Plot summary: The Thanagarians lure Hawkgirl into a trap while Green Lantern worries about his girlfriend and his ex being on a mission together.

Notes and Trivia

Episode: 21 (S2.E8)

Original Air Date: June 18^th, 2005

Directed: Joaquim dos Santos (11) Dan Riba (11)

Written: Stan Berkowitz (6) (story) and Dwayne McDuffie (9) (teleplay)

Animation: DR Movie Co., LTD (11)

Music: Michael McCuistion (8) and Kristopher Carter (8)

Bruce Timm has gone on record to say one of the main reasons for this episode was they were so impressed with Elizabeth Pena’s work in ‘Starcrossed‘ that they wanted to find a way to bring her back.

This episode was originally entitled ‘Mystery in Space’ but was changed out of fear of people thinking it was about the comic of the same name’s protagonist, Adam Strange. A lot of streaming services still use the scrapped title to this day for some reason.

The character credited as ‘Hawk #2’ is David Barrera, the husband of Maria Canals-Barrera.

This marks our third acknowledgement of Old Yeller being John Stewart’s favourite movie.

DCAU Debuts

I know his first big episode was in ‘Task Force X‘, but that episode was already over-flowing with characters and there’s nobody else to bring in here. There are TEN DC comic characters who use the name Vigilante. This JLU incarnation borrows from the original, Greg Sanders/Saunders, who debuted in 1941 (created by Mort Weisinger and Mort Meskin) and rocks a Wild West motif for… reasons. Freddy Stroma has immortalised the Adrian Chase version through his dynamic work on Peacemaker.

Recap

Green Lantern acts cold and distant towards Vixen who has to ambush him to get his attention. John insists everything is fine but won’t return her affections. What a dick.

Vixen responds by volunteering for a rescue mission to an Nth Metal asteroid led by Shayera (with Vigilante assigned to the squad too), which John is none too pleased about.

The distress call turns out to be a trap set by a squadron of Thanagarians, who reveal the empire lost their relentless war following their failed invasion, with Hro Talak perishing in battle.

The trio flee into the jungle, arguing about battle tactics and where Shayera’s loyalties lie. Vixen is captured, and a feint to betray Shayera doesn’t work.

Seeing no other choice, Shayera surrenders. Vigilante steals the Thanagarian’s ship and saves Vixen, who fights off Paran Dul, while Shayera straight up murders Kragger

In the aftermath Shayera and Vixen get drinks together and ostensibly become friends despite laying out on the table that there are still feelings between John and Shayera.

Best Performance

It’s pretty awkward that they wrote a whole episode to bring back Elizabeth Pena as Paran Dul only for her to be much worse when given more lines to work with. I actually did like her in ‘Starcrossed‘ and got why this was their impulse, but she sounds really disinterested here. There is a lot of awkward exposition, I suppose, but even with that caveat this is a poor showing. Hector Elizondo is fractionally better as the addled Kragger, but it’s nothing special.

Even the usually reliable Maria Canals-Barrera is very much stuck in first gear.

There is a certain charm to hearing Nathan Fillion and Gina Torres banter again, and Fillion clearly had a lot of fun hamming it up as Vigilante. Fuck it, he can have the award, I suppose. Nobody else is fighting him all that hard for it.

Episode Ranking

I don’t care if this is controversial to say, but I think doing this episode undercuts the impact of ‘Starcrossed‘. You already told this big ambitious story full of shock and betrayal, a grand epic to cap off Justice League with lasting ramifications. Bringing the Thanagarians back for revenge against Shayera doesn’t accomplish much other than greatly diminishing results in my opinion. Then Thanagarians look orders of magnitude worse, and the episode is generally packed with a dirth of dumb ideas.

For starters, it was absolute lunacy to depict a battalion of soldiers with WINGS opting to remain on the ground and fire repeatedly on a big rock their targets are hiding behind, rather than simply flying high enough to get the drop on them in seconds. I get it when the heroes are in the jungle with ample tree line to conceal their position and it becomes a game of cat and mouse, but the entire big rock set piece is clearly in a huge open space. It’s not quite as bad, but Vigilante relying on one of them walking up behind him to be caught in his trap rather than flying past it doesn’t seem like a decision he should be rewarded for.

I personally wouldn’t have revealed Paran Dul was behind the fake distress call right before the opening titles and then gone out of my way to hide who the attackers are once the rescue team realise it’s a trap. Make a choice, ya know? Conceal things from the audience and the characters or don’t. Otherwise the audience is bored being strung along on a mystery they already have the answer to, as is the case here.

The crux of the episode is the in-fighting between Shayera and Vixen, with Vigilante bickering with anyone and everyone in a misguided attempt to make him fun. Hawkgirl was always hot-tempered, and Vixen is plenty feisty too, but I didn’t think any of them ended up looking very good here. Again, feels a little late for people to still be mad at Shayera over ‘Starcrossed’ when she was let back on the team a while ago now, and they did a much better fallout episode with Wonder Woman holding a grudge in ‘The Balance‘. I’m not against adding in details like Vigilante being locked up during the Thanagarian invasion, but do it closer to ‘Starcrossed’ or don’t do it. Theoretically Shayera is having to learn to play well with others again after going lone wolf mode… but we know she was hanging out with Dr. Fate and his crew, and she and Diana worked together absolutely fine in their mission. I guess this is more about leadership, though. Vixen doesn’t actually seem hugely bothered by her man being hung up on his ex, sparking a friendship with Shayera at the end of the episode, so it’s not like she’s looking for excuses to fight with Hawkgirl. And as I said, Vigilante is basically never not arguing.

The obvious counter-argument is that in the past I have praised the creative team for presenting arguments where nobody is truly ‘right’, but I maintain this is different because they’re kind of arguing about nothing and none of it leads anywhere remotely interesting. Nobody gets over anything or has a revelation. Vigilante gets slightly better at flying the ship, I guess? But Shayera doesn’t learn to be a leader or team player. There’s just nothing! It seems like Berkowitz & McDuffie agreed these three would squabble the entire time but never bothered to come up with compelling reasons for any of it.

Then there’s the broken pacing. Shayera offers to give herself up but is talked out of it. Vixen gets captured and then feigns betraying Shayera in order to access the Thanagarian ship… only to be rumbled almost instantly. Shayera then does fly off to give herself up, leaving an injured Vigilante to fend for himself… and he proceeds to brush off his wounds and capture a solider to also learn the position of the ship. He then flies it to save Vixen when she’s dropped out of the sky. This is all just so much stuff happening so fast for the same outcome of everybody ending up not that far from where they started. Shayera fights Kragger, Vixen fights Paran Dul, neither battle is any fun whatsoever, and the whole thing is just over in a flash.

I’m also just not a fan of this love triangle story. The nature of this giant rotating cast means we only met Vixen for the first time late into Season One, the episode where Shayera finally returned to the fold, slipping straight into the jealousy angle. I could really have gone for an episode or two of John and Mari’s relationship before we went into a jealousy arc, and ideally to establish Vixen as a character I should like and care about. I understand the other big contributing factor to John pulling away is learning he’s fated to have a son with his ex, but that came up eight episodes ago now. It doesn’t necessarily ruin anything – I absolutely get what they’re fumbling around at – it just would have been nice to play in this lane a little more than they have. I did enjoy J’onn telling John to shut up when he complains about missions not being dictated by his sex life, and it was nice to have the two women lay everything out on the table and decide to be friends despite their open rivalry for John’s affections. You can both do so much better, though!

I’m glad Shayera’s mace as a light source returned, this time not just to look cool but to reveal the holographic deception as she notices a shadow doesn’t react properly. I’m always a sucker for that kind of thing. Not mad about Vixen’s… uhhh ‘lizard vision’?… to scope out the area. Doesn’t seem overly necessary when you’d assume the Javelin comes with advanced scanning equipment but hey! The planet is also pretty interesting to look at, from the alien jungle to the tall rock spires and low sun, it’s all very nice.

But some fun visuals can’t save this diabolical episode. It was dead on arrival for me, coming too late to mean anything, dragging down one of the most memorable stories in the DCAU and failing to send any of the characters on anything even resembling a journey. This genuinely pissed me off. Straight to the bottom of the list.

Double Date
For the Man Who Has Everything
Clash
Task Force X
Fearful Symmetry
The Return
The Once and Future Thing, Part 1: Weird Western Tales
The Ties That Bind
The Cat and the Canary
The Greatest Story Never Told
The Balance
Dark Heart
Initiation
This Little Piggy
Kids’ Stuff
The Once and Future Thing, Part 2: Time Warped
Doomsday Sanction
Wake the Dead
Ultimatum
Hawk and Dove
Hunter’s Moon (NEW ENTRY)

Rogues Roundup

The Thanagarians (Elizabeth Pena/Hector Elizondo) (first appearance)

I’m theoretically glad they elected to move Paran Dul into the leadership position instead of Kragger, who gets a fun battle-suit upgrade to make him more of a physical threat and is also saddled with the disturbing ramifications of J’onn probing his mind, leaving him somewhat… impaired.

But the reason I said it was theoretical is that Paran gains absolutely nothing from her larger role, exhibiting barely any extra personality compared to her small handful of lines from her last appearances. It seemed like they intended for her to become more interesting and get a big standoff against Shayera… but that’s transferred over to Vixen instead for some reason, and ends in anticlimactic fashion while Shayera’s busy murdering a disabled person. Fun!

Truly they all end up looking kind of dumb (see above), nobody has much of a personality and they’re very lucky that I’m not doing combined rankings with Justice League because this hugely undercuts them.

Lex Luthor
Steven Mandragora
Circe
Task Force X
Amazo
Chronos
Mongul
Granny Goodness
Galatea
Project Cadmus
Dark Heart
Tobias Manning
The Jokerz
Felix Faust
The Annihilator
Tala
Doomsday
Hades
Roulette
Solomon Grundy
The Thanagarians (NEW ENTRY)
Brimstone
Ares
Mordred (and Morgaine le Fey!)
Mordru
Virman Vundabar