Plot summary: Lex Luthor and The Flash inadvertently swap bodies, leading to a pair of games of cat and mouse with their respective allies.

Notes and Trivia

Episode: 34 (S3.E8)

Original Air Date: March 4^th, 2006

Directed: Dan Riba (17)

Written: Dwayne McDuffie (19) (story) and Matt Wayne (4) (teleplay)

Animation: DongWoo Animation Co., LTD. (8)

Music: Michael McCuistion (12)

Michael Rosenbaum of course played Lex Luthor in Smallville, which was what made the producers want to do a body swap episode in the first place and it was something they had jotted down for a long time.

Brown and Rosenbaum performed each other’s lines first to give their opposite number something to work off.

The body swap gives Lex Wally’s red hair. In the comics and many other adaptations, Lex had red hair in his younger days before going bald.

Mister Terrific sends coordinates to rescue Wally in Kaznia, a DCAU-created country that stands in as a generic Eastern European nation to avoid any specific offence. The coordinates map to Serbia (formerly Yugoslavia.)

Clancy Brown and Ted Levine appear in the same episode for the first time. They played henchmen in Flubber.

In ‘The Balance‘ Wonder Woman was the first member of The League to be assigned a number designation, 003. Flash here is revealed to be 006.

Lex threatens to use Flash’s powers to vibrate his fingers into a support staff’s brain. World’s biggest dickhead villain Reverse-Flash aka Zoom did exactly that to Barry Allen’s wife, Iris West, killing her instantly. She of course was brought back to life as all dead comic characters are eventually.

I’ve devoted perhaps too many words to debating whether Green Lanterns are vulnerable to the colour yellow in the DCAU, but this episode provides one of the biggest pieces of evidence as Lex chucks various food items at John Stewart. Nothing gets through his forcefield… except for some yellow jelly. Case. Fucking. Closed.

DCAU Debuts

I basically covered her when breaking down Fire’s debut in ‘I Am Legion‘, but this is Ice‘s biggest moment to date, one third of the rescue team that fail to retrieve Wally. Tora Olafsdotter debuted in 1988 as part of the hugely influential Justice League International, the creation of Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis (who writes for this show!) and Kevin Maguire. She is the princess of a Scandinavian tribe of magic users and as her name suggests she has ice powers. After being recruited to the Global Guardians – replacing a virtually identical character called Icemaiden – she became fast friends with Fire and the two moved over to the JLI together. She has a romantic history with Green Lantern Guy Gardener and was briefly killed (but of course resurrected), and I’m not sure which of those is a more unfortunate fate. She’s yet to make it into live action but has made plenty of animated appearances.

Recap

Lex Luthor is frustrated by his inability to rebuild Brainiac from the scrap gifted to him by Grodd, who glibly refuses to help. Tala suggests taking the information from Grodd’s mind by force.

At the exact same time Doctor Fate attempts to use psychic resonance from when Grodd mind-controlled Flash to pinpoint the villain’s operation… See where this is going?

That’s right, Flash and Luthor’s minds get switched, with The League struggling to capture Lex now that he has superhuman speed, though they do manage to trap him on the Watchtower.

Wally freaks out as he finds himself surrounded by villains but eventually grasps the situation. While improvising a motivational speech he learns The Legion are planning a massive robbery.

Grodd – knowing everything – mocks Wally, who reluctantly leads the heist, which goes smoothly… until Lex-as-Flash radios them from the Watchtower to reveal the truth.

Flash-as-Lex barely manages to get a radio transmission of his own off before he’s restrained, which is enough for Mister Terrific to send a team to their location, but The Legion escape.

Lex-as-Flash finally takes control of the bridge… but Mister Terrific tricks him into knocking himself out, allowing Dr. Fate to at last reverse the mind-swap.

The Legion don’t buy it and try to torture Luthor… but he reveals his augments of their powers also allow him to override them, freeing himself and reasserting his authority.

Best Performance

While the idea for this episode largely came from wanting to let Michael Rosenbaum play Lex Luthor as a little meta joke, Clancy Brown ends up getting way more ‘screen time’ because his performance is significantly better. It makes sense, given he’s a significantly better actor in general, but kind of a bummer to have a guy play two different characters better than you. Brown perfectly captures the essence of DCAU Wally, softening his voice so much and sounding younger and more naïve for it. His little self-interrupt “Yeah I’m just a little winded – did you say Lex?” is just nothing at all like what we’ve heard from him to date, and ditto his complaints about not getting cell service. It’s a sublime demonstration of his range as a performer, especially because he’s so often tasked with being gravelly voiced and sinister.

Rosenbaum is fine but is hilariously outclassed. I don’t know if they gave him the Dr. Polaris role on the side to make sure he got more lines, but he’s probably more compelling in that role than his milquetoast Luthor.

Juliet Landau is having the most fun she’s had in a while as she begs Lex to fuck her, verbally rolls her eyes at her ex-boyfriend and acts as Flash-as-Lex’s surprisingly earnest cheerleader. She’s almost a character again!

I may feel Sinestro is in a weird role, but I always appreciate hearing the unique marble-mouth of Ted Levine.

Episode Ranking

Okay, yeah, banger. One of the best episodes in the series, with some of the best individual moments in the entire DCAU.

It was an interesting choice to have the heroes immediately aware of the switch and just struggling to stop Lex-as-Flash, versus the villains being blissfully unaware, leaving Wally to try and pass for Lex right under their noses. On the one hand it provides some variety between the two halves of the story, with action-heavy scenes on The Watchtower while the more character-driven work happens elsewhere. It might have been nice to have seen Lex trying to bluff his way past The League, but hey, I’m not mad about him methodically working through possible escape plans, calmly moving from one to the next when the heroes stop him. It was nice to have Mister Terrific outfox him at the end, given he’s one of the few characters who rivals Luthor’s intelligence.

It was a real trip for me to hear a plan involving stealing a massive number of Euros being delivered to Kaznia because they’re joining the European Union. The DCAU feels intentionally detached from real-world events so it was startlingly mundane in a good way! The claim it would be the largest robbery in history was fun too, though I’d assume in real life countries would be supplied new currency in drips rather than all at once on a big train to avoid things like this.

The joke where Lex tries to learn Flash’s identity by removing his mask and looking in the mirror only to realise it’s just Some Guy was among the finest they’ve ever made, justifiably the moment people remember most fondly from the episode. A close second for me is the idea Tala responds better to Flash’s more heroic fuck game than Lex’s selfish and emotionally closed-off style, disappointed when the two switch back at the end.

I liked the visual representation of Fate travelling through Wally’s mind, with little moments from throughout his life. It’s also neat to me that this switcharoo is facilitated by the villains coming at it through tech while the heroes use magic, both because that diametric opposition feels natural, and because DC as a company traffics far more in gods, monsters and larger than life characters compared to Marvel, who built their house on weird science and everyday issues. That’s not to say Marvel are evil and DC are heroic, of course. Both companies are in fact evil.

Overall it’s fitting that this was a collaboration between the two main writers of this season, both because of the inherent duality baked into the plot, as well as acting as a true coalescence of what makes this series so good, combining both authors’ strengths and harnessing everything the production staff are good at too.

It looks good, it sounds good, it’s funny, it’s creative, some deep cut characters get some love, and they managed to advance their season-long plot without making too much of a song and dance of it, which would be my preference. Brainiac’s back in play after going ignored for a bit, The League are getting closer to finding The Legion, and the palace intrigue of the various mutinies sets some stuff up if you know where they’re going with it. Pretty much every character gets a strong showing too, except maybe Steel who gets wrecked by Dr. Polaris, but that was funny in a ‘Wolverine won’t stop trying to fight Magneto’ way, so I’m cool with it.

Double Date
For the Man Who Has Everything
Clash
The Great Brain Robbery (NEW ENTRY)
Task Force X
Question Authority
Fearful Symmetry
To Another Shore
Panic in the Sky
The Return
The Once and Future Thing, Part 1: Weird Western Tales
Epilogue
Flashpoint
Shadow of the Hawk
The Ties That Bind
The Cat and the Canary
The Greatest Story Never Told
Divided We Fall
The Balance
Dark Heart
Initiation
This Little Piggy
Flash and Substance
Kids’ Stuff
The Once and Future Thing, Part 2: Time Warped
Doomsday Sanction
Wake the Dead
Ultimatum
I Am Legion
Hawk and Dove
Patriot Act
Chaos at the Earth’s Core
Hunter’s Moon
Dead Reckoning

Rogues Roundup

Lex Luthor (Clancy Brown) (seventh appearance)

There’s a bit of a tradition in superhero properties for brainwashed/body-swapped/evil versions of characters to exhibit greater power than the heroic version of the character, which Lex continues here. He instantly adapts to his new status quo and gets to work using Flash’s speed for evil, versus Wally being openly groggy and confused for a few minutes. This fits their respective characters, lest we forget Luthor is one of the smartest men to ever live. You can also use that to justify his more creative thinking on how to utilise Wally’s abilities, and of course him sussing out that The League carry ID badges and trackers, allowing him to ditch both to evade capture.

It’s just a tremendous demonstration of how dangerous Lex is, causing total chaos on The Watchtower and then easily turning the tables on his would-be mutineers at the end, as well as reminding us he’s a terrible human being, with Tala disappointed when he and Wally switch back. This is a compliment!

Tala (Juliet Landau) (sixth appearance)

Congrats, Tala, you’re Harley in ‘Mad Love‘, draping yourself all over a villain who has zero interest in you sexually. The suggestion to crack open Grodd’s skull to take what he knows by force was pretty brutal, especially coming off the back of the acknowledgement they used to be an item until she saw which way the wind was blowing and joined Lex’s coup.

She makes for a natural anchor point for Flash-as-Lex, leading him down the correct path and of course… banging him. It’s kind of funny she bounced from Grodd to Lex and then seemingly low-key falls for Wally only to be denied him at the end.

It’s far and away her strongest showing and if they’d managed to make her more of a character early on she’d be in better standing. I’ll move her up a bit.

Gorilla Grodd & The Legion of Doom (Powers Booth/Ted Levine/Michael Rosenbaum/Phil LaMarr/George Newbern/Lauren Tom) (fifth appearance)

I liked The LoD having some backbone and confronting Lex about his potential insanity, particularly because they cited Grodd’s batshit insane plan to turn everybody into gorillas, so they want to do their due diligence with their new leader. That’s shockingly logical!

Feels a bit random to make Sinestro such a big part of a heist given how long ago he appeared in STAS, and the notion of him wanting to get rich feels off to me, but I guess he was in Grodd’s Secret Society… where I had near identical complaints about him. It was at least a cool exhibition of his powers as he does most of the work on the train heist. Also in fairness he’s completely chill about abandoning the money to flee when The League arrive.

Dr. Polaris wiping the floor with Steel was some solid Magneto vs Wolverine stuff. Casting him in the role of ‘next in line’ for command of The Legion is perhaps the strangest choice of all, but hey, he played a large role in the season-opener and while there are higher-profile members of the group, nobody has really done anything lately so why not him?

It was also one of Grodd’s better showings, which is pretty funny given he spends the whole episode tied up. He’s pretty delightful in his taunting of both Lex Classic and Lex (Wally), refusing to help either of them because he hates them equally. Summoning Flash-as-Lex just so he can make it clear he knows exactly what’s going on and is looking forward to him fucking up his undercover act and getting killed for it is gloriously shitty.

Overall this is easily the best they’ve looked collectively. Much like Tala, if they’d been like this in every appearance I’d think better of them, but will move them up.

Lex Luthor (–)
Steven Mandragora
Amanda Waller & Project Cadmus
Circe
Task Force X
Amazo
Galatea
Chronos
Mongul
Gorilla Grodd and The Legion of Doom (↑)
Brainiac
Shadow Thief
Granny Goodness
Devil Ray
The Rogues
The Patriot aka General Wade Eiling
Deimos
Dark Heart
Tobias Manning
The Jokerz
Felix Faust
Tala (↑)
The Annihilator
Metallo
The Ultimen
Doomsday
Hades
Roulette
Solomon Grundy
The Thanagarians
Brimstone
Ares
Mordred (and Morgaine le Fey!)
Mordru
Virman Vundabar