Arrowverse Roundup - Week 19 Review

Just Legends of Tomorrow and Black Lightning aired this week - and there were some interesting things in both. There will be spoilers for this week, so don't read unless you've seen the episode. I am feeling a bit under the weather, so I apologize for the quality of these; they weren't deep dives, more just a running commentary and some random thoughts on the episodes.

You can see all of this season's reviews right here.

Legends of Tomorrow - Episode 3.15 - "Necromancing The Stone"

 

Have you ever wanted to see John Constantine play Dungeons and Dragons? Then Legends of Tomorrow is the show for you! Mallus finally took over Sara, and the Legends were really no match for her.

I've come to really appreciate Ava Sharpe. I like the dynamic she has with other characters. She really loves Sara, and that spawned her jealously of Constantine, which made for great TV.

It is interesting, because Ava Sharpe and John Constantine are completely opposite people - to the extreme. That is the beauty of Sara, she can find that one similarity in everybody.

Mallus showed all of the Legends what they feared most, and the best cameo to come out of that was Violett Beane's Jesse Quick offering closure to Wally West. But Mallus put half the team in the med bay, so it proved he was formidable opponent, especially using the master assassin Sara Lance as his vessel.

In order to defeat Mallus, they wanted to use as many totems as they could. So Mick - known as Heatwave - brandished the fire totem. It works, but I wish it Jax instead. He left because of Stein's death, after failing to make the Firestorm Matrix in singular form. Maybe it still can be, in the future.

This episode served as preview to what is to come for the finale. They are going to need all hands on deck, including Constantine. Which brings me to something that bothers me. The Legends couldn't get a hold of Constantine because he doesn't have a phone, but the last thing he did when we last saw him was give Sara a card with his phone number on it. What?

As far as references go, there was an Oliver Queen one in referencing Damien Darhk's death. But more importantly Beebo was referenced again! Gary had Beebo socks on. It was a fun scene, but not as great as the parallels laid out between the Legends journey and Gary's D&D adventure.

The episode overall was okay. It did what it needed to do, but had a lot of exposition. It looks like the episode will tackle the Ava mystery next week, and I am very intrigued by that.

Black Lightning - Episode 1.09 - "The Book of Little Black Lies"

This show continues to impress. Jennifer found out about her family's super history, and the way the show handled it was great.

Jennifer and Anissa are having the same journey - but are taking radically different paths to get there. They will both be superheroes, eventually. Anissa is almost fully fledged now, she even got her super suit!

Black Lightning got one of the biggest superhero tropes ever - we got a scene where Black Lightning and Thunder walked away from an explosion in slow motion. Almost every super hero TV show has that shot in one way or another. Welcome to the club, Black Lightning.

Both Vixen and Supergirl were name dropped, which means they both exist on this Earth. It also opens the door for guest stars later on, which would be nice.

Inspector Henderson got in deeper, trying to help Black Lightning, and now I am not sure if he will survive the rest of the season.

China Anne McClain, who plays Jennifer, did some of the best acting of her career. You really felt for her and her conflict, and it was nice to see her out of her normal comfort zone.

This is the second episode in a row where we have not seen or heard from Tobias Whale. He will come back in a big bad way, I am sure, but it is kind of strange that we didn't see him. We didn't even see La La in his place, this was all about the ASA, which is sort of the Netflix-Marvel formula - a new villain comes out of the shadows in the third act of the season.

Lynn did a lot of work here too, helping Jennifer deal with this. The scenes between those two have been great. Lynn is the odd one out though, as the only one without special abilities.

I truly do think Gambi is trying to right his wrongs, and I think he will earn redemption. Whether that is earned through his death or not remains to be seen, but I definitely think it is coming.

Not many episodes left now, I like the track that the show is going down, and I am looking forward to how it ends.