Star Wars Rebels - 'Iron Squadron' and 'The Wynkathu Job'

The sharp edge of the Rebellion.

As we count down to the December release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story(1), let's get in on the early days of the Rebellion with a little more Star Wars: Rebels.

While helping rebel sympathisers evacuate from Commander Sato's home planet, the crew of the Ghost run into the Iron Squadron; three punks and an astromech in a beat-up old YT stock freighter who take on the Empire by dropping exploding cargo pods on them. They're bold, cocky and reckless, and determined never to run. Of course, they also think that an Imperial transport ship is a Star Destroyer. It's up to Ezra, Sabine and Chopper to persuade them that discretion can be the better part of valour; before they get killed trying to take on something they can't handle.

"What do I pay you for, Admiral Constantine?"

Learning of these events, Grand Admiral Thrawn dispatches his bumbling underling Admiral Constantine with a light cruiser and his own inadequacies to deal with the threat; or possibly to have a heartwarming adventure and learn a valuable lesson about underestimating your rebel opponents (or the number three.) Naturally, Constantine screws up, and Thrawn pops up in time to see the Rebels bug out, although the really important thing here is that the show manages, after forty years, to make Star Destroyers feel fucking massive again. They do this by looking through the eyes of Iron Squadron, who think they're taking on Star Destroyers when they're actually only facing freighters, then get an eyeful first of a cruiser and then of the Chimaera in all its glory. It's actually pretty awesome.

Glowy thing!

By comparison, 'The Wynkathu Job' is more of a busywork episode, with the gang joining sleazy comic demi-antagonists Hondo and Azmorigan on a treasure hunt to score some ordnance for the Rebellion. It's a chance for Zeb to stretch his command skills and Ezra to learn that funny pirates are not necessarily good or reliable allies. It's fine as far as it goes, but it's basically marking time between much better episodes; episodes like 'Iron Squadron' or 'Hera's Heroes'. On the other hand, I guess it shows that the series is maturing if it can have those slightly slack episodes and that's okay, because the overall quality is so high.

(1) And as people are already beginning to slam the movie for the plot decisions they are sure that it is going to make and HOW DARE IT!

Arrow - 'Human Target'

"It's like looking in a mirror, only..." Actually, you know what, I think I've
officially done that line to death.

In a break from custom, and because I'm a bit behind on viewing, I'm hitting Arrow first this week.

Oliver is finally getting some traction on Star City, but runs up against a councilor unwilling to budge on zoning ordinances. Woo! That's what we're here for, folks. Superhero action and inner city development law! As the Green Arrow of course, Olly is focused on getting Wild Dog back, cue a montage of NuTeam Arrow shaking down Church's organisation, but major points off for the lack of Johnny Cash. They do manage to find and rescue him, but not before Rene has been tortured to the point of giving up Green Arrow's secret identity.

While Diggle helps Rene deal with his guilt and try to pick out anything he might have heard while Chruch thought he was going to be safely dead soon, Oliver braces for the inevitable assassination attempt on the Mayor. He cracks the recalcitrant councilor and scores digits from Thea's media nemesis, only to be gunned down on the steps of City Hall (I assume a new one, since the old one was a) destroyed and b) built on top of ancient evil,) by Scimitar, a masked assassin working for Church.

Seriously; this guy.

Now... Here we come to my big problem with this episode. Not the fact that the 'dead' Oliver is actually professional body double and getting shot loads survivor Christopher 'Human Target' Chance - that is ludicrous, but totally in keeping with the universe - but Scimitar. Introduced - briefly - defending Church from Prometheus, he then shows up, incapacitates Olly's bodyguards and shoots Olly/Church repeatedly in the chest, and is taken out at the end of the episode without us ever finding out a thing about him. Who is this masked man who looks a bit like Deathstroke? What's his whole deal? And if he's good enough to leave our series antagonist looking like a chump - seriously, he steps in to block an arrow Prometheus shoots at Church with obvious lethal intent, and Prometheus is all 'This was your last warning.' Come on, Prommie! Do you want villain decay? Because that's how you get villain decay - then how come his solution to the Mayor Queen assassination is to spray and pray at the chestal area and not notice that... I mean... Gah!

I was actually convinced that the only way this could have gone down this way was that Scimitar (only named in the credits, btw) was the friend Diggle mentioned, infiltrating Church's gang to fake the hit like that soul-stealing sorcerer dude in Buffy. I mean, the fact that Chance is alive is pure luck, since his bullet proof vest wouldn't have helped against head or limb shots, knives or the arrows that, what, 6 out of 10 assassins prefer these days?

Where was I?

Right; with the Green Arrow seemingly dealt with, Church moves to consolidate all crime in the city and beyond, but NTA shows up - Rene having recovered enough memory to give them the lead - and takes out the so-called Trust as neat as you like, even if most of the recruits spend the first minute of the fight watching Spartan and sighing dreamily. Rene reclaims his power by forcing Church to retreat and Green Arrow nabs him. Unfortunately, media nemesis is onto the Human Target substitution, and through this connection is given footage of Oliver unknowingly being rescued by Chance during his Bratva initiation.

Finally, the police convoy transporting Church is ambushed by Prometheus, and its no surprise that there are so few good cops left in Star City because damn if that's not another dozen or so dead. Church tries to buy his life with Green Arrow's secret identity, but Prometheus kills him anyway, because now he wants to look badass.

So, yeah, 'Human Target' has some issues, although bizarrely not really connected to the ludicrous concept of the Human Target himself. Scimitar is a problem, albeit one that might be lessened if he - or she; there's deffo some voice modulating going on with that helmet - turns up again with an identity and some... point. But also, without ever having met the Green Arrow, Prometheus has lost face with the audience by letting Scimitar scare him off. It's a tough gig being a season-long villain, and this does him no favours.

The Librarians - '...and the Rise of Chaos'

Oh, hey; an actual ensemble effort.

Huzzah! It's the return of my annual happy viewing place, The Librarians.

We open with our team pretty solidly united, but with some signs of tension. Cassandra is still of the opinion that, with the shift in paradigm going on in the world, the Librarians should magic up, putting her at odds with the others. Eve is teaching Jake to fight, although he insists he is just a brawler, and that she's always going to be there for the fighting in a way that feels... significant.

And then the clipping book which gives them their assignments explodes. Cassandra reminds everyone that she's not just a wannawitch by using her visualisation powers to reassemble the words on the torn pages and it's off to the museum where an ancient and unspeakable force of evil is looking to open a portal to the realm of absolute evil. For a primordial force of utter negation, Apep is a bit of a one-trick pony: He can unleash the chaos inherent in any dynamic, a little like the Golden Apple, but more specifically interpersonal, thus heightening the tensions in the group for a while. Oh, and because he's possessed the body of a naval engineer, he can programme a submarine to do bad things.

Sadly, I can't get a decent picture of them actually singing.

Apep beats them to the key to the portal, although Flynn and Cassandra get to geek out about the mathematical relevance of the Eye of Horus(1), which is fun. The team eventually confront Apep at the portal and defeat him with a show of unity, which involves them standing together and singing at him. Amazingly, this works, because they accept that they are essentially a family, which means that they stand together even if they don't always agree.

Just to cap everything off, the team are ambushed by a group of Government magic-hunters calling themselves the Department of Statistical Anomalies. They are swiftly deflected by exposing them to Apep's chaos field, but the DSA and Apep are still around, and Jenkins warns Flynn that an Ultimate Battle between good and evil, the forces between which the Library is supposed to keep a balance, is already underway.

In the tradition of season openers, '...and the Rise of Chaos' has a fair bit of book-keeping to get out of the way, reminding us that Flynn is here, Cassandra <3 magic, and hinting that Eve is considering life beyond the Library (not something many Guardians get to do.) The actual plot of the episode is fun, but neither Apep nor the DSA is as instantly menacing as Dulaque or Prospero. Still, it is the season opener and a certain sog is not unusual. I'm optimistic of the season gathering pace, and even slightly slow Librarians is more fun than many shows at their best.

MVL of the Week

An easy win this episode for Cassandra. While Jake and Ezekiel are distracted playing with submarines, her anagramming and mathing are primary movers in the episode.

(1) All of which is totally true.

Arrow - 'Penance'

Tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak...

As per tradition, we wrap up this week's Arrowverse and friends jamboree with the eponymous source of all angst, Arrow.

NuTeam Arrow is still rusty, especially Wild Dog, who almost blows an op by jumping the gun, forcing Green Arrow to come in and nab the bad guy, sending the team - less Rory, who is a no-show - to drop off the perp and his stolen Kord Industries(1) goods with the ACU. Rory does show up, but only to say that having learned from Felicity what she did to Havenrock, he can't work with her. He doesn't blame her(2), but it's too much. Olly suggests that Felicity have a chat with him and try to work something out.

This guy.

Olly goes solo when Felicity isn't down with the whole 'prison break against John's will' deal, but he ploughs on, stealing a gizmo from PalmerTech and beating down the team when they try to stop him. Thus when Felicity realises that Charon is going after the ACU, using the thing his guy failed to nick as a Trojan horse, it's up to the team - including Rory, moved by Felicity's awkward attempts to reconcile - to prevent the elimination of the last good cops in Star City.

Olly does his jailbreak, with Lila acting as ersatz Overwatch for the duration. He manages to get into john's cell, and gives him a rousing speech about doing his penance as Spartan, instead of in a jail cell. Then he cuts a hole in the floor with an anti-molecular spray which I have no doubt we'll be seeing again some time. They make it to the roof and Lila Fultons them off into the air, which is pretty nifty.

I'm not sure why Artemis doesn't get to use her souped-up Canary Cry.

The team do pretty well at the ACU bunker, rescuing the trapped cops and the DA by blasting a wall while Ragman absorbs the blast, then getting everyone to safety. When Curtis take a knife in the back, however, Rene sacrifices himself in a mad charge against Charon to allow the others to escape. I'm not sure why Rory didn't do this, being an unstoppable pile of magic rags and all, except that it was Wild Dog's transcendent 'team' moment.

Oliver drops Lila and John at a safe house and returns to the lair just in time to walk in at the apposite moment, to assure the team that they will be getting Rene back, while Major Queen goes back to the office and finds the DA more willing to accept that vigilantism isn't the devil's work.

And in flashback land, Oliver has to get a lead on his target by terrorising and then killing a man in a police holding cell. Now, he is Bratva.

Arrow continues to struggle to reconcile its desire to be the dark, gritty big brother of the Arrowverse with the fact that it is basically very silly. It's very hard to directly juxtapose a big heart to heart about someone killing their own brother with a spray can of universal solvent, and its more to the show's credit that they manage it at all than it is to its deficit that it doesn't do it brilliantly. While I quite like NTA's rag-tag look, it does seem odd that they're shy of approaching Cisco for gear when Laurel had him knock up the White Canary costume on the off chance that Sara might have an existential crisis.

Also, still no sign of Sara Diggle. Not happy.

(1) Seriously, Arrow; stop teasing me.
(2) A pleasant bit of nuance in a show and a genre more accustomed to people reacting with 'and now I must kill you!'

Legends of Tomorrow - 'Shogun'

I'm only just a man of steel.

Did you know that Ray 'The Atom' Palmer really sucks? Because if there's one thing Legends of Tomorrow Season 2 knows, it's that while he may have a heart as big as all outdoors, Ray Palmer really sucks.

Vixen improbably sneaks aboard the Waverider before it departs and tries to murder Mick because a time traveler killed Rex Tyler and it just has to be Mick. I mean, okay, it's a solid guess, but... Anyway, she takes out the rest of the crew with almost unseemly speed, but Mick is saved by Nate, who is suddenly made of metal and super strong, a gift that sadly he doesn't seem able to turn on at will. Thus it is that Ray is set to train him, which ends up with Nate falling into the timestream and Ray going after him.

They fall into feudal Japan during the Tokugawa Bakufu, which if you know anything about Japanese history was not a good time and place in which to be a white guy. Nate falls in with a blacksmith and his beautiful daughter, but Ray is captured by the Shogun's forces and stripped of his atom suit. Oddly for a man determined to expunge pretty much all traces of western influence from Japan, Tokugawa Iemitsu is well into the Atom suit, and having been made extremely user friendly finds it child's play to work the basic weapon systems (although notably, he doesn't make it fly, presumably because he has no idea it could do that.)

Poor Ray is due some seriously heavy-duty karmic upswing right about now.

Sara, Mich and a co-opted Amaya (Vixen's real name, since we don't go much for superhero identities around here) rescue Ray, while Nate is getting stabbed by goon come to enforce the blacksmith's daughter's forthcoming katana wedding(1) to the Shogun. As Nate recovers, Ray talks him through the means of triggering the Atom suit's self-destruct mode; something only Steel can do. When the Shogun comes for his bride, he finds all the villagers in hiding. Sara, Amaya and Mick defend them, while Nate tries to get his steel on and Ray...

Well, the Blacksmith recognises something in Ray and gives him a suit of armour and a sword he forged for his son, who was then killed by the Shogun anyway. He explains to Ray that for all their magnificence, he would rather have his son. Ray fights the Shogun, disabling key systems on the armour before being knocked down, allowing Nate to pull himself together and finish the job. This does, however, destroy the Atom suit and the Shogun(2), leaving Ray once again feeling like the load (although he would have to be going it some to be as much of a burden as poor, underwritten Hawkgirl.

"Hi. We'll be your badasses."

Sara and Amaya kick serious samurai ass with their comboof assassin training and animal spirit mojo, while Mick is off having an unlikely adventure with ninja (despite Amaya's insistence that ninja don't exist, Chuck Norris-loving Mick is insistent and keeps checking the trees, and in the final battle is randomly scrobbled by a bunch of ninja before showing up in a ninja costume at the vital moment; seriously, it's like he's had this whole other adventure.) For once, Sara doesn't get the action and it's Nate who gets a goodbye kiss from Masako Yamashiro(3) as he passes the sword on to her to be her village's defender.

Meanwhile, back on the Waverider, Jax and Stein have been doing repairs, and stumble on a hidden chamber when Gideon gets all disingenuous. This leads them to a message sent to Rip by the Barry Allen of 2050-some, telling him... Well, actually we don't get to find out yet, as the Firestorm boys are following Barry's request to keep schtum.

'Shogun' is another fun one off from the Legends, featuring a nice bit of bonding between Sara and Amaya, Mick getting to be kind of okay in spite of himself, Nate coming into his own and the universe kicking Ray Palmer when he's down again. Seriously, the series seems determined to grind him down, and I'm only even a little okay with it because I'm guessing it's building towards a turn around. Seriously, does no-one remember when he single-handedly turned around Starling City's economy, trained to a level of fitness roughly equal to Oliver Queen (if less combat trained,) built a super-suit and saved the day all those times? Sara did, last week at least, telling the JSA that she was going to assume that Ray was in the process of busting out of prison as they spoke.

I guess that they're working towards finding a new fit for Ray, with the wide-eyed idealism now covered by Nate. I really hope that they don't make him cynical, because it would be a terrible fit. I would not be unhappy to see them move him more towards the comic book Atom, with the focus far more on the shrinking power than on the Iron Man suit, allowing Nate to be the jovial juggernaut.

(1) Like a shotgun wedding, but in feudal Japan.
(2) I guess it's the 8th June 1651 then, because real historical figure, yeah.
(3) Ray realises that Masako and her father are the ancestors of Tatsu 'Katana' Yamashiro, but it's nicely underplayed.

The Flash - 'The New Rogues'

It's like looking in a mirror, only BOO!

Things are finally beginning to settle in the post-Flashpoint world, with Jesse Quick - way to keep a secret identity - joining Flash for a few patrols before heading home and a new villain of the week drawn from the classic rogues gallery.

Sam Scudder is a reckless thief, who falls foul of his boss Leonard Snart just before the explosion of the STAR Labs particle accelerator and ends up trapped in a mirror for two years. Emerging with a yen for vengeance (against a man who died in the impossibly distant future) and the ability to create wormholes between mirrors, he springs his best gal Rosa from Iron Heights(1) and they go on a Bonnie and Clyde style rampage. When Flash and Jesse Quick confront them, Jesse goes in recklessly and gets hit with Rosa's vertigo powers, while Barry gets trapped in a reflective surface saving her.

Back at the lab, Cisco and Harry try to create a device to chill the surface of the mirror enough to stabilise the exit portal, and between them name the new rogues Mirror Master and Top(2). Harry, Cisco and Caitlin are also searching for another Harrison Wells out in the multiverse to round out the team when Harry and Jesse go back to Earth-2. The device isn't quite up to it, but Caitlin creates a diversion and Killer Frosts that shit while no-one is looking. In the rematch, Jesse takes out Top and Barry creates an inescapable mirror ring that constantly reflects Mirror Master back to the same location.

In romantic subplot land, Wally is getting weirded out about kissing a girl who will be in another universe soon and Barry is getting weirded out by kissing Iris in front of Joe, but it all gets settled in the end. I hope for Wally's sake if nothing else that we see Harry and Jesse again this season.

"I wear a bowler hat. Eccentric!"

Hipster Wells of Earth-19 is brought to be the new Harry, despite Harry's non-specific misgivings. Harry and Jesse go home, Barry kisses Iris in front of Joe, and Caitlin's hair begins to turn white. The reasons for Caitlin's secrecy are a bit of a puzzle, but I'm guessing that it's because the Earth-2 Killer Frost turned out to be such a major backstabbing beeatch that she's worried that the 'tude comes with the powers and the do. It's interesting that she's developing powers at all, of course, since Flashpoint Caitlin had no powers and nothing much to reclaim except for opthalmalogical training and a rapport with kids.

(1) Seriously, Iron Heights needs to work on its metahuman containment protocols given its apparent inability to contain metahumans.
(2) Cisco racing to get a name in before Harry is blamed for the somewhat lacklustre offering.

Sleepy Hollow - The Rest of Season 3

Oh say does that star-spangled banner still wave?

Okay, so it's been a while, but I'm back to put Sleepy Hollow Season 3 to bed. I'm basically going to smush the last seven or eight episodes together.

As the Hidden One gets closer to his goal and starts to be more of a dick to Pandora, alliances blur. Ichabod discovers Abbie's symbol addiction, but soon enough discovers that the symbol in question is used to imprison gods, and can act as a sort of Witness telepathic amplifier if combined with his family tablet, which would no doubt be super useful if it didn't get destroyed in the next episode. We also learn that the Hidden One was one of a number of Sumerian gods, who was set to guarding the Box, the repository of all evil. He got bored of babysitting and used the human slave Pandora's sympathy for him to engineer a coup, only for the humans to turn on him as well and imprison him with said symbol. Pandora was kind of responsible for this, which he learns.

Fuckers.

Pandora thus aligns - temporarily - with Team Witness, and offers to deal with the Hidden One if Abbie and Ichabod repair the box, which must be done in the catacombs. Realising that the reason Betsy 'Badass' Ross made the flag in the first place was that it was not merely a standard, but a magical talisman that lets you turn a boat ride into a path to the Underworld if you sing 'The Star-Spangled Banner'. Because of course it is. They thus cross the Delaware into the Underworld and find the slaughtered remnant of Washington's unit. Deep in the catacombs, they also find Betsy Ross, still alive, who decides that Ichabod must be in love with Abbie and thus departs to return to her own time and be surly at Ichabod, thus leaving him free to hook up with Katrina and so on and so forth. Meanwhile, Joe is turned back into a Wendigo and killed by Jenny using a gun made by her father, who turns out to have been Corbin's friend and armourer.

Unfortunately, the box requires the soul of a Witness to activate, and in order to defeat the Hidden One, Abbie is forced to sacrifice herself. Despite having her soul eaten by a box, it turns out that a Witness's soul is eternal and will reincarnate in someone else (and presumably not a newborn, unless Ichabod is going to be facing the next tribulation Lone Wolf and Cub style.)

So apparently this is where the show is going. Tom Mison in a graveyard.
Alone.

Pandora is still around and decides that she's the new Hidden One, but Ichabod summons the Horseman back from hiatus and gives him his skull so that he will have the strength to battle and destroy Pandora. Technically this kicks off the apocalypse, but it's Moloch's apocalypse and he's dead. I would argue that this might come back to bite Ichabod, but continuity has been a matter of convenience this series.

Mills Snr. pops up and tells Ichabod that, realising what was what with Ichabod showing up in the catacombs, Ross and Washington recorded an order making Ichabod head of a to-be-founded order of evil slayers, who turn up at the end in black sedans to take him away.

"Sorry, Ichabod; you've got another year on your contract."

Season 3 of Sleepy Hollow has been a big disappointment. Season 2 had its problems, but was generally excellent, but 3 squandered its baddies on long-term prep work, as well as alienating me from the get-go by ditching the Horseman. It was good to see him back in the finale, but too little and too late. Joe's death pissed me off, because they bounced the poor character back and forth until we barely had any emotional attachment to him and then made his tragedy Mills Snr.'s reveal. Abbie's death was even more aggravating, because it came because they got suckered. Ultimately, 'Ragnarok' contained no wins whatsoever for our heroes, with Team Witness losing Joe, failing to contain the Hidden One, having to sacrifice Abbie to allow Pandora to defeat the Hidden One and release the full-powered Horseman to defeat Pandora, and ending with Abbie's soul/Witness spark translating to some other random (but not, for example, Jenny or anything,) and Ichabod being abducted by goons who notionally work for him.

I don't know if I'll watch much of Season 4; I suspect it will depend heavily on the chemistry between Mison and the new girl. Just as long as they don't tack on someone else telling him he loves her, as if that was what was missing from the series.

Supergirl - 'Survivor'

"The first rule of fight club..."

New friendships this week, as Kara and J'onn struggle to cope with being only mostly the last of their kind, and Wynn and Kara try to get to grips with new buddies.

J'onn fumbles his dealings with M'gann M'orzz when he asks her to take the bond with him. This is a pretty standard Martian thing, sharing thoughts such that a community has no secrets, but after three centuries alone it clearly spooks her.

Meanwhile, Alex is well into an odd-couple, buddy cop relationship with Maggie Sawyer. They look into a murdered alien, and find their suspect only for him to be kidnapped by men in a van. Maggie's contacts point them to a high end gathering, where the 1% of National City meet up to drink expensive booze, wear laughable tinted goggles and watch aliens fight in an electrified cage. Run by slinky, snake-tattooed villainess Roulette, this no-holds-barred fight club is big, big business, and even when Alex calls in Supergirl for backup, she gets walloped by a big dude called Draga and Roulette shrugs off any suggestion that she might be arrested. Apparently the President's new act has not yet made these aliens citizens, so she can do what she likes to them.

Oh, and M'gann is one of the fighters.

Smackdown.

Mon-El persuades Wynn to take him out of the DEO and paints the town red, in part because Kara won't engage with Mon-El, instead leaving Wynn to deal with him because she doesn't want to get involved with a Daximite in any way. J'onn gets some info by shaming M'gann, and when he goes back to apologise for being a bit of an ass about it he gets jumped by Roulette and dragged in for a green on green death match, during which he realises that she fights in the cage because she does not think that she, as the sole survivor of her race, deserves no peace.

Kara goes to Lena Luthor, who was at boarding school with Roulette and is on her elite invite list. She breaks up the Martian fight and takes down Draga, thanks to a tip from Mon-El; who saw him fight on Warworld one time(1). Roulette is arrested, but instantly sprung thanks to her connections. Kara takes on custody of Mon-El as her odd couple roomie. Alex takes a swing and asks Maggie out for drinks, only to be interrupted by Maggie's unexpected girlfriend. Chyler Leigh plays the quiet hurt of taking a chance on something entirely new for Alex only to realise she completely misread Maggie's casual flirt-banter beautifully.

And M'gann shifts into White Martian form, so there's that.

'Survivor' is a very busy episode. The central plot owes a lot to the Meta-Brawl episodes from the Justice League cartoon, but M'gann's inner life is a little too cryptic for the reveal of her guilt motive to have the necessary kick, in part because we only really get it when we see that she is a White Martian; presumably the White Martian from her life story who refused a kill order. Kara gets a rousing speech to persuade the aliens that life in the shadows as Roulette's gladiators isn't a life worth living, but that's a bit out of nowhere as well. It felt almost as if the need to keep Kara interacting with Snapper Carr (Kara has a story, Snapper is rude, Kara gets confirmation, Snapper is grudgingly respectful) got in the way of a more Warworldy story in which Kara and J'onn would have spent the episode bottled with the other fighters.

(1) From Warworld to a warehouse in National City. Man, that's a fall.

Stranger Things - 'Chapter 6: The Monster', 'Chapter 7: The Bathtub' and 'Chapter 8: The Upside Down'

The Monster

Okay; it's time to wrap up another one, as I address the last three episodes of the astonishingly eighties Stranger Things. I'm going to try to be brief.

In 'The Monster' Nancy escapes from the tree with Jonathan's help. They have a plan to go a-hunting for the monster, but Steve sees them together and his friends paint the town with graffiti accusing her of being a slut and him of being a perv, which precipitates a fist fight and arrest. Steve goes on to come good, realising that his buddies are colossal dicks, but this delays the monster hunt until Hop and Joyce get back from visiting a woman who claimed that her daughter went missing instead of miscarrying, and believed - before she became catatonic - that her daughter had powers. Hop links this to reports of a girl with short hair telekinetically wrecking our favourite knife wielding junior high bullies. It is during this confrontation that Elle admits to having opened the gate that let the monster through, and states that she is a monster.

This is the end...

This brings all of our heroes together for 'The Bathtub', with Nancy radioing Mike to arrange a meetup and Hop rescuing the kids from Hawkins' goons, because it turns out he is some kind of ludicrous badass. They put together an impromptu iso-tank to float Elle in, so that she can focus enough to locate Will and Barb. She finds the former in the Upside-Down version of Castle Byers, but the confirms that the latter is 'gone', actually seeing her dead with things crawling out of mouth, which is pretty yick; like... Exorcist level ick.

Either at the end of this one or the beginning of 'The Upside Down', Hop and Joyce head to Hawkins to storm the gate, while Nancy and Jonathan go monster hunting at last. With help from Steve, Nancy and Jonathan bludgeon, trap and burn the monster, but it vanishes back into the Upside Down. Hop and Joyce are caught, but Hop trades Elle's location and their silence on Hawkins' involvement, in exchange for being allowed in to find Will and a promise to leave the boys out of it.

"Your soul is mine!"

Goons descend on the school and Elle kills a shitload of them - seriously, like... 90% of the casualties in this series are Elle-inflicted - and the blood attracts the monster, which kills the rest of the goons before going after the kids. The boys make a ludicrous stand with a catapult, but Elle steps in and makes it explode. However, this costs her all of her energy and she vanishes along with the monster, leaving Mike devastated, if marginally less confused.

Joyce and Hop rescue Will and bring him home, but a mystery car picks up Hop, implying that there was more to his deal than he let on. Nancy is happy for Will, but sad for Barb.

Oh.

Some months later, at Christmas, the boys reach the end of another campaign, in a scene which suggests that they are expecting more than just monster killing now. Jonathan comes to collect Will and receives a new camera from Nancy (and, unspoken, from Steve, who is dating Nancy,) and all seems happy. Except that Hop is leaving food for someone or something in the woods, and before Christmas dinner, Will coughs up a slug and flashes momentarily into the Upside Down.

To be continued...

Stranger Things is a glorious love letter to eighties scifi horror, and - coming back to something I mentioned talking about The Exorcist - it is much more horror than a lot of more conventionally horror-themed series which focus on pretty vampires making out. Although initially the female characters occupy the conventional roles of the 1980s, they grow through the series into strong and dynamic roles, and while it's a small thing, the fact that Nancy continues her relationship with the chastened Steve - and the fact that Steve is complex enough to be chastened - is important.

Overall, the series walks the line between loving the eighties and being the eighties very well, although the boys seem a little too okay with Elle melting people's eyeballs. I especially felt that Mike's confusion over his relationship with Elle and the conflicting desires to bring her into his family and take her to the Snow Ball was very well played. This is perhaps unsurprising, as Finn Wolfhard and Millie Bobby Brown are the stand outs of this series, bringing a real intensity to Mike and Elle and their relationship.

The Exorcist - 'Lupus in Fabula'

Evil One got mad Jenga game, yo.

There are a lot of supposed horror series out there that are actually urban fantasy or paranormal romance. The Exorcist is not one of those.

We open with Angela finding Casey talking in her sleep, but in a man's voice that warns her that her mother is watching. Angela films this, and Father Tomas uses the video as evidence to try to get permission for an exorcism. The Church, however, insists on therapy as a first step, despite the fact that no known mental illness results in centipedes nesting in your bed(1) and making crank calls to your mother, let alone empowering the sufferer with mad Jenga skillz and the ability to crack a shinbone at forty paces.

Meanwhile, Father Tomas comes home to find that Father Marcus has broken into his house and established himself as his difficult roommate, like The Odd Couple if the slobbish one was a disgraced former child exorcist squatter with boundary issues. He finds the letters from Tomas' childhood sweetheart and encourages him to break this off, as any secret shame, however objectively innocent, will be used against him by the demon. we also learn that Marcus was taken in by some mad sect of the church as a child and thrown into the exorcism game, which is why he's a mess who annotates his Bible and keeps a scrapbook of horrors.

"Goodnight Marcus, God bless. We'll most likely send you into a cellar to
exorcise a demon in the morning."

Marcus gets Angela to dose Casey with holy water, but Casey holds it down through dinner before vomiting green and centipedes down the toilet(2). Meanwhile, Marcus realises that there are other demons in town, many of them, possessing the homeless. He tries to exorcise one of them, but it turns out that he's lost his mojo and the demon notes that he was the one they all failed, until he lost Gabriel. Tomas goes to see his sweetie, Jenny, who hits on him, which makes him realise that Marcus may be right about this shame thing. So one of our priests has no faith and the other has too much shame. This is going to go well.

The possessees commit a series of home invasion homicides, harvesting organs from their victims, and Casey is visited by a kindly, paternal-looking guy whom no-one else can see, which suggests that the demon has got at her in the first place through the void left when her father's head injury (not Alzheimer's) left her without a strong father figure and her sister's accident deflected what was left of the family's attention from her.

(1) Do you have a problem with giant centipedes? This isn't your show.
(2) Seriously; centipedes. Also vomit.

Choices - Bitten and Powers

Cool, hot werewolf fascists.

Bitten is a series based on part of the 'Women of the Otherworld' novel franchise, which tells the story of the only female werewolf and all the ways in which her werewolf family of killer, fascist casualwear models exempt her from the draconian werewolf law that they enforce, without ever really talking about it. It's been sitting on the box for a while, but despite its promise of a strong, female lead and all, it's really just about another superspecialsnowflake who just wants a normal life, by which I mean that she wants to get away from the communal pack house, a massive, richly appointed mansion in upstate New York, and her super-hot genius tenured ex-fiance to live with her superhot new fiance in his vast loft in Toronto and effortlessly sliding into celebrity photographer status. I would have far more sympathy for this character if she were choosing an actual ordinary life, and this - plus still not having enough hours in the week - is basically why I'm dropping it. That and, seriously, the 'noble pack' are a bunch of idiot fascists, enforcing a law that makes no sense in a modern world and making a crushing rod for their own backs because of it.

Produced by Playstation. For reals.

Powers, on the other hand, is a super low-budget superhero show, set in a world in which superpowers are common, and Powers are celebrities with agents and social media presences. It's not an uninteresting setup, and Eddie Izzard makes a really creepy master villain, but it's hampered hard by its budget whenever it actually wants to use superpowers. This might not be a problem, but none of the characters are really likeable enough, nor the story compelling enough, to get past that. So Powers is off the list as well.

Of course, that's like ten stored episodes, which is 1 or 2 percent of the box storage, but about seven hours of my life saved.

Westworld - 'The Adversary' and 'Trompe L'oeil'

"We're getting into a whole weird area here."

After a sleepy week, I had the mental energy to tackle a double bill of Westworld this morning, and it was a doozy.

We begin with 'The Adversary', and Maeve is taking charge of her existence, to the point of goading guests into murdering her so that she can get back downstairs, as it is in the cthonic underworld of the staging areas that she can find true wisdom. As Felix explains what she is, and how she was programmed, she struggles to deal with it while Felix struggles to conclusively prove - to himself as much as to her - that he as a human is substantially different from her as a host. With Felix already on side, she gets a tour of the working space and suborns Sylvester through a mixture of physical threat and blackmail. Having worked out that Sylvester manipulates host settings to pimp them out to his fellow technicians, she gets him to fiddle her settings, reducing all that troublesome loyalty while cranking her intellectual stats through the roof to a sort of supervillain default.

No more Mr Nice Guy.

As Teddy leads the Man in Black across the border in pursuit of Wyatt, we learn a little more about Teddy's new backstory. He wasn't just present for Wyatt's initial rampage, he was a part of it, and retains the savagery to turn a machine gun on an unsuspecting camp. "You don't know me at all," he tells the Man, and that goes for us as well. He also tells the Man some of the story of the maze, a defence built by a man who died and never wanted to die again.

Back in the underworld - where a lot of this episode is set - Bernard and Elsie use a legacy GPS installed in older models of host to determine where and when the stray was broadcasting data out of the park. While Bernard wrestles with his loyalty to Ops Manager Theresa - who has opted to dump him in the face of an incoming Board audit - Theresa tries to strongarm a drunken Narrative Director dipshit back into line to meet the Board's representative.

Ahh!

Bernard also discovers a set of off-record hosts in an isolated house; hosts who respond only to Ford. They are first gen hosts created by Arnold to replicate Ford's family at the time of his only happy memory, although Ford has since adjusted them to be more 'real', including turning Ford Snr. into an alcoholic jerk. Bernard is baffled, but keeps the confidence. He is about to tell Theresa something when Elsie calls, having located the base station for the spy and determined that it was Theresa beaming data to the corporate sponsors, to break Ford's deathgrip on the park's IP. He hangs up and Elsie is grabbed by someone.

Later, Ford discovers that, prompted by a voice in his head, robo-Ford has killed his dog.

"Well, there's something you don't see everyday."

There's so much happening that it was only as we began 'Trompe L'oeil' that I realised that we hadn't seen William and Dolores all episode. Still, we get to see them straight off, travelling by train through 'Ghost Nation' territory. It becomes clear that William is falling hard for Dolores, having already been seduced by the park when it gave him the chance to leave Logan to by hoist by his own petard. Dolores, meanwhile, looks more and more manipulative as she talks of a place she has to get to and shows just enough vulnerability to reel William in.

Theresa meets with Charlotte, the Board's scout, to discuss the data she has been smuggling out for them and the true nature of the Board's interest: Not the direct IP, but the collected data from thirty years of operation, be that a study of AI or just three decades of social and psychological data on the peccadilloes of the 1%. The fear is that when the Board moves to edge Ford out, he'll erase all of that data just to spite them. To force his hand, she suggests that they need a 'blood sacrifice'.

Accompanied by Lawrence, William and Dolores flee the train during an attack by Confederales, who are in turn attacked by the Ghost Nation. As they flee, Dolores sees the landscape from her visions, and she and William head for it.

Never trust anyone who smokes a louche, post-coital cigarette in a supposed
business meeting.

Charlotte and Theresa set up a demonstration, purporting to show that the reverie-build hosts could have gone killer, and use this to have Bernard fired in an attack on Ford's power base. As collateral damage, Clementine - the host used for the demonstration - is decommissioned, and Maeve watches it happen. This provokes her to decide that she is going to escape from the park entirely, whatever it takes to do this. Sylvester calls it a suicide mission, but she assures him that she has died a lot, and she is good at it.

Despite her betrayal, Ford brings Theresa to the farmhouse where Ford's family should be. She sees a door that he does not, and they find a host maintenance station in which Theresa finds blueprints that Bernard can not read, because they are for himself. Ford appears and explains that the Board set her up in a power play against him, mirroring Charlotte's reference to blood sacrifice as he orders Bernard to murder Theresa. I suspect that this is not the last we will see of Theresa, and that the host being built in the chamber might be intended to replace the human version.

So... who else might be a host? And what does it mean that Bernard was apparently pushing Dolores to break her programme? Of course, Dolores is an older model - yes, William; Dolores is a robot with an opening face - so that could have been the actual Bernard in a previous time OH MY GOD, THE ORIGINAL BERNARD IS ARNOLD!

You know; apart from that picture of young Ford and another white guy.

ETA: Looking back over older reviews, I noticed that the one scene that I picked out as disappointingly generic was Bernard's call to his estranged wife, who we now learn is just a simulation on a screen. Man, even when this series is mediocre it turns out it's being brilliant.

Oh, and locked away in the basement is this guy.

What really struck me, especially in 'Trompe L'oeil', is that the series continues to characterise the guests and the staff by the traditionally masculine, and the hosts by the feminine. The hosts are feeling, intuitive, often manipulative creatures; the humans forceful, rational, authoritative. Charlotte and Theresa's power play in based around a demonstration of a brutal assault on a woman; when she retaliates - per programme - she is shot by the male security head. Ford's brutal and terminal attack on Theresa is non-sexual, but a brutal assertion of male strength over female (albeit that the man in question if a host used as a weapon.) Even the control over the hosts is a form of gaslighting, a conventionally male weapon.

I'm not arguing that the show is sexist, by the way; I think it's almost desexualising the conflict between traditionally - although not inherently - masculine and feminine values and approaches.

Star Wars: Rebels - 'Imperial Supercommandos'

Commando Cody and his Rocket Men?

One of the episodes I gave less thought to last season was 'The Protector of Concord Dawn', in which the Rebels captured a Mandalorian commander in order to secure a transport route. This was one of the first looks at Sabine's origins as a Mandalorian, and 'Imperial Supercommandos' follows on from that.

Sabine has been working to win Fenn Rau over to joining the Alliance, but without success. When the Protectors cease to make an appearance during transits through Concord Dawn, the Rebel command begins to worry that they are planning an ambush and send Sabine, Ezra and Fenn Rau to investigate. While Ezra tries to understand how Mandalorians tick, Fenn Rau gets the drop on them and he and Sabine wake on Concord Dawn, captured and disarmed. Rau is clearly pissed, having found all of his Protectors dead, but things get worse when a probe droid gets a signal off. Reinforcements arrive post haste, in the form of a squad of Mandalorian renegades in Imperial armour and jetpacks.

Surrounded.

Led by a man named Saxon, these Mandalorians belong to the same clan as Sabine. They capture Ezra, who bluffs as best he can until Sabine can rescue him, only for Rau to run off with their new-old shuttle. Sabine is able to pull a fast one and a chase ensues with Ezra swinging from Sabine's hand deflecting blaster bolts, in a scene which leaves the Coruscant chase in Attack of the Clones for dust. Saxon tries to lure Sabine back to the dark side with appeals to clan loyalties and Mandalorian honour, but she holds to the rebels and Fenn Rau has a change of heart and comes back for them, having realised that this very loyalty to the rebels displays her devotion to Mandalorian values.

So, what is there to love in this episode? Well, Sabine gets a jet pack(1), and the Mandalorians get a real going over for the first time in Rebels, which is good for someone with a limited experience of the Clone Wars shows and the EU. It also has one of the very few instances of showing what that deelie on the Mandalorian helmet is for (drop-down monocular viewfinder.) Even more than 'The Antilles Extraction', this is Sabine's show, and as in that episode it's got a few gimmes for the shippers, but a lot of more substantial work for the characters as well.

(1) It gets dinged at the end, but here's hoping it sticks around.

Luke Cage - 'Now You're Mine', 'Soliloquy of Chaos' and 'You Know My Steez'

Trouble in Paradise.

Okay, time to finish this.

'Now You're Mine' begins where we left off, with Luke shielding Misty in a club full of bullets. While Diamondback is convinced that they can come out as heroes, Shades is beginning to realise that the new boss is just as self-destructively obsessed with Luke Cage as the old boss; or even more so. Luke manages to get Misty into a prohibition-era hidey-hole, while Diamondback plays out a pantomime of Luke Cage's hostage drama, including murdering Mariah Dillard's council rival with his budget Iron Man gauntlets.

Boom!

Claire is part of the hostage crowd, where she runs into Candace, the waitress who helped to frame Luke and who comes clean now. Claire manages to slip away and incapacitate a guard, because she's awesome, She locates the back wall of the shelter and Luke punches through, letting her get to the injured Misty. "Me, medical shit. You, bulletproof shit." As part of this, she has to close up one of Misty's arteries, with the possible risk that she might lose the arm (hinting at her comic book counterpart's bionic arm.)

Politics.

Luke takes out the hostage takers and gets everyone out alive, apart from council rival, who has already been robot punched to death to encourage the police to shoot first and ask questions in the wrongful death inquest(1). The Inspector struggles not to let the ESU of the chain with Judas 2.0, knowing that whatever the police, the crooks will have soon, and not really trusting Mariah. In the end, Luke doesn't resist arrest.

Misty and Claire take down Shades when he finds the shelter - because they're awesome, yeah - but Diamondback gets away and Misty hints to Luke that he ought to bring him down, before he can go to ground and rebuild his forces.

"So... we don't have to hate each other and cat fight and shit?"

Moving on to 'Soliloquy of Chaos' then, Luke escapes with the collusion of the transport driver and goes after Diamondback. Shades is bailed out, but Diamondback sends his new number two guy to off him for questioning his leadership. Shades takes out three would-be killers and escapes, and both he and Diamondback aim to suborn Mariah to their cause. She leans towards Shades, since Stryker is so clearly incredibly cray-cray. Aided by Mariah's devoted and morally flexible council PA, they set out to get clear of the cops and rope Luke Cage in to fight Diamondback for them.

Method Man.

Tracking down leads, Luke is distracted by a bodega robbery, where by pure chance he runs into none other than Method Man of the Wu-Tang Clan, who swaps his hoodie for Luke's bullet-holed one. Later, he freestyles a tribute to Luke on the radio(2) ('Bulletproof Love') and the storekeeper starts selling hoodies with holes in, providing cover for Luke as the cops find their perp's distinguishing feature has become a fashion statement.

On Bobby Fish's advice, Luke uses Turk Barrett as a way to get to Diamondback, who is in need of new distributors. He goes to his half-brother's warehouse lair, but the Puerto Ricans have beaten him there and been slaughtered by Stryker using something new; something unlike anything they have seen before.

Harlem standoff.

Shades and Mariah look for parlay at the barbershop, offering proof of Carl Lucas' innocence as a sweetener, but Diamondback breaks up the party with a grenade, before entering in a utilitarian-looking supersuit(3).

'You Know my Steez' kicks off as Luke and Stryker face off. Stryker's suit is bulletproof and extends the strength-boosting power of the gloves, but Luke realises that either Diamondback or the suit itself are drawing power from the fight. He lets Diamondback whale on him until the power gives out, then smacks him down. Mariah is taken into custody and it's all good! Yay for the heroes!

Oh, wait; we're only fifteen minutes in.

Actually not the main event.

Luke gives a statement and the NYPD drop the charges. Misty brings Mariah up for murdering Cottonmouth, with Candy as a witness, but unfortunately Shades stole Misty's phone in all the grenade confusion and lures Candy into an ambush, killing her with Cottonmouth's pistol. Without her word, Mariah walks and sets up as the new Queen of Harlem, while Luke's plans to get coffee with Claire are interrupted when Mariah outs him as Carl Lucas in a TV interview and the US Marshall service turns up on account of how he escaped from that prison that one time. Misty is in the shit for going behind the Inspector's back and maybe getting her witness killed. Bobby Fish does find the evidence file, but all in all it's a bit of a downer.

And so Luke Cage wraps up, not with a bang, but with a warrant. The really interesting thing about it is that it essentially takes the entire series to establish its actual villain. We begin with Cottonmouth, replace him with Diamondback - a greater physical and emotional threat to Luke - halfway through, but in the end the villain of this series is Mariah Dillard, the one person Luke's powers are useless against, because she would never come at him physically. Like Luke, however, she is unbreakable. For all her crimes, she walks away Scott free, her political connections protecting her from the consequences of her actions, while better men and women are eaten up by the system.

The series doesn't end quite as strongly as it began, and the high risk gambit of cycling through villains becomes a little frustrating before it finally pays off, but it's a solid entry into the MCU and recognised as one of the best and most aware black superhero stories ever.

(1) I kid of course; they don't have those when the police shoot a black man in a hoodie.
(2) During the interview, the show also gets as on the nose as it is possible to be about the aptness of a bulletproof black man to the era.
(3) It looks kind of goofy, but is probably kind of what a military-issue, non-flying, budget Iron Man suit woudl look like.

Arrow - 'A Matter of Trust'

A man desperately in need of the Cisco Ramone magic.

The two lives of Oliver Queen collide again, as the Mayor and the Green Arrow both attempt to tackle another new drug hitting the streets. This one is called Stardust(1), but it's no magic potion. It... Okay, actually I'm not sure what it does, but I'm happy to get on board with designer street drugs being bad, especially in Arrow where the latest high is usually objectively evil in some way. Kids are getting high and kids are getting hurt, and the new DA is pushing hard.

Do I have something on my face?

Rene/Wild Dog thinks he has a lead on the Stardust factory, since he knows the streets, but apparently we're not done with the trust thing (I guess the episode is called 'A Matter of Trust') and Olly blows him off. Thus Wild Dog and Evelyn do a little freelance recon, which becomes freelance face punching, and loses the DA the chance to flip Stardust distributor Derek Sampson when he is knocked into a vat of his own chemicals(2). Olly butts heads with Rene, and Felicity notes that Rene may be the only person she knows who is more stubborn than Oliver.

Meanwhile, Curtis continues to be adawkward, to a degree which could possibly get old, and Felicity is labouring under the weight of her guilt over dropping that missile on Rory/Ragman's hometown that one time. You can see how that would be awkward to bring up.

While she believes in his innocence, Lila is apparently unable to mobilise the terrifying might of ARGUS to prove it, so he's in custody, and finds himself sharing a cell with an old 'friend'; Floyd Lawton, aka Deadshot, which is kind of a surprise given that we last saw him providing covering fire from an exploding building. Lawton plays on Diggle's conscience until he confesses to Andy's killing. When Lila visits, he decides that he is going to take the fall for stealing WMDs in order to atone for killing his brother. Wanting to be punished makes sense, although it seems a little out of character to let General Garry Chalk get away with murdering his entire unit for the sake of a little metaphorical flagellation.

Terrific.

In an incredible twist, dunking into a tank of boiling drugs doesn't kill Sampson, but instead turns him into a superhuman juggernaut who feels no pain and walks off bullet - and arrow - wounds. He busts out of the morgue, rounds up his crew, and in a stunning break from supercriminal protocols, decides to recreate the exact mix and dunk all of them in a vat of boiling drugs as well. Of course, Felicity jumps right onto the theft of a piece of chemical analysing tech and persuades Olly to take the team out on a fieldwork assignment.

Lots of pics this time, just to cover the new costumes.

The team perform well, although Curtis is a bit bumbling still and provides mostly tech support. They blow up the chemical experiments and Olly offers a little lesson in anatomy - even if you can't feel vital tendons being slashed, they still stop working, which to be fair is one of my bugbears about the whole 'feels no pain' bit - and leaves Sampson in an exploding drugs lab(3), because not being Batman means never having to say you're sorry(4).

Welcome to the Lair.

As a form of graduation, the team are formally welcomed into the lair, and get to marvel at the costumes of the dead and elsewhere. speaking of whom, Thea spends the episode firefighting over the appointment of Quentin Lance as Deputy Mayor, after a reporter flags his alcoholism and then uses her admission of culpability to suggest that Oliver isn't in control of his own office. At the end of the episode, Oliver brings the lessons of vigilante justice to the Mayor's office by owning responsibility for all that his team does, because he trusts those he appoints, including both Thea and Quentin.

Oo. Flashback screenshot.

These lessons also come from his flashbacks, of course, because we're getting well into the whole relevance thing again. Analtoly teaches him that he must trust the Bratva, revealing that the guys who died during his initiation weren't real candidates, but those targeted by the Bratva for wronging their people. Then he has Olly stand and get slashed across the back by his future brothers.

Arrow season 5 continues to feel a bit like a sort of greatest hits compilation of the past five seasons, with its renewed focus on daytime Star City and the the more direct parallels in the flashbacks, the building of a team and the mixing up of regular criminals, mutants and magic; even the presence of a dark archer in Prometheus. It makes me wonder if they're planning a sixth season, and if so how much they're going to shake things up. 'A Matter of Trust' isn't Arrow at its best, but it's definitely better than Season 4's busywork episodes.

(1) So, this ties in with Stephen Amell's kayfabe beef with Stardust, the wrestling persona of guest star Cody Rhodes, which together with Curtis referencing wrestler Terry Sloane (the name of the first Mr Terrific) as his idol and linking Wild Dog's hockey mask to Amell's role as Casey in TMNT: Out of the Shadows, makes this one hella meta episode.
(2) Points off for not having Olly ask: "Do you want supervillains? Because that's how you get supervillains."
(3) Do you want double supervillains? Because that's how you get double supervillains!
(4) About killing supervillains, that is. Not being Batman isn't a blanket excuse for being a colossal dickbag.