DC Recap Round-Up 3, Week 12: Flash-Back!

29 Feb

Welcome back! Besides Black Lightning, we got returning favorites like The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow this time around, while Supergirl and Batwoman take a break. So, how about we just get to it, shall we?

“Marathon”

So, Barry Allen didn’t die in Crisis on Infinite Earths, but that relief of knowing he’s avoided a fated death hasn’t exactly made him feel better. When Diggle shows up with a present from the late Green Arrow, Oliver Queen (the mask Barry made for him when they first met), he’s convinced Ollie has one more mission for him. Turns out it was just a farewell gift from one good friend to another, and nothing more than that. While Barry’s off dealing with all that, Iris West-Allen is having quite a tumultuous time.

Iris is investigating that criminal cabal she discovered before Crisis, who we learn is called Black Hole, and has sent a new Doctor Light, a hitwoman with a deadly energy weapon, to shut Iris up. While Doctor Light is pulled back once Iris has showed her card of incriminating evidence against McCulloch Technologies (who made the energy weapon Doctor Light uses) to its CEO, its Iris’ interest in finding out what happened to the CEO’s wife, Eva (who was running things before she vanished), that leads to one scary development. Iris looks at Eva’s office for evidence of foul play, and finds a large mirror…that sucks Iris in! Do we got a new Mirror Master here?

“Oliver might be dead, but I didn’t puke once when your speed ran me over here. Look on the bright side of things, I say, Barry.”

–Cisco is in not the best of moods, learning Earth-2 is gone, thinking if he didn’t give up his Vibe powers earlier that he could have done something to stop Crisis, and Nash still being around after sort of starting Crisis in the first place. Well he’s going on a break from Team Flash for a bit, which…is never reassuring. Paging Wally West, anyone?

–Nash has a photo of her with Allegra, which means…someone might have a parallel universe daughter running around?

–Caitlin/Frost comes pretty close to getting killed here during that fight with Doctor Light. Only by chance does she get spared because of Iris’ threat to McCulloch.

–We got a new title sequence! Been long enough.

–Diggle takes quite a bit of motion sickness pills. He’ll probably have to puke up that before puking after getting super runned over to Lian Yu in the first place.

–Jitters re-opens in time to get robbed, which doesn’t go well because: a) Flash ; and b) maybe wait until the end of the day when Jitters has cash before robbing it!

–“Gorillas are atheists.” Oh by the way, Gorilla City is a thing in this new Earth now. Probably more island than city, but who knows?

–“Life’s a marathon, not a sprint, Barry. Slow down and enjoy it.”

“Miss Me, Kiss Me, Love Me”

After a brief “chat” with Astra about what she has done, Constantine comes back from Hell to tell the Legends about the whole Encores situation. The newest Encore to hit the Legends’ radar is gangster Ben “Bugsy” Siegel, who is not dead and has a demonic revolver pistol to control the crime world. The Legends craft a scheme to capture Siegel and take him back to Hell, and involves our crew playing in their own version of a film noir. John takes Siegel to Hell, and at one point considers using that demonic gun to kill Astra, but relents and just shoots Siegel with it. Oh John, I don’t think you should try saving Astra anymore.

Meantime, Behrad takes Nate to see his family for a family dinner, which includes a different Zari, who is a vapid “social media influencer” (ugh). While Nate is convinced he has seen Zari before, she is less convinced of this, and more curious why Behrad is always nowhere to be seen, why does he have the family totem, and why does she remember seeing him grown up in HeyWorld back when she was a kid, etc. Through bad timing, Behrad and Nate accidentally bring Zari onto the Waverider, which…is taken about as well as you would think it is by the rest of our team. Oh, and Ava drunkenly sings a Bell Biv DeVoe tune in the past, which is a disaster of epic proportions.

Oh, Ava. Hopefully you won’t remember what happened.

–New title sequence! We gonna get this with the rest of the Arrowverse titles?

–So, we’re we all fooled Ava’s performance of “Poison” was going that well until we see how much of it was in her head? And yeah, I’m sure Mick taped it.

–Watching John attempt an American accent (let alone a American film noir detective type accent) was quite humorous.

–“Z-Nation”, huh? Just saying, it sounds very familiar…

–Ray passing himself off as “Deputy Chief Quimby”. Cute.

–“Should we tell her the mission’s over?” “Yeah, let her finish.”

–“Forget it, Ray, it’s Burbank.”

–“Hey, I spat in that! Old prison habit.”

“The Book of Markovia, Chapter Three: Motherless Id”

Before we get to what happened to Lynn last episode, let’s get to another open thread from that: Painkiller/Khalil captured by our heroes. To get Khalil’s mind out of the prison of that Painkiller controlling personality, T.C. takes Jen into Khalil’s brain to get him out. By doing that, though, Khalil learns about all the evil stuff he did under the influence of Painkiller, like say, killing Khalil’s mom, and takes it about as well as someone would once Khalil is back in control of his own faculties. Plus his touch is still poisonous, so that’s gonna put some speed bumps in anything regarding Jen.

Meantime, Lynn finds herself a prisoner in Markovia with Dr. Jace, and Tobias is now the lab rat of the Markovians. Once Jefferson learns about this, the ASA comes calling for a temporary alliance to retrieve Lynn, but Jeff has some conditions of his own. Those conditions include pardons for his and the past crimes of those he employs for the rescue mission (which is pretty much all our heroes). I’m sure Colonel Grey has some plan to screw our heroes over (and we get clues she probably does in a chip-controlled meta she enlists to be attached to the mission), but we’ll have to wait until next time to see that.

I’ve seen too many Nightmare on Elm Street movies to know locking the dream monster up is a temporary solution to things.

–Dr. Jace has training manuals on how to interact with people? Well, as we see after learning that, it doesn’t quite work because Lynn just starts smacking her down the second they meet again.

–Also, Lynn finally learns how she’s been tricked into her Green Light addiction, which is one massive bummer for her, especially since her captor basically dangles some Green Light to keep her in line.

–Jefferson calling this group “the Outsiders” is a nice nod to something this show has been slow in setting up for a while.

–Tobias has spent a LOT of this season chained up. Considering how evil he is that’s not a problem, but it’s a LOT of time, just saying.

–“What, is Thunder afraid of a little pussycat?”

NEXT TIME: Barry handles a metal on metal gang war on a Valentine’s Day The Flash, a prom night slasher becomes a deadly Encore on Legends of Tomorrow, and our heroes head to Markovia for a risky rescue mission on Black Lightning!