DC Recap Round-Up 3, Week 13: Love and Murder at the Prom!

Welcome back! We got another consistent week of recaps this time, with The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Black Lightning, but next week Black Lightning will take a brief break, while we bring back Supergirl and Batwoman. So, all that hosuekeeping done, let’s jump in…

“Love Is A Battlefield”

Valentine’s Day in Central City isn’t normal, and this year is no exception, as Barry and Iris plan a dinner out. “Wait a minute”, you say, “but what happened to Iris when she was pulled into that mirror at the end of last episode? Did you forget that happened?”. No, and we’ll get to that, but in the meantime, Iris seems to be normal, albeit slightly better at cooking pancakes than she was before and being a bit more better in…well, everything. And those dinner plans go pot once we learn two familiar faces are having a brutal gang war against each other: Amunet Black and Goldface!

Each of them are interested in beating the other to a special prize: a flower that puts out mind control pollen every few decades. They also were ex-lovers, which works out to the Flash’s advantage when he uses that pollen to put them back under love’s spell and…you know, there are some things you just can’t unsee, and that would be one. And while it appears Iris and Barry are going to have a happy Valentine’s Day after all, we then discover the truth that should have been obvious: the Iris that came back from McCulloch Tech is a doppelgänger, and the real Iris is stuck in a mirror dimension! Oh Barry, you got tricked by good pancake making!

This season has been pretty gross. You got exploding blood zombies, and now…well, what those two have to witness. That’s something that never goes away.

–Frost tries to be a matchmaker for Allegra, and that goes well, minus one or two hitches. That’s really the only subplot this episode.

–Fun to finally to see Barry revealing his identity to almost everyone the last few seasons finally cause a problem, when Amunet basically dangles that knowledge over Barry’s head to escape.

–Iris (or Mirror Iris as we’ll call her for now) was really interested in that flower pollen in a way that made me wonder what her true intentions are.

–Nash pops up, adding more mystery to his whole Allegra connection. And wait, is that…was that Earth-2 Harry Wells we and Nash briefly saw?

–“Leave it on. Daddy like metal.” Shudder.

–“Relax, I’m not some whack job meta killer with some crazy good aim…anymore.”

–“Banana! Banana! BANANA!”

“Slay Anything”

The Legends take a trip to the prom, as the newest Encore discovered is an executed high school prom serial killer, Freddy Meyers (get it?), who comes back to life to kill the survivors at a 15 year reunion. When it becomes clear murdering this resurrected killer is going to be tricky in the present, part of our team (Ray, Nate, and Nora) go back to the past to maybe help young Freddy avoid the dark path that awaits him. They seem to succeed (thank goodness for Nora’s fairy godmother powers and DJ work!), but then learn the killer in both past and present was never Freddy…but his psychotic controlling murderous mom!

While our team handles Freddy’s mom (and maybe gets to enjoy the prom), we got some other stuff happening with Constantine this episode. He leaves the Waverider to head to his house in Newcastle to deal with the Astra situation alone…with Gary. And Charlie (welcome back!). John decides to have a chat with a spirit who can help him figure out what to do: Astra’s dead mother! And from the way things look at the end, it is not going to be a pleasant chit-chat. By the way, please subscribe to StabCast, and rate and review it because Ava puts in a lot of work in her down time on the Waverider to do that show. Also, get a discount on some stuff promoted there (Promo code: laceration).

–Hey, I thought we all agreed on a brief moratorium on using “Heaven Is A Place On Earth” after that really good Black Mirror episode? “Supersonic”, on the other hand? Totally cool with that.

–Mick apparently was part of that graduating class (which timeline wise, is a bit wonky), and almost hooks up with that one woman at the reunion before her, and then HIM get killed! Don’t worry, though, timeline fixed in the past, so no one’s dead in the present, so no perma-dead Mick! Yay!

–Fairy godmothers have to deal with a lot of pony requests, huh?

–Zari gets out of confinement after she stumbled into the Waverider last time, and despite her complaints about the bad wi-fi on the Waverider, starts remembering her old timeline self.

–“Maybe next time you should say ‘neigh’?”

–“Dysfunction doesn’t get to choose who you are. You do.”

–“Babe, it’s happening! We’re Final Girls!”

“The Book of Markovia, Chapter Four: Grab The Strap”

It’s time for a international road trip as Black Lightning, his kids, and allies head down to Markovia to get Lynn back from the clutches of her evil captors (and maybe Tobias too, right?). What they don’t know is we got a new player running the bad guy’s show: Gravedigger, a really dangerous metahuman. But we got Black Lightning, Thunder, Lightning, Khalil, Gambi, Grace, Brandon, T.C., that metahuman assigned to them (Erica), that turncoat ASA friend of Lynn’s, so this is all easy peasy, right? Well, it doesn’t quite go down like that, because Gravedigger is…

“OH S**T, IT’S WAYNE BRADY, SON!”

Anyhoo, our team arrives at the enemy lab and things go bad as Brandon tries to kill Dr. Jace (doesn’t succeed at that), and Khalil and Jefferson face off separately against Gravedigger to not successful results. Thankfully Lynn uses some Green Light serum to get her own way out and joins our heroes as they get out, after Jefferson gives Gravedigger a massive jolt. So, we got Lynn, Jace, and Tobias back, and luckily no one is dead from the good guys. I wonder how long that will last going into the final act of the season…

It’s been three seasons, so why not finally do a Right Stuff group shot?

–T.C. has some smarts because he disables that control chip Erica has that would have made her kill Lynn if the mission failed without her even knowing it. And he got to flirt with her, too.

–Lynn kind of underestimates that mind control power she shoots herself up with based on Gravedigger’s power to coerce people, when her order to that general to lose his security is translated as “kill his security”. But she does make him shock himself unconscious, so she’s improving.

–Tobias lets Black Lightning know that he knows who he really is, which only gets him knocked unconscious and dragged back to the helicopter. Good job.

–Gravedigger seems to be a stable metahuman, and maybe older than he looks. Or he keeps himself in good shape, who knows.

–“So…’good morning’?”

–“I’m assuming you’re what they call…a ‘millennial’.”

NEXT TIME: Black Lightning takes a break next time, while Ralph encounters his mysterious paramour on The Flash, the evil Toyman’s reign of terror hits the DEO on Supergirl, Marie Antoinette has an Encore on Legends of Tomorrow, and Kate must decide which of the two Beths should live or die on Batwoman!