Chicago Redshirt

I think we saw most of it. 1. Take out the snipers 2. Have Jack throw out platforms for the one woman (I don't know if we have been given her name or her turn) so she could get down to the gallows. 3. Free Maladie and have her follow woman back to the rooftop. 4. Deploy balloon at the appropriate time. 5. Maladie, Jack and other woman escape in balloon to parts out of London. 6. Maladie is apparently so moved by the rescue attempt that she does not kill Jack or other woman. 7. The Good Touched hope Maladie in fact changes her serial-killer ways and either lets her go in the wild or keeps her in some place that is not the Orphanage. Parts 6 and 7 of the plan are pretty naive. And because Maladie happened to use an electricity trap to kill loads of people, and because Penance no doubt was spotted at the attempted execution, no doubt she will be accused of being in league with her. Hopefully Maladie will spare Hypno Guy to help her out with an alibi. Or it's possible that Augie will lie and provide her with one that paints them as scandalous lovers or something.

I don't see any reason why a super shouldn't be able to run for a democratic office. The same checks and balances would rein them in as anyone. I think Walter's plan makes perfect sense. He wants people to question the Code and doubt Sheldon's leadership so he can take over. So he conjures up a threat powerful enough to kill supers and put them in a position where they will be tempted to break the Code as it's kill or be killed. He does not need to have engineered the specific outcome that Brandon is the one to kill Blackstar. All he needs to have done is create a situation that he can manage in which clone Blackstar kills or threatens to kill enough people/supers that people go "Why are we following Utopian and his Code again?" That seed of doubt gets planted in numerous variants of this scenario, including ones in which no actual supers get killed. It just is brought into sharp relief with Brandon being the one to do the killing. He totally faked being trapped in the clone's head and having the battle with Psychic George to try to dupe his daughter. Presumably, if Grace hadn't invited daughter along, he would have durdled around some and then claimed he saw what he saw was something pointing to George being behind clone Blackstar.

A few minor corrections on the summary: Maladie does not seem to be targeting the Touched. She was willing to kill people who happened to be Touched like Penance, Mary and Amalia. But she is not singling out the Touched or anything like that. If anything, from what I understand, she was killing doctors and the like, perhaps in revenge for her own institutionalization or some such. It's at least somewhat unclear what Lord Massen's intentions are toward the Touched. He seems to have a different agenda than the Purists, who simply want to get rid of them. My take is that he sees the Touched as a threat, but thinks of them as pawns of an as-yet-unseen enemy. Would he be OK with a second round of Touching that kept blue-blooded White guys on top? Probably. To supplement the excellent answers already given: 1. Amelia's future-telling ability seems to come just in brief random flashes, and she seemingly can only perceive things that directly involve her. So in contrast, say, to Johnny Smith of the Dead Zone if you are familiar with that show, where he could deliberately trigger visions of other people's future or past by touching things, Amalia can just be going about her life and she sees what is going to happen. She seems to think her future flashes can't be changed (also unlike Johnny Smith, who could act to change what he saw in his visions).. It doesn't seem like she is able to predict her opponents' moves because of visions of the future. She's just that good as a fighter. 2. We are still waiting to figure out what the connection is between Amalia and Maladie. They apparently recognized each other and called each other by different names, Sarah and Molly and Amalia seems to feel at least some level of remorse for something that happened to Maladie in the past. What that is, and if it really was Amalia or some previous host, remains to be seen. 3. The person you referred to is the Beggar King. He is a crime boss who apparently has his fingers in all sorts of pies. We learned previously that he sometimes tips Amalia and the people at the orphanage as to the whereabouts of Touched people. But he also is tipping off other people too. Amalia pissed him off by demanding to see him. So it could be that he sent his bruiser to kill or harm her as payback. Or it could be that the bruiser was working a different angle on behalf of someone else. 4. The purpose of Swann IMO is a. to provide comic relief b. to give an excuse for HBO sexy-times. c. to provide another angle on the Touched beyond the "they're just regular folk" like the bulk of the heroes believe, "they're a threat" like Massen believes, "they're a charity" like Lavinia seemingly believes, etc. and d. to provide some LGBTQ+ representation The purpose of Augie is a. to show one of the few male Touched b. allow Penance to have an adorkable (but probably ultimately doomed if Joss Whedon has anything to say about it still) romance c. to provide other dimensions and insights into Lavinia.

When you have Hypno Guy in your crew, pretty much anything is possible It's a fanwank but there's nothing to suggest that Real!Effie would have interacted much with the cops. A woman writer back in Victorian England probably would have not normally been on the crime beat, or so I would think. And it seems fair that Real!Effie would not necessarily worked out of a newsroom. Also, Maladie can always have used Hypno Guy to smooth any rough edges with the paper or the cops.

The problem with Sophie in the past was that the writing made her seem bad at her job, a black hole where fun goes to die, and as dull as possible. This episode was one of the few where she seemed generally good at her job, fun and interesting to watch. I wish that they reworked it so that rookie Sophie did not simply benefit from being handed her biggest career win by Stephanie She literally got promoted for something she didn't do, just by being in the right place at the right time. Two steps forward, one step back, I guess. I give the show props for Batwoman reading the Crows for filth and actually calling them white supremacists. I suppose there's probably not many in the audience to get offended by that the way that there would be if, say, a character in alt-universe Flash called someone out as a white supremacist, but still....

Like everyone else, I was put off by Galanthi having not been mentioned before this episode and then it being used like it was the secret word on Pee-Wee's Playhouse. There's something to be said for Penance's point of view: breaking the rules against public execution of Maladie isn't about justice for Maladie's actual crimes. It's about trying to send a message that it's open season on the Touched. Now the way to answer that is probably not to confirm the Muggles' worst fears about the Touched by causing a public breakout of one of the most clearly dangerous people ever. But what can you do? I think the division would have made more sense if Amalia was the "by any means necessary we should free Maladie, especially because I have a personal connection to her" person, and Penance was the "are you daft, woman? She personally tried to kill me and Mary" woman. I believe that we were told that Odium (sp?) was left alive and we actually saw him walking about in previous episodes. Good question. She obviously CAN act normal for at least 10-15 minutes. I would much prefer the character if her crazy is an act she puts on for drama/her personal LOLs and we get breaks from Drusilla/Riveresque babble than to have her really be Drusilla/Riveresque who can feign sanity for 10 minutes. Frank commented that "Maladie knows how to spell." One of her key words involved in her killing is "angel" -- at least, in so far as she talks about stuff she seemingly talks about angels a lot. And so on the surface, for her to misspell that as "angle" and for her to target a victim who is very different from her traditional targeting of doctors would suggest that it's not a real Maladie kill. But with the power of hindsight, we now know that Maladie was working an angle -- kill a reporter so she could take her place and publish her manifesto to enrage people and kill them for wanting to gawk at her execution.

I believe Julia said that the results were double- or triple-checked. But the efforts to fake things could have just been that good, or like someone said, the body part(s) that was/were recovered might have been something like toes or fingers that would be substantial yet not disabling.

My take was that he suspected all along that Stephanie was the one who beat him since she was the only person who ever did. (Apparently Bruce was just AWOL or actually stumped five years ago during his reign of terror). It's unclear as to whether Stephanie was actually in danger in the box trap or not. It seemed to me that her making it to their home confirmed to Cluemaster that she was in fact the person who outwitted him all along and he couldn't deal with the notion that she was smarter than him.

A propos of nothing: throughout this season, how many would you say Mark killed? Not including things like Nolan putting his face through a train and thereby killing a bunch of folks or by his inaction. I'm talking about people he deliberately tried to kill and succeeded. I would imagine some number of the Flaxans (or however you spell the aliens from another dimension), some of the cyborg-zombie guys, and that may be about it?

So presumably, controlling super soldiers is something she still could do. She could recruit people who are loyal in the first place and are unlikely to stray. She could plant bombs in them ala Suicide Squad. She could use pressure on their families. The mind control tech used on Bucky still presumably exists and is functional., and could even be improved on. But let's say that she realizes that her having a personal army of super soldiers isn't worth the trouble. The value of the serum also lies in having the highest bidder pay for it. It just doesn't make sense that the PB would invest an untold amount of money to create a serum worth trillions and then just be like, eh, I'll let Sam and Bucky find the person who is making this for me. Even if for argument's sake she decided consciously to switch gears and get out of the SSS business and into the U.S. government secrets business, there still is no need to tell Sam and Bucky where to find Nagel. Doing so doesn't get her any closer to being reinstated with the U.S. spy system (and she could presumably accomplish that without Sam and Bucky's help, or at least, Sam and Bucky would have been happy to help her without her showing them how to find Nagel because they are generally good guys. The show does not give any reason why Karli did not dose another 12 people with the 12 additional SSS vials she had. Given that we kept on getting told that the Flag Smasher movement was gaining in popularity, it seems unlikely that she couldn't find 12 people who believed in her cause and were willing to volunteer. There was no indication that people needed more than the initial dose to have the full effect of the SSS. The real reason she did not was because the writers wanted to have Zemo have his triumph of getting rid of the serum and Walker to have a chance to take the serum, and they couldn't do that if Karli had used all the serum on hand. Killing Selby makes sense if Selby knows who PB really is and she didn't want Selby to spill the beans (although there was no indication that Selby was about to). Trying to gain the trust of Sam and Bucky doesn't seem like it makes much sense since she already implicitly has their trust. She doesn't need to take additional steps to get something she already has. Setting Sam and Bucky to be hunted by mercenaries and then planning to use them to find Karli doesn't make much sense because Sam and Bucky don't have any more of a clue where Karli is than she does. Also, as far as we know, the PB does nothing with the information that Karli was awaiting the funeral.. It seems improbable that Karli knows that Sharon is the PB but that Nagel had no idea. The sad thing is that the could have made the twist work with a few tweaks to the writing: 1. Rewrite the Selby scene so that she gives Our Heroes an actual lead to Nagel's whereabouts before she gets killed. This puts Sharon in a position where killing Selby makes more sense for her, and where she does not have a choice as to whether Our Heroes pursue a lead on Nagel. Her only choice is to try to manage them. 2. Get rid of the part about putting a $50 million bounty on Our Heroes. Assuming that the Power Broker has that much money around to potentially offer for Our Heroes, it raises a question as to why she has not found Karli and her super soldiers, and why she would want Our Heroes' help. 3. Have Sharon pump Our Heroes for information, realize that they are going to Nagel and insert herself in the plan. You can even still have her hosting the party and the Zemo dance scene. 4. Have a Usual Suspects like montage in this final episode showing all the stuff she was doing as the PB to undermine Our Heroes and why.

I liked this one. Enjoyed the dig at the Avengers, and I'm fine with the retcon of Gary being an alien as well as engaged. I didn't think anything was wrong about the "Sara never liked to be alone" bit. Ava's acknowledging that Sara had an active sex life, nothing deeper than that. She has probably had the most hookups in the Arrowverse besides Oliver. Ava started off very jealous of Constantine, and now has apparently gotten over it knowing that Sara wants to marry her.

The concept of the Code being at the center of everything that goes on this season makes the show more interesting for me. Not for anything the show itself did, because I think it still didn't directly execute these things all that well. But because it speaks to broader points about superheroes and killing. In the beginning of the genre in the 1930s (and I think it's not a coincidence that our OG heroes come from that erra), at least Batman had no problem killing people. But then for most of the next few decades, pretty much he and all superheroes had a strict no-killing rule. Eventually, there cropped up characters like Wolverine and the Punisher, who kill regularly. Fast-forward to the modern era and you have the MCU characters, many of whom have explicitly or implicitly killed and who do not generally seem to have a no-killing rule. You have the DC characters who nominally have a no-killing rule but in most of their live-action incarnations (and particularly under Zack Snyder) use force that would logically put people at risk of death or great bodily harm even when there isn't a need for it. Against this backdrop, it is interesting to think about heroes who explicitly take up a no-killing-ever mantra. But among the many places the show falls down is not saying a) why they took up that mantra in the first place b) what the challenges in maintaining that Code in the face of reality and c) what happens when you break the Code. In his talk with rando supervillain, Sheldon basically said that he came up with the Code because his dad was a bad guy and he wanted to be good. Fair enough. But presumably he knew that sometimes killing in the defense of others is justified. It would have made Sheldon and the show a lot more interesting if it showed or even talked about why he was so inflexible on this, that there had been times that he was tempted to break the Code but knew he didn't, that the notion that effectively by letting super bad guys live, they were morally responsible for the deaths they caused, etc. Also, it seems to me that at least some people would have misgivings about this Code straightaway or at least after dealing with reality. Being in the Union is cool and all, but if it means that people can't use lethal force when they might need to, I would think that many would pass. But then there is the element of actual Code-breakers. Nothing really happens to Brandon for his breaking the Code. He gets put on time out on the farm for a bit. But no civilian authorities (as far as we know) even question him. He isn't kicked out of the Union. And the show could have used more time to show the struggle he had with having been raised with this no-kill value and feeling like he had no choice but to break it, wanting to grow up to be his father but then violating the number one rule. But it is further undermined by the notion that Walt's daughter is a frigging contract killer who they know how to find and at least on the surface are OK with paying $1 million to. How is the Code anything but a joke if you are unwilling to bring to justice a known murderer-for-hire? It starts to smack of the notion that there is extreme favoritism. No killing is a Code for most supers, but if you are related to Sheldon and Walt, you get a pass.

I mean, Chloe is pretty hot so I can forgive him for thinking with lil Hutch. Also, at least he had the decency to get her clean and sober first, and he seems to actually care for/about her, which is more than you can say about most people who are unrelated to her. His hair is, indeed, stupid.

Fair enough that some of his assumptions are true and some of mine might not be.

Walt's presumed agenda is to pave the way to destroy the Code (no killing, no ruling) so that he and whichever supers side with him can make the world "right." Merely killing Sheldon does not accomplish that goal and in fact could make him a martyr and more fully enshrine his stupid Code. It also may be the case that he doesn't want to murder Sheldon; after all, he still may have some love for his brother.. Also, Sheldon still does seem pretty unkillable. Walt didn't necessarily need to know that Brandon in particular would kill clone Blackstar. He just had to set up a situation where he presented a threat that was so big, so lethal and so unable to be reasoned/bargained with that there would be a temptation to break the Code. It presumably didn't matter to him if it was Brandon who did it, Chloe, or some other Super. (presumably he believes that Sheldon simply would not break his own code after 90 years). Indeed, arguably he didn't need clone Blackstar to be killed. He just needed to sow dissension about whether the Code was a good thing, which could have been accomplished as well after clone Blackstar killed three supers. It seems like somehow they have not had to deal with the deaths of supers, at least on this scale, till now. But assuming for argument's sake that Walt specifically wanted to base his whole plan on Brandon killing clone Blackstar, that's pretty feasible too. He is a mind reader, not that he needed particularly to be one to know Brandon's personality and readiness. It's totally reasonable to expect, if not outright know as a mind reader, that if push came to shove and Sheldon's life was in danger, Brandon had both the strength and impulsiveness to cave in clone Blackstar's head. Since he to some extent controlled the clone, he could even have arranged it to die on what was not a particularly deadly blow by Brandon if we want to go deep into the fanwanking. In other words, the fatal blow that Brandon struck might not have been any harder than Sheldon or any of the others struck. But to the extent that having Brandon be the one to break the Code My completely speculative theory is that Walt had brainwashed George on some level to use him as a proxy for all the fights about the Code early on and then made him do a face-heel turn. The George in the flashbacks did not seem the sort of guy who would have those concerns and also seemed to be down with whatever Sheldon wanted. Walt has apparently been trying for years to undermine Sheldon in this theory but was too afraid to confront him directly. I am assuming that Power Rod Guy has been killed, possibly by George, and that George gave Hutch the device. It's possible that there was more than one rod created. One thing I wonder about is about Hutch not having any powers. It seems like most other children of supers have no problem inheriting powers. Is he lying about being powerless, is he not a biological child of George, or is there some particular reason he's a squib? I don't know if I would go so far as to say that Brandon can't stand Sheldon. I think that it read to me that Brandon understood where Sheldon was coming from. I concur that Hutch and his gang of friends were far more interesting seeming than the good guy supes. One of the few times I enjoyed Chloe was in this episode when she came to Hutch's rescue. I'd imagine that over the 90 years or so since the OG Union got empowered things played out like many comic universes: there were various other developments of tech, bio-engineering, etc. that led to other superbeings, along with good old fashioned biological transmission of abilities. There was a glowy bit on board the ship that suggested that the people there might have been irradiated too. It kinda felt like the show was the origin story of the OG Union smooshed together with the modern day generational clash, and I also preferred the OG Union story. The one issue I had with it was that it was anachronistic. Characters talking about wanting to be "heard" and in particular Fitz generally being thought of and treated as an equal by everybody but the one dickhead on the boat stand out.

I don't think Julia ever said what body parts were found. It's certainly possible that whatever body parts were found were plants and the DNA match to Kate was either completely faked, or samples of real Kate DNA were used to prove that parts from someone else were Kate. It's also possible that real Kate parts were found (for instance, whatever happened to her original face) and that either she has replaced them or regrown them. We live in a universe where there is super-science, Lazarus Pits, Desert Roses that can reverse death, among other things. She could just have a very good set of prosthetics.

I think a few of your questions are based on assumptions that may not be true. We can tell from Sheldon, Walt and Grace that at least some of the supers in this universe age slowly/ Those three were presumably somewhere between 20-35 in 1930, meaning they are probably about 110-125 now. They look like they are in their 60s at most in the case of Walt, and Sheldon and Grace look about the age of the actors playing them (40-50) So the next generation of heroes could just appear to be the same youthful age, but in fact be born anywhere from 1940 to 2000ish. I don't think anything has firmly established the ages of any of them except maybe the pop culture references a few episodes back. Hutch's friend referenced Phil Collins leaving Genesis, a reference that the ladies didn't get and so he had to translate it to Beyonce and Destiny's Child. Hutch then referred to 60s girl groups. The implication I took from that is that Hutch is a child of the 60s, while his friends are significantly younger. I have no familiarity with the graphic novel and am unspoiled. But my guess is that some spaceship from Jupiter probably crashed a little before the 1930 stuff we are seeing, that it will contain tech to power up the first generation of heroes, that George or one of the other first generation of heroes will adapt the tech to power up other people and that also there will be natural-born heroes. I will also throw out speculation that Walt is not a good guy, based mostly on genre savvy. It would be too difficult to not have the sibling rivalry potential and the brains vs. brawn potential not materialize.

Also, it does make me wonder why Hutch couldn't just grab the briefcase and teleport away in the first place. I mean, obviously the reason is so that Chloe can get in the mix of this. But why does he need Jack, Gabby and Jacinda to pull off the heist or Magic Van? I could rationalize that he wants his friends around because they're his friends. But it would be way easier to go "Russian brothers," grab the briefcase and then go "loft" and be done with it.

I mean, some people might have the principle that lethal force would NEVER be justified, even if Blackstar threatened to take out the entire state by going nuclear. Principles are principles. I think most people would realize, though, that principles that inflexible are just not going to be workable. It seems that Utopian has been operating since roughly the 30s, so for him to have never encountered circumstances that challenged that principle suggests to me that he was either extremely lucky, extremely naive or extremely black-and-white.

Hypothetically, Amalia could be from non-London part of Victorian England. But yeah, she's probably not from around there and/or then at all.

I think we were told that Kate was disfigured in the accident and was given a new face. Presumably, it is a face similar to Circe's. Presumably, we are seeing Kate's fighting skills with Circe's personality/ According to this, there was a Circe character in the Bat-comics associated with Black Mask, but she was not his daughter: https://comicvine.gamespot.com/circe/4005-77549/

I am still nostalgic for S1 Jimmy as a possibility, but alas, they never really were willing to give that pairing a chance.

No. What about her/it?

I read it as most likely one of two things: 1. At some point, Chyler broadened from talking about just Alex to talking about Alex and her co-stars and the editing/transcribing of the interview didn't fully reflect it. 2. Chyler is one of the many people who sometimes uses "they" as singular. I doubt that there would be a storyline about Alex being non-binary as a character because only so much time..

One way for Sophie to earn trust would be to reach out to Ryan and say "Listen, I know you think of me as Crow-phie, but I have come to see the good that you do as Batwoman and the problems with the Crows. I will show you that I've got your back as an inside person in the Crows. I know it will take some time for you to rely on me after the shady shiznit I have pulled with both you as yourself and as Batwoman. I know we have our differences, but I'm willing to give it a try if you are." One way to not build trust is to sit on the secret identity because if/when it comes out that Sophie knew and acted as though she didn't....well, obviously some might see that as deceptive and untrustworthy. I don't think letting Team Batwoman know Sophie knew would be a distraction at all. Indeed, the only reason that Batwoman's secret is safe (at least for now) is that Sophie knew the identity and was able to delete Ryan's record. Again, this is probably something Luke should have thought of, considering revealing Ryan to Sophie the lesser of the evils to all Crows knowing Ryan's secret identity.