped forever).

The strength of the girls was put to the test with this harrowing monster, and their emotions ran high.

Astrid & Lilly Save the World Season 1 Episode 5 quickly proved to become the best episode of the season.

The body part of the week, of course, featured some of the usual

Astrid and Lilly had to retrieve the monster's "A-Borg," also known in our dimension as its eye.

However, defeating the creature and retrieving its eye proved the most challenging feat yet.

They didn't just have to defeat the monster in person, but first, they must beat it within the warped childhood memory.

The monster forced its victims to experience their most traumatizing childhood memory (all while making it MORE traumatizing).

For Lilly, her horrible friend breakup with Candace (caused by Christine). For Astrid, it was the loss of her father.

The monster made both of their memories more traumatizing, with Lilly overcoming her loop first, then Tate, and finally, Astrid.

Together (including Tate), they defeated the monster by impaling it through its eye, making the eye-retrieval pretty easy.

The character evolution shown throughout the hour was much-needed and made for a quality improvement over previous installments.

Another mystery got introduced to our title heroes: strange tattoos started appearing on their classmate's arms.

Brutus didn't recognize the symbol, which fed more into Astrid and Lilly's worry.

Luckily, the audience doesn't have to keep guessing.

The tattoos came from Christine's "angel" monster as a mark of their allegiance to him.

This is quite concerning.

The girls still essentially have no idea about this "angel."

In Astrid and Lilly Save the World Season 1 Episode 3, Astrid sees Christine talking to someone but cannot identify who (or what} it is.

That's the only clue they have with this supposed big-bad (calling him the big-bad for the season might be an assumption, but things are shaping up for him to be a pretty formidable foe).

The more his army grows, the more the girls are in danger.

Future danger aside, let's talk about the monster's effect in "A-Borg."

An interesting thing happened with Brutus -- he became one of the monster's potential victims.

Previously, a monster had never been shown to affect Brutus in any way, but this one proved to be different.

Brutus seemed tortured through his memory, which greatly affected him and his mental state.

Brutus being affected proves that the monster appearing in the human dimension are getting scarier and harder to defeat.

Hopefully, Astrid and Lilly will be strong enough to face the still-to-come threats.

Both girls experienced strong emotions throughout the hour.

Astrid dealt with the feeling that she caused her father's death, which the monster only amplified.

Lilly dealt with isolation when Candace's mom Christine forced them to no longer be friends due to Lilly having two moms.

Lilly and Candace tried to rekindle their friendship, and it worked to a point, but the monster forced Lilly to remember the experience as Candace's fault -- not Christine's.

Both of the girls got forced to confront the demons of their past.

Though not the scariest-looking, the trauma monster managed to become the worst yet.

Being stuck in a loop of your childhood trauma forever until the monster ultimately feeds off of you sounds terrible.

The quality improvement came from the feeling of real stakes and the amount of information.

We previously wondered what Astrid's biggest fear could be and why she wasn't affected by the fear monster.

Now that we know, she often blamed herself for the loss of her father, which makes us wonder if that factors into her worst fear.

Lilly and Candace plan on trying to continue to get their friendship back.

There are some significant hurdles (mainly in Christine), but I like that they are trying to make amends for things in the past.

The central aspect of this episode, the emotions, makes it the best episode so far.

It ended up being a much-needed break from overbearing campiness, with the balance reached and explored deeply.

We need to discuss the poor girl Val. So far, almost every single monster makes her one of its first victims.

She's survived every encounter and explained the trauma she experiences with some weird (but technically plausible) explanation.

Even though it may become redundant, it's quickly becoming one of the show's best aspects.

Every time Val is on the screen right when a monster starts appearing, we know something wild will happen with her.

It's become a big part of what we look forward to each outing (plus, Christina Orjalo delights and brings her A-Game).

Tate also had some beautiful character development during the hour.

We learned more about his turbulent relationship with his father, featured in his memory loop.

He also helped the girls defeat the monster and further expressed interest in the monsters once the excitement was over.

Even though the bully-to-redemption arc is overused in shows like these, Tate's and Candace's stories (so far) prove handled with care.

We hope the show continues in this strong direction.

Even though it took half the season, the show finally ventured into a beautiful balanced area we enjoyed.

Five monsters remain, including the (potentially) horrible "angel" monster we keep seeing.

Hopefully, the show continues this upward trajectory!

So Fanatics, what did you think of this episode?

Do you agree with us that it's a much-needed improvement?

Let us know in the comments below, and remember to watch Astrid & Lilly Save the World online right here on TV Fanatic.

Michael Stack is a former writer for TV Fanatic..