DC's Swamp Thing, Season 1, Episode 6: The Price You Pay
An... interesting episode. We take a break from a self-contained episodic supernatural threat that has been taking up a majority of the previous episodes, and actually have the supernatural and the mundane storylines come to a head. Swamp Thing ends up getting hunted by a bunch of hunters, who assault poor Swampy with bear traps and shotguns. Which, mind you, is definitely not going to hurt our good buddy Swamp Thing, but we've seen the Swamp Thing's horrifying plant powers before against people who deserve it. And these hunters, while morally ambiguous, are basically just there under contract. The Swamp Thing does end up punching a tree and using it to unleash a hail of spiky wooden spikes to take out one of the hunters, and later on we get to see a harrowing scene of the surviving hunters being both physically injured and mentally traumatized. It's an interesting sequence as Abby ends up being confused, particularly when Matt Cable ends up discovering the Swamp Thing's existence later on. Just how much has changed when Alec was turned into the Swamp Thing? How much of Alec's humanity is lost in the transformation?
The fact that Matt Cable was the one responsible for killing Alec Holland is also going to be interesting. Things come to a head when Swamp Thing seems to remember Matt... but not as the shooter that blew up his boat, but as a police officer that helped Abby that one time. It's going to be interesting to see how this particular revelation's going to happen... especially since Matt's probably going to go all green-eyed monster regarding Abby and Alec's relationship. I've been completely dismissive of Matt throughout basically the entire series prior to episode 5, but this situation definitely kind of re-ignites my interest on how Matt's going to be utilized in the show.
This episode also ends up as a bizarre backdoor pilot to Blue Devil, which takes up a majority of the B-plot portion, and... and I'm not sure how I feel about that, really. We get to see a bit of his backstory, where he was a stuntman that ends up meeting a random stranger (the "Phantom Stranger" again) who offers him a chance to be something greater in exchange for future favours... and ends up causing him to be promoted from stuntman into the main Toku actor for the Blue Devil. And I guess it's the Stranger that ends up causing the Blue Devil to be cursed to stay in Marais for some undetermined purpose, too...
And then while Cassidy is in a coma, Dr. Woodrue, desperate to prove his mutagenic serum thing works after getting some samples of the Swamp Thing's plant-animal cells, ends up injecting Cassidy with the serum, causing him to wake up from permanent brain damage, but also to catch blue flame and run around town burning blue. So I guess the "Blue Devil" stuff is caused by the serum as opposed to a deal with the devil? I'm kind of curious, but I also kinda wished that the Blue Devil origin story could've been a bit more standalone as opposed to being tied into the Woodrue stuff.
We get to see Woodrue himself get some great scenes with his wife, who just is tired of this all and just wants to leave Marais right now, but Avery Sunderland basically has a stranglehold on Woodrue, forcing him to continue his research, because despite the horrifying side-effects, Avery is determined to spin the Daniel Cassidy coma recovery thing as something that's going to benefit them both. Interesting, if predictable, situation for the villain side of things, and I'm actually pretty invested in Jason Woodrue's story. I mean, I know there's no way this isn't going to end with him becoming an evil twig-man, but still.
The show also, I felt, kind of dropped the ball on Abby and Avery's conversation in this episode. After being informed by Liz about how the thugs that attacked her and Cassidy all but confirm that Avery sent them, Abby's angry argument with Avery felt very muted. I get that Abby has conflicting feelings about Avery, a man who's basically an asshole-father figure to her, but I felt like it was pretty underwhelming. I guess they're just saving it for subsequent episodes? And that's honestly what I think the episode felt -- mostly just setup. Which isn't bad, but it does make "The Price You Pay" feel like a weaker link compared to the previous episodes.
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