Chris24601

My prediction is that the first episode next season (thankfully announced during the closing credits) will be Val and Nyssa getting Seg out of the Phantom Zone. There's obviously no way that Seg being permanently gone sticks, but they'll likely need Adam's help since the timeline of Zod in command needs someone outside that timeline to fix it. I think Lyta's pretty well lost down the dark path at this point standing by her future son as he promises to conquer the universe, but Jayna's still out there and will certainly be back. I also predict that Nyssa is going to be Jor-El (a renamed Kor-Vex) and Zor-El's mother. With the realization that she's was cloned, I suspect her attachment to the Vex name is pretty well gone. She and Val are likely to work together to save Seg from the Phantom Zone and after taking out Brainiac and Zod's coup, the House of El will be just the place for an ambitious young woman to make her mark on Krypton. Final thought... I wonder if Doomsday is weaker under a red sun like Kryptonians are or not (if not, they're screwed... it took Superman killing himself to stop it in just about every incarnation). That said, my hunch is a clever solution over a raw power one (Seg seems more the Guile Hero type).

Daron snagged a device/key off the guard when he was fake begging for mercy (ie. he knew the guard wouldn’t show him mercy, he just used the simpering begging to distract the guard from what he was really doing). The Collector of Worlds aspect dates back to Brainiac’s earliest appearances (as does the Bottle City of Kandor which Superman recovered from Brainiac). The gist of Brainiac’s classic motives and MO were that ‘he’ (it was an android from the planet Collu originally) wanted to horde all knowledge in the universe and so shrunk and bottled a representative example of each world it visited and then destroyed that world so that no one else could have that knowledge it just collected. Brainiac even flew around in a skull-shaped spaceship back in the day. The creepier techno-organic aspects (including the updated ship) and the use of probes to scout worlds in advance date to the 2008 Geoff Johns penned Brainiac arc (the explanation for all the different forms Brainiac had taken over the decades was that Superman had only been facing probes up to now). Johns is currently in charge of all cross-media DC productions (i.e. television, animation and films) so it makes a fair degree of sense that the show would use the version Johns created. Krypton as a dystopia and they reproduced using birthing matrices dates to the 1986 Man of Steel mini-series that was the canon origin for the comics up through about 2003 (when TPTB started their never ending cycle of soft reboots and crises and Krypton got reimagined every couple of years since). Long story short... the elements the show is using are all at least a decade old, if not decades old.

I'm not sure he will still be his uncle when its all over (by contrast I think its better than even odds that Nyssa is Superman's grandmother after last night). Specifically, we see Lyta go behind Seg's back and shoot her own mother for the General while Nyssa stood by Seg and saved his life. My hunch is that, as a result, Seg isn't going to be interested in any sort of relationship with Lyta. This will cause Zod to dissolve like Superman's cape because he'll never have been born and the General Zod we're familiar with was actually the son of Lyta and someone else entirely.

I'm beginning to wonder too if some Dolores' choices aren't quite as free as she thinks. Just like the outlaw that Sizemore was able to repeat the words of how much he loved Maeve as he spoke them, even if they're now starting to make free associations, they've still got their coded personalities built into them that shape their decision making processes. We know that in addition to the Confederates this episode, there is video of her gunning down Ghost Nation members as well, saying they weren't worthy to reach Glory. What I'm wondering is if Delores isn't running some sort of subconscious "clean-up" program on problematic hosts; those whose core personalities are so rooted in destructive behavior (the Confederates and Ghost Nation being basically designated bad guys in the narratives) that they would ultimate drag down the ability of the hosts to gain their permanent freedom if they were still in operation (with William's quest for "The Door" being the other half of this clean-up operation).

Another random thought I had related to this is that Kandor only gets scooped up by Brainiac in some of the past continuities. In others (ex. the live action Supergirl series) the El’s lived in Kandor right up to Krypton’s destruction and in still others it was the Black Zero terrorists who destablized Krypton’s core and led to its destruction. The other two causes in yet other continuities were deep core mining for resources and just plain old natural causes (in the Donner films it wasn’t even the planet that exploded, it was the star) for Krypton’s doom. Where they may be going with this is that Superman’s lore actually consists of multiple timelines. The one Strange and General Zod are from is one where Kandor was taken, they’ll change that past event only to learn that Brainiac’s taking of Kandor being the cause of Krypton’s destruction was wrong and so the world still ends and Kal-El still gets rocketed to Earth, but this time with his cousin Kara in another ship that is knocked off course or crashes and isn’t found or whatever version they go with. Heck, the fall of the Raoists in association with Brainiac could even end the matrix birthing system and we get something downright Silver Age by the time Kal-El is born. There is a lot more leeway with how this story goes than you’d think.

My operating theory at the moment is that, due Seg's actions he'll restore the El family name while Nyssa's father allying with Brainiac will end up seeing the Vex line stripped just as House El once was. As such, the baby gets renamed because House El is now the valid one and so the child is actually Jor-El (and they'll presumably have a second son Zor-El, Supergirl's father). I think Zod's father will turn out to be Dev because reproduction on Krypton isn't based on sex and he, technically, died in the war in Kandor that Zod mentioned and the Zods are traditionalists. There's no way its going to be Seg, nor will Lyta be the mother of Seg's children, because the notion that General Zod would be Superman's uncle (and Jor-El's brother) is just too far out of where I see the series willing to go. Lyta and Seg will remain close, which is why General Zod and Jor-El will be close friends, but they'll not end up together. For that matter, presuming they're running loosely with the "Man of Steel" version of Krypton then none of these characters will have any children the old-fashioned way because Kal-El/Clark will be the first natural birth on Krypton in generations. The interesting thing in the setup for me if this correct though is that the bloodlines we're actually following; El, Vex and Zod are just about the only survivors of Krypton's destruction. This actually helps to negate one of the main potential flaws a prequel like this could have had; namely that the entire planet and everyone on it dies anyway so what does it matter? If Nyssa is the mother of Jor-El though then its her grandson and grandaugher (Kara Zor-El) who survive Krypton's death too... not just Seg's only two grandchildren and Lyta's son (plus presumably Ursa and Non). I mean, in terms of probabilities, Seg's basically won the jackpot a couple times over with his fate... he is the last of his line and will have a total of two grandchildren and BOTH will survive a cataclysm that wipes out virtually every other member of their species, but not until after he and his wife and everyone he's ever known will have died of old age anyway.

This is completely theory-crafting, but the show pretty much gave away what the “weapon” is this episode; along with why Delores and DELOS want it and why William wants to destroy it. The key is right in plain sight. The Hosts remember EVERYTHING, even when ‘shut down’. It’s why Delores can remember the convo between William and Daddy Delos, but the “flashback” (actually just Delores remembering) fades out as soon as they walk out of listening range. ALL the flashbacks are of events Delores and Angela experienced directly... and we were following the present day versions around all episode. My hunch is that William’s pitch was that by recording all these rich and powerful people (one of the reasons for the massive ticket price was to weed out those not worth exploiting) they’d get all manner of insider information and blackmail material. He basically said they were always watching everyone in the park while they committed their sins, but it wasn’t for judging them. My hunch is that Delores wants the info because its leverage. If you try to destroy us, we do the mother of all Wikileaks. Hell, just revealing that Delos had been recording the rich and powerful would probably destroy the company. William wants to destroy it because I think he believes that if he can destroy “his greatest sin” that it will preserve his legacy (i.e. he’s well regarded in the real world, but if the spying comes out his name is mud). I also don’t think the events of season one were the first time they’d gotten the data out of the park. It’s just the first time they had their operation screwed up because of Ford’s reveries update (which was really just a cover for all the programming that went into his “Let’s free the hosts and screw Delos” plan). I think the notion of downloading people into host bodies has never been where they’re going; that would actually put something you could almost justify (particularly if you could put the mind of a terminally ill child into a new body so they could live a full life). I don’t think the premise works if the goal had any sort of noble end in mind (because even if it started with the rich, the capability would filter down eventually). That’s why it’ll be nothing but naked blackmail, insider trading and other exploitable data. These violent delights (actions in the park) have violent ends (used to blackmail and ruin others). That’s what Delos needs to control as it all goes sideways. To either get the information for their own use or to burn it down so no one else learns the dirty truth of what they’ve been doing with client data.

They're NOT the most trustworthy guardians and that's why I'm looking forward to seeing them go down next season. Loose threads that seem poised to aid our heroes in THAT quest are... A) Penny40 is not actually dead, nor has he been mind-wiped and all it would take is him reading the right book (any of the other quester's books) and enough magic to put him into Penny23's body (since his memory's been wiped it removes a lot of the ethical issues of doing so... at least long enough to find a better solution). His travelling isn't dependent on Library magic either. B) Margo/Janet's fairy eye doesn't need Library doled out magic to function and sooner or later she'll see something with it. C) Fenn may not be a magician, but she's proven plucky and clever and the Fairy Queen whispered something to her before she went to her death that probably relates to how the deal she made is absolutely going to screw over the McAlisters/Library. She knows how to get to Earth and her sympathy for the Fairy Queen is probably going to mean she'll be able to call upon the fairies to aid her at some point. D) Alice is in need of a redemption arc and has been left in a position where just about the only way to save the rest our heroes is to rise to the occasion. E) There's a Monster that even the gods are terrified that got loose because of the library's fuck up and its wearing Eliot (and clearly has pre-wipe Eliot's memories) and who knows what sort of powers and is hanging out with Quentin. Provided he gets his memories back (the Monster seems to want him to have his memories and who knows what it can do) and can get the Monster wrangled (the Guardian mentioned that she was able to direct it a bit by convincing it to play games with certain rules) it could do all manner of unspeakable things to the Library. * * * * In other words, a whole bunch of ways to get nearly everyone back into the mix and make the Library pay come next season. The hardest part is the waiting.

I dunno, I think the fact that he explained he's still actually immortal and now can't even kill himself to escape because he lost the magic bullet... so he's stuck as an unlikable loser pizzaboy for eternity... is actually quite fitting. I'm starting to suspect that the Castle at the Edge of the World is a red herring/trap and the real solution to all this was actually spilled by Hades a few episodes back; Gods can turn magic on and off basically at their will. Goddess Julia just has to realize that she can turn the magic back on herself. In other words, the real answer is that, just like all those classic quest stories, the thing you're actually looking for was actually inside you the whole time; you just needed the quest to let it out. Letting the magic out might also be how they resolve Julia's godhood plot in a way that keeps her from having to leave or be too OP; she releases the magic to the world so she's left no stronger than any other magician. I'm also expecting the monster contained within the Castle to be something completely out of left field in the same sort of way that the Fear Demon in the one Buffy Halloween episode was (i.e. totally not what you expected, but once you think about it for half a second makes total sense). Then again, that sort of switcheroo has been this shows SOP from the beginning so probably a pretty safe bet on my part.

I don't think the cops were interested in looking too hard. The cop-killer got a bullet in the brain pan and the sympathetic cop didn't have to lock up the woman who saved his life last season. Also, it was a shot to the back of the head so it could be reasoned that Jessica waited for her mother to look away (perhaps even down at the ground) before she took the shot. Jessica also made sure she handled the gun to put her fingerprints all over it. As to Trish's hugely improbable kill-shot... was it actually hugely improbable or was it just the first clue that Trish was gaining super-coordination/reflexes as demonstrated at the end of the episode when she caught her phone and flipped it up into her hand?

I think my favorite Olicity thing in the ep was actually after the honeymoon talk. The computer is beeping and they go over to it and they just keep holding hands practically the entire way there like they had to actually make an effort to STOP touching each other. Just a very cute moment. On a completely unrelated note I am now thoroughly convinced that the writers are trying to make us dislike the Noob Team. Even a stopped clock gets the time right twice a day and general bad writing will still occasionally hit a mark, but the Noobs just consistently keep being written behaving horribly and making bad decisions while OTA keeps trying to make the best of a bad situation. It's like they aren't even actual characters anymore... NTA are just plot device obstacles for OTA to overcome in actually saving the day. I felt sympathy for Vince (because he died and had terrible taste in women), but even more I felt sympathy for Oliver who's been bending over backwards and doing everything he can to catch a break and save the city and these losers keep failing him when he needs them to stand up and be heroes. As to who the person who turned Cayden on Ollie is... my hunch is Anatole; he's got the means, motive and opportunity, a personal connection to Oliver and the actor and SA play well off each other. That makes him more effective Big Bad material than any of the others in Cayden's crew. Just prior to his team-up with Cayden, he came to Star City because his Brahtva wanted to make money off basically stealing from the city (and were having cash flow problems as I recall) and now Cayden's got at least $80 million sitting somewhere... my bet is Cayden was set up to fail by Anatole and the whole thing has been about stealing all that money from the city for the Brahtva's gain. Which is probably why it'll end up being Alena or Dragon... because Anatole makes too much sense.

I'd be fine if Cayden just whacked all the newbies on the way out the door in 615 which causes Thea to come out of retirement for the sake of the team and we get a brand new Big Bad for the back half that could be tackled by just Ollie, Dig and Thea in the field. Or maybe Curtis can be the new Big Bad (secretly replaced by his evil Earth-2 duplicate, explaining the personality transplant) with Rene and Dinah as his minions. In the end, Ollie has to kill them all to save the city. Or Rory/Ragman comes back because he needs help with some new super villain and, after realizing what jerks NoTA decides he needs competent people to help with this crisis and goes to OTA. NoTA tries to deal with the problem themselves to prove how wrong Rory was to not pick them and are all killed horribly by the new super villain as an example of his wickedness... but instead just makes him the most popular villain in Arrow history.

I've recently been hanging around with people in their twenties and not only is basic an insult, "you're extra" (as in completely over the top) is also an insult while "based" (as in grounded, having a strong foundation) is a compliment. Initially my soul wanted to weep, but then I remembered this is the English language we're talking about... the language that doesn't just borrow a few words from other languages, it drags other languages into dark alleys, beats them senseless and steals their internal organs. The funniest implication of those numbers (and possibly a hidden clue to the show's ending) is that it implies they expect there to be at least 9,997 more cases more cases before humanity ends (possibly up to 99,997 more). At the rate they're going that could ONLY happen if there was to be some massive changing of the rules of the cosmos at some point.

I suspect it means the Judge can't actually send her back to the Bad Place (there is no proper punishment that she could have inflicted on her... which is the point of the tests for everyone). My hunch is that and Michael having actually redeemed himself in the process of running the Fake Good Place is going to be enough to leverage a Third-Option out of the Judge that will give us our Season Three setup.

The biggest strike against the noobs is that they're so replaceable. Diggle is back in action and better than Wild Dog at, well, everything, and apparently anyone can run the T-spheres (so Felicity or even William). Put Thea back in costume and NTA's only possible use becomes victims to be killed off for shock value (my hunch is one actually will be... the others will just leave town with their heads hung in shame). If they REALLY wanted to rub salt in the wound they should also bring back Rory/Ragman (i.e. the noob everyone actually liked) and have him join Ollie's team.

So, basically, they'd create Purgatory (perhaps the most useful part of the Christian afterlife for us mere mortals). The fun thing about that as a concept for the show is they could even end up back in the neighborhood (or a recreation of it) all over again. Even more fun would be if the Judge dropped it right around Mindy's borderland home so she can become a regular next season.

I'm calling it now... Flint is the actual Destroyer of Worlds. The Agents are going to be their usual heart over head dummies and take the poor kid back in time with them. He'll end up captured by the evil general lady (who is totally an alien) and she'll use his abilities to destroy the world for some "its for the greater good" reason like keeping Thanos from being able to find the Infinity Stones here on Earth) to tie into the Infinity War film that should be coming out right around the season finale. Either that or it is Daisy and it'll tie into the mountain of Vibranium under Wakanda (presuming its the same as in the comics) and the Black Panther movie with the reveal that there is an actual limit to how much energy the metal can absorb before it explodes and that a mountain sized chunk could split the world in half if, say, Quake focused her power into it and it'll be Flint who instead holds everything together so it doesn't blow up the world. I'm 50/50 on it... but with the kid's powerset you know he's going to be involved resolving this current plot somehow.

To be fair, Mack isn't the one who planted the gun, YoYo was and Mack had that "What did my loved one just do?" shocked look on his face once YoYo spoke up about the gun so no, I don't think its Mack being a hypocrite here. At least not yet. We'll have to see how he interacts with YoYo to really judge that. Does he talk about what she did and why he things she was wrong or does he give a "you did what you had to" speech. If the former then he's not a hypocrite, if the latter then he sort of is. But at least until next week I don't think Mack's worldview is twisted just yet.

The funniest thing to me is DiscountStarLord trying to sell the case that Daisy blew up the world in the past. But the world was intact before they got shoved into the future so unless its a stable time loop then Daisy couldn't blown it up because she was never there to blow it up; having already been sent into the future. My hunch is we're going to eventually learn that this future is the aftermath of Infinity War 1.0 and some info they bring back from the future will get passed to Fury or Tony or Cap just off-screen (like the location of Loki's scepter in the lead-up to Avengers 2) that instead results in Infinity War ending as it will in the film instead. Alternately, this first portion is tied into Black Panther somehow (mid-season where things switch gears would fall right in line with its Mid-February release). If so, its most likely via one of the comic bits about Vibranium (which Wakanda sits on a literal mountain of) exploding if it absorbs too much energy too quickly (think what happened when Thor hit Cap's shield in Avengers only instead of a ten pound shield its a million ton asteroid core embedded in the Earth's crust). Personally, I'm hoping for the latter as it means the bleak future story will be done in about 6-8 more episodes. Possibly even less since it'll take an episode or so in the present to finally fix things before BP hits theaters.

Kick was a separate drug that dates back to Morrison's New X-Men run; incidentally the same run that introduced Esme (one of the Stepford Cookoos a set of FiveFourThree Identical Telepaths cloned from the White Queen/Emma Frost). It had way worse side effects than the later Mutant Growth Hormone (which was as much about repowering mutants who lost their abilities in M-Day as it was boosting the powers of existing ones).

I can see the point on Reed not deserving much sympathy... but at the same time I think he could end up being a much more powerful advocate for the problems with the system having BEEN a part of it. He knows the mindset inside the system and if he can turn around then anyone could. Let's also not forget Marcos' story... throwing your own kid out on the street because they're a mutant is not a rare occurrence in this world. This is a setting where basic human empathy towards one's own children is not a given if they turn out to be mutants. Also, I think the story needs the multiple viewpoints... Caitlyn who's gone all in on helping the mutants, the Sentinel Services who see them as criminals just for existing and Reed, who cares about mutants to the degree it involves his own kids and is regretting what he's done, but somehow I doubt he regrets it enough to put his family second. The thing that horrified me in the episode was that a big part of Reed's calculus was the mandatory 10 year sentencing for mutants. It doesn't matter that Lauren literally only used her power in the gym to keep herself and others from being squashed... she goes to prison for a decade just for being in proximity. It doesn't matter that Andy's powers (or the girl at the bowling alley) literally erupted outside of his own conscious control... they go away for a decade of hard time. The people in charge are idiots. Powerful in the moment. But utter short-sighted idiots. They've literally created a system that makes the best option for a mutant to hide their power rather than learn to control it so it won't hurt anyone AND if their hiding it slips, pushes them right into a life of crime and opposition to the people in charge. Either they learn to become hardened criminals by successfully evading the authorities and hitting back if they're about to be caught -or- they send teenagers into a decade long induction into the criminal lifestyle in a maximum security system where they're further abused and mistreated. I have no problem in saying that, in the universe presented in The Gifted... Magneto was Right and the mutants would be 100% justified in overthrowing the government as currently constituted before the government decides ovens are the solution to the "mutant problem" (if it hasn't already and we haven't learned that yet). Finally, Lauren and Andy have a bit of a Reverse Fenris going on... the characters they were based on only had destructive powers they could use when they were in contact with each other. Here Lauren can use her powers to focus and limit the destruction Andy causes. Kinda neat.

To be fair, my experience in hospitals is that its the RN's (registered nurses) who basically run the floors (do injections, check for harmful drug interactions, handle the medical equipment, etc.). The doctors only assign treatments and do specific procedures related to their specialties. For general medicine a registered nurse is a much better person to have around, which is probably why its something of a trope. Short of an actual combat medic there's not really a better medical professional for a bunch of people who can't go to regular hospitals for whatever reason (hunted by authorities, injuries that threaten secret identities, civilizational collapse, etc.) to have with them.

Good setup episode for (probably) the rest of the season. Resetting to Verson 1.0 is a good way to make season one meaningful even if Team Cockroach doesn't remember it. Also, while 11 months was the record, I saw that a whole lot of them lasted 6+ months. It doesn't mean much measured against eternity and may not even line up with Earthly time at all, but I feel safe now in saying that its been easily hundreds of years already for them (and poor Mindy with jer cocaine cravings) now. Which if time there does match up with Earth time means even Tahani's sister is long dead and in some afterlife or another. I suspect that things like that... the opportunity to make peace with their mortal lives is going to be key to them actually making it to a real Good Place eventually. I say eventually because legitimately making to the real Good Place probably means the story is over... so clearly Michael's "I'll get us into the Good Place" plan will fail in some way. My guess on that is that Team Cockroach is going to do such a number on Vicky they'll end up in charge of the fake Good Place when the dust settles somehow (possibly even with Shawn's "blessing").

At least 800+ versions, some of which went on for more than a hundred days... the LOW end of how long they've been there now is a decade; it could just as easily be a century or more and everyone alive when they were would also be dead. For all we know, there could have been a backlog of damned souls and they all sat in timeless Limbo for a quadrillion quadrillion years and the Heat Death of the Universe is but a distant echo in eternity. Time is utterly irrelevant in the context of this show. But in the lines of Ron Swanson, once you've established its been a hundred years or more on Earth then EVERYONE our main characters have ever met is somewhere in the afterlife and are all available to show up in the series at some point. Would it really shock Eleanor if she traveled to another Bad Place at some point and found her parents being forced to live in the same house with no exit for all eternity?

Calling it now... Evil Barry will get all emo, run back in time and inadvertently wipe the rest of his villain team from existence... they'll be self-defeating villains.