DC Catchup: The Flash - 'Shade' and 'Killer Frost'; and Legends of Tomorrow - 'Compromised' and 'Outlaw Country'

"Don't let the robed followers and creepy mask fool you; I'm a solid guy."

We continue my epic, two week DC catchup with The Flash.

In 'Shade', Barry must contend with a metahuman apparently composed of pure shadow. Shade is hella lame, serving primarily as a backdrop and distraction as Wally begins to have the Flashpoint dreams and Caitlin continues to Frost out, not helped by Cisco vibing the future and seeing the two of them engaged in a superpower showdown. Did I mention that I'm not a fan of this predestined to be evil thing? Also, the fact that the team is still being pulled apart by secrets, because my god people can you not learn from your repeated mistakes in this area? Seriously; I want to get Grover and Big Bird in to give these clowns a few rudimentary life lessons, 'cause damn.

Half-saveloy, half-guitar. Definitely not Sauron.

Anyway, Wally gets mad because Joe doesn't seem to trust him with powers. Joe has a fair point that it's different than for Barry because Alchemy is involved and we all know that he's up to some shit, especially when Barry explains what happened to Flashpoint Kid Flash. Eventually, Wally makes good, suggesting that they let him go to Alchemy and track him. This leads to a confrontation. Alchemy's laser stick is broken and when Wally picks up his magic rock he is encased in a pillar of stuff. Alchemy assures them that they do not know what they have done, just as an invisible speed monster attacks and pins Barry to the ceiling, announcing itself as Savitar, God of Speed.

So... It's another, even eviller speedster. Whoop. And cliffhanger.

"Don't make me cut a bitch."

When Barry gets his arse predictably pummeled by Savitar - named, we are told, for a Hindu god of motion - it falls to Caitlin and Cisco to rescue him, with Caitlin thus falling prey to her crazy, pale-eyed alter ego in the opening section of 'Killer Frost'. Angry that Cisco pushed her to reveal her secret before she was ready, Caitlin drops Barry in it by revealing that Cisco's brother was alive before Flashpoint.

The rest of the team go after Alchemy by tracking his cult, but they are more scared of Alchemy than the cops, and more scared of their 'Dark Lord'(1) than of his prophet. Caitlin breaks into the precinct to try and muscle the location of Alchemy so that he can take away her powers (assuming he can even do that without turning her into a paediatric opthalmologist) and ends up abducting Julian for... reasons. Flash comes to pick her up and talk her down, knocking out Julian in the process. He's able to bring Caitlin out from behind the Frost, but Julian only agrees to cover for her if Barry quits as CSI, because he doesn't believe that forensic analysis is a good match with moral relativism. As much as he's depicted as an arse, I actually find it quite refreshing that someone is willing to call Barry on his bullshit, where most other people eventually just forgive him to get that woobie look off his inoffensive face.

Of course, he's also Alchemy... or something. Savitar speaks to him and urges him to become Alchemy again and he's got the costume in the lab, but... I don't know. Something about the exchange suggested to me that Julian hasn't been Alchemy for a while, and I wonder if there isn't more going on here.

Cue the music.

First of our Legends of Tomorrow episodes is 'Compromised', in which the team argue the morality of historical manipulation while following Nate's new temporal seismometer to try to prevent an impending timequake in the 1980s. Regan and Gorbachev are this close to signing their landmark disarmament treaty, but one Damien Darhk is shoving his oar in, becoming a senior White House adviser in order to blow up the conference and make sure there are still plenty of nukes to go around when it's time for his big plan to go down.

Mick tries - and fails - to groom Ray as the new Snart, and their first attempt to infiltrate the conference fails when Sara takes a run at Darhk and then Ray crosses the cold gun's stream with Mick's heat gun in the spirit of not following the rules. Nate and Amaya go looking for the 1980s JSA, but discover that they all went missing in Russia in the 60s, except for Obsidian, who wasn't trusted because he was gay and blames Amaya for leaving in search of revenge. Still, he has enough clout to get them into a state ball, where Ray disarms a bomb by being himself and dismantling the cold gun for parts, while Jax and Stein try to stop young Martin's selfishness ruining his marriage - and his determination to impress Darhk getting him killed - and Sara reclaims an artefact that Darhk has traded for state secrets before telling him she won't kill him; she'll let him live to fail. Sara also sees Thawne rescue Darhk, confirming that the time traveler is a speedster. Thawne also whips Darhk away in a time sphere, presumably for the purposes of shenanigans.

Cue different music.

'Outlaw Country' then takes the Legends back into the wild west and the life of one Jonah Hex. They save Hex from a lynching and learn that his old nemesis Quentin Turnbull - the man who destroyed the town that Rip Hunter wouldn't save - has taken over the area after mining something powerful that a time traveler was trying to dig up. This something turns out to be dwarfstar, the super-rare, super-dense super-metal that powered the original Atom suit and which, coating a bullet, can put a hole in Nate's steel form.

Sara butts heads with historical misogynist Hex. Ray has to talk Nate through an attack of self-doubt, while Amaya tries to persuade Mick to let her train him to harness his rage instead of always being led by it. Meanwhile, Stein is suffering headaches and visions of a woman he doesn't know but feels that he loves, making him wonder if his involvement in his younger self's life may have imperiled the future of his marriage. At last, Nate goes head to head with a train full of dwarfstar to keep Turnbull from founding his own country and the Legends nick off with the mined metal, so maybe Ray will be back in that suit after all. First, however, he makes a superhero suit for Nate, and Sara tells them that they're heading to 2016 when their friends are in trouble.

All of which will bring us to the start of the big event; the three-and-a-half part 'Invasion' storyline. Catch you next time for that one.

(1) But not that Dark Lord. Or that one. Or that one.