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| Giving new meaning to the term 'street fight'. |
It's that time again, when the CW superheroes close out for the
mid-season break with pain, failure and frustration.
We begin, as always, with Supergirl,
and 'Reign', which unsurprisingly introduces the Girl of Steel to the season's
big bad. Wrongdoers around National City start turning up dead by
superstrength, and a Kryptonian sigil unknown even to Kara's holo-Mom is burned
into the crime scene with heat vision. The crazy prophet of Supergirl turns out
to have a clue, however, explaining that in his research into Kryptonians he
spoke to Fort Raz prisoners still at large and tracked down many Kryptonian
artefacts, which led him to learn of an apocalyptic prophecy from the ancient
days of Krypton, pre-dating the unified worship of Rau, and speaking of the
coming of the Beast, the Worldkiller, an unstoppable force of judgement.
At the same time, she learns that in the far future, Mon-el had formed
a team of superheroes called the Legion, modelled on Kara's example and
including his now-wife Whatsherface(1). This is a bit of a good news, bad news
thing - good news: you inspired a Legion of Heroes; bad news, one of them
married your squeeze - and not helped by Imra telling her how Mon-el was
dedicated to getting back to Kara for four or five of the seven years he was in
the future before their team was caught in some sort of time vortex and thrown
into the distant past, where it lay dormant with them in stasis until Edge's
torpedo shook them up.
Speaking of Edge, Lena and James try to prove he's been building an
evil Kryptonian, mostly to push forward their whole romance angle. Sadly, after
a few weeks of no movement, this is now feeling a little forced. Eventually, it
turns out that the Kryptonian killer is Reign, and she and Supergirl have a
massive fight across the city which ends with Kara being dropped off a roof and
rushed to the DEO for medical treatment, because damn.
Oh, and Sam may be turning permanently into Reign in front of her
teenage daughter. Yay!
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| Yes, these are also the Christmas episodes. |
Meanwhile, the Flash is abducted by Devoe, and Caitlin - who is feeling
pretty pissed that the guys have been hanging out with Killer Frost while her
side of the persona has been sleeping - by Amaunet. Devoe's motives are
obscure, but Amaunet wants Caitlin to save a metahuman telepath who was shot
resisting her attempts to capture him to sell to an interested party. This
leaves Iris in the unfortunate position of having to make the tough call on
where to focus their efforts: Rescuing Caitlin or rescuing Barry. She tries to
do both, but after a tough love pep talk from Harry chooses to focus on Caitlin
and trust that Barry can escape on his own.
Caitlin works with the telepath to try to escape, but in the end the
outside assist is needed, as neither of them are exactly sluggers. Barry,
however, is able to seemingly outthink the Thinker by vibrating his molecules
fast enough to appear to vanish from his Speed-proof cell. The team reconvene
in triumph, but when Barry is called away to the apartment, he gets a call from
the telepath, whose power has been abused to transfer Devoe's mind into his
body, leaving Devoe's body a) dead and b) in Barry's apartment with the police
knocking on the door. Steeling himself with the titular advice 'Don't Run', he
prepares to face the music.
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| All praise Beebo! |
Finally, we wrap up Legends of
Tomorrow with 'Beebo: God of War', in which time falls out of joint when
the younger Martin Stein becomes an anachronism and the must have Christmas toy
Beebo becomes the 'blue god' who will lead Leif Erikson and his sister Freydis
to the conquest of the New World and ultimately supplant Christ as the winter festival deity(2). While the
team is able to infiltrate the camp, rescue Stein and eventually destroy Beebo,
this just leaves the Vikings to be wowed when Damien Darhk turns up in a winged
helmet, with Nora playing a Valkyrie to his Odin, clearly planning to take over
the world, starting with Vinland.
With the off-the-books assistance of Agent Sharp, the Legends have no
choice but to take on the Darhks, magic and all. Sara, Zari and Nate face off
with Damien, while Mick and Lenny Snart use the old crossed-stream trick to
take down Nora. Sara tries to stop Damien time-teleporting out, and finds
herself in the domain of Molos, but is dragged out at the last minute. It's
pretty upbeat for a mid-season finale; except that Stein refuses to keep Jaxx's
Back to the Future letter and as a
result Jaxx opts to leave the Waverrider.
Oh, and John Constantine pops up and tells Sara that a possessed girl is
calling her name.
So far, it's been a pretty strong season for DC/CW, although not
without its flaws. The transition of Sam to Reign still feels too sudden, and
there is always a problem with convincingly portraying a super-genius as a
convincing threat, but also as one that could possibly be defeated. Legends is
managing the best, perhaps because its goofy nature means that it can weather a
few little inconsistencies. Arrow,
I'm not sure about, since we're a ways behind. Maybe we'll get caught up before
the end of the midseason break; or maybe not.
(1) It's Imra, but I always find it telling when I can't remember the
name after a couple of weeks.
(2) Agent Stick-Up-Her-Butt - she's sympathetic enough I ought to call
her Sharp from now on, especially since she has conspicuously and literally let
her hair down - suggests that the Legends handling an anachronism on this level
would be a Beebo's Day miracle.
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