 |
| Grrl power. |
Okay; I've got a lot to get through on this one, so I'll probably be a
little brief.
Aware that Reign is far from beaten, Supergirl plans a trip to 'Fort
Rozz', which is now in orbit around a blue star that depowers Kryptonians and is
lethal to males, because science, okay. In this highly specific set of circumstances,
Kara recruits an unusual squad for this apparent suicide mission(1): Herself,
despite her lack of powers, along with Imra, Livewire and Psi. Their goal: To
find a Kryptonian heretic priestess and find out more about Reign. At the same
time, Alex agrees to sit for Ruby while Sam is on a business trip - only for
Sam to ditch the trip when Reign is activated to stop Supergirl's mission - and
helps her to confront a cyberbully.
 |
| It's Sara Douglas, from Superman II. |
Psi zaps Imra during a fight, confining both to the ship. The prison is
almost pulled into the star, but Winn bounces superlight signals off Voyager
2(2) to save it. Meanwhile, Kara and Livewire locate the priestess and learn of
the other two worldkillers, Purity and Pestilence(3). Reign - whose powers are
not only Kryptonite resistant, but also not dependent on ongoing exposure to
yellow solar radiation - shows up and kills the priestess. Livewire sacrifices
herself to save Supergirl and Psi is able to drive Reign off, seemingly by
creating a bridge between the Samantha and Reign personalities, which also
causes Sam to seek help from Alex over her 'missing time' episodes. Kara is
knocked by Livewire's death under her command; no Amanda Waller she.
Elsewhere, a second Worldkiller survives being hit with a car.
 |
My favourite thing about this episode: That the Wicked reference in the title
suggests they aren't going to heel turn Lena. |
In 'For Good', Lena's feud with Morgan Edge once more arises. Edge and
Lena are both targeted by assassination attempts, causing Edge to go somewhat
over the... well, the edge, and publicly both accuse and threaten Lena. James
comes over all white knight and threatens Edge in his Guardian persona. While
the DEO chase the assassin, Lena works out that the killers were contracted by
her mother, Lillian, in an attempt to make her 'Luthor out' and embrace her
inner diabolical mastermind. Kara and Lena crash Edge's party to warn him, just
before Lillian launches an attack with hacked drones. Lena coerces a confession
from Edge over the pool poisonings, then destroys the targeting tag in his VIP
pass. Mon-el helps Kara to fight off the drones, and also Lillian in Lex's
armoured battlesuit(4), with Winn throwing in some re-hacked drones for good
measure. Edge tries to escape with the recording, but is stopped by Guardian.
 |
| The eyes have it. |
Elsewhere, Alex tests Sam, but finds no sign of illness or tumour.
Winn, J'onn and Mon-el work out that the Worldkillers are genetically modified,
and deduce that they probably came to Earth with Superman and would have secret
identities, identifying four possibilities, including one Julia Freeman, whom
Kara has seen in dreams, leading the DEO to track her down in 'Both Sides Now'.
A raid on the home of one Julia Freeman turns up what seems a normal,
scared woman. Kara tries to talk to her, but Alex steams in and triggers a
shift to the Worldkiller persona. They are able to subdue her and take her in,
where Kara's attempts to get through to her are constantly thwarted by Alex
getting all aggro, despite her promise that they can 'try it your way'(5).
Alex's bad cop routine is similarly ineffective, and the Worldkiller escapes.
When surrounded, she briefly reverts to Julia and agrees to come back to the
DEO, but then Reign shows up and drags her back to the Fortress of Sanctuary to
be properly Worldkillerised.
During this whole business, Sam - who is on sick leave - abandons Ruby
at an ice rink to go off and be Reign. Ruby calls Lena - which is the kind of
employee relations few CEOs can boast, even with senior executives - who also
briefly sees Sam turn into Reign. Also, Mon-el and Imra are having troubles
because - as he admits to J'onn and then to Imra - he is still in love with
Kara and, although he does love Imra, didn't marry her on his own terms but for
diplomatic reasons. In return, she admits that she and Brainiac-5 have a secret
agenda that they didn't share with him.
 |
| Also with karaoke. |
Finally, in 'Schott Through the Heart', Winn's father, supervillain the
Toyman, dies. At the funeral, Winn's mum shows up, and then the coffin explodes
like a giant jack-in-the-box full of C4.
Winn is hostile to his mother for abandoning him, although she explains
that she did it because his father ran them off the road when she tried to take
him to an abuse shelter and told her that if she ever tried to see Winn again,
he would kill Winn. Then mechanical flying monkeys bust into the DEO. Winn's
mother recognises something about them and goes to confront a corrections
officer who was in love with the Toyman and whom he groomed to be his
instrument of revenge. Kara and Mon-el help Winn to rescue his mother and take
down his father's protégé.
In character development land, Mon-el tells Kara what he has learned
about the Legion's secret mission: that Imra and Brainiac were sent to stop the
third Worldkiller, Pestilence, who will one day become the cosmic-level
supervillain Blight, who caused the plague whose cure is concealed in their
DNA. James is having some issues with his relationship with Lena, who seems to
have vanished, but is in fact trying to help Sam by using one of L-Corp's evil
labs for good. Also, Alex realises that J'onn's father has Martian dementia. He
angrily tells her not to get involved in his relationship with J'onn, but comes
around and confesses to his son in another of Supergirl's surprising flashes of really dealing well with real
issues.
This season of Supergirl
continues to run strong, with a good central cast(6) and making a lot of the
opportunities presented by getting to use an enemy who is like Supergirl, but
bad. Conversely, The Flash is really
struggling with not having an enemy
who is like the Flash, but bad, in part because it's using one of the most
difficult of villains: the inhuman supergenius.
 |
| That's a striking range of heights. |
In 'True Colours', Barry has to break out of the metahuman wing, along
with fellow prisoners Kilgore, Black Bison, Hazard and Dwarfstar, in order to
prevent the warden selling them all to Amaunet. Team Flash learn about the deal
when Cecile reads the Warden's mind, then Ralph discovers the ability to
shapeshift and tries to call the deal off, but loses control and screws the
pooch. Barry gets to see what kind of people he is escaping with - Kilgore and
Dwarfstar are gits, Black Bison is a zealot, and Becky 'Hazard' Sharpe is
actually lovely - before they are cornered by Amaunet and the warden. They
fight off this threat, only for DeVoe to pop out of nowhere, as he do, drain
the powers from Hazard, Black Bison and Dwarfstar - killing them - and abandon
the ailing form of telepath Dominic Lanse for that of Beck Sharpe. He also
murders the warden, keeping Barry's identity safe, which is handy when Ralph
shapeshifts into DeVoe in order to claim not to be dead and get Barry released.
 |
| A lot of work goes into establishing what are essentially sacrificial victims. |
Team Flash realises that DeVoe is specifically targeting the bus metas,
which will include Barry, while DeVoe uses the Weeper's narcotic tears on his
wife to allay her growing doubts over the death toll of their plans.
DeVoe's next target is 'Subject 9', a country musician named Izzy who
can control sound waves, especially in conjunction with her violin. Her
abilities prove uniquely able to disrupt DeVoe's stolen powers, but despite
training and support from Barry and Ralph - the latter forming a close bond
with her - and the use of the cerebral dampener mentioned by Savitar, they are
unable to stand up to DeVoe's battery of abilities, and he is able to steal
Izzy's body to escape the deterioration of Sharpe's form. With Barry on
indefinite leave from the police due to ongoing questions over his case, and
Ralph mourning the loss of Izzy, the two bond and Ralph gets Barry a PI
license.
 |
| All the speedsters (well, a good number.) |
A bit of a side track in 'Enter Flashtime', as an eco-terrorist sets
off a nuclear bomb nicked from ARGUS(7). Barry manages to accelerate to the
point that the world seems to stop around him, but the bomb is already
detonating. He and Jesse - on Earth-1 to talk to her father - bring people into
this 'flashtime' one at a time to try to solve the problem, but even with help
from Jay Garrick they cannot seem to find a way to prevent the detonation,
until Iris gives Barry the idea to retrieve a quark sphere designed to make the
Speed Force believe he is still within it, thus drawing down a storm of Speed
lightning able to refuse the nuclei in the bomb.
Caitlin and Harry briefly encounter the mysterious girl at Jitters.
 |
| It's a new colour for a speedster. |
A flamethrowing metahuman bank robber brings to light another bus meta,
Matthew Kim, whose ability is transferring powers from one person to another.
When they try to capture him, the Flash's speed is passed to Iris, who must
learn to act as a speedster while Barry takes over as man in the van, in the
episode 'Run Iris, Run'. To help out where Iris's lack of experience calls for more novel uses of speed, and to fight the Thinker, Harry devises
his own thinking cap. Cisco has doubts about this plan, especially nixing Harry's attempts to persuade the group that he should charge the cap with dark matter. This enables him
to provide a plan to defeat a meta empowered by Kim and - with Kim secured in
the pipeline for his own protection, and Barry's powers returned - also locates
the last two bus metas.
 |
Also, Breacher returns and seeks help with his failing powers, but I had
literally forgotten that. |
In 'Null and Annoyed', Ralph's irreverence wears on Barry as they track
down another bus meta, Janet Petty, who can control gravity. Ralph admits he
jokes because he is afraid of being abandoned, which honestly Barry would have
picked up on if he wasn't so self-centred. They are able to stop Petty, and
Ralph becomes an airbag to catch Barry when he is degravitised and falls from
high altitude. DeVoe's wife, Marlize, discovers that he has been drugging her,
but when leaving a recording to remind herself that he is doing so discovers
that she had done so many times before, while Harry works on charging his
Thinking Cap with dark matter.
In 'Lose Yourself', the team looks for the last bus meta, Edwin Gauss,
a dropout who is able to enter pocket dimensions. A Samuroid comes after Gauss,
injuring Caitlin, and Harry develops a tuning fork weapon to stop DeVoe. Barry
argues with Ralph, who is intent on killing DeVoe to protect his new family,
Team Flash, while Joe tries to help Harry with an addiction to the thinking
cap's effects. Barry and Ralph use Edwin's power to open a door to DeVoe's
pocket dimension base, but he outplans them again and uses their absence to hit
Star Labs, taking the remaining bus meta powers. Ralph is able to capture him,
but he uses his powers to prevent the power dampening cuffs activating,
allowing him to steal Ralph's body and escape back to his lair, after draining
Caitlin's powers and the Killer Frost personality, and before shifting into his
original shape using Ralph's powers.
The problem of course is that a) DeVoe is now simply too monstrous for
me to give a flying fuck about his Utopian vision. They keep referring to their
plans, and I just blank them, because on top of the villains he has murdered
good, kind, innocent people to get to this point, and repeatedly brainwashed his wife so that she never questions
him, so I literally care less about his diabolical masterplan than I did about
Damien Darhk's back in Arrow season
4, and b) in order to sell his supergenius you have to both stretch credibility
- Sherlock Holmes is capable of insane leaps of logic, but we get to follow his
purported process and that means that we're not left thinking 'nope, he's just
a wizard' - and allow that the good guys are gripless incompetents who can't
think to build a power dampner into the cerebral inhibitor 2.0.
 |
| I'm not crying. You're crying. Shut up. |
Also, either they just spent a good third of a season growing Ralph
Dibney from a complete douchebag into a character the audience could respect,
even like, just so they could kill off a recurring character(8), or they're
going to somehow bring him back, which means his death is meaningless. Either
way, it's pretty cheap, and as with so many things in The Flash, fundamentally Barry's fault; not that I'm advocating
superhero rough justice, but Barry's ability to adapt to the new paradigm is
significantly poor.
Also, just how is DeVoe's battery of abilities any barrier to a hero
who is established in Flashtime to now be basically able to move and act faster than thought? For a while now
I've been of the opinion that with superhero shows, half-season arcs are the
wave of the future. It keeps a single nemesis from outstaying their welcome,
and allows for tighter storytelling.
Which brings us to Legends of
Tomorrow, which does full-season arcs, but with a shorter season, and which
uses its time travel premise to continually play with its look and keep things
fresh.
 |
| "No one can know about my haircut." |
We begin this final set with 'No Country for Old Dads', in which Darhk
sends Nora and Ray to 1962 Berlin to retrieve the secret of cold fusion -
needed to power the repair of the broken fire totem - from a defecting
scientist who is about to be murdered by... Damien Darhk. Naturally, shit goes
sideways and Nora and Ray bond a little as they struggle to extract the
scientist the old-fashioned way. Ray believes that there is good in Nora, and
despite her own determination that she is Mallus' creature through and through,
there is something there that he
reaches, in part because of that Pollyanna willingness to accept the good in
everyone that Zari protected back in 'Phone Home'. There is no defection here,
however. Damien shows up to save Nora from his younger self, and in the ensuing
conflict Ray blows a hole in the Berlin Wall, creating another anachronism,
while Nora's desire to save her father is - despite her general evilness -
selfless enough to allow her to bond with the stolen spirit totem, corrupting
it.
Rip and Wally contact the Legends and they learn that the prison in
which Mallus was bound is time itself, hence as the anachronisms create cracks
in time, his cage weakens. Wally rescues Ray and steals back the fire totem,
and the dying scientist - shot by the older Darhk to preserve his record as an
assassin - gives Ray the formula for cold fusion. The director of the Time
Bureau is killed by Grodd while attempting to prevent Alexander Hamilton seeing
Hamilton, making Ava acting director
and allowing Rip back to work. Wally stays on the Waverider, and Rip deletes a file in the ship's directories to
prevent Sara learning Ava's secret.
 |
| Well... okay. |
In 'Amazing Grace', Nate loses his hair game as rock and roll vanishes
from time, thanks to an anachronism caused by a mass panic at Elvis Presley's
first big performance which prevented the style going mainstream. The team
realise that Presley's guitar contains the death totem, which is summoning
ghosts, but when the swap it for a replica find that Presley can't play, having
previously been inspired by the presence of his late brother's spirit. In
addition, a ghostly presence tries to take the guitar from the Waverider and return it to Presley,
while his uncle, the local pastor, has him arrested to try to free him from the
'devil's music.'
Amaya persuades Elvis's uncle to allow his record to be played on the
radio, which causes the dead to walk in numbers, but then Elvis is able to use
the real guitar to send them back to their rest, before surrendering the death
token and returning to his destiny. Amaya plays Nate music from Zambesi, having
listened to him rant on about rock and roll all episode, and the death totem
tries to escape from its bonds.
 |
| Even her t-shirt has veins. |
In 'Necromancing the Stone', the totem calls to Sara due to her
affinity with death, and she falls under the control of Mallus, her physical
form stalking the Waverider and
taking out the Legends one at a time, even Wally with his oh-so-annoying
superspeed. Meanwhile, Ava and Gary track down John Constantine for help, and
in Mallus' realm Nora tries to persuade Sara to willingly join Team Mallus. The
surviving Legends try to access the other totems to fight Sara and Mallus, but
are unable to do so, and Constantine cannot enter Mallus' realm to help Sara.
He is able to block Mallus for a time, and engage him in battle-banter, where
Mallus offers to trade: If Constantine gives up Sara, Mallus will release
Astra(9) from Hell. Constantine does not fall for this, although he admits that
he would have gone with it if he thought it might have worked.
Finally, Mick is able to bond with the fire totem to stun Sara, and
Constantine and Ava release her from Mallus' control. Sara breaks up with Ava,
fearing that she brings destruction on everyone she loves, and Constantine
joins Gary's D&D campaign.
 |
| A post-break up nightmare made real? |
Learning that Ava hasn't been to work for a few days, Sara and Ray
accompany Gary to her parents' home in 'I, Ava', and soon realise that her
parents are actors, hired to play the roles in perpetuity. They then learn that
Ava's first mission for the Time Bureau is also her first recorded act, and
travel to the mission's location in the temporal no-fly zone of 2213. They
learn that in 2213, most of society's service industry needs - including civil
protection - are met by AVA, a mass-produced 'perfect woman'(10). The three are
captured, then rescued by Ava, who is both literally and figuratively beside
herself in shock, clearly having had no idea where she actually came from. She
and Sara figure out that it was Rip who hid her history. In the next episode,
Ava learns that she is the 12th AVA clone Rip has snagged to use as
an agent, which is pretty cold soup to lay on someone's plate.
 |
| Fantasy or nightmare? How much of a lechy sleaze is Nate? |
Back in plot-land, Amaya and Nate have to try to keep Mari McCabe(11)
from getting killed trying to vigilante now that the spirit totem is in the
hands of the Darhks. Amaya forms a temporary truce with Kuasa, who also wants
to protect Mari, only for her to sort-of double cross Nate when he suggests
pretending to hand him over in exchange for the spirit totem. She does return
the totem, but in the meantime Nate is tortured by the Darhks. In fact, he
realises that while Nora is now entirely Mallus' creature, and half-possessed
already, the seeds of doubt that Ray sowed have taken root, as Nora's brief
outpouring of daughterly love has cracked Darhk Snr's shell and what he now
wants is to save Nora from Mallus.
I... literally don't know what to make of this. On the one hand, as a
father I sympathise with his desire to save his child from a mess in large part
of his own making, and on the other it's taking away a female character's
agency, although you could say that Mallus already did that.
Nora/Mallus catches Damien fake torturing Nate (which is hilarious.)
Amaya, Wally and Kuasa rescue Nate, but Nora rips the water totem out of Kuasa,
killing her - although Wally is able to retrieve the totem itself - driving
Amaya to return to Zambesi in 1992 and try to save her village from the attack that
wiped it out.
 |
| And yes, John Noble is the voice of Mallus. |
The Legends next defend future president Barack Obama from Gorilla
Grodd in the 1980s, and in so doing both prevent further anachronism and get a
few licks in at the current administration. Damien offer an alliance with the
Legends to prevent Mallus' ascension, having realised that it will mean Nora's
destruction, but admits he has no more influence over her since she realised he
had gone soft. Since the only person she listens to is Mallus, they decide to
trick her into thinking that her master is giving her instructions, by getting
actor John Noble to imitate Mallus' voice in the weirdly meta episode 'Guest
Starring John Noble'(12). They achieve this by getting him to run lines from a
doctored script to The Return of the King,
then Ray plays them through external speakers while basically sitting in her
ear, and thus lures her into the Waverider
to be captured.
With Amaya - and Nate - poised to create another anachronism by saving
Zambesi, Sara decides that they let this happen, then job Mallus with the six
totems when he emerges, having learned that it was only the defection of the
sixth tribe - the creators of the death totem - that prevented the ancestors
gacking him in the first place. Damien wields the death totem, due to Sara's prior
issues, but as Nora is still alive inside her possessed form is duped into
turning on the Legends with the sliver of hope that she might survive, and
releases Grodd to rampage in Zambesi, thus preventing the demon's release;
until Nate uses the Earth totem to stop Grodd and it's Mallus o'clock.
 |
| Ultimate evil... |
Moving into the finale, 'The Good, the Bad and the Cuddly', the Legends
try to whip Mallus with their individual totems and it all goes tits up. Rip
sacrifices himself to buy time for the Legends to escape(13), fleeing to the
temporal blindspot of Salvation in the Old West, where they catch up with Jonah
Hex while they lick their wounds and woe about how they weren't worthy of the
totems. Ultimately, they realise that the problem was that they used the totems
individually, where in fact they needed to be combined, their joined power
bringing forth an ultimate warrior of light. Ray, however, goes his own way,
releasing Damien and planning to secure Nora in Zambesi before Mallus can
emerge.
Apparently Mallus can see more than the Time Masters(14), because it
isn't long before he sends an army of Romans, Vikings and pirates, commanded by
old foes Julius Caesar, FreydÃs EirÃksdóttir and Blackbeard, descends on
Salvation demanding the totems. Ray and Damien fail to contain Nora, but Damien
never intended to. He uses Ray's nanogun to kill Nora, forcing Mallus to
abandon her and take him as a host, while Ray gets Nora away and treated. They
then rejoin the team, along with Hex, and a band of unlikely allies: Jax, a
Kuasa who grew up without the shadow of her village's destruction, and Helen of
Troy after a few years Amazon training on Themyscira. The Legends try to pass
off the totems - apart from spirit and air - to those more worthy, but are in
turn told to step the fuck up. They defeat the army, and when Mallus turns up
Sara (death), Mick (fire), Amaya (spirit), Nate (earth), Zari (air) and Wally
(water) combine the totems to create the most powerful warrior for good since
Captain Planet:
 |
| ...vs Ultimate good. |
Words literally cannot describe how awesome this is. A giant demon is
piledrivered by a cuddly toy, that's really all you need to know.
Mallus is destroyed, and Damien Darhk is killed(15). Ray slips Nora a
time stone as she is taken away by the Time Bureau. Amaya returns to Zambesi,
but with her memory intact. The rest of the team take a well-earned break in
Aruba... until John Constantine (and Gary) turn up to tell them that a bunch of
other demons escaped when Mallus was released.
Another very strong outing from the Legends then, as the junior show
moves out of the shadow of Arrow and The Flash to become its own thing, with
its own villains and whacky time travel shenanigans. I don't mind admitting
that this show has really grown on me. I'm sorry to see Jax and Stein go - I
mind less about Firestorm - but I hope that Wally can find the place he never
found on The Flash, and Zari is a
huge pile of fun; her training session with Mick, which ends with her spinning
him around in a whirlwind until he promises to learn to use the fire totem
properly, is a high point in this set. I also like that Ray is getting some
love, without betraying the brilliant, loveable, well-meaning dope that he is,
and that his attempts to save Nora pay dividends, not because she falls for him(16),
but because he manages to revive enough of the genuine love at the base of her
relationship with her father for him to rebel at her consumption by Mallus.
(1) There must be a name for something like that...
(2) The sort of feat that only gets more impressive the more that you
think about it.
(3) Reign is 'Power'.
(4) A comics and DCAU favourite.
(5) Alex is being a real dick in this episode, and I'm not sure why
exactly.
(6) It still really doesn't know what it's doing with James, but that's
not the actor's fault by any means.
(7) Seriously; what do ARGUS pay their people for?
(8) Which was a cheap trick when Voyager
did it.
(9) The little girl he accidentally sent to Hell in his own backstory.
(10) They call her a clone, but there are strong robotic elements,
especially tied to the original Rossum's
Universal Robots.
(11) The modern day Vixen.
(12) I just thought the Sky box has mislabelled the episode here.
(13) Gone for reals this time; probably.
(14) Or perhaps someone forgot how quickly they were tracked last time
they were in this particular 'blind spot.'
(15) Gone for reals this time; probably.
(16) Aside from anything else, that dynamic hit peak with Blackarachnia and Silverbolt in Beast Wars.
