Superman: The Animated Series, Season 2, Episode 24: Warrior Queen
Some people cite "Heavy Metal", the previous episode, to be the worst episode of the season, to which I'll point at this episode and disagree. Maxima is a character dear to my heart, being one of the villains (well, anti-heroes, really) to feature in some of the earliest Superman comic books I had as a kid. She's a rather difficult character to adapt into modern day due to her more... misogynistic modus operandi. She wants a man that can defeat her in combat to be the only man she can marry. But there are ways to get around that, of course.
"Warrior Queen" keeps the whole find-a-husband deal as Maxima's main goal, while at the same time focusing more on her immaturity and her woman-child tendencies. Basically a less psychotic Jeoffrey Baratheon. Yet both the episode and Maxima herself move around so erratically that none of her character grown felt earned. Maxima is initially presented to us as an immature queen who cares more about finding a mate, is horrible to her subjects, and generally, well, an air-headed asshole. She kidnaps Superman to find out that her previous competitor, De'Cine, has taken over because, shit, everyone hates her. Oh, and for... some reason, De'Cine decides to exile Maxima's majordomo, Sazu, despite initially forming an alliance with her.
Maxima is angry and is about to kill Sazu, which Superman says "no!" And while, yes, there's a point to not killing everyone without a trial, and three's a point to not kidnapping other men and dragging them home to marry, Sazu did betray Maxima, and honestly the weird "no, forgive her" stance they took with Sazu felt odd. Likewise, while Superman and Maxima beat the hell out of De'Cine and the treacherous guards, did Maxima having a change of heart suddenly cause everyone to become good again? All of these felt rather oddly done, and there really isn't much that makes me believe that a brief jaunt through the dungeons of Almerac would cause such a drastic change in Maxima's personality. It's just a character change that doesn't seem earned at all, in my opinion.
Add that to the honestly rather unimpressive battle scenes, both against De'Cine's court or against the giant tentacle beast, and the episode ended up being a bit of a slog. Though honestly, Maxima's squee and her kissy-faced pose when Lobo crashes into her court is just so freaking hilarious that I'll forgive that.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Apart from wearing a completely different outfit, Maxima, the warrior-queen of Almerac, is a supporting anti-hero/villain of Superman, with more or less an identical backstory as she does here.
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