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.