DC Recap Round-Up 3, Week 7: Secrets Exposed!

24 Nov

Welcome back! We’re back to a full deck of recaps for The Flash, Supergirl, Black Lightning, and Batwoman, so no need to waste time. Let’s get to it…

“License To Enlongate”

Ralph Dibny has been looking into this Sue Dearborn missing persons case for a while now, and he believes he has found a lead on her in Midway City. Barry decides to tag along with him for help, and also because he has his own plan of setting him up as Central City’s main hero if the fate foretold for Barry in Crisis is to be believed. While our duo doesn’t find Sue, they do find a plot to sell off a deadly satellite weapons system to whichever bad guy pays the most! Barry and Ralph mange to stop the satellite weapons demonstration set for Central City, and the bad guy and his henchwoman Ultraviolet.

Speaking of Ultraviolet, her cousin Allegra is recruited by Nash Wells to use her powers on that chamber being used by The Monitor. It helps he promises her some big stories regarding the whole multiverse thing, but whatever works. While Barry gets some recognition from the police for his forensic work (fun fact: do you know he still works for the police?), Ralph gets some recognition for his heroics. Too bad for Ralph that at episode’s end he gets an unexpected visit from the evil Ramsey Rosso, and he doesn’t look all that hot!

“This is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into, Barry!”

–Barry can’t phase through that Eternium doorway of the Monitor’s secret chamber, hence the need for Allegra’s help from Nash. By the way, who does Allegra remind Nash of, I wonder?

–Cecile gets to help out Chester, fresh from being put in a containment pod in the season premiere after that black hole mess, in getting his life back together and maybe getting a date with one of the waitresses from Jitters. Also, has Jitters been closed after that black hole incident, or did I hear that wrong?

–Considering Ultraviolet’s appearance does resemble a Mortal Kombat character, and the heavy amount of blood oriented mayhem of the last few episodes, that this didn’t end with one MK fatality is surprising.

–Remington Meister really falls into the Bond villain cliches, huh? He even has a large laser to carve up Barry and Ralph!

–“Oh come on, that line is literally from Goldfinger!”

–“You gotta take it easy on the Bond quotes, man!”

“Tremors”

We got quite a bit of ground to cover this episode, so before we get onto the big blow out between Kara and Lena, let’s discuss Leviathan. It turns out Leviathan was started in ancient times by Rama Khan, an alien from a neighboring planet by Krypton that also happened to get annihilated too. Khan currently is not happy Lena knows about Leviathan, and a little fed up with subterfuge, so he personally goes out to kill Lena, only she gets saved by Kara. And then Kara finds out who Rama Khan is and learns there are weapons to defeat him in the Fortress of Solitude, and guess who she invites to go with her?

After sending Khan packing from the Fortress after he stops by to finish the job, Kara learns Lena has been playing her to get her hands on Myriad, the mind control technology used in season one. And then things start to come out, like Lena’s anger over Kara lying to her and the whole “I killed Lex Luthor to protect you all” we tend to forget because, a LOT of stuff in that last season finale. While this trip to the Fortress was happening, Lena also took control of the Fortress and uses its security system to imprison Kara while she finishes her big project. As you can guess, Kara is pretty shaken up by this reveal, and certainly getting imprisoned in your Fortress doesn’t help things. Oh, and other stuff happened too, such as…

This is why you don’t invite friends to your secret Arctic Fortress. They just start stealing your deadly alien weapons or your DVDs. It’s always the same thing.

–J’onn took another one of his vision quests and ran into his Martian ghost dad, who confirmed Malefic was probably alive, and that J’onn should try to reach out to his wayward brother. Well, he finds Lena’s lair where he’s being held (of course, not knowing whose lab it is), and allows Malefic to see his pain over what happened. And…Malefic hugs him? I wonder how this will really pan out.

–Alex has a little drama with Kelly, who is rattled after Alex survives that exploding Rip Roar corpse, and considers splitting up to avoid losing another loved one in such a similar way Kelly lost her fiancé, but everything’s cool now.

–As for the other survivor of said Rip Roar bomb, Brainy has a little damage with knocks his inhibitor chip loose, leading to some fun with him speeding through his investigation of Leviathan without any concern or forethought. Malfunctioning Brainy can either be funny or like last season, chilling. Let’s hope this doesn’t start teetering towards the latter.

–Rama Khan has some lady associate who thinks Leviathan should be more of a technological threat, so I’m thinking she might be a bigger thorn later on this season.

–Deputy Director Skinner from The X-Files (Mitch Pileggi) is Rama Khan, who happens to be a villain introduced in the Justice League comics.

–Can we just note how Kara and Lena’s scene in the Fortress was so gut wrenching? I mean, look how the miscellaneous notes for this are basically everything but that!

–“You’re on Krypton, old man!”

–“I’m not a villain. You shouldn’t have treated me like one.”

“The Book of Resistance, Chapter One: Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”

A lot of drama happens, and that’s not just because of what happened to poor Tavon last episode, although some of it happens because of how he died. For one thing, Anissa is barely fighting off that poison that Khalil/Painkiller cut her with, and it’s not until Gambi finds a cure that she seems fine. Meantime, Jennifer is looking into her new fellow metahuman Brandon, and he seems to be very interested in researching the Pierce clan. And Jefferson is lashing out as Black Lightning, which is leading to some serious threats from Odell.

Of course, Odell’s threats seem to be less of a problem than maybe Jefferson realizes, as the Markovians infiltrate an ASA outpost where Odell has laid out a trap. But those Markovians and their help, the teleporting assassin from last season, escape that trap, but leave Odell dead! Even with Odell a corpse now, his machinations are still causing problems, such as Lynn having to rely on Tobias for her research and feeding him info on the metahumans to keep her family from being endangered. And she eventually leaves the Pierce home again, because of all that pressure and being addicted to that mild Green Light. Damn it, Odell is a pain in the ass even after he’s dead!

You see? You know you f**ked up right there, don’t ya, Odell?

–Henderson enlists the street reporter that was with Anissa a few episodes back to work with the resistance to get info outside of Freeland about the occupation. So that little plot thread is finally looking to pay off.

–Gambi has to keep quiet about Anissa being poisoned, but has a bigger moment when he follows up on the origins of that poison, he discovers Khalil’s grave is empty!

–Lynn does not give Tobias info on the really powerful metahumans in custody, but still, this can’t be good.

–Besides our teleporting assassin returning, we see Dr. Jace is alive and well, working with the Markovians.

–R.I.P. Agent Odell. You got lucky Jefferson didn’t get to barbecue your ass.

–“I’m still recovering from my fight with Bruce Leroy.” Last Dragon reference!

–“Have you been reading Michelle Obama’s book recently?”

“Tell Me The Truth”

An assassin paid off by Alice has brought some trouble to Gotham, and brought with it someone pursuing said assassin: Julia Pennyworth, Alfred’s daughter! Julia has a past history with Kate (quite a past, if the innuendo suggests), so Kate is more than happy to get a little extra help hunting down this assassin and get advice on some more personal things. Those “personal things” happen to be Sophie and her believing Kate is Batwoman, and willing to rat out Kate’s secret to Jacob in order to protect her. This conflict brings out some unfinished business regarding their break-up years ago, and so Kate stages an elaborate hoax, with Julia dressing up as Batwoman and Kate appearing as “Batwoman” meets with Sophie to throw her off.

Unfortunately at that moment, that assassin shows up to shoot “Batwoman” with that stolen gun that can punch through Bat-armor and knocks “Batwoman” out (but not kill her, because Alice didn’t load it with any ammo), leaving her arrested by the Crows. Kate manages to break Julia out, and it looks like Sophie is off the trail of Kate being Batwoman, for now. But we have another problem: being Mouse has been impersonating someone we know: Jacob! Alice has taken Jacob captive and she’s planning to have the family over for a little tea party!

Awwww dammit, all the cool kids get to hang out in the secret Bat-lair!

–There’s mention of someone Alice answers to named Sayifah, who if you know anything about Batwoman from the comics, you know this will be an interesting adversary that is being set up for down the road.

–So Jacob has been Mouse throughout the whole episode, huh? That does add some wrinkles to things, like maybe patching things up with Catherine after filing for divorce from her between episodes. And of course, he was probably hearing Sophie’s confession that Kate was Batwoman (all to actually protect her from that super gun, believe it or not), so…Jacob still knows nothing about his daughter.

–We have a good amount of positive gay representation on this show, so it adds up there would be a scene or show that not everyone shares that opinion, especially in that restaurant scene with Kate and Sophie. But Late deals with that discrimination in stride by buying property across the street and wanting to turn it into a gay bar! And Mary gets to bond with Kate in decorating it! Win-win!

–So now we learn more about Sophie’s state of mind, as to why she’s married to a guy (surprise, it’s because of narrow-minded religious parents), and why she stayed in the military (sigh, because Jacob suggested it). Of course, who knows where she’ll be now that Kate has put her in the friend zone and her hubby is really skeptical of all of that.

–Well, that info about Kate being a expert sharpshooter even blind drunk turns out to be helpful in disabling that Crows van holding Julia.

–Julia is off to run down that assassin, so who knows, maybe we’ll see her again.

–“So you ‘know each other, know each other’?” Yes Luke, that’s how it sometimes works.

NEXT TIME: We take a week off, but will be back with the last of the Recap Round-Up before Crisis on Infinite Earths, starting with Barry getting drugged by the evil Bloodwork in a two-part The Flash, Kara deals with the fallout of Lena’s betrayal and Rama Khan on Supergirl, Jefferson comes into conflict with Henderson’s resistance in Black Lightning, and Kate and family are going to a deadly tea party with Alice in Batwoman!