Stargirl S01E12-13 Review: Legacy Fight

Stargirl, Season 1, Episode 12-13: Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E., Parts 1-2

Good lord, I tried twice to write a review for this two-parter, but my computer kept eating the drafts. So forgive me if this does feel a bit truncated. And honestly? Other than maybe the first season of The Flash, this might very well be the strongest first season of any DC superhero TV show. Admittedly part of me really just likes the JSA team in general, but between the unabashed comic-book love that this show ends up showing, the great costumes that don't try too hard to go for a 'this is realistic' vibe that makes everything drab and boring, a pretty tight storytelling and a mostly superb cast really ends up with this show ending pretty strongly. 

And... granted, the show itself is far from perfect. After their original recruitment, the three junior JSA members are kind of toeing the line between being prominent or being background characters. Shining Knight's story could've been incorporated a lot better. Icicle could definitely have done more, because at this point Brainwave honestly feels like the actual 'main villain' of the show if we're talking about screentime and impact. But honestly, the simple joy and unadulterated fun of the show really end up making up for a lot of the character-juggling and pacing weaknesses. 

The two-parter is basically a huge climax, and episode 12 in particular feels like it's just non-stop action. The huge ISA plan is sort of a mixture of a Bond movie plan crossed with some Silver Age superhero comic goodness. It's neat that all of the villains ends up having a role to play (most of them, anyway; RIP Fiddler for the two minutes of screentime you have in this two-parter) and even Gambler gets to cause a huge communications blackout. But then the episode immediately jumps into Sportsmaster and Tigress's frankly terrifying attack on the Whitmore-Dugan household. Last episode's civilian-heavy episode kind of runs on a 'as the plot demands' shrug on why Brainwave doesn't hunt down Stargirl since he knows her secret identity, but even the two non-superpowered villains attacking the unprepared family is pretty damn scary. I don't think the action scene here brings as much memorable stunt sequences as some of the previous conflicts between Stargirl and the ISA, but it's still harrowing to see Sportsmaster come close to beating an unprepared Pat to death, or Tigress barely missing killing Barbara while she's packing. 

Of course, Pat gets saved by the surprising arrival (and surprisingly violent) of Mike, who had an argument with him just two scenes earlier. And he drills Crusher right in the back! Meanwhile, the moment Courtney gets her bearings, her cosmic staff blasts poor Tigress straight in the face. She's not dead, but it does really show that Stargirl's slowly closing the gap between her and the more experienced villains. 

Interestingly, this Sportsmaster/Tigress fight, beyond being just a cool action piece, also helps to wrap up the "half the Whitmore-Dugans don't know what the other half is doing" bit. Barbara intellectually knows that her daughter and husband are superheroes, and are one foot into wanting to support and help them... but to see Courtney kick absolute ass with her glowing magic staff basically helps her get on-board with the superhero thing. And seeing Pat fight Sportsmaster is way more informative than any awkward father/son conversation could bring. 

The rest of episode 12 is kind of just a build-up as our heroes gather in a surprisingly fancy cabin. With Sir Justin obtaining nourishment in the form of lawyer-friendly KFC and Pat summoning the STRIPE armour, both heroes and villains are doing preparations. There's the odd B-plot of Anaya Bowin teaching her daughter to use musical instruments to beat up bullies (very dark!) before she herself gets killed for insulting Tigress and Sportsmaster's daughter. It's a bit weird, but I guess it's just setup for the next season? Isaac Bowin Junior's going to be a right nasty villain, even if 'the Tubaist' is nowhere as catchy as 'the Fiddler'. 

I think this cabin scene might be where I really sigh and accept that Justin, Yolanda, Rick and Beth aren't going to do a whole ton, but what're you going to do? Rick solves the honestly not very exciting journal B-plot after realizing that his dad's Ford Mustang is the answer, and with Beth and Chuck's help, they plan to assault the ISA base. More interestingly, Courtney and Mike have a very nice sibling bonding moment. The villains are mostly just planning their huge evil plan (and having Brainwave connect to the not-Cerebro-from-X-Men device), although there's the not-unexpected bit of Icicle's parents telling him to not use Barbara as a replacement for his dead wife. I dunno, I know we've got scenes of Jordan looking at Barbara longingly but I also feel like his creepy crush does kind of come out of nowhere. We also get a bit of a contrast where Pat, Barbara and Justin are apprehensive but ultimately supportive of their children fighting the fight, while we get a short scene of Ito shutting Cindy out of ISA business. 

There's a bit of a 'wait, are we fighting the good guys?' when they read the Project: New America manifesto, which is all about eliminating global warming and racial/gender/religious discrimination, and also embracing eco-friendly energy and universal healthcare. With the smaaaall price of having everyone brainwashed and killing around 1/4th of the adult population. The first part ends with Gambler 'hacking Beth's hack', and mocking them into thinking that the countdown is for the project starting, when it's actually a countdown for a speech. All the adults get their brains shut down by Brainwave's huge machine, and Brainwave controls Pat to fight Courtney! Dun dun dunn!

And we get the finale. Which, of course, falls somewhat in the 'could be better' category but I honestly am not nitpicking. It's pretty dang solid. The opening part of the episode is pretty awesome in itself. Stargirl versus STRIPE! The two lead characters of the show fighting! Oh noes! A huge giant Bond villain base rising out of the football field in Blue Valley High! All the adults mind-controlled! The fight is fun, but the biggest part of this little storyline is, of course, Courtney doing a 'I know you're in there' bit and ultimately calling Pat her father. Aww! Not entirely unexpected that a scene like this will take place, but it certainly doesn't lessen the impact of Courtney going to view Pat from just some dork her mother married to her actual dad. Meanwhile, Beth and Chuck manage to take down the Gambler's hacks by hacking his money and spending them, eventually freeing Pat, but the scene is heartwarming nonetheless.

And then we get an action scene! And the action scene was kind of chaotic but also surprisingly fun and actually easy to follow. We've got all the bad guys from the season -- Icicle, Dragon King, Sportsmaster, Tigress -- assembled against the new JSA. Because he's been foreshadowed since earlier this season, Gambler also eventually sics Solomon Grundy on the JSA, which is nice because Rick Tyler gets to deal with his season-long motivation. There's not much to say here, the fight is pretty fantastic and makes pretty great use of fun choreography and some neat CGI. Keeping STRIPE off-screen for a good chunk of the season to save the money for this fight when we see STRIPE, Grundy and Icicle run around with powers is pretty fun.

Oh, and while the Shining Knight/Dragon King rematch ends up with Dragon King's victory, he gets stabbed and seemingly killed off by Cindy, who breaks free from her cell in the chaos. Kind of a well-deserved death for Ito, I feel, considering how shit of a parent he's been all season long. Cindy herself also joins the fight later on, but beyond the obligatory pin-down of Stargirl I think it's hilarious that she actually gets taken out almost unceremoniously the moment Courtney gets her bearings.

And it's just kind of non-stop action with some interesting character moments. Yolanda (who, again, sadly doesn't get much screentime in this season after her initial episode) does get a bit earlier in the episode where she argues with Rick about not killing... but when she gets separated from the others trying to deal with Brainwave, she meets what appears to be Henry King Junior, who claims to have faked his death and pretended to be one of the hooded Dragon King minions. But the choice of words ('your friends' instead of 'our friends') causes Yolanda to figure out what's going on and rip out Brainwave's throat. Granted, it's stupid of Brainwave to ever leave the security of Not-Cerebro, bus that's still an interesting moment. The fallout from this isn't particularly clear beyond some haunting looks from Yolanda, and one would argue that it's certainly a well-deserved villain death, but still... unlike Rick's story, Yolanda's non-killing stance was literally just introduced this episode. So it really kind of loses a lot of the impact. 

Rick, meanwhile, manages to save Pat from Solomon Grundy... but ultimately, seeing the whimpering, animal-like giant zombie cowering and being utterly afraid of him, Rick finds it in his heart to spare and drive off Grundy. It's a complete reversal from how he acted earlier (when Yolanda admonishes him for continually yelling about vengeance against Grundy), and, again, while Rick doesn't get too much of development, it's still nice to see this.

Ultimately, most of the ISA members got beaten down (the show leaves Sportsmaster and Tigress's fate ambiguous), killed or escaped. Stargirl flies around and blows up the giant radar dish. With Grundy running away and Gambler cutting his losses, the rest of the ISA is in shambles. And, sure, you could raise the argument that we're not quite sure at what point the JSA suddenly gets to become a well-oiled fighting machine... but eh, I'm still entertained.


Perhaps the weakest part of the finale, in my opinion, and perhaps in the season as a whole? Icicle. Sure, his debut in the show in episode 3 was pretty badass with him killing one of his allies and ruthlessly murdering a child, but Icicle in this episode is... well, I genuinely felt far, far more threat and gravitas from Brainwave and Dragon King and even Solomon Grundy. Icicle himself seemed to be relegated to part of the B-squad-for-any-given-action-scene alongside Sportsmaster and Tigress, until he disappears partway through the fight to show up, freeze and destroy the Dr. Mid-Nite goggles (a moment that was probably pretty terrible for Beth, but it's also kind of a moment that felt like it didn't quite have the impact it should've) and kidnap Barbara.

And... and, sure, Pat's moment fighting Icicle without his armour just to protect his wife and buy time for his daughter is badass. Sure, Barbara's defiance is cool. Sure, Courtney going up and having the one-on-one against Jordan is neat. But Icicle himself feels utterly under-utilized throughout the entire season and it's like 'oh yeah, we have to deal with this guy'. And his death (?) is even presented as an utterly comedic punch-line with Mike and the dog showing up on a truck and smashing him into itty-bitty pieces. After so much effort trying to make Jordan Mahkent this conflicted, three-dimensional villain and after all the effort with the Yolanda-killing-Brainwave scene, this scene, as batshit-funny as it was, did strike me the wrong way.

And then the episode wraps up. Sir Justin goes off to find his pegasus (and honestly, poor Justin is very much underused, huh? Hopefully he returns with a proper costume next season). Beth's goggles are broken but they resolve to help her fix it. We get our heroes having a nice Christmas dinner and Court and Pat share a nice daughter/father bonding moment -- Court gives Pat the 'best dad' mug she was saving for her own shitbag bio-father. And, of course, we get the obligatory next-season tease with Cindy finding the Eclipso crystal (!!), Shade shows up in the ISA base, and Sylvester Pemberton is apparently alive and looking for Pat.

As much as I'm a huge Shade fan (and Eclipso's cool, at least), I dunno about those bits after the comic book geek in me went 'oh shit that's a character I recognize cool cool cool', considering how under-utilized so many secondary characters in the show have been, I'm afraid that Wildcat, Dr. Mid-Nite, Hourman, Shining Knight and the ISA's children will end up basically being background characters in the second season if we really are going to focus on Shade and Eclipso.

Ultimately, though, a fun little romp of superhero goodness. More, please.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• In the original run of Stars and STRIPE, the Courtney-vs-Pat fight was actually reversed. Dragon King's machine in the comics allows him to mind-control children, so it was Courtney that got controlled to fight Pat. 
• The mysterious man with the top-hat is, of course, Shade, another DC supervillain associated with the Injustice Society. Shade has been name-dropped earlier this season and his power glimpsed during the prologue of the show. 
• Shiv finds the Eclipso shard. Originally a simple villain with a magic gemstone that transformed him into an evil personality, later on Eclipso would be revealed to be an ancient demonic being bound to a black diamond. This black diamond, the Heart of Darkness, was shattered into 100 pieces, and anyone angry enough while in contact with one of these shards would become susceptible to being possessed by the shards. Later revelations would show Eclipso's true nature as the original embodiment of the wrath of god, which was replaced by the Spectre. Eclipso has fought against the JLA and JSA multiple times, most iconically heralding the end of the original DC continuity during the lead-up to Infinite Crisis.
• MCU fans will recognize the little girl who Jordan meets while panicking about her brainwashed dad as Lexi Rabe, a.k.a. Morgan "I love you three-thousand" Stark.