Black Lightning Episode Guide: Season 2, Episode 16 - The Book of the Apocalypse: Chapter Two: The Omega

For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here.




Plot

Tobias Whale is on the run and desperate to launch an attack that will cripple Freeland and kill Black Lightning once and for all. With a power outage, a riot and the Masters of Disaster threatening Freeland as Jennifer loses control of her powers, can Black Lightning and Thunder hope to save the city and bring Tobias to justice before the resurrected Lala puts him in the ground?


Influences

The Batman and the Outsiders comics of the 1980s.


Artistry

You can tell the budget for special effects was saved for this episode and the fight with the Masters of Disaster.


Trivia

Anissa makes reference to Batman existing when Jennifer asks her if she thinks Gambi will be all right, saying with everything Gambi has done she wouldn't be surprised if he told them he was Batman.


Dialogue Triumphs

(Jennifer and Anissa are looking down at the injured Gambi.)
Jennifer: You think he's gonna be okay?
Anissa: Shoot. I wouldn't be surprised if he told us he was Batman! He'll be fine, all right?
Jennifer: You know, this is another one I owe Tobias for.
Anissa: Look, you're right, baby sis, but I need you to calm down, all right?
Jennifer: No, I'm fine. I'm... Seeing him out of the blue like that kind of caught me off guard. But it's cool. I'm not gonna blow us up.
Anissa: Good, 'cause I got stuff to do.
Jennifer: Yeah, I know, Harriet. Or should I say Blackbird?
Anissa: Well, I kind of like Blackbird. She cool, right?
Jennifer: You're such an overachiever. It's not enough you're in medical school, you gotta be two superheroes. Or maybe just one now, 'cause of Dad's code?
Anissa: Nah, Blackbird is needed. But I will start planning better and stop lone-wolfing it.
Jennifer: You know, I can roll with you.

Jennifer: If I can float in my sleep, then I can probably fly while I'm awake.

(Tobias is in his office, talking to the painting of Tori. He is quite clearly insane now, laughing nearly constantly.)
Tobias: I know, right? As soon as I kill Black Lightning, I'm gonna scoop up all those poor, lost little meta-humans.
(Lala enters, gun drawn.)
Lala: Damn. You talkin' to paintings now? It's about time I killed your ass.
Tobias: Latavious? Please. The devil deals the cards.
Lala: (grunting) That don't work on me anymore.
(Lala steadies his gun and Tobias laughs.)
Tobias: You think I never caught any lead?
(Lala fires as Tobias keeps laughing. The bullet bounces right off of him.)
Lala: The next one's goin' right between your eyes.
Tobias: I don't think so. E pluribus unum.
(Lala collapses on the ground as his body begins smoking and Tobias laughs again.)
Tobias: Yeah, that one worked. Yeah. Do you feel that bubbling up inside?
Lala: (weakly) What did you do?
Tobias: Lazarus Prime only brought you back. I'm the one who brainwashed you. First level was about control. You clearly passed that. Second level, way deeper. That passphrase was Latin for, "From many, one."  Bringin' out all the tattoos, all the people you killed, at once. And your black ass certainly killed a lot, directly and indirectly.
(Lala's skin continues to smoke. He screams as Tobias continues laughing until Lala passes out.)
Tobias: Yeah, Tattoo-man. Go to sleep. The next time your ass wakes up, you're gonna be buried in some concrete on the East Side.
(Tobias laughs and claps, before looking to the painting of Tori.)
Tobias: What? I know. He actually thought that he had me.
(Tobias keeps laughing... until Jennifer flies through his window in a hail of glass.)
Tobias:Who the hell are you?
Jennifer: Call me Lightning. And this is payback.
(Jennifer blasts Tobias with a lightning lasso and lifts him off the ground as he is electrocuted.)

(Black Lightning arrives to find Jennifer electrocuting Tobias.)
Black Lightning: Stop!
Jennifer: He deserves it!
Black Lightning: But you don't!'Cause you don't deserve to become a cold-blooded killer.

Agent Odell: Let's skip the prelims. I know exactly who and what you all are.
Lynn: You need to leave.
Agent Odell: There's something you need to know. The Markovians have a stockpile of meta-humans in pods. The largest on Earth.
Jefferson: You've been asked to leave. Nicely.
Agent Odell: (nodding in polite acknowledgement) Not yet, Mr. Pierce. Thanks to you, the Markovians have Dr. Jace. And here is the best part. The concentration of meta-humans in Freeland from the vaccines and the Green Light experiment make it the greatest threat to Markovia. It's only a matter of time before they launch a lethal first strike. I'm swearing in Black Lightning, Thunder, and (looking to Jennifer) whatever you're calling yourself, young lady. The Markovian War is coming. And Freeland... Freeland is ground zero.


Continuity

Gambi finds Jennifer and tries to bring her under control while wearing his insulated gloves.

Lala finds Jennifer and Gambi and is ready to shoot her because she looks like she's dangerous.

Gambi persuades Lala to leave her alone after he confirms he is not with Tobias.

Jennifer is able to get control of herself but Gambi develops severe radiation burns in the process.

Jennifer and Anissa take Gambi back to the sanctum, while Jefferson checks out Tobias' hideout.

Jefferson finds the kidnapped Green Light Babies in the pods.

Tobias plans to use The 100 to start a riot after the Freeland D.A. announces that no charges will be filed against the police who killed Cape Guy in 215.

Tobias also has Coldsnap freeze the Freeland power plant to cause a power outage, thinking this will depower Black Lightning if he doesn't have a power grid to draw off of.

Anissa says she doesn't plan to stop being Blackbird anytime soon.

Jennifer says she can help Anissa with her robbing-the-rich act as Blackbird.

Lynn finds Dr. Jace hiding with the pods on Tobias' hide-out and beats her up.

Dr. Jace bargains for protection and asks to be turned over to the police rather than the ASA. In exchange for that, she tells Black Lightning about the Masters of Disaster.

The teleporting assassin from 209 finally arrives in Freeland. It is revealed that he was hired by the Markovians to capture Dr. Jace.

The teleporting assassin kills several cops at the Freeland jail. He refuses to renegotiate a deal with Dr. Jace when she offers him more money, saying that when he gets bought, he stays bought.

Reverend Holt is revealed to not be dead and that he has made his church into a shelter during the riot.

Lala saves Black Lightning and Thunder from the Master of Disasters after they get ambushed.

Jennifer uses her powers to thaw out the power plant and restart the city's electrical grid under Gambi's direction.

Cutter abandons Tobias after he tries to release the Green Light Babies thinking they'll automatically go out and start fighting for him.

The Green Light Babies awaken as Lynn is in the middle of asking Agent Odell for a few minutes to administer a serum to stabilize them before they try moving them.

Lynn is able to use the information Dr. Jace gave her to trace the signal that opened the pods. This enables her to find Tobias' office and the briefcase.

Jennifer goes after Tobias hideout, using her powers to fly for the first time after she sees the location on the comm system in Gambi's van.

Tobias is revealed to be bulletproof.

Tobias implanted Lala with a second code that would awaken all the tattoos of everyone he ever killed all at once. Tobias believes this wouldn't kill Lala outright and plans to have him dropped into a concrete building foundation where he can keep resurrecting over and over inside the rock.

Jennifer takes up the superhero name of lightning and electrocutes Tobias.

Jefferson arrives and stops Jennifer from killing Tobias. He does help bring him down, however, and they turn him in to the police.

Rev. Holt delivers an address to the people of Freeland across the radio and Internet, thanking God for Black Lightning and Thunder and urging people not to lose hope, because love will stop what evil has started.

Tobias is sent to a secret metahuman prison called The Pit. He is informed that he's been classified as a metahuman weapon of mass destruction and, as such, has no right to a lawyer and no reason to hope for escape or rescue.

It is said that most of the Green Light Babies released from the pods were recovered and returned to their families.

It is revealed that Agent Odell has three teens in pods - Wendy Hernandez, an apparently not dead Khalil Payne and Isiah Williams (a.k.a. Body Bag Boy from 202.)

Jefferson apparently makes terrible peach cobbler, which is more bread than peaches.

Agent Odell reveals that he knows Jefferson, Anissa and Jennifer have powers.

Agent Odell says he needs to deputize them for a coming war with the Markovian govenment, who are certain to attack Freeland as the place with the highest population of metahumans outside of Markovia, which is building a metahuman army and has captured Dr. Jace.


The Bottom Line

An odd conclusion to an odd season. Lala's resurrection ultimately serves no purpose, other than turning him into a deus ex machina that can save Black Lighting and Thunder only to "die" again with no apparent answer as to if he'll return from Season 3. The teleporter who was introduced and forgotten half a season ago suddenly returns.The whole Green Light Baby storyline fizzles out as the only named characters are still in the government's custody and every honest bit of drama from the season is negated as it is revealed that Khalil is still alive. The worst part of all is Tobias "going crazy," turning the character into a giggling fool out of nowhere. Tobias shouldn't go mad with power - he can become overconfident, but not crazy. And this was crazy. And not the good kind of crazy. It's not bad enough to make me stop watching but I'm starting to wonder if this series is worth profiling given how few connections it has to the comics at this point which would necessitate a guide like this.

Arrow Episode Guide: Season 7, Episode 16 - Star City 2040

For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here.



Plot

With Felicity's last message leading them into The Glades, William and Mia face their most dangerous mission yet. Meanwhile, Dinah, Roy and Zoe discover something shocking regarding the plot to blow up Star City and who is involved in it.


Influences

The Hunger Games (the gala ball seems heavily inspired by The Capitol and the lavish parties held by the rich while the outer districts starve, the main hero being a teenage girl with a bow.


Artistry

The gala costumes are well-made.


Trivia

Dinah's contact with the SCPD says that a group called the Eden Corps was responsible for faking Felicity's death. Reference is also made to their nuking cities. In the Green Arrow comics, the Eden Corps was an eco-terrorist group led by a woman named Veronica Dale, that Oliver Queen tried to infiltrate in what turned out to be his last adventure as Green Arrow. Oliver sacrificed himself to destroy a biological weapon the Eden Corps intended to unleash on Metropolis.

This is not the first time the Eden Corps have appeared in the Arrowverse. The Eden Corps was the group responsible for trying to activate a nuclear bomb in Central City in The Flash episode "Enter Flashtime" (i.e. F415.) Their leader was also a woman named Veronica Dale.

The CEO of Galaxy One - the company that is a front for the Eden Corps - is a man named Keven Dale. This is likely the son of the Arrowverse version of Veronica Dale or another member of the Dale family.

Connor Hawke is revealed to be an agent for an organization called Knightwatch, which is described as the good version of ARGUS. In the comics, Knightwatch was the military wing of the D.E.O. and their duties included protecting the President from metahuman and magical attacks.These agents wore armor similar to that of the organization Checkmate.

William reveals that the angel investor who helped him get his company off the ground was a company called City of Emeralds Capital. There is a double reference here suggesting that Felicity was his mystery investor. First, City of Emeralds is the name of the largest city in Oz (i.e. Emerald City), which is revealed to be Felicity's favorite book. The Emerald City is also the nickname of Seattle, Washington, which has been the home town of Green Arrow in the comics and occasionally the model for Star City.

It is said that Keven Dale's ultimate goal is to promote a peaceful Star City to other cities as an ideal town and use that to take the Archer protection system global. This is similar to the tactics used by The Ninth Circle during Benjamin Percy's Green Arrow run, where they destroyed Seattle with several terrorist attacks and then used that as an excuse to gentrify the whole city while promoting their own unique brand of Laissez-faire capitalism and using that to take over other cities.


Technobabble

William says that Archer can't be hacked but he did find a way to temporarily make people invisible to it.

The security system at Galaxy One is protected by a DNA access protocol.

Connor has access to a device that can fool a DNA scanner provided it has a sample of the DNA it is meant to simulate.

The bombs are linked by a li-fi - a unified connectivity device - which acts as the brain of the bombs and requires an exterior power source. It is revealed that this is contained within the fidget cube that Keven Dale carries with him.

Functional textiles are high-tech clothing with computers embeded in the cloth.


Dialogue Triumphs

Felicity: This is just a little something that I've been working on on the side.
Mia: For Smoak Tech?
Felicity: No, not exactly. Um There is a corrupt company in The Glades that I am this close to exposing.
Mia:You're hacking again like Overwatch.
Felicity: Oh, well, no, Overwatch was part of a team, right? Team Arrow. And this is solo. So no team, no complications.
Mia: You're a vigilante.
Felicity: No, not exactly. (pauses) Technically, yes, by definition

Tattoo Artist: What's the black star for?
Mia: My mom once told me that all the starlight we see has so far to travel that the stars might not even exist anymore. Eventually, they all just fade to black, erased. That's where I want to be.

Connor: We have to move.
Mia: Didn't you want to go with them?
Connor: Hey. I am only here to back you up.
Mia: Right. 'Cause you promised your daddy. You know, I am really not sure what's worse. The lying or the fact that you actually thought I needed protection.
Connor: Mia, I know that you can take care of yourself.
Mia: Then why the hell do you keep hanging around?!
Connor: Because I care about you! Okay?! I wanted to tell you the truth, but I knew that you would hate me the minute I did. And every day, it just got harder and harder.
Mia: So your big idea is that I would just never find out?! Do you have any idea what it's like to find out that your entire relationship with someone is based on a lie?
Connor: No, okay?! But I know what it's like to have heroes for parents. It sucks. Man, I used to ask my dad all the time why he even adopted me if he and my mom were never gonna be around. But you know what? When I got older, I realized I was proud of them.
Mia: You were proud that they prioritized the rest of the world above you?
Connor: Okay, no, not that part. But with great power comes great responsibility, right?
(Mia stares at Connor, blankly.)
Connor: Oh, come on! Spider-man?
Mia: I'm not really into comic books.
Connor: Okay, my point is that the same applies to us superhero kids. And we have to learn to share our parents and be a little selfless.
Mia: Of course you would say that! You've been a hero in training since you were a kid.
Connor: Well, so have you. The only difference is I got to choose and you never got to make that choice. Until today.

(Rene has sided with the vigilantes.)
Zoe: What opened your eyes all of a sudden?
Rene: Someone very smart with impeccable genetics reminded me of who I used to be.
Mia: And why should we believe you? Aren't you the evil mayor who's been trying to destroy Star City?
Rene: And who are you?
Felicity: This is Mia. These are mine and Oliver's impeccable genetics.
Rene: (stunned) You and Oliver had a kid?!
Felicity: (deadpan) Surprise.

Mia: So what, you probably want me to come help stop Galaxy? A little mother-daughter vigilante time?
Felicity: No. I wish I could take you away from all this. I wish that you didn't have to think about any of this. But I know that that is not my decision to make.
Mia: You know, when I first left home, I was so mad at you. I learned everything I could about vigilantes. I dug up old news stories about how they destroyed Star City. I was convinced it was true that you had lied to me my entire childhood with your your stories of the heroism of Team Arrow. Because you didn't want me to think badly about you. Or about dad. I spent these past years hating vigilantes. Because I hated you.
Felicity: Well, I don't blame you.
Mia: I understand why you wanted to lie to me. To protect me. I can't even imagine what it was like having the entire city turn on you and turn on dad.
Felicity: Mia, you are so much like your father. Out on that field, so badass. I'm so proud of you.
Mia: Mom, there's, um It seemed like there is something really personal about you stopping Galaxy. Is that about dad?
Felicity: No, it's not. That one is on me.


Continuity

Mia Smoak was born in a small country cottage in a town called Bloomfield.

Oliver was present for the birth, along with Dr. Schwartz.

Nyssa Al Ghul trained Mia in combat.

Felicty runs Smoak Tech remotely and avoids Star City.

Mrs. Carver runs the general store in Bloomfield. She has two sons - Henry and Seth, whom she tries to set up with Mia.  Mia doesn't like either one of them, unable to decide if Seth is a Scarecrow (i.e. no brains) or a Cowardly Lion.

Felicity has told Mia that her father was a hero but hasn't explained why it is dangerous for people to know that Oliver Queen had a daughter.

By the time of 2040, Jordan Peele has made enough films to support a marathon.

Mia discovers a secret computer room in her home and nearly sets off a self-destruct while looking at the computer.

The computer screen has pictures of Felicity with William and a picture of Ollie on the Screensaver. When the screen comes up, it shows Rene Ramirez and the shady financier helping his campaign.

Mia developed her hatred of vigilantes after realizing that Felicity had never really given up being one even as she tried to keep Mia from using her combat training to follow in her father's footsteps and wouldn't even allow her to go to the city on a day trip.

Mia gets a tattoo of a black star shortly after arriving in Star City, because of something Felicity once told her about how the stars we see at night may already be dead and blacked out. This was also the source of her fighting name.

Anson is the name of Dinah Drake's contact within the SCPD.

Anson tells Dinah, Zoe and Roy that a group called Eden Corps faked Felicity's death and they are operating out of a business in the Glades called Galaxy One.

Dinah has heard of Eden Corps and says they had been lying low.

Anson says Eden Corps may be ready to start nuking cities again. Eden Corps attempted to blow up Central City in F415.

The coordinates Felicity gave William and Mia lead to Galaxy One's offices in the Glades.

William reveals he changed his last name to something besides Clayton, so nobody would connect him to Oliver. Presumably he changed it to Harris, as he enters Galaxy One as the CEO of Harris Consolidated.

William and Mia try to sneak into Galaxy One disguised as a CEO and his executive assistant. William is able to hack his way past the DNA scan at the gate but Mia sets it off.

Connor Hawke is able to get Mia past the gate, flashing a badge and saying that Mia is one of his undercover people.

Coonor Hawke is an agent of Knightwatch, which William describes as the good version of ARGUS.

Mia and Connor are confirmed to have a romantic relationship. He says he honestly did love her and regretted not telling her he was a spy.

Rene Ramirez knew that Zoe was working with The Canaries but had no idea she was one of them.

Rene says that the plot to blow up Star City is the first step of something called The Star City Reformation Project. While the plans to blow up the city are legit, Galaxy One plans to evacuate the area first. This is being done to expand The Glades outward so what Rene has done as mayor with the Archer system can be attempted on a larger scale.

Rene refuses to believe that Galaxy One is a front for the Eden Corps, saying he would know if they were.

The CEO of Galaxy One is a man named Keven Dale.

William plays the role of the CEO of Harris Consolidated, eventually agreeing that Mia can be Ms. Margo, his associate, rather than his Executive Assistant.

William claims that he heard that Galaxy One was working with a company he was interested in acquiring called Halcyon Pharmaceuticals.

Keven Dale agrees to tell William a bit about the company in exchange for the secret of how William was able to get his company off the ground so quick. William says he had an angel investor - City of Emeralds Capital - who stayed otherwise anonymous.

Mia guesses this investor was Felicity, as "City of Emeralds" is a Wizard of Oz reference.

According to Mia, The Wizard of Oz was Felicity's favorite book and she read the whole Oz series to Mia when she was growing up.

Connor, Mia and William find Felicity in a cell on a hidden level of the Galaxy One building.

Felicity sent them the coordinates to Roy and Dinah could destroy the bombs in the Galaxy One building - not to summon a rescue team.

Felicity refuses to leave until the bombs are destroyed. William decides to go with her, as Mia and Connor decied to escape.

Dinah, Zoe and Roy catch up to Felicity and William, having entered Galaxy One through their ventilation system.

Felicity is revealed to now be using her father's old hacking alias, The Calculator.

Mia and Connor eventually return to help Felicity and the other vigilantes.

Rene realizes Zoe was right and finds out that Galaxy One is planning to bomb Star City that night, without evacuating the city, during a gala fireworks show in the Glades.

There are permanent Archer blind-spots that can be centered on a person for a price. Keven Dale has one of them.


Mia is able to destroy the cube controlling the bombs with a well-placed arrow.

After the vigilantes attack his party, Rene publicly posts a $10 million bounty on Arsenal, Black Canary and The Calculator.

Keven says that the bombing plot being stopped is a set-back but also an opportunity to fully turn people against the vigilantes.

Felicity and Mia reconcile.

Felicity is revealed to be the creator of Archer and it was originally the basis of her home security system.


Location

Bloomfield - a small town outside Star City. We see it over the course of several years as Nyssa trains Mia, from 2019 to 2040.


Untelevised Adventures

Most of Mia's formative years are unseen, apart from her being trained to fight by Nyssa.


The Bottom Line

A solid episode and definite contender for the strongest episode of the season. While it doesn't address any major mysteries (i.e. What happened to Thea, Digg, Black Siren, etc. in the future?), it does a lot to solidify Mia's character and if the rumors of a spin-off based around her as a new female Green Arrow in post-apoc Star City are true I would not have any objections to it.

Starman Plays Batman: The Telltale Series - Part 15

In which we catch up on the news and update our files before going on to a final confrontation with Catwoman.

Supergirl Episode Guide: Season 4, Episode 15 - O Brother, Where Art Thou?

For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here.


Plot

Dying of a mysterious ailment, Lex Luthor is secretly furloughed from prison. Naturally Lex isn't ready to die and seeks out Lena's help to develop a cure. Of course Lena is skeptical of her older brother's intentions, but another life or death situation will leave her questioning just how far Lex can be trusted, even with his own life on the line. Meanwhile, as Supergirl and Martian Manhunter continue the hunt for Manchester Black, James' sister Kelly comes to town after he is hospitalized by an assassin's bullet.


Influences

The Superman comics of Roger Stone (Lex Luthor's dying of cancer caused by Kryptonite exposure), the War of the Supermen storyline (Lex Luthor turning the sun red), Watchmen (Lex's "ten minutes ago" speech.) and Superman: The Movie (the power trio of Lex, Otis and Miss Teschmacher.


Goofs

Lex says that his quote from Epicurus is 230 years old, but Epicurus died over 2000 years ago, in 270 BC.

The final scene doesn't make a lot of sense and demands many explanations for how Otis is still alive and at what point did Miss Teschmacher pull her face-heel turn. Has Lex had a nuclear physicist playing the bimbo secretary just to spy on Cat Grant and James Olsen all these years? (I can see Lex doing it, but I still want to know how and why all this happened.)


Performances

Jon Cryer finds the perfect edge for Lex Luthor. While you can hear snatches of the sarcasm from his character on Two And A Half Men here and there, that sarcasm is very appropriate to Luthor's character. Cryer also manages to go over the top at just the right moments, playing Lex in a manner that evokes the memory of Gene Hackman in Superman: The Movie. This Lex is a smart ass who can't help but show-off his intelligence, quoting Jesus of Nazareth even as he's writing in pain and further pissing off the guards who would gladly sit there and watch him die.


Artistry

The nightmare scene in which Manchester attacks J'onn with images of a zombie Kara and Alex is very well executed. Though we know it's a fake-out, the make-up for Kara and Alex is fantastic and the general pacing and choreography of the scene truly captures J'onn's terror.


Super Trivia

The title of the episode is a nod to the Coen Brothers movie of the same name.

Jon Cryer, the actor who plays Lex Luthor in this episode, also played Lenny Luthor, Lex's nephew, in the movie Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.

The idea of a villain making the sun red in a bid to depower Superman has been used countless times in the Superman comics. Lex Luthor did it in the War of the Supermen storyline to stop an invasion fleet of Kryptoians who sought to conquer Earth. The same ploy was used by the light-manipulating science villain Luminus in Superman: The Animated Series.

The idea of Lex poisoning himself with Kryptonite first appeared in Action Comics in the early 1990s, just before the Death of Superman storyline. It was here that Lex discovered that the Kryptonite ring he had made to keep Superman at bay was slowly killing him, as Kryptonite radiation was lethal to humans albeit it not as immediately as it was to Kryptonians.The same idea was also used in the Justice League animated series.

Kelly Olsen is a new character created specifically for Supergirl. In the comics, Jimmy Olsen was an only child. He had an older brother in the reality of Smallville, but this seems to be the first times James Olsen ever had a sister in any medium.

Lex tells Lena a story about the dog that he owned before she was adopted by The Luthors. He says the dog's name was Ignatius. This is also the name of Lex Luthor's pet iguana in the realities of both the Krypto: The Superdog animated series and the DC Super Pets book line.



Technobabble

James is said to have had a large amount of shrapnel removed from around his cervical vertebra, which was created by a bullet that did far more damage than a standard bullet of its kind.

Lena and Lex are eventually able to get Lena's Harun-El serum down to having a 99% chance of not being lethal.


Dialogue Triumphs

(We hear the sounds of sirens and people screaming as guns fire. The sky is red. We see Lex Luthor looking out over the city, with Lena tied to a chair, close to tears as Lex smiles.)
Lex: "Against other things, it is possible to obtain security, but when it comes to death, we human beings all live in an unwalled city." Do you know who said that?
Lena: Please, Lex, you don't have to do this!
Lex: I'm doing this for us. For the entire human race. Listen down below.
(The sound of screaming is heard.)
Lex: They're already cheering. And it was Epicurus, by the way. An aphorism 230 years old, and yet still as apt as ever.
Lena: You sound like a freshman philosophy major and you're gonna kill millions of people. The world can't live under a red sun!
Lex: Neither can Superman.

(Manchester appears before J'onn as the fire surrounds them, holding a familiar looking staff.)
Manchester: Hello, J'onn.
J'onn: How are you capable of this?
Manchester: When you broke into my mind to stop me from killing the Lockwood brood, you opened up a motorway. It goes both ways. So, whenever you poke around in my mind I can poke around in yours. So I did. And lookie what I found. Your peoples' most powerful weapon.
J'onn: You don't know what you're toying with.
Manchester: Oh, but I do. I dug deep into your mind. And the ground. You call yourself a man of peace, Martian, but your god was one of wrath!
J'onn: You burned my father's grave to teach me a theology lesson?!
Manchester: (laughs) You forget H'ronmeer's punishments. You're a hypocrite. Wake up, man! It's time you followed the true righteous path. And we can put a stop to the hate that's burning this world up, just like it burned up Mars. We can stop it together.

Lena: Eve, what's wrong?
Eve Teschmacher: I understand you wanting to save your dying brother, no matter what he did. But now we're giving him full access to everything in order to save Mr. Olsen. Look, I care about James, too. But I just wanna make sure that you're not gonna let your sympathy jeopardize everything that you've been working toward.
Lena: Eve, I know what my brother's capable of more than anyone. But I truly believe his lone scheme right now is just to live. (smiles) I don't think he can imagine the world without him in it. 

(Lena enters into the room she and Lex turned into a lab, She sees Lex on the floor, having tumbled out of his wheelchair, as a guard stands-by, doing nothing as Lex coughs and seems to have a seizure.)
Lena: What's going on?
Guard: He's making a mess of your floor.
Lena: I'll have you arrested!
Lex: (weakly) Don't blame him. He knows not what he does. (smirks, speaking with a sharper edge) He's on a government salary after all.

Lex: Did I ever tell you about my dog, Ignatius? Before you joined our family, he was my closest companion. And when I was seven, he had to be put down.
Lena: If you're gonna continue to compare James to your dying dog, I'm not sure I'm gonna be amenable to your point.
Lex: I wanted to be there for the procedure. But Mother insisted that I go on a business trip with Father. She thought I was being too sentimental.
Lena: That's our mom.
Lex: That's -my- mom. (sighs) A trip with Father, that sounds like something that ordinarily would've pleased me. But on this particular trip, he brought a woman with him, and insisted that she go everywhere with us.(chuckles and coughs) So, here I was, seven years old, dog dying, Father ignoring me...
Lena: Is there a point to this story?
Lex: At first, I swore to loathe this woman. How dare she take my father from me at the moment I needed him most? But I couldn't keep my promise. Because she was wonderful. She was so kind to me. On the day they put Ignatius down, she embraced me, and sang me this beautiful Irish song. By the end of the trip, I wished that she was my mother.
Lena: But she wasn't your mother.
Lex: She was yours.
(Lena looks stunned.)
Lex: I want you to know with certainty that while I came from poison, you came from love. And if the rest of this family stands steadily in darkness, you will always fall into the light. I knew that from the moment I met her.

(Lena enters into the operating theater where James' surgery has just been cut short.)
Lena:What I'm about to do is absolutely illegal. Any witnesses will be considered accessories to a crime.
Doctor: Miss Luthor. -
Lena: (firmly) Leave now before I fire you.

(J'onn looks at the ring he took from Manchester.)
Kara: You should give that ring back to Brainy. He'll be happy to see it.
J'onn: I'm not ready to explain how I got it.
Kara: James is okay. The whole city is okay because of you.
J'onn: Yeah, but at what cost? Manchester is dead.
Kara: I know you're trying to follow your father's code, but what happened today doesn't change who you're trying to be.
J'onn: But I don't know who that is, Kara. One thing I do know, I am not a man of peace.

(Lena enters into her study, where Lex is sitting in his wheelchair, reading a book.)
Lena: You know, most bad kids burn ants using a magnifying glass. But not you. No, you would build ant hills out of mud and twigs, to scale. It would take you hours, sometimes days. And then, you would trick the ants into thinking they were going home. They would follow the maze you laid out and walk right into an open flame.
Lex: I'm sorry, exactly what are you accusing me of?
Lena: The power in the hospital didn't go off because of the attack on the dam. You did that! And I know because the L-Corp foundation has its name on every scalpel, bench, and backup generator in the place.
Lex: Hmm. Quite the philanthropist you've become. (coughs fitfully)\
Lena: There were children in that hospital, Lex. You took advantage of the attack on the dam to kill the power, while James was on the operating table. You risked his life and the lives of countless others just so I would be forced to test the Harun-El.
Lex: (mockingly) Aw, you figured it all out. Well, mostly. You missed one big thing.
Lena: Yeah, the story about my mother was just another lie to manipulate me.
Lex: No, that was true. That's what made it so effective. But I also had Jimmy shot. Unfortunately, that wasn't as effective a cattle prod as I'd hoped.
Lena: You are sick.
Lex: Exactly. I'm dying. This horrible cancer is eating me up and you are sitting pretty on the very thing that could cure me, and you wouldn't even test it! God knows I'm not going to test an experimental, lethal drug on myself, so you needed a nudge, and a test dummy.
Lena: Well, it worked. James is gonna live, and you're gonna rot. 'Cause I will never, never give you the cure. (to the guard) Take him away.
Lex: Lena, Lena.. I... I'm disappointed that this is your reaction, but I'm not surprised. Which is why I had someone give me the cure ten minutes ago.


Continuity

Four years ago (i.e. 2015) Lex Luthor turned the sun red in a bid to take away Superman's powers. This resulted in his arrest.

As the episode opens, Lex Luthor had a stroke.

Whoever shot James Olsen knew about his signal watch and used it.

Kara hears the signal watch and finds James wounded in his office.

Reportedly, Lex was diagnosed as dying six weeks earlier - something he has mentioned to Lena and the start and end of every phone call he's made to her since.

Lex has been released from prison to be placed under house arrest due to his ill health.

Lex is revealed to have been helping Lena with her research into Harun-El and to have been pulling the strings to give her access to the resources of the DEO.

Lena was unaware that James had been shot.

Kara determines that James was shot in the back with a hollow-point bullet and it splintered passing through his spine. Even in a best-case scenario he will be paralyzed for life.

J'onn is certain Manchester Black is responsible for shooting James.

Alex tries to persuade Lena to use the Harun-El treatment on James.

Kara leaves with J'onn to help in his search, telling Alex to stay with James as she needs to run the office in James' absence.

J'onn tracks Manchester to the place where his father died in 323.

Manchester is revealed to have armed himself with The Staff of Kolar, which was first seen in 303.

Manchester also reveals that the psychic link J'onn created between them goes both ways and enabled him to read J'onn's mind and learn all about his life on Mars.

Lena says that she's been unable to separate the potential curative properties of Harun-El from the part that could give a human super-powers and it is this later part that can potentially kill someone.

Lena asks Lex to help her get the Harun-El cure to work - for James' sake as well as his own.

As children, Lex would make fun of Lena's inventions as a way of encouraging her, thinking that she needed someone to fight against in order to prove herself.

Lex makes reference to how Lena created synthetic Kryptonite in 317 and says even he could never manage that.

J'onn says that H'ronmeer tested the Martian people in many ways and his punishments for failure were severe.

Lex had a dog when he was 7 that his mother wouldn't let him stay with as it was put down. Instead he was sent on a trip with his father, who spent most of the trip with some strange woman leaving Lex alone. The woman was Lena's mother, whom Lionel Luthor had an affair with. By the end of the trip, Lex wishes she was his real mother because she was far kinder and loving than Lilian Luthor ever had been.

Kelly Olsen is a military psychologist.

Kelly says she has had to visit James in the hospital 11 times before this incident.

Dreamer and Brainiac-5 kiss for the first time.

Manchester attacks the National City dam, apparently causing a power outage that even shorts out the hospital's back-up generators.

Lena uses the Harun-El cure on James. It works, healing his spine and all the other trauma to his body.

J'onn loses his temper as Manchester shows him images of his children being abducted by White Martians. He seemingly kills Manchester, vaporizing his body, leaving behind only Brainiac-5's Legion Flight Ring.

Brainiac-5 tells Dreamer that they can never have a relationship, quoting the movie Speed to justify the idea that relationships built on intense experiences never work in the long run. Dreamer is less than convinced.

Lex is revealed to have had someone else give him the Harun-El cure while Lena was away treating James, most likely Eve Teschmacher.

Otis Graves, believed to have been killed in 404, is revealed to be alive. It is not explained how.

Eve Teschmacher is revealed to have been working for Lex for sometime. Again, it is not explained why.

The episode ends with Lex killing all the federal agents on the Luthor Manor property and leaving in a helicopter, only to wind up staring down Supergirl.


Location

Metropolis - Spring 2015


The Bottom Line

A mixed bag, despite likely being the best episode of the season in many respects. The scenes between Lex and Lena are golden and Jon Cryer was a perfect casting choice, able to play the humor and the viciousness of Lex Luthor equally well. The problem is that there's so much gravity to the fact that the show finally has Lex Luthor on it that the episode feels over-stuffed. As a result, everything else that happens feels like a distraction until Luthor is back on-screen because, come on, we ALL know he's about to do something big. Otherwise why have him on the show in the first place?

The Manchester Black storyline fizzles out anti-climactically and what should be a big deal - J'onn giving up the path of peace - seems like a foregone conclusion. Brainy and Dreamer's scenes could have been cut without the episode losing anything. Kelly Olsen's introduction and meet-cute with Alex seems like filler. And even the fact that James Olsen is dying seems like the fourth of fifth most important storyline despite being the center of the episode!

Your enjoyment of this episode may ultimately come down to how much you can forgive the sudden pile-up of unexplained plot points in the final two minutes, all so we can get Lex, Otis and Miss Teschmacher taking on the world to classical music and winning. If you can forgive the rest of the episode for getting us to that point, you'll like it.

Starman Plays Batman: The Telltale Series - Part 14

In which we start Chapter 5, with a shoot-out at Police Headquarters and our final confrontation with Two-Face.