Black Lightning Season 4 Review - Part 2

Part 2 of my coverage of the final season of CW/DC's Black Lightning TV show.  

Just as I mentioned in my previous CW-superhero-show-recap-reviews, this one is going to be a lot shorter and reactionary compared to my previous coverage of CW/DC shows. Again, this review was written over a rather long period of time as I go through the season slowly and write my comments and notes after watching each episode. 

S04E08: Things Fall Apart

As we go down the second half of this final season, 'The Book of Ruin' continues with a bit of an acceleration on the conflicts after the brief intermission with Painkiller. The FBI arrives on the Jefferson residence, under what is clearly a Tobias-orchestrated frame job that makes it look like Jefferson was embezzling Garfield High's money. Simultaneously, we also learn that he's going after other things that Jefferson loves -- like demolishing Jefferson's grandfather's house under the guise of creating a new hospital and giving back to the community. Tobias has been very oddly handled this season, just essentially being in the background pulling everyone's strings, and I do hope we get to see more of what his supposed master plan is. 

This ties in with Jennifer (or 'JJ') going to Garfield High to see a split among the student communities, some of whom quickly decry Jefferson for betraying them. She gets a crush on one of the other students that defends Jefferson, which leads to a bit of a conflict in the next episode. This 'new Jennifer' storyline isn't the most exciting and one that feels caused by the actress exiting, but I do have to admit that the new actress does a pretty good job at mimicking the original actress's mannerisms. 

We also learn a little bit of the superhero sci-fi stuff that seems to be relegated to the background for most of this season -- Lynn uses Gambi as the willing subject of her experiment, and we learn that Tobias's secretary Val is actually a power-cancelling metahuman. On the other hand, Jefferson and Gambi manage to also get information of Tobias's magnetic-meta hitman Red, and find out of his existence. Anissa and Grace go and get some files about Monovista International's cure project, but ends up coming into blows to Ishmael, and while the two of them retreat, the threat of Ishmael as the big scary meta-hunter causes TC to contact Khalil to bring him in for the finale. 

S04E09: Lyding

Lynn gets a fair bit of focus in this episode. The episode opens up with a (rather long) nightmare as Lynn has a nightmare of trapping her family and forcing them to take the metahuman cure. She goes to her job to find out that 26 years' worth of research was seized by the government due to Jefferson's embezzlement case; and at the end of the episode while the rest of her family is out, she gets arrested by Agent Mason, with an intentionally-protracted sequence of her being searched and processed as an inmate. 

Jen/Lightning, meanwhile, goes through a brief simple side-plot with her dad and TC about maintaining an instagram presence, particularly when she uses her influence as Lightning to help the handsome boy Uriah that she had a crush on last episode get funds for the school music program or whatever. This nice bit ends up backfiring as Chief Lopez uses Uriah's instagram profile to essentially bait Lightning to a meeting where they ambush her. Jen's impulsiveness is essentially her defining trait particularly in this season, and I wonder if this is the moment that makes her grow out of it. 

Oh, there's also a sideplot of Khalil and Painkiller arguing with each other as they go and investigate some of Tobias's operations. They do a good cop/bad cop thing, but ultimately Painkiller ends up winning this conversation and kills the criminal after getting intel out of him. 

By the end of the episode, we get a multiple-way fight. Black Lightning manages to get himself on a one-on-one fight with Ishmael after some setup. Lightning is flying away from the ambush. And Anissa finds her ally Darius dead and killed in his apartment, and about to be hit by a car... while all of this is going on, Tobias gives a whole speech about taking away everything that mattered to Black Lightning just as how he took Tori Whale away from him, and activates the ominous device we've been seeing all season. As rather obviously foreshadowed last episode, it nullifies everyone's powers... and we get to see Black Lightning, Thunder, Lightning and TC all lose their powers in a very inconvenient time. A pretty all right (if obvious) major crisis mode for a superhero TV show, although I really felt like it probably could've been built up for more than just a single episode. 

S04E10: Revelations

As we start off the final arc of 'the Book of Reunifications', we're wrapping up a bunch of the side-threads... which means certain storylines end up being quickly and abruptly finished. Which does beg the question as to why they were built up for so long. Of course, after the cliffhanger of episode 9, everyone essentially survives from their powers being removed; but the 'anti-metahuman' aura is still on the entire city of Freeland because of the plot device that Tobias Whale stole from Monovista... which leads to a confrontation between Gambi and his girlfriend Lauren... a plotline and character that really didn't amount to much and really does overstay her welcome especially in an already-packed season. 

Jeff and Officer Shakur meet up with Lynn as she's being arrested, but after the prolonged, protracted humiliation sequence last episode... it basically ends up being handwaved away when Anissa calls in Lynn's lawyer ex-boyfriend. Did he exist in previous seasons? I don't really care, and the five or so minutes of Jefferson being jealous and pouting over it felt particularly pointless. Jennifer gets panicky because of another identity crisis, and against everyone's advice, shocks herself and flies up to the ionosphere to regain her powers. Okay? The rest of the Pierces remain without their powers, which is fine but we don't really... get much out of them?  

The Kobra Kartel gets written out of the story, essentially, and Ishmael (who's really only there for the action scenes quota; he doesn't have much of a personality) gets hired by Tobias. Khalil, who is in contact with TC, goes on his own sidequest to get Tobias's ledger to solve the Pierces' legal problems... and finds out that Looker from the previous seasons is involved with Tobias's master plan. Oh, and said master plan is shown when Tobias gets into a call with a cabal of... illuminati gang leaders? It is so random, and while I'm all for Mayor Tobias taking over Freeland and having monopoly over who gets metahuman powers or not, I felt like both the ledger and the illuminati stuff could've been built up a lot earlier. 

S04E11: Trial and Errors

With most of the Pierces stuck without powers, this leaves everyone kind of floundering around. I don't really have anything to say about the Jefferson/Lynn lawyer stuff, which really just peters out on its own. Oh, Gambi also re-earns the trust of Lauren or whatever, but this sub-plot is really wearing thin and we get another 'civilian working alongside the Pierces' storyline. Speaking of civilians, Jefferson reveals his identity to Officer Shakur, and after a bit of anger on his part, the two of them conspire to drug Agent Mason... who conveniently is under Looker's mind control. This sub-plot hinges on me caring about Shakur and Mason, and... and to be honest, I really don't. It is a nice showcase of what Jefferson can do without his powers, which I appreciate. 

Lightning zips around and attacks one of Tobias's bases (which was a bit random) and steals a bunch of plot devices, but this tips Tobias into finding out Lightning is still active, and that "JJ" and Jennifer are one and the same. Tobias then decides to arm Chief Lopez with meta-booster serum and the bracelets that make Tobias's metahumans immune to the power dampener wave. 

TC, meanwhile, figures out via hacking that Jennifer's crush Uriah didn't actually sell her out, and sets up a date. Which feels like such a huge distraction in this final arc, but this is all there to build up to Tobias's minion Red showing up and murdering Uriah in cold blood when Jen's powers fail. Some stakes! It's interesting how much focus Jennifer's getting... meanwhile, poor Anissa isn't really doing anything in the past couple episodes other than argue with Grace about whether they should be happy or sad that their powers are gone. (Anissa also has some role giving exposition about the very poorly-researched 'genetics stealing' sci-fi handwave, which is terrible even by CW standards)

The big action scene in this episode comes from Khalil fighting Looker, which is a bit of a random addition although I at least remember this show's version of Looker that it feels a bit more epic than Ishmael. Looker being casually horrible in racism also gives her a bit of a nice personality -- Looker tries to take over Khalil's mind with her weird silver powers, but gets outnumbered in the theater of the mind, and beaten down by Khalil and Painkiller. It's a bit odd that Khalil's just doing sidequests while barely being in contact with the Pierces, but there you go. I also really wished that Looker was in the season more, maybe replacing the random personality-less Ishmael throughout a greater portion of this season as an antagonist. 

S04E12: Crossroads

As we go to the two-parter finale... some things are way more fitting for a finale, and some things aren't. I'm not sure how much lead-time did the showrunners have before they knew the show was going to be cancelled, but I felt like a lot of the side-characters really didn't matter all that much. Like Lauren, for example, with her will-she-find-out-or-won't-she-find-out. As a character that was entirely a satellite to Gambi, she really does feel bland. 

Jennifer is in full breakdown mode after Uriah's death, but Jefferson comes and the two get a great moment talking about the burdens of being a superhero -- with Jefferson rather cleverly remembering an aspect of his and Tobias's rivalry from season one. That Tobias killed Jeff's dad while he hid under the bed, helpless. It's, I suppose, a nice throughline as Jennifer finally matures after being a bit of an impulsive teenager throughout the first half of this final season, although it definitely is a clunky one. Jeff and Jen not really having much of a scene after the whole 'Jeff can't stand his daughter's transformation' subplot doesn't help either. 

We then wrap up some stuff on the villain end. After the strange blue-hologram illuminati were introduced all but two episodes ago, Tobias calls them again. When they try to deny him a seat, Tobias apparently has invisible assassins who are ready to kill this shadow council or whatever, and Tobias gets to be the new 'king' of this shadow council that we didn't even know exist a until two episodes ago. Tobias then monologues about his master plan, where he'll control metahumans even in all these other cities like Star City and Metropolis. Okay, sure. 

Khalil's little sidequest is now blocked by Ishmael. The two's action scene is pretty great, but it is really an odd choice to depower almost everyone in the Pierces and leave a lot of the heavy duty to Khalil... and don't even have Khalil really interact all that much with the Pierces. The fight is all right, and Painkiller kills Ishmael. Looker, who was slated to be killed by Tobias, ends up begrudgingly agreeing to testify. And... that's all these ex-villains wrapped up. Khalil/Painkiller is quite neat, but I really do feel like particularly in this final season that he should have interacted a bit more with the Pierces.  

Anissa, Lynn and Grace all kind of have this rather bland side-plot of informing the public and the victims of the 'stolen genes' or whatever, but it's quite sad that they've reduced Lynn and Anissa in particular into essentially doing nothing in the background compared to Jeff and Jen. Gambi and Lauren also find some Prometehum underneath the city and they're working on basically reversing the anti-metahuman pulse. All right. 

At least Jennifer gets her revenge on Red. With TC's help and some ionosphere power-ups, she confronts Red and beats him. She gets confronted by racist Chief Lopez. Red gets arrested, but Lopez gets livestreamed ranting about how all metahumans should be purged and in anger and desperation, she... injects herself with the meta-boosters? Okay. 

Far more interesting, of course, is the buildup of the confrontation between Jefferson and Tobias at Jeff's father's hosue. With the reminder to the audience of the genesis of their history, Jeff cooks up a plan to wipe Tobias's memory with, uh... a device. Black Lightning's zappy-amnesia powers are goofy when it showed up earlier in this season, and I am not too thrilled that it's randomly the crux of this confrontation. Thankfully, Tobias catches on to this and destroys it before it can be dignified. I do like Jefferson pretending to be utterly beaten and Tobias eating it up (I felt this could've had a lot more buildup) before engaging in a fight, and Tobias letting Jefferson 'take his best shot'. The episode ends with Jefferson apparently killed and Tobias scaring the shit out of Jennifer, which... obviously isn't the case, but it's a nice cliffhanger. 

S04E13: Closure

It's, uh... definitely a 'rocks fall, people die' final season. Comparing this to the final season of Supergirl, which had a fair amount of time within the season itself to reflect on what being Supergirl meant... the final couple of episodes of Black Lightning was really... distracted. We do check some of the boxes, and the ending is, for the most part, a good ending. But I felt like this last couple of episodes were particularly weak, and especially compared to just how strong Black Lightning started off as a show. Nothing, by the way, about Freeland or how the city is moving on was touched upon in this episode. The community of Freeland was such a strong part of the show's identity and while it was given less focus in this season, we got nearly none of it in the end. 

Let's start with my least favourite part of the finale -- the actress-swapped Jennifer we have been following for half a season was... an ionosphere energy being impostor all along? And the 'real' Jennifer came back this episode, and we get a clone fight for... for no goddamn reason at all? I felt like this was just a way to bring the original Jennifer actress back for the finale, which, fine, I get it... but it was so out of nowhere and meant that we spent so much time (particularly since 'JJ' got a fair bit of screentime) trying to develop an impostor. This was also shoved under the rug after like, a single conversation at the end, and I really felt like it was handled piss-poorly and even if they wanted the original actress back there were much more elegant ways to do it. Like, uh, just... swapping faces when 'JJ' flew back up to the ionosphere or something. The whole ionosphere thing always felt tacked-on as a vague metaphor of addiction or something, and was dropped quickly anyway. It's quite poorly done. 

The 'real' Lightning then goes and essentially one-shots Chief Lopez, who's like... given way too much screentime in the precious real estate of this final episode. This really does make the Lopez and Shakur drama amount to basically nothing as they disappear after this scene, and... again, I really wished this confrontation happened at an earlier point in the show instead of the final episode. 

Also, while all of this is going on, Gambi, Anissa and Grace have a little raid on Tobias's little military base (which we just learned about) and it's honestly quite simple even for CW standards. 

And for the most of the episode, Jefferson spends most of the episode buried in a coffin waiting for Team Anissa to turn back the power. It's... it's nowhere as dramatic as the show thinks it is, and I really don't buy that Tobias didn't actually make sure Jefferson was dead. There are some flashbacks that has Jeff swap between his adult and child self as he talks to a vision of his dead father, which I guess is good enough as a emotional hook even if it does feel rushed. Ultimately he gets his powers back, ghost-dad tells him that he is a better man than Tobias Whale, and flies to confront Tobias. Again, it is a rather typical 'superhero gets his groove back', but -- and especially for this show -- it feels like it lost a fair amount of the gravitas and thematic cohesion that Black Lightning as a show usually has. 

We get a fight; Tobias gets a couple of verbal and physical jabs in, but while I don't expect a visual spectacle in a CW superhero show, I expected an emotional one. It was nice that we get to see these two rivals fight properly, but especially compared to the previous episode's fare, I really expected more. Tobias spent so much time in this season building up this master plan to control everything, and he just... gets thrown out of the window, gets impaled, quotes Moby Dick and dies. He dies, but doesn't really get his whole political and power angle really dismantled, which I thought would at least be a lot more appropriate. Again, it could be doable if the show distributed the characters a bit differently instead of wasting time with the very shoehorned Fake Lightning bullshit, but as it is, it does cause Tobias's defeat to ring hollow. 

Speaking of side-characters... TC hacks into Khalil/Painkiller's mind and removes the 'kill order', but also wipes Painkiller's mind of the Pierce family. Um??? Again, very random to toss in here, and while I realize this was because of a spinoff being planned back in the day, I felt like Khalil's exit from the show was already done last episode. Speaking of random spinoffs, the 'stinger' of the show has La-La (I forgot he existed and got carbonite'd) get freed from his cement prison. What a waste of a character, by the way, La-La really didn't get to do anything this season and I really wished he took over the role of Ishmael or someone. 

Ultimately the final moments were with the Pierce family, with the aforementioned handwave that no one noticed that Jennifer got replaced by an energy being (surely if they wanted the energy being fight, it might be better to have Jennifer actually be Jennifer up until 12? Or something? With the vague memory-copying bullshit it could've been easily whatever the writers wanted), we wrap up some bits and bobs. Jeff and Lynn are getting remarried (which I keep forgetting hasn't already been done), and the two of them and Gambi are stepping down to let the next generation be superheroes. Again, it rings hollow because we don't really get anything in this episode that shows that Jeff is ready to move on -- if anything, wouldn't he be galvanized by the speech prior to fighting Tobias? The only real scene that we got of Jefferson being ready to pass the mantle was last episode, ironically enough, with the fake Jennifer. Which makes that plotline even worse. (By the way, it makes it even worse that Anissa and Lynn essentially got sidelined for a fake Jennifer's character development). 

Again... it really is a messy finale that misses the point about what made Black Lightning's original couple of seasons so compelling in the first place. Even the buildup of Tobias and all the hullaballoo about the more non-superhero way that Tobias is striking back at our heroes (Lynn's case in court, Jeff's dad's house, Tobias's status as a mayor) weren't even mentioned. I would've been happy with a simple, basic finale -- and while the Jefferson/Tobias fight is that, everything else around it really wasn't. Again, I get that for the most part these CW shows didn't have proper time to wrap up the way they wanted to, but this one is particularly frustrating because they theoretically have the formula even up to the penultimate episode. Definitely a shame.

Black Lightning Season 4 Review - Part 1

As I ever so slowly make my way through watching the conclusions of the CW Arrowverse shows -- many of which were produced and concluded during the years of the COVID-19, this time I cover the final season of Black Lighting. Had to take a bit to get a recap on what's been going on in this show, but happy to go through the relatively shorter season and see its conclusion. 

Just like my Supergirl final season coverage, this one is going to be a lot shorter and reactionary compared to my previous coverage of CW/DC shows. Again, this review was written over a rather long period of time as I go through the season slowly and write my comments and notes after watching each episode. 

S04E01: Collateral Damage

It is always a bit difficult to come back to a TV show you haven't watched for... god, time flies, half a decade since the last season. The recap doesn't really fill up all the gaps, but this episode is a neat one to set up the new status quo. After the Markovian invasion that happened in season 3's climax, Jefferson Pierce has hung up his mantle as Black Lightning, but has gone on a bit of a self-destructive vigilantism -- combining fights with his wife, still not getting over Chief Henderson's death, explosively attacking drug dealers and aggressive policemen. It's nice to go back to the more intimate setting of Freeland instead of the international metahuman weapons war that they did in the previous season. 

It's an interesting bit of realignment even if I'm not the most invested in the family wangst. There are also things moving along in the background. The newly-introduced police characters are suspicious of Jeff's attack on two policemen, and may be on to his secret identity. Tobias Whale has resurfaced and is now a major player as Lynn's boss -- and there's an argument that the Pierce family has about killing him preemptively. Lynn's been going around testing the metahuman serum as a vigilante. while being in denial about her addiction or something? Gambi's been going around helping clean up Jeff's mess. And lastly, Thunder and Lightning, whose confidence and wings are growing, are taking over as superheroes in the city but find themselves close to being outmaneuvered by La-La's gang. It's an all right season premiere, and hopefully the show will be able to capture some of its original magic before its end.

S04E02: Unacceptable Losses

We continue with the storylines established in the first episode, with Freeland getting caught up in all the chaos as the police are importing anti-metahuman DEG guns, the 100 and Kobra Kartel are warring in the streets, and Tobias Whale literally being untouchable as he makes it clear to Jefferson that his revenge for all of the previous seasons' conflicts are coming. All of this is going on as the Pierce family is falling apart. Jeff is split between 'I can't be Black Lightning again' while also going rogue and beating up gangsters that are evading justice; Lynn gets into a fight with her daughters when they find out that she's been recklessly following them around while shooting up with metahuman serums... and Gambi's just kind of caught between being a 'guy in a chair' and meeting up with his ex Lauren. The show does make it kind of obvious that he's never going to betray the Pierces for an ex-lover, since Lauren is working for the company producing the DEG's, but it's nice to see Gambi having a side-plot for once. 

Things are going quite slowly, although I do appreciate the death of a kid living in a car (his family was displaced by the war last season) ended up tying together the Jeffreson and Anissa plots -- Jeff ends up arguing with Gambi about his brand of vigilantism as he hunts down for the punk that shot the kid, and breaks his legs. Anissa, meanwhile, dons her Blackbird alter-ego to force Lala and Destiny to honour some neutral grounds. Meanwhile, there is a bit of a quasi-framing story of Jeff and Lynn's couples' therapy, but neither Jefferson nor Lynn are behaving particularly logically in this episode, both of them being erratic around Anissa, Jennifer and Gambi. There's also a bit of a side-plot about Anissa making a new friend while struggling with accepting Grace's condition. Seeing the Pierces fall apart as a team and family is an interesting hook to take the show, but it's not exactly the most fun to see over and over again. 

S04E03: Despite All My Rage

We're exploring more of Jefferson's... moping? Coping? He keeps insisting throughout the four-part "The Book of Reconstruction" arc that he is no longer Black Lightning, but as Gambi and other people points out, it's one thing to hang up the superhero suit. It's another to go around and beat up gangsters with his superpowers.. and in this episode, Jeff finds that Marcel -- the father of the boy killed in the previous episode -- is fighting in Lala's illegal fight club, Jeff ends up going in and fights anonymously to give Marcel the earnings. It's helping Marcel, sure, but it's also a surprising bit of brutality as Jefferson Pierce engages in something a bit darker than what a good principal is supposed to do. 

It's also a bit odd since the rest of the Pierce family is still active fighting crime... and each other. After the previous episode, Lynn confides in a therapy session that she has never felt like she belonged in her background as the only person in a military family that didn't fit in, and now as the only non-metahuman and a burden, a significant part of why she's doing so much is also a desire to fit in. The episode's cliffhanger has Tobias Whale manipulate events so that Lynn has dinner with him, ostensibly to discuss a research-funding project but with some creepy undertones as well. Not the biggest fan of the overly soap-opera-y bit of Jefferson arriving, eavesdropping and leaving without saying anything, which predictably ends up being a rather bland B-plot in the next episode. Tech-meta TC joins the supporting cast and continue to appear throughout the season, but he does really just feel like a plot device character and maybe bounces off some dialogue from Jen. 

And after two episode of Anissa's weird floundering around the comatose Grace, she's awake without much fanfare, and gets married with Anissa... also without much fanfare. It feels like this is just tying in last season's unresolved sub-plot, but ultimately isn't that interesting. Jennifer, meanwhile, ropes in T.C. to help her do a bit of a social media war against a reporter, going around to try and show the world 'the truth' about her. It's all right and something new for these characters, I suppose. Jen's bit of trying to get her own identity is understandable, at least. (All the while, there are subplots brewing about the minor gangsters, Chief Lopez and her increasingly anti-meta stance, and whatever Tobias is cooking in the background). 

S04E04: A Light in the Darkness

In the last episode of the first arc, 'The Book of Reconstruction', we get a lot of yelling and family drama about secrets. Through different ways, Jeff and Lynn end up finding out about each other's secrets and are at each other's throat about this. Jeff having going out (and enjoying way more than he should) Lala's cage matches, and Lynn's little meeting with Tobias. Having this take place four episodes in, however, and building up on Jeff and Lynn's own struggles with their respective traumas -- Jeff dealing with Henderson's death and Lynn's superhero drug addiction -- ends up with both Jeff and Lynn letting out some ugly things at each other in the confrontations. Jeff gets an actual good scene where he wanders into a bar and starts shit-talking Black Lightning, but we get other people in the bar (including detective Shakur, a minor recurring character) talking up all the good that Black Lightning's done. Lynn... doesn't really get a huge scene that changes her mind, a bit of a shame. 

Tobias continues to be fun with how much he's stringing Jeff along, setting up a meeting in a restaurant and clearly having fun trying to get a rise out of him. There's something going on with the DEG, with al parties trying to get to them. All of this culminates in Lala's gang attacking the buyback event. Lightning, Thunder and Grace intervene, but the mayor dies -- which ends up enforcing angry police Chief Lopez's hatred towards metahumans. All of this is later revealed to be part of Tobias's plan, who snuck in a metal-manipulating metahuman called 'Red' to kill the mayor in all the chaos. 

The C-plots in this episode isn't interesting. Gambi also has a rather bland continuation of the side-plot to delay the DEG production with his girlfriend... which mostly leads to Gambi discovering another sci-fi doohickey that's rather telegraphed to be commissioned by Tobias. Anissa also gets into a bit of a post-coma-recovery argument with his new wife Grace over... uh... wanting to cohabitate but not wanting Grace's stuff around because of the 'vibes' of their house? Anissa's a jerk, I'm sorry, and this C-plot was essentially handwaved very quickly.

Oh, and Jennifer has been going to the ionosphere to draw energy, but in this episode after Jeff's attempted apology, she... blows up! Whoops!

S04E05: Picking Up The Pieces

So this whole episode deals with an attempt to get the blown-up Jennifer back. Of course the show's not going to kill Jennifer, not in such an anticlimactic way. But there are some really great acting -- particularly from Cress Williams -- as the family struggles with the hectic race to gather all the ionosphere sci-fi-comic-book-y whatsits and reconstruct Jennifer Pierce. We get an oddly off-screen cameo from the Flash, who delivers the sci-fi plot device... and for most of the episode, we wait. Jeff and Lynn explode at each other again -- very understandably considering that their youngest daughter might be dead. Jefferson gets a really sad moment of confiding to Gambi how the most scared he had been in his life was when he thought he lost his daughter when she was younger. Lynn also gets a great moment when she calms down later on and bonds with Jeff over being two scared parents desperate on the hope that the sci-fi plot device works... but Lynn's brain tells her that it's impossible, and it's hurting her particularly because of that. 

Thanks to comic book magic, of course the STAR labs device works at the end of the episode, and Jennifer is back... but with a different actress! Dun dun dunn, I suppose. 

While all of this is going on, other stuff is going on. Anissa and Grace get a completely unnecessary and frankly very distracting sub-plot about boundaries (both of them come off as assholes this time) for very minimal payoff as Grace's integration to the family is essentially brushed under the rug. Jefferson suits up as Black Lightning to get Jen back, but keeps the suit and identity to confront Lala with the gangster stuff. Lala's role as the 'lesser evil' amongst all the criminals is an interesting one, for sure, especially considering what happens to him at the end of the episode. 

Oh, and Chief Lopez finally dips into the 'unreasonable police chief' role in full gusto, which isn't a surprise. She decides to pin the death of the 100 gangster that Jeff crippled (and Lala killed) on Lightning, without any real evidence and out of the vibes of the vigilantes interfering in her protecting the mayor. This makes Lightning Public Enemy #1. Sure. She also cracks down hard on the gangsters. Destiny and Lala appear to make a truce, but it ends up to be a Tobias-sponsored trap, and Lala's entire inner circle (no, Devonte!!!) gets arrested. Lala manages to escape with his Tattoo-Man powers, which continues the whole gang war storyline. 

S04E06: Theseus's Ship

So we get this whole episode devoted to the recasting of Jennifer Pierce/Lightning, as she gets magically aged up, Gotham Poison Ivy / Batwoman style, after being reconstructed through the magic electric 3D printer machine. It's an all right episode for what it is, which I felt kiiiinda tied into Jen's newfound identity-searching crisis? It does feel forced, not going to lie, although at least Jennifer (or 'JJ') being a relative unknown that gets caught in Tobias Whale and his minions' web relatively early promises to be something interesting. 

The main one who can't accept that this is Jennifer is surprisingly enough Jefferson, while Gambi, Anissa and Grace are all more quick to accept Jennifer's new form. Grace gets a nice bit of bonding by explaining her own shapeshifting powers, while Jennifer herself also goes through a whirlwind of emotions as she tries to figure her new body out. I don't necessarily feel that there's one huge big moment that shows off Jefferson and Jennifer's reconciliation, Jefferson just gets pressured (rightfully) by the rest of his family until the two of them team up and fight some dirty cops. That's all right, although I did feel like having a fake-out flash-forward to see what would happen if the civilian was caught in the crossfire was awkwardly handled. 

Oh, while all of this is going on, the C-plot of the 100 versus the Kobra Kartel kind of gets into a bit of a conclusion. With Lala's entire organization arrested by the police, he goes in and tries to kill Destiny, only for Destiny to sic an anti-metahuman assassin (from Arrow-native League of Shadows!) Ishmael who beats up Lala and then turns him into a Han Solo carbonite decoration to get past his quasi-immortality. Okay. 

S04E07: Painkiller

Right, Khalil Payne and Painkiller got split into two personalities or something in the last season. Thanks, helpful recap! 'Painkiller' is a bit of a weird episode in that it very abruptly goes off and takes a side-quest from most of the cast in Freeland, taking Grace and Anissa on a rather random honeymoon to the Akashic Valley. I must say that the Anissa/Grace 'secret marriage' thing felt very flat and unengaging, particularly since Grace is already interacting with the rest of the Pierces. But anyway, they go to a honeymoon and end up coming across a group of... they were originally presented (and mistaken by Khalil and Anissa) as human traffickers, but turns out they're a weird brain-mind cult or whatever. 

None of these is really explained as we're built to some vague villain, Maya (who turns out to be Odell's daughter -- a fact that has no bearing on the rest of the season), and most of this episode just revolves around Anissa being incapacitated while Khalil fights with his split personality Painkiller to go off and rescue Grace. There's a nice enough spotlight and conflict between the two personalities, and there's some nice discussion about the Painkiller split personality who is compulsively 'programmed' to kill the Pierces. Is it enough to carry the whole spotlight episode? Eh. We're introduced to Khalil's little support staff... who aren't colourful or memorable enough to mention. Khalil's arguments against his own dark side is a simple trope, but an effective one thanks to the backstory and to the conclusion of 'Painkiller' being able to befriend Khalil. 

and it's not until I finished and sat down that I realized (and confirmed after a quick search) that this is a random attempt at making a Painkiller spinoff. Just like the 'future Arrow babies' episode in their final season... it really didn't pan out all that well, with so many of the CW superhero shows going into a much-needed conclusion. 'Painkiller' doesn't even follow 'The Book of X' prefix that the rest of the series' episodes have, setting it apart as an episode. 

With Tobias Whale clearly being saved for the final arc, and Lala being reduced to a distraction, it is nice to focus on a former antagonist, particularly one who's actually developing as a character after all the trauma he's been through. Granted, I find it... questionable to think that Khalil somehow managed to set up a Mission Impossible team in the one year between season 3 and 4, but I suppose this is comic-book land. It is a bit of a shame that Jennifer doesn't get to participate in this episode, or even Jefferson, but it's a nice spotlight for Khalil. Other than the format, I don't have any real complaints.

Black Lightning S03E16 Review: Metahuman War

Black Lightning, Season 3, Episode 16: Liberation

And here we go with the exciting conclusion to the three-parter "Book of War". Season three of Black Lightning is a lot better composed than its second season. There were certainly a lot of problems with the third season, with its very slow pacing for its first half and a very rapid one for its final couple of episodes, and the fact that a lot of the B-plots seem to be more or less afterthoughts... but at least it stuck to its guns and really charged through its stories full-on through. And while I do have some problems with the pacing of these last couple of episodes, I cannot deny it -- I really did enjoy the breakneck pace and non-stop tension in "The Book of Markovia" and "The Book of War" arcs.

As much as I bemoaned the fact that Gravedigger's introduction was done via a gigantic exposition dump and he has got the completely irrelevant actually-Jeff's-grand-uncle revelation that doesn't amount to much... Gravedigger's actually charismatic enough to really carry these couple of episodes as a pretty fun antagonist. He's kind of one note, basically resorting to his backstory for any sort of depth, but at least it's a decent backstory, y'know? And none of the fights lasted very long, but at least they're all entertaining as Gravedigger just unleashes his many borrowed superpowers that is basically what the CW special effects team can easily replicate. Cyclops eye-beams, metal bending, levitating people, super-strength... stuff like that.

Meanwhile, because, again, Gravedigger's huge master plan is basically just "hey, march on Freeland, kill everyone who resists", guess what? Everyone in Freeland resists. And this part of the episode does feel like it moves a bit quickly and felt a bit irrelevant considering how little the police and the 100 gangsters actually have felt throughout the season, but Hendersen and Lala (who forgot throughout this arc that he has Tattooed-Man powers) basically enter an alliance to shoot a bunch of Markovian invaders dead, and we do get a bunch of neat cameos from characters like Two-Bits and Reverend Holt, which is always nice to see. Also, while all of this is going on, Lady Eve meets up with Major Grey to discuss Eve's extradition to Gotham City... and Eve realizes that they're going to nuke Freeland, and the resulting shootout leaves both Grey and Lady Eve seemingly dead. Lady Eve's actor is great and all, but she really got the shaft this season, huh? She's buddies with the creepy Lazarus dude, so I guess she's going to be back next season. Oh, and not that anyone really cares, but the Perdi are also rescued off-screen.

A good chunk of the episode is just fighting against Gravedigger as he moves all the way to the ASA bunker to capture all the metahumans evacuated there, and... well, people die in the process, even as Jeff ends up rescuing Jennifer, who gets kidnapped long enough to argue with Gravedigger. We've got things happening left and right, including a middle action bit where Painkiller is about to snipe Black Lightning from afar, only for Khalil to break free and end up fighting Painkiller in a very clean, awesome action scene. I also do like that instead of the neutral ground of the darkened corridor outside Khalil's apartment, this time Khalil brings the fight to Painkiller and beats his ass with katanas and whatever in a fascimile of the ASA training room.

While all of this is going on... people die, and I feel like some of these deaths might've been a bit more impactful spread out a little, but it does really hit home the feel of "oh no, shit's going down". Jamillah Olsen, who is a character I forgot existed, gets gunned down randomly in a news report early on in the episode. Captain Henderson is perhaps the biggest name to go down, being a central character in the first two seasons, sort of a supporting character in the first half of the season when it's all about occupation and completely disappearing after the mid-season break. I suppose there might be a problem with the actor? At least he managed to go out in a pretty great scene, taking a shot meant for Black Lightning and getting a great, if truncated, send-off.

All of the focus of the good guys is on Gravedigger, so Odell takes the chance to do some slimy ASA cover-up stuff. He sets the ASA base to self-destruct when he confirms that Gravedigger has entered, and sends off Commander Williams to take care of any loose ends... which involves Dr. Helga Jace, left bound by Brandon who sort of panics in the whole thing. Bye-bye Jace, and when he attempts to attack Lynn (who's making an antidote for Gravedigger's superhero steroids) turns out Lynn is prepared with another dose of the super-strength serum she used against Tobias and knocks Williams out.

Gravedigger, meanwhile, proves unstoppable (if not particularly lethal), taking out practically everyone in his path, putting Erica Moran to sleep, tanking Brandon and Lightning, and forcing Thunder and Grace to fight each other. Poor Grace gets put into a coma when Anissa is forced to defend herself, which... yeah, this was kind of easy to see coming after the wedding stuff, but I dunno, it feels kind of tacked onto a whole lot of casualties. Eventually it's Lynn and Jefferson that manage to tag-team and disable Gravedigger and defeat him with a zappy-zap, before everyone evacuates the ASA base as Odell's bomb blows it up.

And after that? It's mostly just wrap-up. Odell doesn't quite get away scott-free, because Khalil catches up to him and we get a cool scene where Jefferson tries to talk Khalil down from killing Odell... and then Khalil seems to shoot Odell in the back, but turns out he shot to maim, not kill. There's also a hearing in congress as Black Lightning, Thunder and Lightning stand as witnesses as they reveal the depth of the ASA manipulation and exploitation of metahumans and reveal the briefcase for all to see, and they walk out triumphant with the ASA disbanded and the Pierce family being recognized as superheroes. Gravedigger is still alive, though, apparently with some self-disguise powers, although I guess he respects the Pierces going for metahuman rights the legal way? Meanwhile Tobias Whale is off somewhere, scheming, after murdering some dude or whatnot.

Ultimately... this one is more of a huge action scenes, and the sheer amount of deaths and confrontations that happened at fast pace only worked because they all hinged on viewer familiarity with them. Sure, not a lot of us really care for, oh, Commander Williams or Agent Grey or whoever, but they're recognizable, and so are many of the good guys that died in the chaos. Again, I still think the Grace bit was unfortunate and honestly felt a bit shoehorned in just to give Anissa some angst next season (compare it to how tactfully Khalil's exits were done, for example). Ultimately, though, it's a pretty satisfying conclusion to the end of the ASA and Markovia storylines, and when we return for season four, it seems like it's going to get a bit more personal for the Pierces with both Gravedigger and Tobias running around. This season tries for a far larger scope in ambition and plot, and while it doesn't completely succeed, I did enjoy my wild ride through this season for sure with its breakneck pacing. Honestly? Pretty good stuff.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Black Lightning's creators Tony Isabella and Trevor von Eeden make cameo appearances as part of the Congress panel reviewing the events that took place in Freeland. 

Black Lightning S03E14-15 Review: Meta-Prime

Black Lightning, Season 3, Episode 14: Homecoming; Episode 15: Freedom Ain't Free

Episode 14: Homecoming
I always forget that Black Lightning, for some reason, gets a significantly less amount of episodes compared to its sister shows, and this is us entering the final three-parter of the third season, "The Book of War", where the multiple sides in Freeland -- the ASA, the Markovians, the Pierce family and everything in-between -- finally clash with each other. There has been a bunch of complaints from me about how the third season tries to do a lot while not really doing all that much, particularly in its first half where it's not even exactly clear if the Markovian attack is even real or not, but if nothing else, like many CW shows, the actors really do carry the show.

And things are happening hard and fast in this episode. A good chunk of it is still a combination of set-up for the "Book of War" as well as a bit of a respite from the whole assault on Markovia last episode, with the Pierce family sitting down at a table and promising to each other to have no secrets and all that stuff, talking about Jen's time as a manipulated weapon for Odell, about Lynn's addiction and the fact that she actually hid a pill of Green Light in the house, all that stuff.

But while this is going on, things are happening rapidly in the episode as we zip through and try and get as much set-up about the major players in Freeland. We get Gambi ripping out the eye of one of Lady Eve's twin assassins, which honestly sort of came out of nowhere. There's also Lady Eve and Lala meeting each other in a confrontation, then Eve and Gambi meeting each other in a confrontation, with Eve giving the ASA briefcase that has been sort of a Huge Deal in the second season but hasn't really been super-relevant other than scenes like this that end up reminding us that, hey, the briefcase exists. We get continued mentions to Lazarus the weird dude that revived Lala and Eve and we're still not sure why that even happens (or why we should even care, really). We've got the Perdi being attacked by the Markovians and boy oh boy I keep forgetting the Perdi even exists.

The briefcase, at least, is finally explained. TC is able to open it, and apparently it's a database of the genome of every metahuman the ASA has had contact with... including Gravedigger, the "Meta-Prime", the first metahuman in recorded history. We learn about Gravedigger's backstory as this episode basically sets him up as being the Big Bad instead of just a pretty powerful metahuman flunky of Markovia, and how Gravedigger was a black soldier in World War II who was 'volunteered' into a super soldier program, he had his meta-gene activated, and ended up with mind-control and longevity powers and became a super-spy-soldier-hitman. I'm pretty sure that there are better ways to utilize a soldier that has the ability to bend people to his will with a simple phrase or two instead of having him fight in the trenches, but at least we get to see Gravedigger do badass action scenes, which I appreciate.

Anyway, apparently the USA and ASA has been financing the Markovian metahuman program, and it's not until Gravedigger defected and lead a coup and is basically the real ruler of Markovia. Okay, sure. That's a lot of info-dump to us, which really speaks as to just how nebulous Markovia has been in the show's history when we can drop such a gigantic bomb on Markovia's history and I just shrug and go "yeah sure it doesn't contradict anything". Also, Gravedigger kills Colonel Mosin, which is a thing that happened... I really wish I had more to say, but Mosin is so one-dimensional. Also also, Gravedigger has access to a potluck of random metahuman powers thanks to the research that Lynn and Jace left behind, so sure.

Speaking of more things happening... we get more Khalil, and I kind of wished that we've saved this for next season? We've had a bit too much focus on the whole Khalil/Painkiller/firewall stuff and this episode has Painkiller break free of his little mind-vision prison and beat up Brandon, TC and Jennifer before Khalil regains control, and Khalil sort of peaces out in angst and grief after Jennifer rejects him in a balcony-rooftop-talk. It's an okay scene, I suppose, but compared to the original Khalil/Painkiller scene we saw earlier in the season, this just felt abrupt, like we're just going through the broad strokes instead of actually exploring the emotions and character changes, y'know? It makes sense, but I just don't care a whole ton.

"Homecoming" is really mostly just setup, except it's kind of hard to really care about some of the setup when things like the briefcase or Lady Eve or Lala haven't really been relevant, and there's even Brandon going around hunting Dr. Jace. While the core of the show has been relatively consistent in the amount of screentime they get, a lot of these B-plots and B-characters show up maybe twice throughout the season in very vague scenes and it's really hard for me to care about them, y'know? This episode mostly just sets things up, hastily wraps up the whole Eve/Lala/Gambi/briefcase stuff that the season has been completely ignoring prior to this episode before we get to the climax of the season, and build up Gravedigger a bit. It's decent as a standalone watch, but as part of a whole, it does highlight a lot of the plot-juggling problems in Black Lightning's third season.
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Episode 15: Freedom Ain't Free

As much as a lot of the B-plots and B-list characters suffer, though, at least the plot moves on at a decent pace? Again, I wish the show really had time to actually explore Gravedigger beyond the quick information dump about his tragic and sympathetic backstory in episode 14 and a vague connection to how the fact that he's a victim of an asshole government is a similar situation to how the ASA has been treating Freeland all season long. And Gravedigger's huge plan is to 'free' all metahumans by forcing them to leave Freeland and be liberated under threat of death. On one hand, it's the bread and butter of some of the best, most interesting antagonists like there, and why Magneto is such a compelling villain when he's written well. On the other hand, the writing for Gravedigger here ends up feeling like why Magneto is not a compelling villain when he's not written well... Gravedigger's plan, for lack of a better term, is just kind of dumb. No one, least of all Americans, are going to want to go along with Gravedigger showing up with an army with guns and shit with the promise of being 'liberated'. Sure, Gravedigger's backstory is certainly sympathetic, and the ASA is definitely a piece-of-shit organization, but the way he goes about things is certainly not one that's going to gain him a lot of supporters. Maybe if he had actually made a 'free to choose to enter Markovia, Markovia accepts all metahumans with the promise of no experimentation or exploitation' drive, he'd be more sympathetic? As it is, the show writers just easily slapped together a sympathetic backstory and the execution of a clearly antagonistic way of doing his plan. There's enough of an ambiguity to Gravedigger that you go 'yeah, he's got a point', but at the same time the fact that he's going around being all murder-y and invade-y and clearly refuses to calmly negotiate with our heroes and it's clear that the writers really want us to know that this dude, he's the bad guy.

The show tries to add another layer to Gravedigger by having Lynn discover that Gravedigger is actually Black Lightning's grand-uncle or something, thought to be dead by the family, but Gravedigger himself hasn't really gotten any sort of super-meaningful interactions with Jefferson that finding that out really ends up with nothing but a shrug from me. While everything about Gravedigger has been pretty great as a complex antagonist (save for when he is introduced in the show), this random detail felt, well, random and shoehorned in. I'm not even sure what this is for, other than to maybe tie in the Pierces into the ASA/USA manipulation and exploitation themes? Or just for the whole Jeff-won't-kill-especially-not-family and Lynn just wants Jeff to "do what's necessary" argument? Either way, it's absolutely random, and as someone who's watched the finale, it sure doesn't add anything to these two episodes.

Still, once you get past that, "Freedom Ain't Free" is a very entertaining episode of superhero television. And the ASA is still portrayed as being the most dickish and villainous of the various organizations around, with Odell making it clear that the U.S. military is prepared to nuke Freeland, the invading Markovians and wipe everything off the map, because, like any self-respecting superhero movie, you need to have extra stakes. That's actually pretty brilliant, and fits pretty well with the ASA's way of doing things since they're all gigantic pricks.

Black Lightning, meanwhile, does another round of superhero recruiting and concocts a plan to confront Gravedigger's army as they charge into Freeland. Conveniently forgetting that he now shares a universe with Superman, Supergirl, the Flash and a dozen other superheroes, Black Lightning gathers his dwindling group and a significant part of the episode is placed on Jennifer arguing with Jefferson on why she, the strongest member of the group with no quantifiable limits to her powers, is placed in reserve. Jeff might try to pretend to be Sun Tzu all he wants, but it's clear to everyone that he's just trying to protect his daughter.

And we get all of the characters we care about hanging out for a wedding -- Anissa and Grace's -- and I wish that I had more to say about this? Anissa and Grace's story has been a long-running B-plot and the fact that Grace is missing or sidelined most of the time does mean that she's not as interesting of a person as I wished she was -- she's badass, she's in love with Anissa, she's got PTSD... that's about it, really? The episode kinda hints at her powers 'evolving' or something, but that plotline gets dropped after a single conversation.  The wedding does give us a pretty cute moment of peace and family-dom and all of the cheesy stuff, and the scene does work well -- if nothing else, the Pierces and most of their allies have a very good familial bond and the episode's wedding scene shows this to us well. It's also a classic way of building up the dread before a literal war comes on their doorstep, all this peace and love and happiness that really emphasizes to our heroes just what is at stake.

And then, of course, Jennifer gets TC to track Gravedigger's movements, and heads out on her own to one-shot and wipe out Gravedigger's entire army (is that a regular army, or a metahuman army? We'll never know). What she doesn't know, though, is that Gravedigger's a really tough son of a bitch, and with a bunch of other powers that he's able to take on without overloading himself, Gravedigger just tanks through Lightning's zaps and throw her into the Freeland forcefield, very damn near killing poor Jennifer if Black Lightning doesn't zip in and catch her. There's a bit of a tense moment as Jeff has to restart his daughter's heart, and, well, we end the episode with Black Lightning and Gravedigger finally facing off with each other, mostly because it's Black Lightning's show and he's gotta fight the main villain.

We've got a bunch of B-plots too as the show scramble to wrap up every other dangling B-plot while also introducing a lot of new things about its new big bad villain. Lala shows up to reject anything that Jeff is selling, but Jeff really should've led with "they're going to nuke us if the Markovians do invade" instead of speaking in vague gang terms. Lala also kidnapped an ASA doctor to find out about Tobias. Painkiller takes over Khalil and starts murdering random soldiers. Brandon has attacked Dr. Jace with his powers and demands to know all about his father and stuff, and at this point I just don't care anymore. Erica and TC being all cute and stuff is cute. Also Lady Eve wants a seat back at the 'Shadow Council' with Odell in exchange for the briefcase. It's nice that all of these are getting tied up, but I really do wish that there was another episode in "The Book of War" arc to properly give these lesser plotlines time to breathe and be relevant. Still, all things considered... still pretty entertaining despite the mess. It's a far better-constructed season finale compared to the previous season, I suppose. 

Black Lightning S03E12-13 Review: Crazy Crazy Odell

Black Lightning, Season 3, Episode 12: Motherless ID; Episode 13: Grab the Strap

Episode 12: Book of Markovia Chapter Three: Motherless ID
As we close out the four-parter "Book of Markovia" and move into the three-parter that closes out the third season, it's interesting to take a look at the whole third season of Black Lightning and look at how rather inconsistent everything has been. I'm not sure how much the random Crisis crossover has affected the writing and budget of the season, but I do know that I really did feel like the season seems to be juggling so many storylines but also not really delivering any of them super sufficiently. Take the Markovians, for example, whose presence in the show has been both large since everyone keeps bringing it up, but they're such a non-entity other than brief action scenes that it's hard to be really invested. Or take, say, Tobias Whale, who just spends the entire season so far more of a plot device that says racist things every now and then but otherwise is just kind of there. Or Lala, who gets a huge scene early in the season and is completely shoved into somewhere off-screen. Or the Sange and Perdi, who gets sort of brought up as something that is brewing in the background but also hasn't really been relevant at all. The only real constant, I feel, is the Pierce family members and their dynamic, as well as Agent Odell as an antagonist, and while that's certainly enough to carry the show, I really do feel like it could've been better.

What I am getting at is that finally, after 11 episodes of them being nothing but a vague presence shown sometimes in 2-minute commandos that participate in action scenes or the faceless data farm that Lightning blew up, the Markovians finally have a face as a villain that ends up serving as a common enemy that the Pierces, their assorted allies and the A.S.A. can join forces to fight against. Honestly, I knew that I spent a while watching the middle episodes of the season wondering if the Markovians are even that evil, or if the whole Markovian situation is just a super elaborate hoax for Odell to fuck with Freeland, but now they're basically just the bad guys that kidnapped Lynn and Tobias, and are on the verge of forcing Lynn and Dr. Helga Jace (speaking of characters that the show kind of left off-screen) to make the metahuman-stabilizing serum.

That said, I really did like the portrayal of Helga Jace as a complete sociopath that has no idea how to really interact with people and tries her best to pretend to be friendly and foster a relationship, and her interactions with Lynn throughout this episode is a constant highlight. Lynn and Jace's interactions are absolutely fun, and while Jace hasn't been my favourite character in season two (I always found her flat) this combination of self-preservation, sociopathy and her very clumsy attempt to 'befriend' Lynn is hilarious. Lynn, of course, isn't going to give Colonel Mosin what she wants, but while Odell is happy to manipulate Lynn with a combination of carrot and stick, Mosin is far more ruthless, using a combination of a zappy-zap Thor: Ragnarok neck shock chip and giving her some drugs to further her addiction.

Meanwhile, Sgt. Grayle is left behind alive by the Markovians for... for no real reason. Why didn't they just kill him? Whatever the case, he's just there for plot device reasons, as a middleman to allow Team Pierce and Team Odell to gather together under a common banner. This is basically the formation of  Black Lightning's version of the Outsiders. Basically, everyone with a bone to pick with the A.S.A. get gathered together. We've got Black Lightning, Lightning, Thunder, Gambi, Grace, Brandon, T.C., plus a bunch of A.S.A. loaners like Gray, Grayle and the metahuman lady Erica Moran. I absolutely love just how much Jefferson is throwing his weight around with the utterly long-suffering Major Gray, basically demanding a whole ton from the A.S.A. now that they basically need the Pierce metahuman squad to help out. It's just kind of a shame that some of the characters do feel like an afterthought. Grayle is just Mr. Exposition; Erica is just Little Miss Metahuman Soldier; Grace is just Anissa's love interest (that sparring scene, while entertaining, was kind of pointless); Brandon is just Jennifer's buddy who has a vendetta against Jace.

There's also the Painkiller/Khalil plot taking up a huge chunk of the episode's first half, which I admit has been a lot more engaging than I thought it would be. I absolutely hated how the Jennifer/Khalil romance had dominated so much of the previous season, but the way it's portrayed now is a whole lot more interesting. With the aid of TC, the good guys (well, mostly Jennifer and TC with Gambi and Brandon playing the role of a video game hint-giver) figure out what's going on with Khalil and Painkiller, and with TC's powers, they manage to enter Khalil's mind and basically walk around in a corridor set to trap the Painkiller Program behind a firewall, represented as a door. It's kind of low-budget, but the acting between China McClain and Jordan Calloway are genuinely well-done, carrying the scenes on their back. Calloway also does double-duty as the shell-shocked Khalil and the menacing Painkiller, and that's absolutely well-done.

I also do like basically just how the real Khalil personality is sort of essentially suicidal, already accepting his death at the hands of Tobias, and when confronted at the idea that he's gone around and killed his mother while under the guise of Painkiller, can you blame Khalil that he basically decides to shut down? It's not until Jennifer braves herself and risks her life (something that Khalil doesn't know) to turn into digital data and talk to Khalil and drag him out of his 'safe space' and lock Painkiller in the imaginary room that he finally snaps out of it. It's actually amazing just how much I'm invested in Khalil's redemption arc (such that it may be). I also absolutely love that while it's their love that ends up being the thing that shakes Khalil out of his stupor, it's also something that Jenn needs a lot of effort to do and it's not just that Khalil regains his senses when he sees Jennifer on the battlefield or something. It's a lot more satisfying, is what I want to say.

There are a bunch of minor stuff, too. Jefferson and Anissa's discussion about Lynn's addiction to Green Light and Jefferson regretting not doing anything about it a couple of episodes ago is brought up, but it's also brushed aside very quickly. Anissa and Grace, like I mentioned before, has a bit of a scene but ultimately it's just there to remind us that Grace can do kung-fu. But overall, with most of the episode's focus on Khalil/Painkiller's mind-scape and cutting back and forth to both the formation of the Outsiders and Lynn's time among the Markovians, this is mostly set-up, but it's decent set-up.
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Episode 13: Book of Markovia Chapter Four: Grab the Strap
And then we're immediately off with the Outsiders preparing for battle. Half of the episode is our hodgepodge group of heroes and anti-heroes sort of gathering and preparing for the fight, and the other half is the actual fight itself. We do have a bunch of interesting scenes, like Brandon being a bit of a loose cannon that is quick to anger and wants nothing to do with playing nice with the A.S.A.; we've got TC's awkward flirting with Erica (which is a ploy to deactivate Erica's kill-order chip); we've got the scene between Anissa, Jennifer and Grace in the mess hall; we've got Khalil suffering from PTSD and Gambi helping him out, and Jefferson later convincing him to stick around; Jefferson's own drinking-alone-at-the-bar scene... it's all very great scenes, and while some of these characters have had a lot less screentime than the others, I really do like this series of scenes leading up to the battle.

While all of this is going on, in Markovia, Lynn has convinced Jace to help her out to basically pull a Tony Stark -- pretend they're working on what the bad guys want them to work on, while work on something else. Lynn's original attempt at being defiant to the end ends up backfiring, though, when Colonel Mosin shows up with Markovia's own metahuman soldier, Gravedigger, a dude with a cross-shaped scar who has a mind-control voice. Forced to work, Lynn ends up manipulating Gravedigger into giving her some of his blood (as a sample from a stable metahuman) before making one of those 'give yourself metahuman powers' serum. Okay, then.

I could very easily see a world where this episode is split into two episodes, one where our heroes train through teeth-clenched teamwork with the A.S.A, and another focusing entirely on the assault, but the fact that both are lumped together ends up with a very exciting, tense hour where we build up the impending assault and actually go through with it. And... admittedly, thanks to the show's budget, a lot of the fights are off-screened and some characters just have like a single scene of helping out (like TC and Grace) and just basically hanging out in the background. It's not quite as obvious budget-saving as the Masters of Disaster fight at the climax of the second season, though, and I didn't mind it that much. Most of the characters that are relegated to the side at least get a chance or two to show off them using their powers, like Anissa and Erica breaking down a door before staying behind to hold off the enemy.

There are a bunch of main objectives for our heroes -- rescue Lynn, rescue Tobias, and later on, also rescue Dr. Jace... and the latter, of course, is a huge bit of point of contention for Brandon. I felt like the Brandon/Jace conflict was utterly one-dimensional, though, and while it sucks that the storyline was basically a bit of an afterthought -- Sgt. Grayle just knocks out Brandon and evacuates with Jace because they don't have time to fuck around -- it's nice that at least the conflict is addressed?

Introducing Gravedigger in this episode also ends up with an actual threatening force for our heroes to fight against. I'm not sure why that teleporting metahuman is completely absent (remember Instant?) but Gravedigger's fight against Khalil in the corridor is absolutely well-done, and I really do like that it makes Jefferson's decision to talk to Khalil and bring him along actually feel like it's making a difference instead of just adding another body to their team -- Khalil being a cyborg means that Gravedigger's power doesn't work on him.

Lynn, meanwhile, whose plan would've been absolutely terrible if she had done this at any other point in time other than the time when her family is making a superhero team to save her, mind-controls Mosin and and engineers her own escape, before regrouping with the others. So that's nice. Black Lightning, meanwhile, is forced to evacuate Tobias Whale, and we get a pretty fun bit of Tobias mocking Jefferson about knowing his identity all along... Krondon doesn't get anything to really do this season as an actor, but at least he gets a lot of good lines and if nothing else, seeing Tobias mock Jeff is always fun.

The raid on Markovia is exciting and very quickly-paced, and when Gravedigger manages to knock out Jefferson Pierce and holds most of our heroes at sway with his voice powers, it does seem like our heroes are going to have to go home switching one hostage to another... but then Black Lightning zaps his way back to the extraction zone and manages to knock out Gravedigger. Gravedigger works very well as a mini-boss, and, surprising me (since we still have three episodes left) the Outsiders basically make out of Markovia with all of their members intact and basically everyone except for Tobias Whale accounted for. Ultimately, though, a very fun arc-closing episode and probably the most solid hour of Black Lightning's third season.


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Gravedigger is a name used by seven different characters in DC comics prior to this, and the character featured in Black Lightning is an amalgamation of several Gravediggers. His name, Tyson Sykes, is taken from the second Gravedigger, an agent of the organization Checkmate with the rank Rook and having telepathic powers due to injecting himself with an alien serum, but his design, particularly the cross-shaped scar on his face (and details about him we learn from the next episode) pegs him more as being based on Ulysses Hazard, the first Gravedigger, an African-American soldier of World War II who conditioned himself with strict training to become the peak of physical prowess. Due to the racism of the time, Ulysses is frustrated that he is relegated to menial tasks, and Ulysses goes off to prove himself by single-handedly invading the Pentagon, and eventually becomes a one-man strike unit called "Gravedigger". 
• Jefferson off-handedly refers to his team as 'the Outsiders', a reference to, of course, the superhero team that Black Lightning is most closely associated with. 

Black Lightning S03E10-11 Review: Addiction

Black Lightning, Season 3, Episode 10: Blessings and Curses Reborn; Episode 11: Lynn's Addiction

Episode 10: Blessings and Curses Reborn
I haven't really been following up with Black Lightning because... I don't really know. I guess the pre-Crisis episodes aren't as interesting as they could've been? I always feel that Black Lightning is a show that's always better served when I binge-watch it anyway, which is why I suppose I left it for last. After the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths, we basically get a bit of a reset to the status quo, with Black Lightning zipping back and bursting into the dome-covered Freeland, while Lightning returns back from her bizarre trip into mind-land where Jen meets the other 'possible futures'. This basically leads to a quick little recap where Jen tells Jefferson about her deal with Agent Odell and stuff, since Jen basically went through her character development after seeing the two extreme versions of the path that the alternate Jennifers would take.

And while there will always be the little question burning in the back of my head now that this is a shared universe on why Black Lightning doesn't just call upon the combined might of Supergirl, Superman, the Flash, Martian Manhunter and two dozen other superheroes or to call the D.E.O. and ARGUS to beat up the A.S.A., but whatever, superhero individual title non-crossover clause, I suppose.

Agent Odell, meanwhile, is back to take over the A.S.A. and no real offense to the actors that play Agent Grey or that one power-stealing commando dude, Bill Duke just has the gravitas to actually be a properly imposing villain. Throughout the episode, though, Odell basically puts his foot down, not particularly pleased with the state of events after the Pierces basically decided to revolt, and narrowly avoids getting zapped to death by an angry Jennifer, by way of realistic hologram. Also, thanks to Jennifer bringing her buddy Brandon around as backup (he shoots sand blasts) I guess Brandon gets brought into the loop.

Meanwhile, the rest of the episode basically sort of follows Black Lightning and Anissa (in her Blackbird guise) and they work with the underground to liberate a bunch of metahuman prisoners. It's a basic "trust that your child knows what she's doing" storyline, with Jefferson learning to let Anissa do what she needs to do as the leader of the resistance, even if I do think the "I pick right" "I pick left" sequence was a bit too on the nose and there's no real reason for Anissa to be right other than the plot demands it to be. Another B-plot deals with Lynn being super-duper addicted to Green Light and lashing out to everyone around her, but that's always been a plot point that I felt was kind of random and isn't exactly executed particularly well.

Overall, though, the episode mostly functions to bring us up to speed, and I kind of feel that there's at least part of it that's meant to be a recap after the hiatus and crossover stuff.
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Episode 11: Lynn's Addiction
Episode 11 is all about the subplot I don't really care about, though and that's Lynn's addiction. And... I dunno, I really am not a huge fan of her being addicted to Green Light and fighting with Jefferson about it? It's a decent way to get drama and some mileage out of her actress in theory, but in practice, it's just honestly repetitive and one-dimensional. I guess Lynn's addiction is focused in a more tangible manner by the fact that it's not just physical drugs she's addicted to, but also a bit of a hero complex thing of wanting and needing to solve all the answers on her own? She spends this entire episode basically on her one-woman crusade to deny the ASA of the cure they need, and, arguably, this sort of attitude is what a hero needs. It's just that it's done with the background of her demanding to get her Green Light back and it murks things up a bit.

I also kind of wished that we actually had any sort of foreshadowing that Sergeant Gardner Gayle exists at all, because it genuinely does feel like a bit of an ass-pull that Lynn suddenly has this sympathetic-to-the-good-guys member of the ASA that is ready and willing and has all the resources able to sneak Lynn's bag (and drugs) out, sneak her in, and basically cover for her while she injects Tobias Whale with an invisibility superpower serum and sneaks him out. It kind of is a storyline that is fine on its own, but as part of a greater season feels kind of random. Lynn revealing that she shot herself up with some super-strength serum to bop Tobias in the face is a well-done moment, as is the sudden plot twist that Lynn and Gayle got tasered in the back by what I assume to be Markovian agents.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Pierce family are doing... stuff. More than a bit angry about the fact that Odell has apparently gotten Jennifer to go around and blow up buildings and potentially kill Markovians in the process, so Jeff brings Anissa and Gambi in for a strike force to beat up Odell's convoy of ominous black SUV's and threatens him with stuff, and Odell's answers to a lot of the Pierce family's accusations are basically deflections, trying to quote Martin Luther King and quoting the Lord's Prayer. Okay, sure. But Jefferson isn't that brutal, of course, and all they are doing is basically getting the biometric data they needed to create a digital replica of Odell to order the ASA out or something...

But, of course, Jennifer comes in at the exactly wrong moment and gets into an argument about hypocrisy (she's not wrong, technically, but at the same time she just wants to straight-up murder Odell and that's a no-no) and then the ASA commandos show up, and then Khalil Payne shows up, all Terminator-like, and poor Jenn just basically goes into a bit of a shock at the sight of her dead zombie boyfriend. Not really understanding what's going on, Jennifer restrains Jeff and Anissa from Painkiller and tries to talk him down, and this whole sequence is enough for the ASA commandos to extract Odell. Of course, at the end of the episode they have Painkiller sedated in the Gambicave, and thanks to Gambi's computer-speaking metahuman buddy Technocrat, they find out that Khalil's mind is still alive underneath all the robotic programming after all.

And the episode ends with the Pierce family basically fractured -- Lynn's driven away her family members and has gone off on her own solo attempt to be a hero without telling anyone; Jennifer's hurt and angry at the two huge chunks of information that her family's kept from her (the attack on Odell and Khalil being alive), and whatever happens in the next couple of episodes will have the Pierces dealing with this angst.

Also, there's a B-plot with Lala basically sending out Devonte (which I think was one of the Pod kids? Why is he with the 100?) to spy on a new gangster in Freeland, and turns out it's the resurrected Lady Eve! I'm not sure where this is really going to lead, because Lala's been disappearing and reappearing at random points in the season, and whatever's going on in this episode honestly genuinely feels like a random unrelated side-story with barely any relevance to the main storyline. The only real way this can tie in to the greater storyline, really, is the revelation, via Gambi's new buddy Baron (a.k.a. Technocrat; he speaks to computers), that Lady Eve was the person behind Gambi's assassination. Oh, I suppose Baron's pretty dang charming, he has been showing up in the background of the past two or three episodes, hanging out with Gambi and apparently Gambi sees young Jeff in Technocrat. It's a bit of an awkward intro for the character, but ultimately a decent one. Basically, both Brandon (a.k.a. not-Geo-Force) and Baron are looped into the Pierces. Okay, sure.

Anyway, despite some questionable storylines, episode 11 is a decent one.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Odell mentions multiple times in this episode that he comes from Gotham City, which, of course, is now part of Earth-Prime alongside the entire world of Black Lightning. 
• Brandon talks about possible code-names, listing "Quake Boy", "Earth-Force" and "Geo" among them, which, of course, clues us in to the fact that Brandon is a race-lifted and age-lifted version of the superhero Geo-Force, a.k.a. Brion Markov of Markovia, the earth-manipulating prince of Markovia and a fellow founding member of the Outsiders alongside Black Lightning in the comics. 
• Baron, a.k.a. "T.C.", is very loosely based on Technocrat, or Geoffrey Barron, a business magnate that attempted to sell battle armours to the nation of Markovia. Donning his own Technocrat armour to defend himself when the Outsiders were framed for the murder of Markovia's queen, Technocrat joined the Outsiders in helping to clear their name and would join the group himself. 
• Gardner Gayle in the comics is the superhero Atomic Knight, who utilized a STAR labs battle-suit to fight crime. He participated in a virtual reality experiment that had him interact in a post-atomic-war world. As the Atomic Knight, he would briefly join the Seven Soldiers of Victory, and later on as a member of the Outsiders. 

Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part 5 [Legends of Tomorrow S05E01] Review: What Had Been Many, Became One

Legends of Tomorrow, Season 5, Episode 1: Crisis on Infinite Earths, Hour Five

So this episode starts off after the chaotic end of Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part Four... and I have to preface this review by noting that despite my utterly critical review about the messiness of parts three and four of Crisis... I still kind of enjoyed it to some degree? And, yeah, part of that enjoyment kind of stems from the simple reason that I've just enjoyed a lot of these actors and characters over the years. It's just such a shame that this could've been so much better, both as a crossover, as a huge event and as a send-off to Oliver Queen, their star for the past eight years.

Anyway, after the huge magic fight between Spectre Oliver and the Anti-Monitor, we get Kara waking up in her apartment all stumbling over her glasses and whatnot, and zapping the wall with heat vision by accident when Alex wakes her up. Everything's normal now, Kara just woke up in front of the TV and no one's worried at all about the multiverse-ending crisis or whatever. Also, we never really got an answer whether Alex was counted among the casualties of Earth-38, huh? That would've given all those "Kara angsts for Earth-38" scenes some weight, wouldn't it? And Kara just gets thrusted into what seems to be her normal life, with only her as a person that remembers the events of Crisis. Alex is confused and shrugs it off as just post-battle grogginess, Nia calls Kara and tells her to super-speed her way to the Nobel peace prize and Kara just wants to wing everything for the day before asking Nia about the weird 'dream' she had...

And then we get the bombshell that Lex Luthor is the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and everyone in the world from Nia to all these random reporters love it. Yep, seems like in this brave new Earth, Luthor's rewritten himself to basically become a villain with good publicity as opposed to the Golden Age era hammy card-carrying villain.

As much as I am frustrated by the way they handled Luthor in this crossover, I do admit that using the Crisis as a way to retool Lex Luthor into the far less boring and far more interesting President Luthor from the comics is definitely a lot more interesting! Theoretically, anyway. Kara watches in confusion and revulsion as Luthor talks up how dangerous the world is and how superheroes are special but Luthor is also special because he's helping people despite not having superpowers. Oh, and also, Kara's attempt to vent about Luthor to Alex ends up causing confusion as Alex, too, is a huge Luthor fan now and the D.E.O. is a subsidiary of LuthorCorp.

Eventually Kara gets to talk to another Paragon, J'onn, who confirms to Kara that, no, she isn't insane, it's just that only the Paragons, who witnessed the new Earth being created, remember all the events of the Crisis. Okay, sure, that kind of makes sense, I guess, and is a neat adaptation of the final arc in the comic-book version of Crisis. Another huge twist? Of course, as everyone predicted, Earth-38 gets finally fused with Earth-1, and basically all of the CW shows are now part of one big harmonious Earth-Prime. In an attempt to stop the supervillain Weather Witch, Supergirl runs into Flash and the two are kind of confused why they are shoehorning on each other's Earth... only for Marv Wolfman (author of Crisis on Infinite Earths) to show up and ask for their autographs, confirming that in the history of this new Earth-Prime, Flash and Supergirl are apparently known to the public since forever.

It's a twist that I personally saw coming from a mile away, but I do appreciate the show actually focusing entirely on Supergirl's cast members for its first scenes. With the huge revelation over, we now cut away to Pariah, who's back as Nash Wells, waking up in the dumb sewer set of Central City because of all the plot points that require resolution in this huge endeavour, it's the god damn sewer runes that they think is burning a hole in the viewers' minds. Nash wakes up with little memory of how he got here. In Star City, Sara is back on the bar and tries to get Ray (who doesn't remember anything) up to speed, and Ray is just baffled at the idea of missing out on a crossover. J'onn shows up, though, and basically uses his martian psychic powers to bring everyone relevant up to speed, which is actually pretty fun and pretty convenient. J'onn has apparently been doing this presumably to all of the relevant characters in each show's primary main cast. Okay.

Sara rendezvouses with the rest of the Arrow cast in the Arrowcave, where Diggle, Rene and Dinah are hanging out and mourning Oliver Queen, because, of course, with the creation of Earth-Prime, Oliver had also forfeited his life. Or had to serve as a ghost-god or something. It's never made clear that that honestly is probably one of the shittiest part of this live-action crossover -- the huge exit and the huge conclusion to one of its main characters is extremely vague and makes no sense to anyone who isn't familiar with Spectre from the comics. Flash and Supergirl also arrive in the Arrow-cave, and the two of them are far more bubbly and excited... before realizing that Oliver isn't back.

In STAR Labs, Caitlin is scanning Nash before J'onn shows up and brings both of them up to speed. I do like the bit where Nash is initially indignant and defiant, before J'onn gets absolutely pissed off at him, being the one who released the Anti-Monitor (it isn't really made clear prior to this episode, really), and the memory dump gets Nash morose and sad again.

And then everything goes to shit as a giant Beebo attacks Star City, and at this point I do feel like Beebo is a joke that the Legends crew think is a lot funnier than it actually is. Sure, it's off-the-walls the one time they used it to fight Mallus in season three's finale or whatever, but at this point it's an overplayed joke. Oh, and also since this is the Legends episode, we get to see the rest of the Legends cast other than Sara, Ray, Mick and Constantine. We get to see Ava and Nate in the Time Bureau eye-rolling at the crossover, while Mick ends up being the first to fight Beebo, who interrupts his book signing. We then get Flash, Atom, Supergirl, Canary and Heatwave fighting Beebo... and being pretty ineffective, only slowing Beebo down. I do like the couple of bits where Flash zips around with cables around Beebo's feet and the giant furby just shakes it off, and good ol' John Diggle's deadpan "I'm not letting my kid watch this show ever again" is perfect. Dinah and Rene being baffled at how batshit crazy crossovers are is also pretty neat. Oh yeah, Batwoman also shows up with a pretty cool dynamic entry, and figures out that the giant Beebo is just a distraction. The heroes then arrest Beebo's summoner, Sargon the Sorcerer, who gets punched in the face by Sara as he tries to rob a bank.

The hero squad then spend time drinking and socializing in the Arrowcave...and it moves quickly without a whole ton of notable dialogue until Nash shows up and moves the plot along. The Anti-Monitor's not completely gone, because the anti-matter is rising in that area. Okay though but didn't they like rewrite time itself? Why did the Anti-Monitor only show up at this specific time period okay yeah don't overthink things, I know, it's just a wacky huge crossover. I get it.

While the rest of the cast do some sci-fi mumbo-jumbo talk off-screen, I do really love the scene of Barry walking up and talking to Sara as she sits on a flight of stairs overlooking a tree. These two are inarguably the closest friends to the late Oliver other than Diggle, and I do love the two of them basically taking a brief moment to reflect on their life, with Sara noting how she used to race with Laurel to the tree and now she's gone from an assassin to a vigilante to a corpse to captain of a time-traveling ship. They both note how they both had connections to their old, pre-superhero life, and for Sara, that's her connection with Oliver. For Barry, that used to be his dad, Henry Allen. And while they know that they have to move on and they've both found new families, it's nice to have a reminder of your past, y'know? That's a pretty neat little scene that I feel is massively lacking throughout the rest of Crisis, and it's scenes like this that give actual oomph to Oliver's death.

Oh yeah and a Shadow Demon randomly shows up to murder them, and we get a badass slow-motion zippy-spin thing. Sara and Barry quickly figure out that the Shadow Demons are hunting the Paragons down... and oh no, Ryan Choi! Powerless Ryan Choi, who is still just a regular dude protecting his baby from ripoff Dementors. The superheroes save Ryan, then they discuss the Anti-Monitor problem... Oliver-Spectre stopped the destruction of the multiverse, but didn't kill the Anti-Monitor. Mick just wants to lob the fool into the sun, while Sara is very confrontational with the fact that Nash is still hanging out with them. Ryan's huge contribution is being a science-bro with Ray, deciding to use a perpetually shrinking chain reaction to send the Anti-Monitor into the Microverse.

Anyway, a fuck-ton of Shadow Demons show up in Gardner Pier, and we get a pretty badass shot of the superheroes walking down the line to meet them. Wild Dog, Dreamer, Spartan, Flash, White Canary, Supergirl, Martian Manhunter, Alex Danvers, Batwoman and Superman. Oh, and J'onn's got a fancy new suit again! We get a fight against the Shadow Demons with the Flash zipping around and the Supers unlesahing eye-beams and stuff, but then the Shadow Demons sort of disappear and reform into the Anti-Monitor? Who still looks like a White Walker from Game of Thrones doing a Halo cosplay or something. The Anti-Monitor spouts generic yelling about how this is their end, and then we get more fighto-fighto.

In STAR Labs, Ray, Ryan and Nash are trying to make the doohickey to trap the Anti-Monitor in a perpetually shrinking state, while Killer Frost and Heat Wave hold the ground against the Shadow Demons... and Black Lightning shows up! He's badass, and he gets a badass entry and I do like the three characters just exchanging barbs and rescuing each other. Earth-BL just got sucked into Earth-Prime, I suppose.

Anti-Monitor quotes his comic-book counterpart about how he's "destiny incarnate, inexorable and inescapable, you are nothing, insects fated to be crushed beneath my heel without a moment's thought", but the heroes are having none of his flowery speech. He uses an eclectic mixture of random beam powers to fight our heroes, while Sara and the others refuse to fail Oliver. There's a pretty cool tracking shot of one of Batwoman's batarangs flying towards the Anti-Monitor before being blocked with his energy shield, and then everyone just unleashes heat visions, bullets and whatever the hell those beams that Dream shoots at the Anti-Monitor's shield, and we get a pretty neat shot of Sara circling the Anti-Monitor and locking eyes with him. A ground-pound from the Anti-Monitor knocks everyone down (poor Rene's just pretty much out of his league, huh) and then the Anti-Monitor becomes gigantic and proclaims the Age of Heroes as being over.

Y'know, the Anti-Monitor becoming a giant might be a bit more impressive if we hadn't seen fucking Beebo do basically the same thing earlier in this episode. Anyway, Supergirl leads the 'sky team' of Superman and Martian Manhunter to fly around the Anti-Monitor and pelt him with blasts and super-punches and it's actually pretty neat. Ray tells Barry to zip back to STAR Labs and use his super-speed to help construct the Atom Bomb, which I think is cool. Flash then zips Ray back to the pier they are fighting, while the rest of the ground-bound superheroes are fighting the Shadow Demons. Anti-Monitor manages to beat the ever-loving crap out of Superman after the flying heroes fly around his head a bit too many times, but eventually we get the pretty cool, explosive entry of Flash and Atom as Barry zips through all the Shadows and Ray flies bringing the Atom Bomb to Supergirl.

There's a pretty cool bit of Anti-Monitor clutching Superman in his arms, then Atom shrinking Superman to save before Supergirl does a "throw it like a girl" moment, chucks the Atom Bomb and shrinks silly ol' Mobius down into nothingness. There is some ominous latin chanting music before Sara thanks Oliver, noting that the Crisis is over. Oh, and also we get the obligatory shrunken-Superman joke.

Ultimately... okay, yeah, this is a far more entertaining fight than the generic beam spam between Spectre and Anti-Monitor last episode, and it's a nice little last hurrah as our heroes prove that they can protect their brave new world. It does really kind of hammer home what a flat villain Anti-Monitor has been, though, since he's barely more relevant than a generic angry monster.

Anyway, conclusion time! A president lady (who I don't think are any of the presidents in the CW shows we know) addressing the public and thanking Oliver Queen, the Green Arrow, for being a hero and an inspiration to us all, acknowledging his death and crediting him as a leader. We go through various families and heroes in their civilian lives, which is neat, and we also see that apparently Earth-Prime also restores Sara Diggle... I've always thought that it's weird that no one ever really comments that J.J. basically replaces Sara and erases her out of existence, so hooray Diggle for getting his original kid back! (Also, Superman and Lois have two sons at least now) We get to see various families together. Sara, Alex and Kate hanging out in Kara's apartment. Barry and Caitlin. Dinah and Rene. Sara, Ray and Mick. Nate and Ava. They're all watching the news, honouring Oliver.

Please ignore the fact that so many other characters like Cisco or Mia don't even get a mention because the actors can't make it to the filming of this episode or whatever.

Anyway, we then cut to a narration by Oliver as we go through space, and apparently the Multiverse still exists -- it's just the CW shows that are merged into one. "In the end, there's a single black infinitude. Then the infinitude found release. And finally the darkness broke, filling it with life, with the multiverse. Every existence multiplied by possibility. And spread out in space and time in infinite measure. Civilizations rose and fell. Life. A precious gift, persevering in the face of every obstacle. until finally the age of heroes was born." As we cut back and forth between various shows and movies based on DC superheroes. A new Earth-2, the new Stargirl show and the Justice Society of America. Earth-12, the god-damn Green Lantern movie. Then more TV shows. Swamp Thing, Titans, Doom Patrol. And Brandon Routh Superman flying into space.

Before we cut to Earth-Prime and a group of superheroes gathering in the warehouse that they used as a base during the Dominator invasion. Flash, Supergirl, White Canary, Martian Manhunter, Batwoman, Black Lightning and Superman. They are honouring Oliver's costume and a flame that they set alight... and we get a speech from Barry and Sara. Barry notes how Oliver believed in him even when he didn't, bringing the best in all of them. Sara thanks Oliver for always being there for her... and then we cut to Jeff just sort of wanting to be included and going "he must've been a good dude". Whatever the case, though, this basically leads to the new Earth-Prime heroes deciding to found a group of heroes, with chairs and emblems around a central meeting table... a Justice League in all but name. Again, for all the problems I do have with the pacing of this crossover, I do love that it eventually ended with the founding of the Justice League formed out of most of the most prominent superheroes in the Arrowverse, and the final shot of the Crisis is panning out of the Hall of Justice.

And that's a wrap. It's... it's all right, I guess. Crisis really struggled, even moreso than previous crossover attempts, in juggling way too many actors and characters while also trying its best to homage the comic-book Crisis, insert cameos to various DC live-action shows and also trying to tell a coherent story. In retrospect it's a gigantic clusterfuck, and I really wished that they had the foresight to cover a lot of the buildup regarding the Paragons, the Monitor/Anti-Monitor and multiverse rules in at least Arrow and Flash, the shows that are the biggest ones with a lead-up to the Crisis. Ultimately it's entertaining as all hell, and I did enjoy the madcap rush of superhero material I watched to get here... but at the same time, it's also kind of a huge mess.

Where do I go from here? Well, for starters, it's sure been a huge trip and I feel I'm tapped out on superheroes for a while. I'm not sure if/when I'll catch up with the rest of the CW shows, but I definitely need a break. How I'm going to handle the rest of the shows, or if I'm going to just do mass reviews for some of them, is going to depend on my scheduling for the next couple of months, which look pretty dang busy. We'll see. Still, for all of you reading my reviews of live-action superhero stuff, I do sincerely thank all of you for sticking through this very late, very clunky review series.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Oliver's "in the end, there was only one, a single black infinitude" speech was taken from the original 1996 Crisis on Infinite Earths miniseries. 
• Marv Wolfman, one of the two writers of Crisis on Infinite Earths, makes a cameo asking for an autograph from Flash and Supergirl. I'm not sure if it's intentional or not, but both Flash and Supergirl were the biggest-name heroes that Wolfman killed off in Crisis. 
• The other co-writer of Crisis, George Perez, is homaged by the location of the fight with the Anti-Monitor, Perez Landing.
• Gardner Pier, meanwhile, is a reference to Gardner Fox, which, while isn't directly involved with Crisis on Infinite Earths, was the person who wrote "Crisis on Two Earths", the first multiversal crossover and the first one who used the term "Crisis" in DC comics. 
• The original Crisis on Infinite Earths did end with a rebooted 'one world' universe where every previously different world was combined into an "Earth-Prime", where all of the histories of the disparate characters are folded into the "Post-Crisis" timeline. In the comics, only a specific group of people remember the existence of the multiverse at all (notably the Psycho-Pirate) although here it seems like everyone important gets to remember it thanks to J'onn J'onzz.
• The Arrowverse clearly only merged the CW affiliated shows, though, with the end of the episode showing that the other TV series and movies are still their own thing.
• Mick's suggestion of tossing the Anti-Monitor into the sun and blowing it up is actually how the Anti-Monitor was ultimately defeated in the original Crisis on Infinite Earths comic.  
• Even more alternate Earths, as part of the new multiverse:
• A new Earth-2 is home to the upcoming Stargirl show, showing off its roster -- Stargirl, S.T.R.I.P.E., Dr. Mid-Nite, Hourman and a female Wildcat, presumably Yolanda Montez -- which is a character that debuted in the 1996 Crisis series. Earth-2 has been traditionally the "JSA universe" in the comics' pre-Crisis timeline. 
• Earth-12 is the 2011 Ryan Reynolds Green Lantern movie.
• Earth-19 is DC streaming service Swamp Thing TV series. 
• Earth-9 (Titans) and Earth-96 (Superman Returns) are also restored, and we get more cameos from different Titans characters. Despite being a spinoff of Titans, apparently Doom Patrol is a different Earth, Earth-21.
• Sara Lance was previously retconned out of existence and replaced with John Junior thanks to the events of Flashpoint. This version of a cosmic reboot restores her while still keeps J.J.
• The STAR Labs facility from the Invasion crossover makes a return and is converted into the new JLA base, and the exterior shot establishes that the building is basically an adaptation of the Hall of Justice from the cartoon Challenge of the Super Friends. 
• Various incarnations of the Justice League's conference table has had the iconic chairs with each member's logo emblazoned on the back. 
• The episode closes on a monkey cage with the name 'Gleek', which is one of the pets in the Super Friends carton, and a variation of the theme plays.   
• During his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Luthor quotes some of the traditional Superman catchphrases -- "fly faster than a speeding bullet" and "leap tall buildings" specifically. 
• They don't appear in this episode, but Felicity is mentioned a couple of times by the Arrow cast, Rory "Ragman" Reagan is alluded to by Rene, and Barry notes how he heard about the Legends' fight with Beebo from Wally "Kid Flash" West.
• Sargon the Sorcerer is the name of several characters in the DC comics. The first Sargon (John Sargent) is a man who came into possession of a mighty Ruby of Life, allowing himself to control most of the things he touches, fighting against mystical enemies and getting honorary membership into the Justice League at one point. He later only made sporadic appearances among DC's other mystics, notably assisting DC's other mystics in Crisis on Infinite Earths. The original Sargon was succeeded by his grandson, David John Sargent, who accidentally stumbled into a fight over demons over the shattered Ruby of Life, and ended up inheriting the remaining powers of his grandfather, guided by the original Sargon's ghost to become a mystical sorcerer. The only villainous version of Sargon is from the New 52 reboot, where a post-humous Sargon was mentioned as having been driven insane with his power