DC Recap Round-Up 3, Week 6: Leviathan Rising!

17 Nov

Welcome back! So The Flash is off this week, which still leaves us recaps of Supergirl, Black Lightning, and Batwoman to do (but don’t worry, we got a full plate again next week). With all that said, let’s get to the recaps…

“Confidence Women”

It’s time for a big backstory episode, as we learn more about the rather thorny past between Lena Luthor and Andrea Rojas. The reason we start learning this is because Andrea has been tasked by Leviathan to kill Rip Roar (her ex-boyfriend turned cyborg killer), and we learn she is the shadow assassin we’ve seen a few episodes back. That is all because Lena involved her bestie Andrea in a plan to find an ancient medallion that would be helpful for Lena to get out of then still alive Lex Luthor’s shadow. Only thing is, Andrea took it for herself when learning from Leviathan that it would help her family and their company survive a brutal economy, and didn’t tell Lena the truth. Surprise, Lena figures out what happened to the medallion and there starts all her issues regarding trusting people.

Andrea doesn’t fare much better just because her family’s company miraculously survives its likely doom, because now she finds herself indebted to Leviathan and they want her to do all sorts of stuff, like murder. We even learn when her boyfriend Russell finds the medallion and is likely to be killed by Leviathan’s agents, she basically saves his life by turning him into Rip Roar, and that horrifying trade off makes Andrea desperate enough to ask Lena to help her spring Russell from the DEO. Lena does help, but the cost is she gets that medallion back, which leads to some bad luck in Russell getting killed by Leviathan as Andrea tries to whisk him away. But hey, Lena learns Leviathan exists based on the writings on the medallion, so Lena may have another problem on the horizon besides her creepy mind control experiment.

The things you do for ancient bling.

–Kara finds out about Leviathan too, thanks to Russell being very briefly lucid before he’s whisked away by Andrea. So we got the DEO and Lena on the same track and it’s just a matter of time before they connect.

–Also J’onn notices that mind freezing device Lena gives to Andrea to break back into the DEO has the same imprint as his brother. Lena is gonna have some explaining to do already before explaining that.

–In “Lena could care less” stuff, she makes clear she’s getting that medallion from Andrea after using that mind control device to make Russell hold a knife to his own throat. Yikes.

–We get a Lex appearance in those flashbacks, which sort of makes sense since he will be popping up in the big crossover in a few weeks. Even Jack, Lena’s old beau pops up in them, which is odd unless he’s being set up to come back in the present.

–“What’s the DEO?” Lena isn’t even trying to mask she knows who they are.

–“It’s never too late to make things right. Or at least better.”

“The Book of Occupation, Chapter Five: Requiem for Tavon”

It’s about time for this powder keg of a situation in occupied Freeland to explode, and it looks like it will after this episode. To help bring relief to the parents of Tavon, the boy arrested by the ASA for being a metahuman when he clearly wasn’t, Jefferson asks Anissa to bring Tavon back into town. Unfortunately, Painkiller/Khalil has been sent to intercept and deal with this Blackbird situation, and in the ensuing battle as our hero is crossing over into town, Tavon is killed. Once that news gets back into town, Garfield High has a protest against the ASA soldiers there that almost gets violent, but only gets halted after Jefferson takes a vicious beating by said soldiers as he tries to break up the hostilities.

Meanwhile, Agent Odell is manipulating Jefferson’s family in different ways, such as sending Jennifer to go inflict some pain into those soldiers that beat up her dad. And Lynn learns there’s a secret to stabilizing those metahumans in custody, and it comes from maybe the worst source: the only other person to be stable from the original Green Light experiments, Tobias! Oh, and he seems to have figured out her hubby is Black Lightning, so she wants Odell to “disappear” Tobias after this is over. Meantime, we find out who’s running the resistance inside Freeland, and…its Henderson! And now it looks like it’s time to finally start getting the ASA out of town…

Tobias looks like he’s ready for his audition tape for The Walking Dead.

–Grace gets to be helpful by pretending to be Anissa when Odell stops by, believing Anissa is Blackbird. Of course, I’m not sure he’s convinced Anissa isn’t Blackbird by the time things settle after that Anissa/Khalil fight.

–We learn the new student in Garfield that Jennifer has befriended actually is a metahuman in hiding, and can siphon energy from her. It’s actually helpful before she’s about to go out and help her dad during that beating in front of the school, because who knows how worse that could have gone.

–Anissa doesn’t seem to recognize Khalil, although the last time she might have seen him is when he was in a wheelchair and then dead, so that can be confusing.

–Tobias finally gets de-aged from his old zombie look of the last few episodes to relatively normal because he needs the serum put back into him for Lynn’s experiments. But Lynn at least is going to get her licks in, especially with that pelvic injection she gives him.

–Apparently soaking up a truckload of sunlight in the atmosphere can get Jennifer super hungover. She still had to go to school, though.

–“I thought you were black.” “And I thought you had leopard spots.”

“I’ll Be Judge, I’ll Be Jury”

The murder of an attorney via electrocution by a masked man with an axe turns out to be a pattern when Kate figures out that attorney was working with a detective and a judge to put people who might have been innocent into prison and/or death row. And the killer happens to be the very executioner who killed those innocent people now gone mad and seeking revenge. It’s during the killing of the detective (via firing squad) that things really get complicated for Kate when Sophie is injured with a gunshot, and reveals in her delirium she knows Kate is Batwoman! Kate whisks Sophie away to be treated by Mary, and kept in check until Kate can figure out what to do.

But Kate is occupied with this whole executioner killing spree, and convincing her dad not only that Batwoman is trying to help, but that the person he thinks is the killer totally isn’t. They manage to save the judge, and Jacob kills the executioner, and learns Batwoman may not be that bad after all. Sophie manages to leave Mary’s good care, maybe to reveal to Jacob what Kate is up to, but is delayed seeing both father and daughter having a bonding moment…for now? Oh, and Alice has her face swapping friend Mouse swipe a gun that could pierce Batwoman’s suit, so that’s a thing to note for the future.

To be honest, most of Gotham’s judges wear bag heads and carry axes because…well look what they have to deal with in this city!

—So a big reveal or two happen in this episode regarding that dead attorney, in that he represented Jack Napier, who is known in this world as…The freaking Joker! Also another bombshell reveal is that the prosecutor sent the killer of Luke’s dad to prison. Yes, I’m saying Lucius Fox was killed, and now even worse based on what we learn about this cabal of corruption between the targets of the executioner, the man convicted of the crime may not have been guilty! That’s a lot to take in.

–We get to see more of the weird Alice/Mouse relationship, especially that Mouse is jealous of Alice wanting to still connect with Kate in her own twisted way. And that snide way of killing the guy he imitated to get that gun Alice wanted adds a wrinkle to this passive/aggressive relationship.

–Speaking of sisters wanting to connect with our lead heroine, Mary tries to get Sophie off her thing to reveal Batwoman’s identity, without actually knowing even from Sophie that Batwoman is Kate. Man, Mary is just not having the best time.

–Not sure setting fire to poison gas to diffuse it is a good idea, fire proof cape for protection or no.

–Is there really Bat-Protocol written down? Is it in PDF form or hand written or what?

–“Can you play some hold music while I wait?”

–“No offense, but Batwoman scares me more than you.”

NEXT TIME: Ralph and Barry get into some espionage on The Flash, Kara starts to learn the truth about Lena on Supergirl, the book of resistance starts on Black Lightning, and Kate finds herself having to trust Sophie to keep her secret in Batwoman!