The Gifted S01E08 Review: Fenris Wolf

The Gifted, Season 1, Episode 8: threat of eXtinction

So the X-Men is a corner of the Marvel universe I'm at least somewhat familiar with, and I know that Wolfgang von Strucker -- a character you might recognize from the MCU movies -- have a pair of mutant twin kids, collectively known as 'Fenris'. When I saw that the Struckers were the main characters in the Gifted, I thought that it was a coincidence that they're named Struckers considering that they have nothing in common with Hydra or Wolfgang von Strucker.

Of course, here, we get the revelation that Reed is actually estranged with his father, Otto von Strucker, who worked for Trask Industries. And very, very much so. There's a crapton of daddy issues that Reed suffers, and here he's forced to confront his father, who reveals to him that the reason Otto is so distant is because... he was trying to protect Reed. Trying to cure Reed of being a mutant and be ostracized like he was, and nearly killing a young Reed in the process. It's perhaps a little too convenient that the very same 'my dad didn't visit me when I was hospitalized' story that Reed says this episode was the exact same incident that Otto cured Reed of the mutant gene, but eh.

Otto reveals that he was born to from mutant parents. And Otto's father, Andreas von Strucker, and his twin sister Andrea, are the same mutant twins that wrecked a fuck-ton of cities with their combined powers. And, well, they're both basically the worst of the bunch, a pair of mutant terrorists known as Fenris Wolf. And Otto warns, very much so, that Andy and Lauren must never touch hands when they use their powers, lest they unleash the same scale of destruction that Fenris did.

Reed discovering all this is handled pretty well, although I could've done without Otto's sudden heroic sacrifice at the end of the episode to drive away Sentinel Services' forces. Pulse also dies during Otto's blow-up, coincidentally taking out one of the recognizable faces from the antagonists' table. At least Thunderbird got to say goodbye. 

I did like how Otto was initially presented to be a regular aloof dad, or even an evil one (when he mocks Thunderbird's name) but I do like the gradual reveal of his true motivations. I'm not sure if I really buy into how the Strucker family is oh-so-special, how both the twins in their families have identical mutant powers or something like that, and Otto is powerful enough to out-power Pulse... but I'll buy it. 

The rest of the cast deals with one of Sentinel Services' mutant sleeper agents, one Chloe, although this bit was particularly clumsily-handled with the sudden appearance of Esme, a mutant telepath no one mentioned before. Why they couldn't have used a pre-existing mutant (surely Dreamer could've fit this role better?) instead of conjuring a plot device to do this is beyond me. But they basically discover that Sentinel has been drugging up mutants to use them as their cannon fodder is definitely well done, and Chloe's brutal drug-withdrawal death was gruesomely acted. 

Overall, a relatively solid entry in the Gifted, even if it's a bit too much laden with exposition for my tastes. 

Pokemon Ultra Moon LP #2: Trials and New Additions

Pika pi, mofos

So last we left off, I finished Ilima's trial. And, well, I kind of ran around in the Tauros all over Melemele Island to get some of the Totem stickers and did a bunch of side-quests and captured a bunch of Pokemon, and also downloaded the event Rockruff and Hat Pikachu. I've decided to use Pikachu as a party member simply because it's been some time since I've gotten a Pikachu in my party. I don't think the event Pikachu can even evolve, but that's okay -- I don't like Alolan Raichu all that much.

Oh, and I fought against the Ultra Recon Squad, which had... a Furfrou. Which was hella randomly disappointing, I think.

So instead of riding a boat, this time around I ride around on a Mantine Surf minigame! Which is a... decent distraction, even if it did take a fair amount of time for them to give us the tutorial. It's ultimately not a thing I'll repeat, unless there's a reward tied to it, but I dunno. I felt like this is the type of minigame that really feel at home in the Hawaii-inspired Alola as opposed to the rather shoehorned Battle Royale or the constant reminders for me to 'TAKE A PHOTOSHOOT'. Still, it's something.

Unexpectedly adorbs

Much of Akala Island honestly progresses mostly similarly to Sun/Moon, so I won't repeat myself all that much. I did discover the Pikachu Valley, a neat little area that... doesn't actually allow you to capture any Pikachus. Good thing I have my Hat-a-chu. I get the Pikachunium Z or however the fuck you spell it, and my Pikachu can now unleash the 10,000,000,000,000 Volt Thunderbolt or whatever it is. Also, having a little bugger that can unleash Thunderbolt and Thunder at level 20 where everyone else are just learning Spark or Charge Beam? Pretty fucking broken.


Samson Oak gave me a 'totem Raticate' or some shit for finding a bunch of stickers... which I didn't really feel had much difference beyond being a bit bigger, I think? Certainly my totem Raticate doesn't have any differing abilities than normal.

Akala Island's still pretty slow-paced, and I really wished Alola had more of those longer routes filled with Pokemon or trainers that earlier generations had -- or later islands, in Generation VII's case. I don't think there's any significant differences throughout most of Akala's storyline. We've got the hotel bullshit, the railroading bullshit, the encounter with Gladion, the little ranch town, the water trial at Brooklet Hill with Lana... I think her dialogue may be slightly altered, but I can't be bothered to compare.

The big surprise is, of course, when some of the splashes turned out to be Dewpiders instead of Wishiwashis (I'm so using an Araquanid this playthrough) and the massive totem Pokemon turns out to be a gigantic Totem Araquanid, which is awesome as hell. That cutscene is still pretty fucking dope, even if Araquanid's cry isn't quite as awesome as Totem Wishiwashi's cry.

Of course my Pikachu two-shotted the thing with a Z-move. Poor Araquanid.

She's 'adhesive'. Somehow.

And then as I clear out the Sudowoodo blocking the road, the Ultra Recon Squad shows up again, and this time Soliera fights me... with Poipole! Which is a Pokemon unfamiliar to me. I saw it in the trailer as a pure-poison Ultra Beast... but this, this is the kind of change that I really expected to happen in a remake, and I really wished it had come sooner. And Poipole beat up my weakened Pikachu and got a Beast Boost up -- see how much more entertaining battles are when you don't get a free heal up every time? Thank you! Of course, I'm carrying an Inkay as one of my party members and a quick Topsy-Turvy kind of neutered Poipole's Beast Boost, but it's the thought that counts. The Ultra Recon Squad continue to be creepy and cryptic, and walk away. Definitely loved this little side-encounter, though.

And then... there's the silliness with the Battle Royale, there's a bunch of side-quests and exploration and sticker-collecting, and I hatched an Eevee out of an egg. At which point I ended up going up to Kiawe's trial without a single water or ground type in my party... which is well and good, because they've replaced the Totem Salazzle with a Totem Marowak, who is Fire/Ghost. It's still a pretty tough fight because of the ally Salazzle casting Torment all the time, and Alolan Marowak's Cursed Body ability disabling my shit, and it actually went down to knocking out four members of my party before my Zorua can take it out. Good stuff.

Mallow's trial still ends with a Totem Lurantis (that I one-shot with my Dartrix's flying Z-move) but the way it happens is different. Now I have to take the things I gather from one of several patches, and if I take the wrong one, the Pokemon will attack me prior to the cooking process. Also, apparently there are trees that look like Sudowoodo, which made me laugh.

So yeah. Despite my initial complaints with the Alola games (and I'm still pissed at the sheer amount of bullshit side-tracking with random enforced side-games and whatnot) I still enjoyed myself through all this. Current party: Dartrix, Pikachu, Inkay, Grimer, Zorua and a sixth rotating party member (previously a Growlithe, then the egg, now a Stufful) that probably will be replaced with a Araquanid in the future. Either way, I definitely need less dark-types and maybe ground or water because I have a huge problem dealing with fire types. I dunno. Overall, I try not to really think about it too much and just go with the flow.

Avengers: Infinity War Trailer!

INFINITY WAR!

(No, I'm not exclusively a DC fanboy.)

Holy shit, the trailer's amazing! Not much to say beyond general holy shit, 18 movies down the line and we get this glorious thing. Love that we don't actually get revealed much, and hopefully the trailers don't overplay themselves and keep most of the movie a mystery. 

Captain America's beard!

Giant aliens!

Spider-Man's new costume!

Spider-Sense!

WONG HELL YES

(Also, Dr. Strange!)

Motherfucking Thanos!

Motherfucking Paul Bettany Vision and Scarlet Witch!

Motherfucking Vision being beaten down by Thanos!

Iron Man!

Corvus Glaive!

Wakanda army and Black Panther!

Eyepatch Thor!

Black Widow's new hair!

Black Widow! Guardians of the Galaxy! Hulk! Bucky! War Machine! Falcon! Probably a couple I missed! (No Hawkeye, though, poor man)

Holy shit, man, I was not ready to watch the entirety of Crisis on Earth-X and for this to drop on the same day. 

Crisis on Earth-X, Part 2 [Arrow S06E08]: An Unexpected Return

Arrow, Season 6, Episode 8: Crisis on Earth-X, Part 2

Yeah. Yeah, this is what a Crisis crossover should be. I definitely am happy I waited until all four episodes are dropped to watch them together, because it does feel like a pretty huge event movie to me. 

I'm sorry. You gotta give this to me. Crisis on Earth-X isn't just a big four-part-episode mega-movie, but one that is also decently paced and also helps to further some plotlines from their respective shows. And plus, it has... so many DC superheroes! If Justice League excited me a couple of weeks ago, I was simply grinning like an idiot throughout my huge binge-watch of all four parts of Crisis on Earth-X. Yes, on one part, the premise might be a little shaky with evil Nazi doppelgangers being the villains -- it's far more entertaining compared to last year's Dominators, mind you.

And, well, I've been a superhero comic-book fan all my life. I really could've stood around picking out the plotlines. I certainly am not a big fan of how the Oliver/Felicity marriage slap-slap-kiss dicking around the bush ends up being the big takeaway plot from Arrow, and how Supergirl's own takeaway plot is that 'Kara and Alex need to move on'. Comparing it to the very emotionally heart-string-tugging father/son relationship of Stein and Jax from Legends of Tomorrow, the love lives of Oliver and Kara certainly feels absolutely trivial. 

But honestly? All these silly sub storylines do feel trivial, for the simple fact that fuck, lots of superhero showdowns happen this episode, and this is just part 2. We have two more episodes to go, and at least half the supporting cast still hasn't arrived yet. I do feel that, yes, Cisco being knocked out and the Waverider crew being stuck on a random mission to the Stone Age during this episode feels a bit wonky... but Crisis on Earth-X is clearly trying to limit the central cast to just around a half-dozen characters instead of juggling all 20+ characters at once, and bringing in reinforcements bit by bit. 

The first minute of this second part of Crisis is an amazing moment, though, as Prometheus is revealed not to be Adrian Chase, or Simon Morrison... but Tommy fucking Merlyn! Well, Nazi Tommy Merlyn, anyway. I've been joking all throughout last year that Prometheus was Tommy, knowing full well that the fantastic Colin Donnell can't make it to shoot as the main villain for Arrow... but a quick five-minute cameo? Hell yeah. We get a surprisingly tender moment from Oliver as he converses with Nazi Tommy, and then he eats a cyanide pill and dies. Yes, it's perhaps a bit of a shame that evil Tommy isn't actually part of the Earth-X Nazi alliance beyond this scene, but god, that's a great bit of scenery-chewing right there as he reveals that his whole 'we could be buddies'  thing was an act and he's just waaaah super evil and a mere herald of the true Fuhrer.

We also get the big revelation that Overgirl and Dark Arrow, the Nazi doppelgangers to Supergirl and Green Arrow, are married in Earth-X, and are the supreme rulers of Earth-X. We also learn throughout the episode that their goal isn't just conquest of Earth-1 (well, not just) but instead something that feels like a twisted version of what our Oliver and Kara would do. Which is to kidnap our Supergirl, and use her and harvest her organs because Overgirl is dying of solar radiation overload (a neat homage to All-Star Superman there, with Overgirl's story also having shades of Red Son) and even a Fuhrer will do whatever he needs to rescue his wife. They serve as pretty decent villains. Again, it's a matter of performance. Melissa Benoist and Stephen Amell juggle the part of playing both the heroic and villainous versions of Oliver Queen and Kara Zor-El very well.

Rounding out the trio of villains, however, is Tom Cavanagh back as... I said Harrison Wells last episode, but here it's explicitly stated that he's Earth-1 Eobard Thawne Reverse-Flash, using the Harrison Wells face-change. It's somewhat complex, and Thawne simply waves off the question as to why he's played by Tom Cavanagh as opposed to Matt Letscher; why he's alive after the events of last season's Legends of Tomorrow; and which point of time this particular Eobard Thawne came from. The show even hangs a lampshade on it, saying 'eh, time travel. A complicated thing' or something along those lines. It's pretty funny, to be honest... and I don't really care. 

I really loved the super-speed gag, with Flash and Supergirl arriving on the spot... and then Green Arrow vroom-vrooming on a bike so much later than the others. So good. 

The big mid-episode conflict between the good guys and the bad guys simply happens between the three biggest heroes and the big three villains, with Green Arrow, the Flash and Supergirl facing off against Dark Arrow, Reverse-Flash and Overgirl, and it's... serviceable. There are a couple of odd moments with the evil villains dropping rather flat dialogue like 'Oliver is ten times the man Hitler was!' or 'my allegiance is to the Fatherland', but, again, it's serviceable enough and leans more towards charming than groan-worthy. The fight opening with the two Flashes turning into lightning bolts and zooming around; Green Arrow launching a kryptonite arrow at Overgirl (even if the CGI for the arrow splitting open is a bit iffy)... and then it's interrupted by Overgirl blasting apart a construction site, leading to an extended sequence of our three heroes stopping it from crumbling and saving all the people.

I do like my superheroes to save the civilians, but perhaps there's a huge question as to why the Nazi dudes didn't attack our heroes when they're destroyed, or blow up more buildings. I do feel that that part's a bit weak, narratively, even if I can ignore or handwave other plot points in the Crisis Crossover like, say, how did Eobard survive, or why is Cisco knocked out so long, or why didn't the Arrow Team or the rest of the Legends show up. (At least Kid Flash and Diggle's absence throughout the entire crossover is explained by Wally guarding Joe and Diggle being hospitalized respectively).

Speaking of which... one thing that I felt could've done better in the 'Invasion' crossover was how... haphazard the actors and characters weave in and out of the shows. Like, Thea shows up for one episode, and is handwaved away in the next, or the Arrow sidekick squad showing up for one episode and not participating in the next... here it seems they have pre-emptively written out some characters even before beginning, making the transition far smoother (if more lampshade-ier). They also wait a bit before introducing some characters like the Team Arrow sidekick squad, who had a brief cameo explaining what they're doing early in the episode, before showing up at the end, and continuing to show up through parts 3 and 4.

Also, again, there are the weak parts of the Olicity stuff but... eh. So much of the other emotional beats are so powerful, as Stein and Jax speak once more about their unique father/son bond and Jax finally exploding on Stein about how he's the closest thing to a father. We've got the oddly mature moment of Oliver asking Barry for relationship advice, and the somber scene of Barry and Iris in Eobard Thawne's secret room. I even liked Alex's brief flustered thing over the one-night stand with Alex. Really, the Felicity-doesn't-want-marriage stuff is the only thing I could do without. 

I did love the slow 'suit up' scene as the scene transitions from Alex and Sara to Firestorm to Flash to Supergirl to Green Arrow, with their respective theme music blaring... yeah, there's no real excuse for Kara to go from Supergirl to civvies and then do the dramatic shirt-open to reveal the S-symbol. But it's cool nonetheless. And, boy, I'm just happy to see Firestorm fly around again. I missed Firestorm so much throughout this season of Legends of Tomorrow.

And then the final battle happens in the warehouse, with the strike team doing battle against Overgirl, Reverse-Flash and an army of Nazi goons, while Dark Arrow goes into STAR Labs to take out their support team... and thankfully Heatwave was left behind as he's hunting for mustard (and hitting on Caitlin). And while the mid-episode battle might have been aborted, the final episode battle is amazing for the simply awesome chaotic scenes. With Flash single-handedly taking out a room of Nazi goons, to the threatening 'oh shit' moment as Dark Arrow walks menacingly towards Harry Wells, to Supergirl and Firestorm raining flames from above, to Overgirl catching ansnapping the kryptonite arrow, Supergirl whacking Reverse-Flash mid-run and sending him tripping away... there was a wee bit too much shaky cam, and at some points Flash and Reverse-Flash exiting from being lightning bolts to being people we can see is a bit jarring, but it's fine. 

There was a long shot as Green Arrow gets knocked over, and sees the battle in slo-mo reflected from his eyes. That's a bit unnecessarily long, but also still awesome, so I don't care.

And honestly, Dark Arrow's invasion of STAR Labs may be my favourite sequence in this episode. From the cold horror as he advances towards the helpless Harry Wells, to Heat Wave and Killer Frost teaming up against Dark Arrow... there was a moment when it looks like Killer Frost would be able to take down Dark Arrow or snap his arm or something (there's certainly precedent for an armless Green Arrow), and the simply badass entrance of the Team Arrow second stringers of Black Canary, Wild Dog and Mr. Terrific...  they end up getting beaten down in a single scene, but by god, that whole sequence does sell how badass Dark Arrow is. 

Oh, and Metallo! I really wished he was foreshadowed a bit earlier, but seeing a fully metallic and simply awesome Silver-Age Metallo show up and one-shot Supergirl, and then for Overgirl and Reverse-Flash to quickly mow their way through the rest of the heroes... it's pretty badass. Metallo just looks so good! And his inclusion, while a bit deus ex machina-y, is still done with such aplomb and I just love it. 

And this episode ends with our heroes beaten down and captured, used as leverage against Supergirl. Those on STAR labs are imprisoned in the Pipeline, and those with Strike Team Oliver are sent to a concentration camp in Earth-X,  while Supergirl is captured and about to be subjected to some forced organ donoring. The only ones left in STAR labs, sneaking away from the evil Nazis, are the non-powered love interests, Iris and Felicity. It's the whole darkest hour trope, and I'm fine with it.

And really, it's mostly a matter of simple, pure, unadulterated badass superhero action. Yes, some of the dialogue are cheesy as all get-out. Yes, some of the action scenes may use questionable CGI. Yes, making the villains somewhat cartoonishly Nazi is a bit laughable (apparently a lot of people hold some issue to Nazis being used at all? Eh, not something that even remotely crossed my mind, honestly, and people are a bit too over-sensitive in recent times). Would I want more characters (J'onn! Superman! Elongated Man! Kid Flash! Black Siren! Diggle! Thea! Other Vixen! Constantine!) But is it enjoyable? Oh hell yes. Oh hell yes. I could nitpick around it all day... but I'm not gonna. It's just such a fun romp with a fun cast of characters.

And... is it a better Justice League movie than the actual Justice League movie? I love the movie, mind you... but yes. Hell yes this is better. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Apparently, Earth-X's version of Prometheus is Tommy Merlyn, who we last saw dead all the way back in Arrow's first season, although he's since made several brief appearances in flashbacks.
• Earth-X's version of Metallo, while still played by the same actor as his Supergirl counterpart (who appeared and died last season), is a full-on robot with no fleshy exterior parts seen (a look more common in the 90's with Superman: The Animated Series popularizing the half-human, half-machine look), which was how Metallo looked throughout much of the Golden Age and Silver Age. 
• I'm not sure if we already knew this already, but here Harry Wells establishes that there are only 52 Earths... plus Earth-X. The fact that the multiverse stops at 52 instead of extending all the way to Infinite Earths is the hallmark of the New 52 reboot.
• After much dancing about it, we finally get the confirmation that Earth-1 does have its own Krypton and it's own version of Kara.
• Overgirl dying of solar energy overload is based on a similar thing that happens to Superman in the iconic alternate-universe comic All-Star Superman. 
• Reverse-Flash, explicitly stated to be Eobard Thawne of Earth-1, makes several call-backs to the first season of the Flash and how he acted as Barry's mentor, as well as to how the rules of time travel is often bent to the whims of the current story.
• Oliver's possession of a Kryptonite arrow and several characters going 'WTF?' at that revelation mirrors how CW's Green Arrow borrows a lot of elements from Batman as the paranoid, broody hypercompetent vigilante of the universe.
• Oliver name-dropping a metronome as a device to track down Earth-X's frequency is a possible homage to how in the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, the plot device to travel between universes was a gigantic tuning fork.

Crisis on Earth-X, Part 1 [Supergirl S03E08]: Unite the Seven...teen

Supergirl, Season 3, Episode 8: Crisis on Earth-X, Part 1

Last year's big crossover event honestly only lasted for three episodes instead of four, since Supergirl's leg of the Invasion event merely has her episode be a prologue that isn't particularly important and has her just jump over to the Arrow/Flash/Legends world of Earth-1 at the end of her side of the episode. And another part of the crossover involved half of it revolving around an alternate dream-world... which was a well-done episode, but not particularly great for telling the story of the Dominator invasion. This time around, we're getting a more serialized and tighter storytelling as properly befits a crossover. Hell, we don't even get the Supergirl opening, but a brand-new Crisis on Earth-X opening sequence... hence, the title of this review. 

And, well, so much of this episode feels like a true crossover as a good chunk of the storyline actually involves characters from The Flash and Arrow, as opposed to how the previous crossover event went where each episode sort of did its own thing. 

One of the biggest weaknesses of the Justice League movie in my opinion (I still love it regardless) is how much it spends to introduce three new characters plus a villain plus all their backstories, plus juggling all the other older characters, whereas it was a problem that Marvel's the Avengers did not have (when Marvel actually tried to introduce three new characters while juggling multiple older ones in Age of Ultron, it ended in a pretty messy movie as well). Crisis on Earth-X, likewise, doesn't have that problem. As I mention in my last episode review of Arrow, it has a gigantic history behind its characters to draw from, that even a simple conversation between, say, Stein and Caitlin this episode feels like a pretty momentous occassion. Sure, anyone who's exclusively watching Supergirl will probably be confused as hell as to half of the things going on, but in honesty if we're going to slow down and properly introdump everything it'd be confusing as all hell.

So yeah, we start off with a montage of scenes. The opening scene in Earth-X involves a dark-suited archer in a world ruled by Nazis killing a bunch of people and facing off against the Guardian (with a fancy new America-themed costume) and straight-up killing him. Killing off alternate-universe heroes is a cheap way to build up your villains, but it's still a pretty cool action scene nonetheless, and since the only representation of the Supergirl cast at this point only seems to be Supergirl and Alex -- the rest of the cast show up briefly in the DEO base -- it's a neat way to sneak a Guardian action scene into the mix.

I really liked the little montage of what the four main shows are doing. Flash's fighting King Shark while arguing about RSVP's and his wedding with Iris over the radio. Green Arrow's fighting ninjas while arguing about attending Barry's wedding with Felicity over the radio. The Legends of Tomorrow are... pretending to be Robin Hood or some shit? Gratuitous action scene! Supergirl beats up a Dominator while the DEO cast make commentary. It's a great sequence. Perhaps less great is the sudden crash-landing and very intro-dumpy talk between Kara and Alex about how they've both broken up and in a flunk and decide to travel through worlds to attend Barry and Iris's wedding.

But after that, this episode does kind of slow down. Sure, there's a brief cryptic cutaway to Earth-X and the Nazi Green Arrow and Nazi Supergirl Overgirl, but a good majority is spend with our characters. And there's definitely the feeling of payoff as Barry and Iris talk with their friends about their upcoming wedding. Barry and Oliver meeting each other and having a bro talk about happy endings and shit, Iris girling out with Felicity, Caitlin and Kara, Barry and Kara discussing Kara's love-life and her embracing her alien side, Alex going on a drunken one-night stand with Sara, and even the brief talk between the Firestorm duo with Cisco and Harry Wells are all well done. 

And I'm definitely surprised that we're getting Barry and Iris's wedding here instead of in Flash's episode, and Joe's speech was definitely well done. It's so sugar-saccharine, but you can't say that it isn't earned.

The Legends team don't get to do much (Nate, Amaya and Ray sits almost the entire episode out) with Mick providing a lot of comedic beats and Sara fucking Alex... and it's clear that we're going to give Stein and Jefferson the majority of the screentime this time around. It's no secret that the characters (and the show) has been working Victor Garber's exit from the show, but is definitely far more interested in making the exit more elegant and well-written. Cisco and Wells develops a serum that will wipe both their superpowers out, turning back into humans, while Stein is tunnel-visioned into giving Jax superpowers because he knows how much Jax wants them... while still not being that properly emotionally astute. The Amazing Sticky-Man!

From the Arrow side of the story, we naturally stick with Oliver and Felicity, as they're really the only ones to interact a lot with Barry and Iris. (Diggle would probably be in on this, but he's hospitalized, last we see him) I'm not sure I'm a big fan of the sudden way that Oliver wants to commit and marry Felicity, who isn't particularly ready for that sort of commitment, but their storyline didn't really extend that much. It's more Olicity shipping stuff, but nowhere as painful as past crossovers were. Supergirl's cast members has Alex, to her horror, do a 'man thing' of sleeping with a random woman after a break-up, and we get some more exploration of Kara's character as she handles Mon-El's return-as-a-married-man poorly and resolves to go back to the bubble of being an invincible alien super-woman. Oh, and in addition to extending Firestorm's storyline from Legends of Tomorrow, we also get a neat moment of Stein bonding with Caitlin over Ronnie. That's sweet.

Oh, and Supergirl apparently sleep-floats. That's hilarious.

And as the marriage is about to happen, Barry is visited by a strange young lady (who looks mixed-race, by the way) for no real reason, and that's obviously Dawn Allen, his future daughter... but we don't really dwell on it too much because FUTURISTIC NAZIS ATTACK!

And, well, it's just fun stuff. The 'Dark Archer' and 'Overgirl' and 'Prometheus' are basic, simple slick evil-looking motherfuckers, and they lead an army of not-Stormtroopers, but they prove to be pretty cool fodder as our superheroes fight. And isn't that what I tune here for? The super-fights are awesome, even if our heroes dress in swanky suits and dresses. We've got Heat Wave blasting fools with his fire gun while laughing racuously. We've got Flash and Kid Flash zooming around catching bullets and flicking them back. We've got Vibe creating portals to drop his allies and help them teleport around the room. We've got Killer Frost stabbing people with a gigantic ice blade. We've got Green Arrow shooting arrows and deflecting the Dark Archer's arrows. We've got Supergirl (in a pretty pink dress!) and Overgirl duking it out with super punches and heat vision blasts. We've got Firestorm combining and blasting flames all over the place. We've got White Canary and Alex Danvers doing an amazing simultaneous dress rip and engaging Prometheus with that weird chain weapon. 

Perhaps the weakness of the episode is its attempted coyness in trying to delay the inevitable reveal that Overgirl is alternate-universe Supergirl and Dark Archer is alternate-universe Green Arrow. That was a bit over-extended, I think. (Rounding up the cast of villains is Harrison Wells Reverse-Flash and Prometheus, who the good guys capture) But I did like the show's focus on several characters at a time. It's a bit of a shame that the whole complex song and dance about what actor can appear on what show (which was a bit ridiculous in the 'Invasion' storyline) prevents us from actually having the full force of four shows' cast (J'onn is perhaps the biggest loss in my opinion) to join together in four episodes, but I'll take what I can get. 

And most of all? It's fun, and it features characters I love... so yeah, bring on the next three episodes.  

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Evil Supergirl is called Overgirl, an obvious reference to Overman, the evil Nazi-raised Superman of DC comics' Earth-X, and Overgirl even borrows a variation Overman's lightning-bolt symbol. The idea of a dystopian world where superheroes have taken over is often a topic done in DC comics alternate universes.
• King Shark returns to do battle with the Flash in the opening scene, after last being seen being held in an ARGUS facility at the end of Flash's third season. We also get another reappearance of the Dominator in Earth-38, where, after the Invasion crossover last year (Kara notes how Dominators are 'so last year' as a meta-reference) have made several appearances in Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow.
• When Stein tells him that he made a serum to give Jax superpowers, Jax name-drops Marvel superhero Spider-Man and rattles of the web-slinger's super-powers. 
• Winn and J'onn name-drop other alien names when asking Supergirl about the Dominator's species, notably the Hellgrammite (which was a species Supergirl fought in season 1) and Czarnian, a species that the Superman villain Lobo hails from. 
• Earth-X's Guardian borrows a lot of design motifs from Marvel's Captain America, specifically the original design where the shield actually was shield-shaped instead of circular. He also borrows a fair bit from other designs of older incarnations of Commander Steel.
• Barry makes a callback to his last crossover with Supergirl last season, where Mr. Mxyzptlk traps Barry and Kara in a magical musical world. Kara sings a rendition of Barry's proposal song from that episode.
• Heat Wave makes a call-back to his first appearance in The Flash where he kidnaps Caitlin Snow.
• The awkward waitress who notes how happy she is to be at the wedding is heavily implied to be a time-traveler, likely to be comics character Dawn Allen, Barry and Iris' daughter. It's not the first time that a Flash's child travels back in time to meet their parents, with both Barry and Wally being subjected to it. 

Arrow S06E07 Review: Another Trial

Arrow, Season 6, Episode 7: Thanksgiving

Repeating a plot arc is tricky. Action story arcs tend to get an easier pass because it's easier to make it different by using a different antagonist, and there's always the primal sense that maybe this time the world will be destroyed. But this is like the third or fourth time that we're doing the 'Oliver Queen is suspected of being the Green Arrow' song and dance, and by god, I found out that I am so over it. There really feels to be something that's far more interesting to talk about other than yet another storyline about how FBI agent Watson is trying to prove Oliver Queen is the Green Arrow in the same day that a terrorist bomb is going to be set off. 

Meanwhile, the other storylines here -- John and Oliver dealing with passing the mantle of Green Arrow around; John's addiction; Oliver's promise to his kid; Dinah and Quentin's 'my loved one is a villain' bonding session; Cayden James in general -- are all so much more interesting. Sure, all of them combined don't make an above-average episode, despite great acting moments from Michael Emerson, Stephen Amell, David Ramsey and Paul Blackthorne, but they're certainly so much more exciting and interesting. Sydelle Noel (Watson's actress) isn't a bad actor at all, but she's given such basic and bland material that it's hard to really be excited about it. 

And honestly? A lot of the episode is just lackluster, and only the strong acting and individual moments really save it. I really loved the scene when Oliver finally talks to Thea as she regains consciousness in her hospital room. I loved how Dinah and Quentin bonded over how their loved ones -- evil-alternate-universe Laurel and Vince -- are villains and they've both had the chance to stop them and didn't take the shot, and Quentin's expression when he realized that Dinah probably has it worse than him is amazingly done. I really loved Michael Emerson's speech to Oliver, and his hilarious hammy back-and-forth with Laurel. Does Cayden James' backstory really matter at this point? It makes him interesting, but it also seems like a bland rehash of Prometheus at this point... but I really am excited about Cayden for the simple fact that Michael Emerson is a badass actor. "Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!" is a common line to quote, but man, Emerson's just awesome. Black Siren is still a hammy henchwoman that is still one-dimensional, but Katie Cassidy looks like she's having so much gosh-darned fun I can't fault the role. 

But none, perhaps, is as well-done as Oliver and John's scenes this episode. Like I said in the past two episodes, part of what makes Arrow moments so powerful is the five-season-strong bond between many of the original cast members. Oliver and Slade. Oliver and John. And the angry back-and-forth that John has with Oliver as he lays in the hospital, taken out of the action with a combination of the steroid use and Curtis's experimental treatment, is well done. Diggle shouting at Oliver about him putting his interests above Diggle's own, Oliver's later apology, John's own apology and noting that being Green Arrow is something he wants to be...

Yes, on the surface you could brush it off so that Oliver can get under the hood in time for next episode's Crisis Crossover where everyone who isn't caught up with this season's Arrow is expecting Stephen Amell to be Oliver Queen to be Green Arrow. But on the other hand, the bro bonding moment between John and Oliver, with Oliver promising to keep the hood warm only until John recovers, is definitely well-done that I can't not like it.

Part of me is honestly disappointed that they didn't do a lot with John Diggle's tenure as the Green Crossbow Bolt Arrow. Most of his tenure as the Green Arrow this season involves him playing second fiddle to episodes that centered around Dinah, Felicity or Slade as the main focus, which leaves him just another vigilante in Arrow's ensemble cast. But at the same time, what few scenes he got struggling with his drug addiction and his whole successor deal is so well  done by David Ramsey that I am far more invested in Diggle's story, and it truly leaves me wanting more. If you had told me that back in the first season that I'd want John Diggle to do more as the Green Arrow, I'd probably laugh at your face.

Felicity and Curtis have a brief blow-out over Felicity doing things without consulting with Curtis first, although it's somewhat overshadowed by Oliver and John's conflict. It's... okay? I don't mind this plotline at all, although at the same time I'm not overtly interested either.

There's also a subplot about how Cayden has framed the vigilantes into looking like brutal mofos where they beat up villains dressed up as cops the very day before voting for the vigilante ban happens, and the vigilante ban ends up passing. I'm pretty sure we've gone through this song and dance in the fourth season with Darrhk, yet the vigilante ban still feels so much more interesting than the whole FBI investigation thing... but not by much. At this point, Arrow really feels like the most mature and possibly the strongest of the CW shows. Not because of the long-term plot storytelling, because despite being played by an amazing actor Cayden James is still bland, and Richard Dragon's storyline barely elevates him beyond a C-lister, but simply by the strength of the quieter moments between the actors and how much these characters have been consistently written throughout their six-season tenure despite however unstable the story and plotline might be. And make no mistake -- despite the strong moments, this episode is pretty choppy and messy. 

Overall, though, I'm just happy to go through this episode, because after this, I get to talk about a Crisis Crossover -- another type of storytelling that wouldn't have been as good if we didn't have so much history to draw from. I've waited until all four parts are out so I can watch them all at once. Brief spoiler warning: it's good. I like it. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• John Diggle references the illusory Star City from way back during the 'Invasion' crossover when the Dominators invaded and kidnapped the non-metahumans and placed them in a fake world. 

Stranger Things S02E09 Review: What Has Risen May Sink, and What Has Sunk May Rise

Stranger Things, Season 2, Episode 9: The Gate

So my verdict for this season is pretty definitely "not as good as the first season". It's plagued with a plotline that ultimately felt too telegraphed (Eleven returns, fixes everything), and so many sub-plots that feel like they're absolutely unrequired or could've been integrated to the main plot better (Nancy/Jonathan; Max; Billy; Eleven). 

Still, the finale was fun as all hell to watch regardless.

Perhaps one of the weaker parts of this episode was, once more, Billy, but come on, that scene where he very nearly seduces Nancy's mom was uncomfortably hilarious. His whole point is to have a bit of a beat-them-up moment with Steve (poor Steve!), and because the kids are too dumb not to peek through a window, menace the team of Steve-and-the-Kids. Max ends up jabbing Billy with the drug cocktail that they use to put Will to sleep earlier, then slams it down near Billy's balls. Sadly, she doesn't go all the way and shatter them. But eh. 

I did like the earlier scene with Mike and Eleven. Their reunion is so sweet! And the confrontation between Mike and Hopper as Mike's just filled with anger and confusion and fury at Hopper, and for good reason. Mike does understand why Hopper did it, but that doesn't stop him from being any less angry, and Hopper doesn't blame him. Then, it's business time, because if they're going to kill the Mind Flayer and close the gate, they have to get the Mind Flayer out of Will. 

It's... it's a bit of an iffy thing for sure, but our characters are desperate. So they drug Will up again, drag him to Hopper's cabin, and set up a bunch of electric heaters and starts to quite literally cook Will in order to deny the nourishment that the Mind Flayer needs, and through a bit of an asspull, the shadowy tendrils of the Mind Flayer gets cooked out and escapes from Will's mouth. It's a bit convenient that Will doesn't just straight-up get killed by the heat, but eh. Will's acting is at top-notch as he alternates between being a confused boy and being some eldritch demonic being possessing said confused boy. Joyce's screams and desperation is also well-done in this scene, too.

After dealing with the whole Billy subplot, Steve the Babysitter and his charges end up going off to distract the Demodogs from Strike Team Eleven (Hopper and Eleven) who are going to close the gate. Steve was unconscious thanks to Billy's whacking of him, which actually neatly explains just why he shows up there when all logic should dictate that he get the kids as far away from danger as possible. Max drives Billy's camaro, and kind of fulfills her role as the 'zoomer' that she keeps insisting she is. With a cardboard box to actually reach the gas pedal. I just feel happy because it's Billy's car and Billy deserves all the grief the world has to offer. 

They arrive at the pumpkin patch that Hopper investigates earlier this season, and Steve ends up having to lead the party because, shit, they're all kids. They manage to set the 'hub' on fire, attract the Demodogs during the critical moment where Hopper and Eleven are assaulting the lab, manage to scramble all the way to safety (there was a harrowing bit where it seems like Steve and Dustin, hanging on the rope, might not make it, but he does because by that point the Mind Flayer is summoning all the demodogs his way). Dustin even gets a heartwarming moment with little Dart, the only Demodog who inexplicably has a different colour and some semblance of independence. With a gift of a nougat bar, they manage to escape from Dart (which I'm assuming gets, um, killed in the huge explosion?) and escape safely.

Which leaves us to Eleven and Hopper. Their conversation in the car was lovely and well-done. Not much is exchanged, and Hopper and Eleven both act as a worried parent and a chastised daughter very, very well. Eleven explains where she's been to (although only says that she went to visit her mom) and Hopper tells Eleven about his dead daughter. At the end of it all, the two storm Hawkins Lab, Hopper manages to get the still-somehow-alive Dr Owens to promise to stay away from Eleven, and they close the gate. This part of the climax was.... okay. It's not particularly as exciting as the show makes it out to be, and feels more like a 'yay, we won!' bit. It's exciting enough, but considering the climax to the first season, I expected something more. Which, mind you, isn't the worst thing that could've happened. 

I did find the string of epilogue scenes to be charming, though. The Nancy/Jonathan getting closure for Barb's death is a bit of a whatever, but Hopper getting Eleven legally adopted as his daughter by fabricating a birth certificate is absolutely amazing (Jane Hopper!). So is Steve and Dustin bonding (as much as Steve's douche-boy charm advice doesn't work). The Snow Ball dance with Mike and Eleven, Nancy dancing with a heartbroken and dejected Dustin... yeah. One of the strongest parts of the show is simply just how invested I am with the characters and the acting that even this sub-par finale feels like a pretty great time nonetheless. And, as heartbreaking as it is, Dustin's acting as he gets through a string of rejection is just amazingly shown. 

Oh, and, of course, the Mind Flayer isn't remotely dead. As Police's absolutely amazing "Every Breath You Take" plays over the snow ball, with the lyrics 'every move you make, every bond you break, every step you take, I'll be watching you' we get to sere the Mind Flayer actually looming over the school, watching. That's a pretty cool and creepy scene.

So yeah. Not as good as the first season, and not as many Cthulhu as I would've liked, but still a fun romp nonetheless. 

Stranger Things S02E08 Review: The Nameless Monstrosity He Had Sought to Depict in His Dream-Sculpture

Stranger Things, Season 2, Episode 8: The Mind Flayer

Ah, so apparently the shadow monster that I have been calling 'Thessalhydra' all throughout my review for this season has been given a proper D&D themed name -- the Mind Flayer, the Illithid, the Cthulhu-esque humanoids from another plane with squid-faces that will devour your mind. While Mind Flayers aren't exactly a one-to-one comparison with the gigantic eldritch shadow-creature in the Upside-Down, they're still pretty damn appropriate for a Cthulhu-mythos inspired creature.

So after the bizarre detour that is the seventh episode of this season, we're back to our soup of horror and mystery. The fact that we know Eleven is coming with all her telekinetic powers and the likelihood of possibly just ending this whole thing by focusing her anger and power is a bit of a downer since it kind of telegraphs what's going to happen in the final episode, but it's a minor enough complaint that I don't particularly mind.

We pick up straight where we left off in the sixth episode, with Hopper and a bunch of others watching as Dart's army of Demo-dogs, having murdered the entire strike team sent down into the Mind Flayer's vine-tentacles, have arrived at Hawkins Lab. "They can't get through!" one of the stupid scientists say, but of course they do, and we're treated to a pretty cool sequence of monsters going wild in a laboratory and ravaging everything in their path. Again, not particularly original, but definitely fun to watch. I particularly liked the grisly sequence at the elevator as a group of scientists are just huddled, pressing the 'close' button as an army of Demodogs charge towards them and, naturally, the next scene is of the elevator doors opening to show them all dead. 

Will, Mike, Joyce, Bob and Hopper all get the hell out of dodge, but not before sedating Will in order to stop the Mind Flayer from seeing through his eyes. Which... part of me is screaming at how illogical that a randomly-dosed injection by an untrained woman doesn't actually kill the little kid, but since Will's like possessed by the Mind Flayer he probably is tougher than most. 

Speaking of which... so the Demogorgon from the first season was working as a minion of the Mind Flayer, then, in turning Will into a host that vomits out slug-creatures that grow up into Dart? Or is that just a bit of a coincidence that Will's encounter with the Demogorgon causes him to simply be more receptive with being shunted into the Upside-Down realm?

We get some absolutely amazing moment from Bob as he offers to go down and reboot the system, video-game style, to unlock the doors so that they can escape. Dr. Owens leaves himself behind in the control room to tell Bob when to duck and what to do. The rest of the supporting cast -- Steve and the Kids, as well as the Nancy/Jonathan pair, kind of congregate outside the laboratory after dealing with their own personal sub-plots, some of which are more interesting than others.

Bob's spotlight, of course, earns him a heroic sacrifice, and he's easily one of the most likable characters in the show. Between his cool tech-savviness of using water sprinklers to distract the Demodogs from killing him, to his 'cool boyfriend' mode to Joyce, to that tense moment where he hides in the closet... of course the broom falls, and Bob gets hounded by the Demodogs and gets ripped to shreds in front of Joyce and Hopper, despite their best efforts. I just kind of feel that while Bob's death was certainly hard-hitting, he felt like Barb from the previous season in that it's one of the not-central cast that ended up dying. Still, Joyce's hysteric reactions and the moments we spend with Bob throughout the season certainly does help t make the death impactful.

Everyone pile in to a series of vehicles, there's a bit of a catch-up in a shack about what's going on (Nancy and Jonathan probably have jack shit to contribute to the group). There's some disagreements about what's going to go on, and after some D&D comparisons to the Mind Flayer, the kids suggest that they can kill the central core, the Mind Flayer itself, to stop the army. But the only weapon they have (because there's the subtle implication that Hopper's not volunteering Eleven) is the connection that Will has with the Mind Flayer. I loved how Hopper began that conversation going "this is stupid, it's a children's book!" before getting into it and going "how do we beat it? How does the book say we beat it?" and for the kids to sheepishly admit that it's, well, a children's book.

Will is tied up in the garage where he was abducted last season, and in a neat callback to the sensory deprivation kiddy pool from the first season, they cover everything with tinfoil and newspaper, tie Will up, and they basically try to get Will back from the Mind Flayer's clutches. The kid, who spent most of the first season offscreen and most of the second season scared, really can act, huh? Between the confusion of being 'Will trapped with a mind-devouring parasite within his body' and said parasite trying to impersonate Will, it's some pretty amazing and harrowing stuff. It is cheesy as all get-out for Jonathan, Joyce and Mike to weaponize the power of good memories to try and get Will back, but it doesn't actually work. Will does manage to get a message through, which is the remarkably unhelpful "close gate", since there's really no way to close the gate without fighting through a facility filled with angry Demogorgon dogs. 

Then time runs out when the phone rings (how many phones have the Myers family gone through now?) and informs the Mind Flayer of Will's location, who sics an army of Demodogs to attack the shack. Everyone gets ready to fight. Nancy with a shotgun, Steve with his awesome spiked bat, Hopper with his gun... Lucas with his fucking wrist cannon in the background... but then sounds of screaming yipping dogs, and Eleven enters the house. Yeah, she's back, and she's going to be the one to close the gate. It's honestly telegraphed from so long away, and her little soul-search feels more like an attempt to justify her absence throughout most of season two than anything else. Still, doesn't make it any less badass. 

I feel like I have to acknowledge Billy being pushed around by his abusive drill sergeant father about what a shit brother he has been. Like, his own abuse led him to being abusive in his own right, but the only thought I can spare for him in that scene was "punch him, abusive father! Punch him good!"

Kobolds & Catacombs Card Reveals, Part #4

Bunch of new cards!

Hoarding Dragon: It's kinda like Hungry Dragon, a 4-mana 5/6 dragon... but it's arguably a lot worse. Hungry Dragon gives your opponent a 1-mana minion, something you can deal with no problem... and he still doesn't see play. Hoarding Dragon's disadvantage is in the form of a deathrattle, yes, and you get N'Zoth synergy and all that jazz, but it gives your opponent two coins. And practically every deck in the meta currently -- Rogue, Mage and Priest being the big ones -- can get a fuckton of value from coins. So yeah, not the dragon I'm looking for. Great art, though.

Psychic Scream: What a card, man. I've been playing a lot of Priest variants recently -- highlander, big, dragon and the odd token list -- and Psychic Scream feels just so insanely powerful. A 7-mana non-conditional board clear? Sure, you don't actually get rid of the big minions, but shuffling them into the deck buys you a lot of precious turns to actually draw into your own win conditions. So long as you don't give them a valuable minion (so no Big Priest usage here) shuffling cards they can't really synergize with like Northshire Clerics doesn't really hurt you that much. Definitely effective against druids, where instead of Jade Idols they're drawing into single vanilla golems that are far easier to deal with (or, even better, Spreading Plague tokens), effective against aggro where you nullify the buffs they may have had, and particularly effective against shamans and paladins if they have tokens on the field. Because there's nothing worse than drawing into a vanilla 1-mana 1/1. It requires some fiddling to really get a feel as to when to best use this card, but holy shit, man, now against Priest you have TWO big removal spells to look out against. As if Priest didn't need more good cards. Almost makes up for that year where all they got was Purify. Almost.

Voidlord: Ooh, control warlock tools! I certainly like me some control warlock tools. Voidlord's pretty cool. He's a 9-mana 3/9 with taunt, which isn't... isn't super-horrible. He's like a slower Primordial Drake. But he summons three 1/3 tokens with taunt as a deathrattle, making the Voidlord some sort of Sludge Belcher on steroids. Even better if you can cheate him out with Krul, or re-summon him with Gul'dan. I've gone on record on saying how much more awesome Bloodreaver Gul'dan could be if we got better mid/late-game demons than just Doomguard and Dreadlord (and as it turns out, those are enough to make Gul'dan viable) and Voidlord might be that huge late-game bomb that you need. I'm not sure he's an auto-include, but Voidlord's definitely an interesting tool I'm happy to be included in warlock lists.


Fal'dorei Strider: Ah, obligatory Drider D&D reference! Fal'dorei Strider is essentially a better version of Beneath the Grounds from TGT, one of my all-time favourite cards. It's a lot less interesting because you don't shuffle things into your opponent's deck, but it's definitely a better card than Beneath the Grounds (assuming it works the same). A 4/4 body for 4 mana isn't bad in itself, but summoning three 4/4's down the line? It's a 4-mana 16/16. Now it's obviously delayed, and it's not going to work all the time, but at the same time Rogues do draw through their deck at an amazing rate, so it's pretty cool addition to the Rogue arsenal. Whether it's going to see play isn't something I'm particularly sure about.

EDIT: I've seen the uncollectible cards up on Hearthpwn... and apparently the spell that summons you costs 4 mana and is automatically cast? I'm not sure if this is good at all if you actually spend 4 mana to cast the spiders when you draw them. We'll see for confirmation, though. Double EDIT: It's been confirmed that the spells cost 0 if you draw them naturally, so yeah, carry on. Fal'dorei Strider's still decent.

Hungry Ettin: Hungry Ettin is a card that made me go 'whoa, value!' when I saw that he's a 6-mana 4/10 with taunt. That's like Primordial Drake stats, but for 2 extra health and 2 mana less! So what's the catch, here? Well, just like Hungry Dragon, you give your opponent a free minion. But unlike Hungry Dragon, you give a 2-cost minion. And by god, there's a lot of great 2-cost minions that your opponents will be glad to have. Stubborn Gastropod and Patient Assassin will simply murder your Ettin without a fuss, in particular. I dunno, though -- is the gamble of giving your opponent a poisonous minion, or a super-value card like Pyros, enough to justify playing a 4/10 taunt for 6? In comparison, Nesting Roc is a 4/7 conditional taunt for 5, and even that is getting cut out of many Hunter decks now. It's a bit hard to say -- I can potentially see the Ettin being a conditional inclusion because there are easy ways to deal with 2-drops, like setting up a Mind-Control Tech turn or a SW: Pain... but to me it looks more like an arena card than anything.

Cataclysm: By pure luck, I am a player who has opened the entire discard warlock package from Un'Goro and Frozen Throne naturally. That's three legendaries, folks, that are wasted for a near-dead (but fun!) archetype. And Cataclysm is the sort of card that I look at and go 'holy shit, it'd be great in a quest Warlock deck!' It's 4-mana, destroy all minions, discard your hand. And discarding your hand at turn 4 basically means you get your quest complete... which frees up turn 5 to just plop the portal and go from there, somewhat negating the fact that you're missing, y'know, a hand. It gets even better if you get Silverware Golems and Zavas boosts from Cataclysm. And even even better if Malchezaar's Imp triggers before he dies. Ultimately we'll have to see if this card will single-handedly rescue discard warlock. My gut says no, but I really do want this deck to work. I also find it hilarious that Cataclysm is, like, the third Warlock super-massive board clear? Not a good card ultimately, but one that I think is decently designed.

Call to Arms: For 4 mana, you recruit 3 minions that cost 2 or less. It's a paladin card, and essentially a better Small-Time Recruits because you, well, actually recruit the minion onto the board... but I really don't see any good 2-cost minion or less that you really want to desperately spend 4 mana to summon. Like, I guess you can get Shielded Minibot in wild, and in standard you can get... Argent Squire? So many of the 2-drops that Paladin runs are murlocs that have battlecries (Vilespin Inquisitor, Hydrologist) that I'm not sure that you'd want to run this. I suppose the fact that you're fine with summoning those with Finja makes this card somewhat possibly viable? I don't really see it. Great artwork, though.

Lynesa Sunsorrow: A 7-mana 1/1 that casts all buff spells you've casted earlier in the game into the minion. For one, it really makes Evolving to 7 mana scary as hell. And Lynesa is... not a bad card, because every deck's running Spikeridged Stegodon, and honestly a simple Stegodon buff on Lynesa is enough to make her an oversized Sludge Belcher. It certainly looks more appealing than Bolvar Fireblood does... but on the other hand, do you really want to be playing this over Tirion or Ragnaros? I don't really think so. Definitely a good card, but one that I don't really see being played all that much.

Kobold Hermit: We have a trio of shaman cards released at the same time, revolving around the synergy of Windshear Stormcaller below that synergizes with, well, basic totems. And Kobold Hermit... honestly isn't good. He's a 2-mana 1/1 that basically allows you to discover a basic totem. And the tempo loss is just kind of bad since it's an actual card you put into your deck as opposed to just pushing a button that always exists. A 2-mana 1/1 is worse than Tuskarr Totemic's 3-mana 3/2, and the basic totem certainly isn't worth an additional 1 mana. Great art, though, with those candle totems.

Primal Talismans: And Primal Talismans is even worse. You give your minions a Soul of the Forest-style deathrattle, but instead of 2/2 treants you have them summon a basic totem? And it costs 3 mana? The thing about basic totems is that 75% of the time they're 0/2 bodies, and it's so much easier for your opponent to deal with them. Yes, it might buy you an extra turn to play with Windshear Stormcaller, but I don't really see Primal Talismans being particularly playable.

Windshear Stormcaller: A 5-mana 5/5 that, if you have 4 basic totems on board... you summon Al'Akir! It's a great card, unquestionably, if you can get the effect off. Al'Akir is fucking dope, yo. But getting all 4 basic totems survive, and playing Windshear Stormcaller? Yes, you could do some very weird combo with things like Grumble bouncing totems back to your hand, but it's just so impractical of a combo. Not to mention that if you're banking on spamming Kobold Hermits, note that there's only 7 slots on the battlefield, meaning that you can't have too many minions on the battlefield (i.e. 4 totems, Stormcaller and Al'Akir, plus another), making the combo even harder to pull off. And even then, it's not a win-the-game-instantly like Uther of the Ebon Blade's four horsemen, but rather you summon Al'Akir. At which point why not just play the elemental package itself? Not a bad concept, and definitely a fun one, but probably won't be a top-tier meta deck.

Lesser Amethyst Spellstone: Oh man, another good spellstone! The 'lesser' one is still crap, 4-mana deal 3 damage with lifesteal, but the regular amethyst deals 5 lifesteal damage, and the greater one deals 7. It's a powerful tool for control warlocks, and the way to upgrade isn't quite as impractical as, say, the paladin or warrior spellstones. You deal damage to your face with your cards, and lots of existing cards already deal damage. Flame Imp, Abyssal Enforcer, Hellfire... plus a bunch of new cards... And Amethyst Spellstone even heals your hero, which makes ti far more attractive to abuse self-damaging tools. Amethyst Spellstone is a powerful card in my opinion for control warlocks, and I for one am excited to use it.

Kobold Librarian: Poor kobold, he's burning his own books. But the Kobold Librarian is a damn good card, though. Unlike the Kobold Hermit above, which is a poorly-stated minion, Kobold Librarian has basic stats for 1-mana 2/1, meaning you don't even get a tempo loss. And the Librarian basically gives you a free hero power -- drawing a card and dealing 2 damage to your hero. Drawing a card is always good, and you basically summon a cheap 2/1 in addition to getting a free hero power. It's definitely a card that works well with Amethyst Spellstone, with the only caveat being that whether Warlock can actually fit this into their decks simply due to the sheer amount of demons they play. Maybe take out the pirate package?

Vulgar Homonculus: Speaking of demons, we've got this fatso. The Vulgar Homonculus is Felguard done right, a 2-mana 2/4 with taunt, which is definitely decent stats for 2 mana. It's also a demon, mind you, which allows Bloodreaver Gul'dan to summon more taunt demons (alongside Voidlord, if you decide to play him). The problem with Gul'dan is that the only taunt demons you tend to summon are just Voidwalkers, since Felguard's shit and Lakkari Felhound's only good in the sub-par Krul-zakus control list, so Vulgar Homonculus only asks for a meager 2 damage to your hero. I may be somewhat overhyping the Vulgar Homonculus, but I definitely like it a lot.

The Punisher S01E01 Review: You're Punished

The Punisher, Season 1, Episode 1: 3 A.M.

I've actually finished watching a good chunk of The Punisher from a while back, but never got the time to review it. Which is partially due to my own schedule kind of just... piling up with so many other things to review. So anyway, here it is -- my review of the first episode of Netflix's Punisher TV series, spun off from the character's amazing, amazing introduction in Daredevil's second season. Daredevil's second season was somewhat problematic, but I don't think many people would argue if I said that Punisher is the best part of that season. 

Like The Gifted, I'm not going to do any 'Marvel Easter Eggs' corner or whatever since I know jack shit about Punisher lore and only know what the TV show tells me, so hopefully these reviews can be cranked out a lot faster. 

And, well, the first episode of Punisher... starts off very slow. It's nowhere as bad as Iron Fist's first episode, where we literally spend the entire episode in a mental hospital going 'oooooh is this dude really the Iron Fist?' but the only real action scenes we get is the first few montage of Punisher killing some dude through a sniper rifle across the American/Mexican border, as well as some dude in a bathroom, the last of the cartels and gangsters from Daredevil who caused the deaths of his family. 

The majority of the episode just has Punisher wander around with a beard, being an antisocial construction worker who everyone thinks is autistic, and spends most of his time smashing walls. He gets befriended by chatty young kid Donny (definitely a likeable, if slighly cliched, secondary character), who ends up getting caught up by a bunch of doucheholes (who spends most of the episode mocking Frank, who they think is autistic) in a scheme to rob a high-stakes poker game. The robbery goes south, Donny nearly gets himself killed, until, of course, Frank Castle decides to get back punishing. Whacking the douchebag, murdering fools with his sledgehammer and dumping them all in a cement vat, he then proceeds to gun down the Gnucchi gangsters that are planning to stamp out witnesses.

There are some sub-plots and minor characters introduced -- like this dude Curtis that knows Frank's secret, working as a PTSD support group leader (and also is a nice buddy to Frank as well); as well as Dinah and Stein a pair of FBI agents or something that are trying to rise up their racist, sexist, cover-up-evil boss, but other than the fact that they exist, I don't really think there's much that this first episode does to make them feel interesting. And to be fair -- I do approve of this choice. Just giving us enough screentime to tell us they exist, but focusing mostly on Punisher's conflict at the construction site is definitely the right way to go. 

As a rule, I'm far more of a fan of superheroes who inspire hope and justice. I like my Spider-Mans and Supermans to be real beacons of hope and justice to the community, I like my Captain Americas and Wonder Womans to inspire and be beacons of an ideal, and I rage when the DCEU showed Batman murdering dozens of people with the Batmobile. But there's definitely a place for the 'HELL YEAH' wanton brutality that the Punisher inflicts on his victims, because he, well, punishes them. This first episode doesn't really offer much in terms of a greater storyline, and the only real hints we got are from the FBI agent point-of-view, as well as the mysterious dude observing Frank through a computer... but as a re-introduction to the Punisher it's definitely a great way, acting as a neat sequel to his character in Daredevil while at the same time remaining fresh for anyone who started off with this show, with all the context clues from the conversation with Curtis or Frank's own flashbacks allowing you to fill the holes about what happened in Frank's past. 

So yeah. Definitely a strong, if very slow, start. But it's worth it, because Jon Bernthal is a pretty fucking badass Punisher. 

The Flash S04E07 Review: I Think

The Flash, Season 4, Episode 7: Therefore I Am

I'm trying to get through all of the CW shows before 'Crisis on Earth-X' drops. And, well, episode 7 of Flash's fourth season finally gives some context to the Thinker, the overarching bad guy that's been oh-so-mysteriously showing up at the end of every other episode.

And this episode adopts the Arrow strategy of flashing back to how Clifford DeVoe and his wife, Marlize, became who they are during the huge particle accelerator explosion caused by Eobard "Harrison Wells" Thawne in season one. It's a pretty well-done, if slightly introdump-y, flashback, though one that I enjoyed. It's clear that we're giving the Thinker a more original origin story than what is traditional, though compared to Zoom or Savitar, Thinker's far more faithful to his comic-book counterpart.

And it's actually pretty cool. Thinker's a neat character with a backstory that's almost sympathetic. While the motivation to make people become smarter after being disillusioned by his unappreciated role as a university teacher, he gets inspired by Eobarrison Thawells' words and decides to put an invention created by his wife, the Mechanic, called the thinking cap, to increase his intellect during the metahuman storm. And he did become smarter, but this comes at the cost of having a fatal case of ALS, which puts him in his current form.

And all the Thinker backstory stuff, while expository, was serviceable. The thing is... the rest of the episode is kind of shit, since it revolves around Barry's headstorng and honestly pretty stupid insistence that, yes, good old harmless teacher Clifford DeVoe is a super-smart villain that's involved in all these conspiracies. And as the audience, we know Barry's right. Of course we do. But the execution of the episode makes Barry's attempts to prove it, in spite of all of his allies finding objective evidence that, no, DeVoe is nothing more than a regular teacher... it's pretty annoyingly obtuse, and the feeling that the entire episode is nothing but stringing Barry along isn't helped by the fact that DeVoe just... reveals his secret identity to Barry quite randomly at the end of the episode (which all of Barry's allies just... accepts?). The writing is sloppy, and there's literally no motivation for Barry to be so bull-headed. It would be something if Barry's bullheadedness actually put him in odds against Team Flash as part of some master plan by DeVoe, but it's not even that.

A particularly stupid piece of writing is Barry realizing that DeVoe bugged STAR labs with a camera, then acting like it's such a huge revelation that DeVoe knew his secret identity.

And while the DeVoe's love story clearly is supposed to be some kind of obvious parallel to Barry and Iris, I can't help but to honestly be overwhelmed by all the present-day scenes in this episode. The flashbacks were fine, as they help to contextualize the Thinker and the Mechanic, but everything in the present-day took a huge, major hit.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• DeVoe and his wife show up in the particle accelerator scene from the first season, but we see Barry and Iris leaving to catch the purse snatcher, explaining why none of the characters present saw them in season one.
• Wally returns from Blue Valley, after 'fighting a giant starfish', which is sadly not a scene from any of CW's other shows. The giant starfish isn't named, but likely a reference to longtime DC supervillain, the alien starfish, the original threat that the Justice League was assembled to fight against.
• The Thinker's 'thinking cap' was the cap he designed to give himself superpowers in the comics, and how the Thinker looked (just a regular dude with a sci-fi hat) when he fought Jay Garrick. When he returned to fight Wally West, he's a robotic being as seen above. 
• Barry mentions that his 'Spidey-Sense' is tingling, a barely-disguised shout-out to Marvel Comics' friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. 

Supergirl S03E07 Review: The Language of Saturn

Supergirl, Season 3, Episode 7: Wake Up

This episode of Supergirl was one that started on a pretty slow burn. Oh, Mon-El returns! But he has a beard, and is maybe evil, except he's not, he's just acting suspiciously and not explaining the whole truth to Supergirl and the others... just because. And right there would be a formula for a pretty shitty episode. But a combination of strong acting from both Kara and Mon-El, some great B-plots and a particularly awesome revelation at the end that caught me off-guard caused me to like this episode more than I should.

Really should've realized what was coming when they keep talking about the Saturnian language.

So yeah. The B-plots were great. J'onn and M'yrnn's scenes were amazing. M'yrnn points out just how businesslike J'onn has been in his 30+ years on Earth, and how his father has even turned out to just be 'another mission'. It's really great acting from both Harewood and Lumbly, and that final scene with J'onn showing his bare-bones apartment to M'yrnn and offering that they could live there is so fucking touching.

Meanwhile, Samantha Arias, who has been revealed to be the CW-verse incarnation of Reign the World-Killer (not a DC supervillain I'm super-duper aware of, beyond her existence), goes through a sick version of Superman's journey of self-discovery. Her mother (a detached woman that's far from the loving mothers that Martha Kent or Elisa Danvers are) reveals the spaceship Samantha crashes in, she finds a crystal, which leads her to an alien fortress that sprouts up all awesome-like in the middle of the desert, and as she enters it... instead of being told that this is her destiny, the hooded acolyte computer-voice tells her that she is nothing but a weapon, and soon she will return to what she truly is. Samantha's anguished screams of how 'this isn't supposed to be!' is well-done as she ends up losing herself to the Reign program. 

The Mon-El storyline was definitely the weaker material, due to how sloppily it's written, and how really none of the characters really do have the excuse to act as they do. But the revelation that Mon-El's been sent to the 30th century for 7 years, and basically gone through what Superman goes through in Legion of Super-Heroes stories (and considering Mon-El himself is a Legion character in the first place, it's appropriate). And in those seven years... Mon-El got married to a girl from Saturn, Imra Ardeen. Also known as, er, Saturn Girl.

It's a nice, if dangerous, cliffhanger we're left upon. On one hand, I'm glad that Mon-El's loss at the end of last season isn't just glossed over and thus making last season's Mon-El story feel cheapened, but if this goes to a bog-standard love-triangle bullshit Supergirl's third season may end up feeling worse than its second.

So yeah. While it's on paper a weak episode, really strong performances from Kara, Mon-El, J'onn, M'yrnn, Samantha and even Winn in his brief scene all serve to make this episode somewhat better than it should. I dunno. I'm not the biggest fan of the Legion of Super-Heroes, but the combination of the Reign and Legion storylines makes me really like this episode more than I probably should.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Irma Ardeen, a.k.a. Saturn Girl, is one of the founding members of the Legion of Super-Heroes. I'm not really up to talking about the Legion at this point, but they're basically a group of aliens that serve as super-heroes of the 30th century. Most famously, to boost popularity ratings, a teenaged Superboy would show up and be one of the main characters of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Here, things are somewhat swapped around a little in that it's Mon-El instead that gets sent to the future.
• Mon-El mentions a 'Querl' as he talks about what the time wormhole thing might be, which is a clear reference to Querl Dox, real name of Brainiac 5, another central member of the Legion. 
• Kara about to drill a hole into the ground is, of course, a likely reference to a move that iconically utilized in the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie.

The Flash S04E06 Review: The Council of Ricks

The Flash, Season 4, Episode 6: When Harry Met Harry

So this episode was... not that good, to be honest. It had some great ideas, and there were some decent performances by the actors involved, but I really feel that the episode ended up being a relatively weak one.

PAJAMAS

The attempt to develop Ralph Dibny -- combining his shtick as being somewhat of an atoner and being the group's resident douchebag -- in my opinion works really well. His constant referring to women by their measurements is pretty fucking hilarious, and gets some equally hilarious 'DID YOU JUST' reactions from everyone involved, but it's clear that it's not going to be the most popular decisions around considering the current socio-political climate. But I really liked Elongated Man's character development in this episode, how his straightforward and bull-headed approach to crimefighting -- capture the perp -- contrasts to Barry's own priorities of saving the civilians. Ralph gets some people hurt on the street and there's a lot of great emotional work being done in the hospital as he is filled with shame, self-loathing and anger as he pushes everyone away while blaming himself. Barry gives him a pep-talk, and while it does a feel a bit too cheesy I felt that it worked in the context of the episode. Oh, and he also returns the Sioux artifacts to the Sioux people.

Oh, and he spends most of this episode dressed in a fucking stupid-looking excuse of a prototype costume. What's there not to love?

(Side-note: I watched the episode and reviewed it without being aware of the whole sexual harassment scandal that revolved around one of the CW show-runners around the time this episode was released... but I dunno. Would the episode have been received differently if such scandal hadn't popped up? Should it?)


Of course, while the Elongated Man stuff was done pretty well... pretty much the rest of the episode ended up sort of falling flat for me. The villain of the week was a weak one, and while those have been a problem that Flash has had over the years for its episodic villains, Black Bison perhaps takes the cake for being really, really poorly done in my opinion. There's the attempt at making her somewhat sympathetic by how she's motivated about returning important Sioux artifacts back to her people, and that subplot ended up feeling sort of half-baked. Her powers are at least pretty damn cool, with the smash-cut to the panther statue killing the security guard, the activation of the police armour puppet and the skeletal T-Rex all working as cool scenes.

The thing that perhaps fails the most is the Council of Wells. Trying not too hard for me to go into a rant about how it copies from the Council of Ricks from Rick and Morty, which in turn copies it from the Council of Reeds from Marvel Comics... it's not particularly well done. I'm not complaining about Tom Cavanagh, who splits his acting roles between hamming it up as the jackass Harry Wells to the wacky evil-German Herr Volvgang Vells to the grr-grr badass cyborg Wells 2.0 to the careless playboy Lothario Wells, and a brief Wels-the-Grey Gandalf comedy bit...

But in the end, it really feels more suited to a stand-up comedy routine. It's funny as all hell, but a combination of the poor effects (particularly on Wells 2.0) and the painfully obvious "you're just hating your own flaws" speech from Cisco made the whole affair feel so much weaker than it could've been, and while Tom Cavanagh's acting and comedic tones were spot-on, a combination of weak dialogue and the hilariously childish "we just need to put all our weird science goobledeygonk which is simpler than we think it sounds TOGETHER!"And as a result, randomly finding out the Thinker's address felt far less of an accomplishment than it probably should be.

I dunno. This episode felt more like a parody of a Flash episode than a properly good Flash episode. I did enjoy the Elongated Man/Flash stuff if nothing else, but didn't really like most of everything else.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Black Bison is a Firestorm enemy, with his real name in the comics being 'Black Cloud in Morning', or John Ravenhair once he became an adult, initially being disillusioned with his family traditions. John's body was taken over by the ghost of his ancestor, Bison-Black-as-Midnight-Sky, who used a mystical ritual to bind his spirit to Black Bison's body. He would menace New York until he was stopped by Firestorm. In the comics, he had weather magic and controls members of his Black Bison Cult. Obviously, the Black Bison has been heavily retooled for his live-action adaptation. 
• Ralph references Indiana Jones with "it belongs in a museum!" and Jurassic Park during his initial dealings with the robot T-Rex. 

Legends of Tomorrow S03E07 Review: Angry Dads and Ape Saviours

Legends of Tomorrow, Season 3, Episode 7: Welcome to the Jungle

(The Punisher reviews will start hopefully later this week. I really need to watch the series first before actually, y'know, reviewing it)

I really want to like this episode. I really do. It has Gorilla Grodd, and Gorilla Grodd has always been consistently one of the best parts of the CW-Arrowverse. The fact that Grodd is almost always played straight as this monstrous telepathic gorilla that's a huge, huge threat adds to the appeal of Grodd, and to say that I was absolutely freaking out when I learned that he was in the episode (I wasn't spoiled by trailers or previews) was a huge understatement. It felt a little surprising that the mysterious rogue element in the Vietnam War ends up being a known quantity -- Grodd -- is a huge surprise to me. Grodd's plan isn't as well fleshed-out as his multiple appearances in Flash, with his storyline about trying to bring about peace between Americans and Vietnamese by subjugating them all under his mental thrall, and proceeding to kickstart WWIII, is not super-original. But there is enough entertainment factor, and some attempts at comparison between the Vietnamese war and the war-torn dystopia of Zari's future, as well as Amaya trying to get Grodd to see her side, that having peace with Grodd is almost believable.

Yet so many multiple plotlines are running that none of Zari or Amaya's points really got the focus that they deserve. We've got Mick's dad, we've got Jefferson and Stein's little song and dance, we've got Sara rising up from a coma... It's honestly a bit of a disservice to the Grodd storyline, I think, to pile up so much stuff -- and even in Zari's case I didn't think she really ever got a proper focus episode after her introduction. Sure, she's got multiple scenes that establish her as an independent superhero, but I really feel that there's something significantly lacking about her. There's also the whole plotline of Amaya trying to befriend Grodd, while at the same time dealing with her own problems with the revelation that Kuasa is her descendant. Oh, and Jax saving the president. Oh OH and Martin plucking Isaac Newton and a bunch of other scientists from the timeline for no reason other than a gag. While I appreciate multi-layered storytelling, this is one that I didn't think worked all that well. 

The Mick storyline is honestly unnecessary, although by god, Dominic Purcell is an amazing actor here. Perhaps one of my big dislike about it is how everyone in the Legends team with parental issues ends up discovering that their parents aren't all that bad (Nate even lampshades how he gets over daddy issues in an episode last season) means that while Mick's acting is amazing, a combination of Mick's dad Dick (no, really) being acted by someone who tries to out-ham Dominic Purcell's performance makes me really hard to take the Mick subplot seriously.

Although, once more, Dominic Purcell's performance is really quite strong enough to carry the plotline and not make it too cringe-y, I did really feel that it was a bit more overdone than it should. Add that to the fact that I'm not sure if I really like the revelation that Mick killed his dad who's traumatized by war... who may not actually carry that trauma back after Mick maybe-kinda-changes-the-timeline... I dunno. It makes me think that Mick might just get some random reversal and get a happy ending the way Martin gets his anachronism daughter back, and... I dunno. It just kind of feels out of left field, although I do appreciate the attempt -- if not the result -- of trying to make Mick a lot more than just 'angry pyromaniac'. 

But, still, for all the faults of this episode... we get Grodd. And Grodd is pretty amazing. Be it just glowering and roaring at our heroes, or jumping around like King Kong on the Waverider, Grodd is a villain that just works. This is definitely a more sympathetic version of Grodd than I'm used to from the mainstream DC universe, but it works due to how Grodd himself has been portrayed within the CW-verse, and I'm a big fan of it. And the fact that Damien Darrhk (Darhk? I'm genuinely not sure which is the right spelling now) has decided to pluck Grodd out of certain death and recruit him into the New Legion of Doom is just amazing. 

So yeah. While this episode has its weak points, enough material from Grodd and Heatwave works in the episode's favour to make it far more entertaining than it should.

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DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Grodd was last seen in The Flash's third season, where he invaded Central City with an army of Earth-2 sentient gorillas. His attack on central city was referenced to by Darrhk, and his torture under the hands of human scientists in Flash season one was referenced to by Grodd himself. 
• "Kneel before Grodd" seems very likely to be a reference to the iconic quote from Superman II, "Kneel before Zod".
• "There is no Sara, only Grodd" is a reference to the Ghostbusters quote "there is no Dana, only Zuul".