Ruby:
-Traveled around like this is some fantasy RPG land
-Fought some random encounters
-Jaune made us feel
-Ren and Nora are ******* and sent their friends alone with an injured Qrow in the direction of a powerful Grimm
-Dark and Troubled Pasts
-Crazy-Ax villain fight the good guys
-Qrow shows semblance
-Yang's mom is still a ****
On top of Jaune giving Ruby a talk and showing his annoyance at Ozpin's crew for not being clear on everything after Qrow explains the **** to them.
Much needed backstory for Ren and Nora which develops them.
All the destroyed towns, the dying huntsman and Qrow getting injured being a catalyst for Ruby realising that she can't save everyone nor rely on someone to come and save her at the last second.
Plus stuff in the finale.
-Punished Yang deals with her robotic arm
-Her father shows up, finally
So she developed her character then considering the sparring matches between her and Tai having them chat as well as when Oobleck and Port were around.
Also Tai was in Volume 3, twice.
Again another thing in the finale that definitely requires paying attention.
Blake:
-Random sea monster attack
-Taking your boyfriend to meet your parents
-Relatable.png
-In this case, I'm Sun
-Oh no, the Black White Fang is evil!
-Totally didn't see that one coming
Glossing over Sun giving Blake a talk she needs and her explaining why she runs or Blake now deciding to stop running and actually fight.
Weiss:
-Daddy issues
-That's it
-That's her whole arc
On top of being the only person in Atlas (aside from Ironwood) who actually knows whats going on whilst everyone else is too busy being a load of self centred pricks. Weiss' arc here is a culmination from her actually getting exposure to the outside world in the previous Volumes on top of finally summoning properly, something that she couldn't manage before.
And I guess none of that **** about Iron"
I have two seats on the council"wood happened.
Farm boy:
-What's the point of him again?
AKA you didn't pay attention. The whole series has dropped hints about it since Volume 1 (Blake's book, "I've made more mistakes than any Man, Woman or Child on this planet")
It's like you've forgotten the basics of how a Series works. Stuff that happened in past seasons should never be ignored because the events in past seasons build up and the current season shows a culmination or continues building on them.
I'll agree that pacing was an issue though but to say that there was no character development?
That's just being utterly ignorant.