DC Recap Round-Up 2, Week 17: Regreso es El Leyendas de Manana!

3 Apr

Welcome back! Here we are in the weird scheduling lunacy that is late March and early April, and while Black Lightning is gone until fall, we finally FINALLY got Legends of Tomorrow back for the rest of its season. But first, let’s deal with two really jam packed episodes of Supergirl…

“The House of L”

So how did we get to Lex Luthor escaping police custody, using Lena’s serum, and gaining powers (which Kara finds out about the hard way)? Well, welcome to a flashback episode that starts four years ago as he goes to prison for that hilarious “turning the sun red” thing we saw last time, but still has enough pull to basically run prison from his cell, and make a assistant in Lex superfan Eve Teschmacher (and even suggests taking a job in Lena’s company). His plans really don’t start coming to fruition until about a year ago, when he gets a call from a Kaznian general who he’s done business with before about a bizarre discovery they made: a metahuman who looks exactly like Supergirl! Yep, that whole doppelgänger thread from the season so far is FINALLY coming to fruition. But this doppelgänger is still a lot like Kara, if missing her memories, which makes it easy for Lex to start mentoring her in his own image.

It’s a plan not without a few hiccups, such as when she becomes interested in Kara’s life and starts finding herself swayed towards being good, and Lex squashing that by blowing up a kid she befriends (but not really, but we’ll get to that in the notes below). He even gives himself cancer so that he can force Lena to speed up work on the cure, which…that was a level of crazy I didn’t expect. In the present, Kara let’s her friends know about Lex and needing to find Lena quickly. And for good reason, because doppelgänger Kara/the Red Daughter has a slick new supersuit and an evil mentor running loose!

That many seasons of Two and a Half Men will harden any man.

–So besides a story idea that was explored in a great Superman Elseworlds story called Red Son, where Kal-El landed in Russia instead of Smallville, the notion of Lex becoming a mentor to Supergirl is one that was in the comics in the late 80’s (though it technically wasn’t Kara, but that’s another story in itself).

–Otis was apparently dead from his last appearance in this season, but how and why he’s alive is still a mystery (let alone what happened to sister Mercy). But he does have some sympathy by shuttling that kid the Red Daughter befriends away to a safe place instead of being blown up. Can’t help but think this might unravel our doppelgänger’s loyalties if found out.

–Nice retcon of the kryptonite atmosphere poisoning from earlier this season as a way to force doppelgänger Kara to learn a rather twisted version of Kryptonian history by Lex.

–Our doppelgänger only really remembers the name “Alex”, which is really helpful for Lex. Curse almost identical names!

-A throw away piece of info in that Lex wanted the Graves siblings to recruit Ben Lockwood as part of his grand scheme to cause chaos, which kind of undercuts Ben’s particular origins and makes him an even bigger tool than he was before. I approve.

–I guess someone on the writing staff watches The Americans for that slight reference when both Lex and doppelgänger Kara are in disguise, which is fine because that’s a great show. And with better wigs.

–Poisoning the entire courthouse immediately after receiving his sentencing is a baller villain move. Good on you, Lex.

–Lena’s reaction to Lex asking about the serum: “You know it doesn’t grow back hair.”

–“It’s all right. I know what I have to do. I have to give myself cancer.”

“All About Eve”

Well, the good news is Lena is found by the DEO very much alive in her office, but the bad news is Lex is still loose, and with the DEO focused on the security of hearings on the possible Alien Amnesty repeal, Supergirl is left to find the now superpowered baddie. While J’onn is busy dealing with his own personal issues, Kara has to team up for the Lex Hunt with Alex and Lena, who is a little nervous as she secretly worked with Lex on that serum and would probably not want that piece of info to come out to her friends. However, this does lead to a bit of a reconciliation between Supergirl and Lena when she learns about how the serum was created and Kara has to deal with her own overreacting to things. So at least, that is a positive that happens for her this episode, because the rest of the hour goes super bad.

The first thing is the Alien Amnesty act gets repealed, and it’s done in such a dodgy way that even Ben Lockwood, who pushed for the repeal, is a little curious why it’s suddenly going through. It’s probably has something to do with Lex, and when Kara investigates the big get together over the repeal at the White House to find Eve Teschmacher there, it somehow gets worse. While Kara is temporarily occupied by one end of Lex’s big plan, the other part of that plan is to have the Red Daughter dresses as Supergirl and start torching the place! The President declares martial law and Supergirl an enemy of the people, which at least her friends (and surprise, even Colonel Haley) know she’s innocent of to begin with. It might be a bit harder to convince the world that Supergirl didn’t just torch the White House, but we still got a few more episodes left this season to do that.

You’re gonna need more than a run to the bakery to fix this mess, Kara.

–So James is dealing with some trauma from that near-death experience, which isn’t helped when he discovers that it was Lex who was behind his shooting. After a freakout during Faux Supergirl’s rampage in the Oval Office, he finally goes to Kelly for some psychiatric help.

–J’onn reaches out to get some advice from his late dad M’yrnn, and maybe picks the wrong time to do this in retrospect, but heads off to Mars to bury some ancient symbols. I hope he at least left a message on Kara’s phone.

–Yeah, Eve bothers to treat her ailing aunt with the serum, but on the other hand, she was creating freaking Metallos (which loosely explains Otis being alive, I guess).

–Lena seems to be covered by her family over this whole serum thing, but that doesn’t make her guilt of working with Lex any less painful. But she does get to use that family dynamic to her advantage when she gets dead old Mama Luthor to reveal more about Lex’s plan once Lena lets mom know that Lex was planning to have her killed in prison. Ouch.

–Now we got Ben considering that James is right about being a puppet of Lex Luthor, which who knows what will happen there now that he barely survived that Faux Supergirl incident.

–Lena knows about Franken Berry.

–“I speak English better than you.” “Whatever, this isn’t a contest!”

–“They dress their patients in business attire in this hospital?”

“Lucha de Apuestas”

Soooo, you remember before the hiatus and before time got turned to Swiss cheese how Mona got involved in trying to save that wolf creature from being stolen away by those mystery guys? Well, the Legends come back to the Time Bureau HQ to learn she’s been pegged as the one responsible for the creature’s escape, and any evidence of the mystery men is gone. To add to the worseness, that wolf creature is around where Mona is recovering from that nasty accidental wolf gashing and she uses a stolen Time Device (that’s why you don’t trust Gary to do…things) to send the wolf guy away to 1961 Mexico. As you would expect, our wolfman becomes an…undefeated Luchadore?Okay, you probably didn’t expect that.

Anyway, the simple retrieval plan goes south when it learns our undefeated Lucha wolf man has to pretend to go down in the ring, lest Mexico gets thrown into chaos. Add to that the discovery that Nate’s dad Hank might be behind all that wolf guy stealing, and Ava being not cool with the Legends doing another crazy stunt, and things get dicey in and out of the ring. Well, Mexico is saved from chaos (I guess), but Ava and Sara have a big break-up over this whole thing…on the other hand, Mona and the wolf guy get to live happily ever after, right? WRONG, because before Mona can send her wolf man to safety, one of Hank’s goons guns down Wolfie, and she…turns into a wolf person and kills the guy! Oh nuts. Someone really should have checked that gash she got earlier.

Dammit, what did I just say earlier in this round-up? Not even snickerdoodles will do, dude!

–El Cura is clearly a homage to famous Mexican luchadore El Santo, who appeared in many movies involving the supernatural, time travel, and aliens. As you can imagine, the climaxes of those movies involved wrestling in some capacity.

–So Nate is now spying on his dad with Zari’s help, now that he knows his dad is up to some shady stuff. Although, if Constantine was at that gala with the two of them, he probably would have noticed his imprisoned to Hell lover/Neron in the crowd.

–Gary gets memory flashed by Mona as she escapes and is a little terrified by the horrors that have happened to him this season. I mean, wouldn’t you?

–Ray had enough spare time to put together a card game (Cards To Save The Timeline?) to teach Constantine and Charlie about how to be Legends, which is maybe not the best usage of his time. I mean, his petition to be interim captain while Sara goes to chat with Ava does have one signature being “GO **** ******** HAIRCUT”. I’ll let you guess who signed that.

–So Mona is a reader of Mick’s sci-fi romance books. Fan or not, maybe not spoil the plot for the next book in the series for her, man.

–“Vandal Savage? That’s a real name?”

–“Where’s my nipple? WHERE’S MY NIPPLE?!”

–“Did you just try to shoot her shoot her?”

–“Let’s prepare ourselves to WRESTLEEEEE!”

DC’s LEGENDS OF TOMORROW: the only show where a Luchadore and a wolf man wrestling is considered a “normal” event.

NEXT TIME: The Woman of Steel is public enemy number one on Supergirl, we start learning more about Nora’s past and the Team’s future on The Flash, and we get a double shot of Legends of Tomorrow as President Nixon is kidnapped and the team goes Bollywood!