Boobs on Your Tube: Those Thunder Grace Kisses Are Sparking up Black Lightning!

We finally made it! It’s the end of the month!

First, this week we said goodbye to the first season of The L Word: Generation Q and whew we did so with a flourish! There were FIVE POSTS about the show this week alone! Here’s what you missed:

• • Riese wrote the final recap; Drew and Annalyssa hosted the final podcast
  • The TV Team ran down our favorite ‘ships and sex scenes (Spoiler: We all love #Sinley except for one person… wanna guess who that is?)
  • The Speakeasy had a conversation you won’t find anywhere else on the internet right now: Nine Queer Writers of Color on “Generation Q” and The L Word’s Legacy of Whiteness
  • Then the TV Team got back together to dissect all of the best and worst storylines from Season One and what we hope changes before Season Two gets underway

In other parts of the TV World, we hosted a roundtable about how dang much we love She-Ra. Heather called Fortune Feimster’s new Netflix comedy special “Sweet and Salty” a love letter to lesbian tomboys. Kayla watched the new season of the Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina and deemed it a muddled, but still magical, mess. Then Winn returned for a very special episode of Supergirl. Kayla wondered is she’s the only one who remembers that Cheryl and Toni exist on Riverdale. Alice learned some good lesbian boundaries on Good Trouble. Edie Falco is brilliant as LA’s lesbian police chief in Tommy. And last but not least, Drew wrote a beautifully personal farewell to the first season of Work in Progress. 

Notes from the TV Team: 

+ I must admit, I’ve been disappointed with Deputy thus far, particularly Bex Taylor-Kaus’ limited role in it. Their appearance in last night’s episode (“10-8 Black & Blue”) was frustratingly brief, but Bishop returns home to find that Genevieve’s found old pictures of a more feminine presenting Brianna Bishop in boxes from DC. Genevieve leaves a flirty note — “who is this cutie?” — but Bishop’s reaction to it hints at a forthcoming storyline about Bishop’s gender presentation. — Natalie

+ Cupid (or something like him) was on Legacies this week but Josie is trapped in a prison world so her and Hope couldn’t explore their feelings for each other via magical means and I am SAD ABOUT IT. — Valerie Anne

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All American 210: “Protect Ya Neck”

Written by Natalie

The title of this episode left me a little paranoid. Without Preach’s protection, Coop is as vulnerable to Tyrone as she’s ever been so I watched the episode on high alert, anticipating the moment trouble would darken Coop’s door. And it does, eventually, both in the way that I expect and in one that I don’t.

Despite the looming threat against her, Coop just wants to embrace some sense of normalcy. She invites Patience to accompany her to Olivia’s cotillion — it’s a “free gay prom,” Coop says, which is not how I’d describe the cotillions I’ve been to — so that they can have some fun. Patience is reluctant at first but ultimately agrees. But Coop’s excitement is muted by the arrival of Patience’s old friend, Luna, who’s in town for the cotillion. Coop is immediately jealous about their rapport and dismayed that Patience never told her friend about their relationship. Later, the couple meets in the park to talk about Luna but the chasm between them only grows deeper. Turns out, Luna and Patience are exes and the omission feeds into Coop’s paranoia about what’s going on between them.

The couple put aside their issues and attend the “free gay prom” together, with Coop’s mom happily snapping pictures of them together. Coop’s annoyed by her mom’s attentiveness but Patience reminds her how remarkable it is, “You do appreciate what’s going on here, don’t you? Your mom, the woman who threw you out of her house, is now playing paparazzi with her gay daughter and her gay daughter’s girlfriend.”

But Luna persists in interrupting the date night and Coop grows angrier. Coop insta-stalks Luna and realizes that she’s Patience’s first love — the one that inspired her to come out — and it sparks a confrontation between the couple. They’ve lost trust in each other and Patience tearfully admits that they need some time apart.

Patience: Like, you freaked out because J.P. was more interested in me as an artist than he was in you and now you’re freaking out because I’m still friends with my ex-girlfriend?
Coop: I’m freaking out because I love you.
Patience: I know, but I don’t want to be loved like this.

The heartbreak is painful to watch but when Coop realizes that she’s been jealous and paranoid, I’m optimistic that it’ll be temporary. But just when I think Coop will escape “Protect Ya Neck” relatively unscathed, her best friend — who’s spent the episode trying to protect her — is shot as he escorts Olivia to her car.

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Arrow 810: “Fadeout”

Written by Valerie Anne

This week was Arrow‘s final episode, and we said goodbye to the show where Sara Lance got her start. Much to my delight, she wasn’t the only one at Oliver’s funeral; Nyssa al Ghul made her triumphant return, as well. Nyssa told her sister about how her marriage to Oliver was a sham, and introduces Sara as her “beloved” for old time’s sake. I do hope Nyssa goes on to date Laurel2 (or anyone, really) and find her own happily ever after, but I can’t blame her for holding a torch for her Ta-er al-Sahfer. I’ll admit I haven’t really been watching much of Arrow since Felicity left, but I will be watching the Green Arrow and the Canaries spinoff if it happens, and I will forever be grateful for the show for giving us characters like Felicity and Laurel(s) and Thea and Dinah and Mia. And, of course, our fearless Captain Sara Lance.

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Nancy Drew 112: “The Lady of Larkspur Lane”

Written by Valerie Anne

Nancy Drew is really throwing me for all kinds of gay loops. First it gives me the very cute pairing of Bess and Lisbeth. Then it accidentally taunts me with cute Nancy/Bess interactions. (That’s not the show’s fault, they’re not doing anything but having these girls develop a friendship, I just love them both and can’t help myself.) But now they introduced Bess to Amaya, a woman Bess’ new aunt is trying to get to “mentor” Bess, a woman who calls Bess a snack and is hilarious, smart, and bold.

She assumes Bess knows nothing of her world and makes her sit in silence while she has a business meeting, but Amaya’s boldness makes Bess more brazen. She speaks up for herself and proves Amaya’s snap judgements wrong. And I love Lisbeth but, to borrow language from Season Two of Sex Education, she doesn’t make Bess sparkle. Not the way Amaya did. I think she might be more up to Bess’ speed, but Lisbeth was so sweet and supportive I feel bad rooting against her. So I don’t know what will happen or even what I want to happen, I just know that I love that Bess’ queerness is just a known and accepted thing at this point and we can focus on things like love triangles. Plus all the ghosts and murder.

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The Bold Type 402: “#Scarlet”

Written by Carmen

Last week on The Bold Type Kat saved Jacqueline’s job! But not before the suits in the board room decided to follow IRL media trends and move Scarlet magazine to an all digital platform (see also: Teen Vogue and Glamour). Is this going to do anything help stop the fantasies I play in my head that Autostraddle’s feminist can do spirit could be Scarlet magazine if only capitalism were fake and we had $$$ to spend on New York City high rise offices and a limitless fashion closet? No, it will not!

OK so Scarlet is becoming #Scarlet. To launch their first digital issue, Jaqueline would like to celebrate the magazine’s past. That means Kat has to interview celebrities whom got their start at the magazine, like Bella Diaz. Except interviewing Bella is the last thing Kat wants to do! You see, many years ago when Bella was a just-starting-out singer, and Kat hadn’t yet realized her own queerness, Bella came out to her at a photo shoot. And Kat listened to Bella’s then-manager and buried the story. So yeah, she has a lot of leftover shame over that whole deal.

When Kat meets up with Bella in our current timeline, she apologizes for not being more supportive. Bella downplays it, and says coming out isn’t important to her anymore, which of course sets Kat’s mind in motion. It turns out that back then Bella was in love with her pianist, but they’ve since broken up (the pianist didn’t want to stay with Bella in the closet). Bella doesn’t feel ready to publicly come forward – and risk her career! – without her.

At the digital launch party, Kat tells Bella about how scary it was her to navigate her queerness without Adena, but how ultimately she found more truth and bravery in herself because she did. Once again I really have to applaud The Bold Type, so many YA-focused television shows only focus on the romance of queer love stories, and TBT has found a way to make Kat’s queerness ever-present and tied to the adult woman she’s becoming, regardless of whom she’s sleeping with.

Anyway, Bella tells Kat that she’s still not ready to come out, but I’d love for Kat to have a queer woman of color friend that she’s not sleeping with, so I hope Bella ultimately stays around. I may get my wish. Later that night Bella privately shares “Brave” with Kat, the first song she wrote about falling in love with a woman. (Fun Fact: Bella Diaz is played by Latin Grammy nominee Sofia Reyes, who has released “Brave” exclusively on her YouTube channel and you should give it a listen!)

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Black Lightning 311: “The Book of Markovia: Chapter Two: Lynn’s Addiction”

Written by Carmen

When we said goodbye to Black Lightning for the winter break, I wished for two things: 1. That I would learn better patience with the show and 2. That the production behind the series would learn to treat the show’s sole queer relationship with some respect.

Well, I must have been a good girl over the holidays, because Santa left some presents underneath my TV tree! Not only is Grace Choi back on the series (and flirting marvelously with Anissa – damn Nafessa Williams and Chantal Thuy’s chemistry remains off the charts), but she’s coming back to Freeland! After having an emotionally mature conversation actually on screen with her girlfriend, nonetheless! When Anissa visits Grace at the metahuman camp in South Freeland, Grace explains that she’s realized the cause of her shapeshifting is feeling insecure in her surroundings. She’s lived her entire life being abandoned, and once she started falling deep for Anissa, she worried that something might happen that would ruin the one good thing she had in her life. That caused everything inside her body – powers included – to tumble into free fall.

But even when Anissa sent Grace away to protect her, she never let go. She always comes back, and the few times she can’t, she makes sure Grace is safe with her dad. Despite all the metaphorical storms and literal Markovian/ASA drama surrounding them, Grace now realizes that Anissa is her rock and nothing will move her. She convinces Anissa that it’s safe for her to (finally!!!!! And hopefully, for good!!!) come back home. It’s 2020 and I am choosing optimism. Let this next step be the first of many. I’m so ready to root for Thunder Grace, if only Black Lightning will let me.

As excited as I am for the return of Grace Choi – and I am! – she is not the reason that my fellow TV Team member Natalie ran to text me mid-episode earlier this week. Oh no. That honor is reserved for the baddest damn bitch in the room. You see, last week Black Lightning ended on a glimmer… a hope… a cliffhanger that I almost didn’t allow myself to believe could be true. But here we are friends. HERE WE ARE:

LADY FUCKING EVE IS BACK FROM THE DEAD!!! After three years, I could’ve just cried at the purr of her voice. So far Lala (our most common Black Lightning undead) thinks he has Eve under his thumb. But if there’s one thing that we all know, it’s that you can’t keep a good bitch down. I’m sure Eve has something tucked away as she plots her return to the top of Freeland’s underworld. And I can’t wait to see it.

CW Crossover “Crisis on Infinite Earths” Parts Four and Five: The Dawn of Time

Previously on Crisis on Infinite Earths, antimatter destroyed everything except the seven Paragons, who noped out to the Vanishing Point, and Oliver, who was hanging out in Purgatory (not the one in the Ghost River Triangle) with a being called Spectre. The last we left our heroes, Lex had changed the Book of Destiny to replace the real Paragon of Truth with the biggest liar of them all: himself.

Even though it feels like it has been ten thousand years since the last episode of the CRISIS, we start this episode ten thousand years ago, on Planet Maltus, where a younger, happier-looking Novu kisses his wife and tries out a temporal jump they’ve been sciencing. He ends up at the dawn of time, where he accidentally caused a breath to the anti-universe, where anti-matter is afoot and the Anti-Monitor is there.

At the Vanishing Point, it becomes clear by Ryan’s facial hair that they’ve been stuck there for months. I’m a little confused as to how he and the other humans are still alive, since obviously time is moving if he has a beard now, so his body is still doing things, but maybe there’s a Vanishing Garden somewhere. Then again Lex doesn’t have a longer beard so who knows what’s going on. He writes a letter to his dead wife, saying that things are looking bleak. The Paragon of Destiny doesn’t believe in tomorrow. The Paragon of Courage trains day in and day out for a battle that might never come. The Paragon of Honor meditates. A lot. And the Paragon of Hope seems to have lost hers.

He calls Lex a douche, which is a delight, and apparently the Paragon of Love has up and disappeared. Because love is a lie.

Eventually, Lex and Ryan work together to create a transporter of sorts, meaning they have a chance go get out of here.

Kara flatly says that Lex should be the one to test it. It’s a perfect moment because sometimes even the most hopeful, the most positive, the kindest, can reach their limits with someone and no longer have the energy to even feign politeness.

Kara is determined to get the people they lost back, and just for a moment, that little flame of hope seems to spark behind her eyes.

The machine whirls and pops, but Lex unfortunately isn’t immediately replaced by his sister or anyone more useful than him. However, unrelated, The Flash barrels in, and when everyone demands to know where he’s been for months, he insists he’s been gone for like two minutes. But time means nothing anyway, because he can’t access the Speed Force, which means he can’t undo this. There’s no way out.

Over on the post-death version of Lian-Yu, Spectre is giving Oliver all of his powers and showing him how his life lead up to this moment. He tells SpectrOliver that it’s almost time for the ultimate fight, and that it’s time to find his friends. Which is something it has taken Oliver 900 episodes to realize, and honestly I think he still needs it told to him: he needs help, and it’s okay to ask for it, and accept it.

Back at the Vanishing Point, Barry is zooming around, angry, Kara and Sara holding him back, knowing they can stop him by force if they have to.

But Oliver shows up and tells them that the Speed Force is the key and that the Paragons have to use it to stop the Anti-Monitor.

They’re surprised to see him but he explains that he’s not quite Oliver. He says he’s something… more. Which is what he’s been saying he needs to become in his intro for quite some time now, so I suppose this was always going to happen. He says they have to go to the dawn of time to fight, and gives them their mission. He sends Kara, Ryan, and Lex to Maltus to try to stop the Monitor from making the breach in the first place, and boops Barry to give him (and thus, the rest of the team) access to the Speed Force again.

Barry Flashes into the Speed Force but finds himself knocked off course and face to face with a version of Oliver who is at Queen Consolidated. Oliver explains that the Anti-Monitor attacked and scattered his friends throughout the Speed Force, and that he’s going to have to go back through important moments in the Arrowverse timeline to find them.

On his way, Barry runs into another Barry Allen… and it’s the Barry Allen from the Justice League movie. Which, after the wee bit of controversy that surrounded the DC Universe when it was clear they weren’t doing a Marvel and using the same characters in their movies as their TV shows, was pretty delightful. (Also implies the existence of Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman, just saying.)

Up (over?) on Maltus, Lex fucks off almost as soon as he lands on Earth, much to Kara’s chagrin. Kara finds him and fights with him; he’s so convinced that brain will beat brawn, but what he doesn’t realize is that she’s not brawn at all. She’s heart.

He goads her into asking what he wants and he goes full Pinky and the Brain and says that he wants to take over the universe. Oh, also? When he was fiddling with the Book of Destiny, he gave himself powers. Even though part of his whole deal is that he hates that some people are naturally more powerful than others but whatever.

Lex ends up using these powers to knock Kara and Ryan out and in case you forgot he’s a sociopath, he whistles while he walks away from their unconscious bodies.

Ryan wakes up first, I would assume because Kara needed to RELAX and the only way she was able to do so was to be knocked clean out, but as soon as he wakes her and she scans him for permanent damage, they’re off. Ryan doesn’t feel much like a Paragon (even though he somehow survived a blast strong enough to knock out a Kryptonian), but Kara reassures him that the fact that he’s even there, willing to help, means he’s special.

He calls her the Paragon of Pep Talks and calls Lex a “selfish asshat” and frankly I like him and wouldn’t hate it if he stuck around post-Crisis. On any of the shows. Kara agrees and then tells him to get ready to fly.

Then.

She says.

UP. UP. AND AWAY.

Say what you want about this Monitor/Anti-Monitor stuff (What I’ll say is: it’s boring and I don’t care about it) but moments like this are what my nerdy, cheese-loving heart LIVES FOR.

Meanwhile, Barry is zip-zapping around the Speed Force and starts collecting friends from different points in Arrow. He eventually finds Oliver in last year’s crossover memories, and Oliver tells him about the deal he made to save Kara and Barry. He tells them that dying is easy, dying is peace, but it’s the people who have to keep going, keep fighting, who are the real heroes. In other words, “The hardest thing in this world is to live in it.”

Barry ends up back at one of the times Sara died, dressed as the Black Canary, Laurel and Diggle standing over her. Barry zaps Sara awake and doesn’t even let the sisters, whose current experience is that the other is dead, hug for ONE SECOND before whooshing her away again.

On Maltus, Lex goes to find the Monitor and tries to offer him knowledge of the future in exchange for abilities he will come to possess. But as he’s explaining the Crisis to Novu, Kara shows up to spoil his fun.

While those two fight, Ryan talks to Novu and talks him down from doing this thing that will surely destroy the universe. His calm and reasonable nature sways Novu, who calls him remarkable.

Meanwhile, Kara is telling Lex all the things he’s done to piss her off, but the thing she says the loudest and the angriest is, “You betrayed Lena.”

But before their fight can go too far, The Flash Train comes to pick them up and takes them to meet up with the rest of the Paragons at the dawn of time, in the anti-matter universe.

The Anti-Monitor chuckles at their attempt to stop him, because even though they stopped this Monitor, one will still come. So instead, at SpectrOliver’s command, they fight.

So the heroes all join forces; even Lex, because he values his own life above all else. While the Paragons take on the shadow demons, Oliver takes on the Anti-Monitor, blasting all the dementors away with one beam and his catchphrase (but Crisisified): You have failed this universe.

Realizing Oliver still needs their help, Kara tells them to all focus on their Paragon qualities and Care Bear stare at the Anti-Monitor.

After the Anti-Monitor is gone, Barry flashes him and Sara up to Oliver’s side, where they have to say goodbye again. It’s another speech that’s bigger than the events of this episode. It’s not just Oliver saying goodbye to his old buds Sara and Barry. It’s not even just Stephen Amell saying goodbye to Caity and Grant. It’s Arrow telling Legends of Tomorrow and The Flash to keep going; the world still needs them. Both of them. It was a mentor saying goodbye to his colleagues, a man saying goodbye to his friends, a show saying goodbye to its spinoffs. Arrow walked so The Flash could run. So Legends could fly.

Oliver tells them to look up, and through their tears they see a new universe forming. An end and a beginning.

And thus ends Part 4 of the Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Arrow Hour, the Darkest Timeline.

PAGE TWO: PART FIVE! 

CW Crossover “Crisis On Infinite Earths” Part 3: Batwoman vs Supergirl

Day three, baybee! The Crisis on Infinite Earths marches on, and so do we. Once again without a previously on because we have NO TIME TO WASTE.

We open on Earth 203, in New Gotham, with Huntress running through the streets. Not our Jessica De Gouw Huntress from the Arrow days of yore, but Ashley Scott, from the 2002 series. (Also starring, hilariously enough, Rachel Skarsten, aka Alice from Batwoman.)

Huntress is on the phone with Barbara/Oracle, and realizing she’s out of time as Earth 203 is turned to dust.

The Waverider is still orbiting Earth 1, where our heroes are waiting for the Paragon detector to tell them what to do next.

Since this is technically the Flash hour, the rest of Team Flash decides to join the fray — specifically Frost, Cisco, and The Elongated Man. Ralph gets a little flustered seeing all these heroes in one place and they joke that it’s his first crossover, and I’ve decided I’m going to start calling it a crossover whenever more than one of my friend groups intermingle.

Earth 1 is still the safest place to be, and it’s getting a little expensive to have so many people in one room, so a few of the heroes run off to start getting civilians from other Earths to Earth 1.

With Cisco’s help, Ray gets the Paragon Detector up and running.

First it tells us what we already knew: Kara is the Paragon of Hope, Kate is the Paragon of Courage, Sara is the Paragon of Destiny, and RayClark is the Paragon of Truth. But now they know the identities of the last three: J’onn Jonzz is the Paragon of Honor, Barry Allen is the Paragon of Love. And the last Paragon is one they don’t recognize: Ryan Choy, the Paragon of Humanity.

He’s an Ivytown professor, so Ray, Ralph, and Iris go to pick him up.

Before Sara can get a new task, Diggle shows up and starts yelling at her for not calling him and also for using a Lazarus Pit even though she, of all people, knows the risks.

Sara insists they have it handled, and while he’s already mad anyway, he should know Lyla is missing. At first he thinks she maybe just teleported away to snatch another random person from a random Earth but not the people standing three feet from them, but the Monitor confirms that he thinks the Anti-Monitor is manipulating her now. And Diggle. Is. PISSED.

In a really fun moment, when Diggle is yelling at Mar Novu, Sara basically “Yeah, what he said!”s him and I know she could kill them both with her pinky finger before you could say CAW CAW MOTHERFUCKERS, but she’s still so smol, so it was very cute to behold.

The Monitor then says a thing that maybe they’ve been saying all along, over and over for months, and it only took this long for me to hear it: the reason this is all happening is because the Anti-Monitor wants to start fresh and make a universe of his own that he can control. It felt like that moment in math class when things finally start making sense. I still have to do a lot of hand waving around things like why the Monitor is sometimes magically helpful and sometimes extremely not, or why he is somehow both an omniscient and unreliable narrator all at the same time. But at least I understand the motivation.

The thus taskless heroes are standing around the Waverider hub, and I know I said it yesterday, but this is one of my favorite sets, so I love seeing our non-Legends friends on the ship. Kate is still watching Kara carefully while they discuss what to do next. Cisco thinks he found the source of the antimatter wave, so he takes the rest of Team Flash with him to Earth 1.

On his way out, the Monitor finds Cisco and says Vibe will be needed soon, so he gives Cisco back his powers. Without his consent, I might add. And see why can he do this but not give Oliver back his soul? Or seemingly do anything but be cryptic?

Anyway, Cisco continues on with Frost and The Flash to the tunnel where Nash had gotten sucked into the doorway. He explains to those who missed it that he’s Pariah, being punished by being forced to bear witness to tragedy until the end of time. He doesn’t really remember how he got through the door the first time, so Cisco vibes his memories and gets the code so the team can get in.

Up on the Waverider, Kara goes to Lex to ask how to use the book to get her Earth back. Finding him entirely unhelpful and wanting to support her friend, Kate roughs him up a bit until he explains that it takes extreme willpower to do even simple things, so saving a whole Earth could drive Supergirl mad. After throwing Lex back in the brig where he belongs, Kate pulls Kara aside and says maybe this is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad plan.

But Kara wants to fix this. She keeps saying it, she’s been saying it since last week’s episode. “I can fix this.” And it’s how I can tell Kara is reaching her breaking point. Not her like… forever broken point. But it’s getting clear the poor thing needs to sit down and process all her pain and have a good cry on her sister’s lap, but instead she’s powering through. She thinks she can fix this but she can’t. Even if she gets her mom back, even if she saves the world(s), even if things get better, she still experienced this trauma, and she still needs to process it.

Constantine, Mia, and Diggle head to Earth 666 in LA because Constantine knows someone who can help them get to Purgatory to get Oliver’s soul the good old-fashioned way since Constantine’s necromancy powers haven’t quite returned. They knock on the door and who answers but LUCIFER MORNINGSTAR. Like, the real Lucifer! From the show Lucifer! He crossed NETWORKS to be here! Lucifer introduces himself to Mia and ask what she desires, and all she wants is her father back.

Lucifer is entertained, and agrees to help, mostly to return a favorite. “I owe you for Maze,” is what Lucifer said, and I don’t know what that means, but I do hope we find out in the next season of Lucifer. Lucy hands them a card that will get them to Purgatory and flirts with Diggle a little before sending them off.

The trio end up in Purgatory, which looks like Lian Yu, which MEANS Purgatory, because Oliver wasn’t all that creative when coming up with his personal hell. Constantine warns them that when they find Oliver, he might need his memories jogged, and also that they don’t have much time.

Team Flash finds the source of the antimatter wave, and it’s a massive cannon being powered by a speedster. And not just any Speedster: Earth 90’s Flash. Flash Gordon himself. And he’s trapped in what MY personal Purgatory would look like: a neverending treadmill.

Cisco vibes a portal in so Barry can get Flash Gordon off the treadmill of doom, but as soon as he’s off he warns them that the thing is rigged to explode if he stops running for too long.

Topside, Iris and the boys find Ryan Choi, who is hugely excited to see Ray Palmer. Iris interrupts their nerding out though because they need Ryan to help them save…well, everyone.

Ryan doesn’t believe them when they say they’re superheroes, and doesn’t really understand when Ray calls him a Paragon. He insists he’s not a hero, just a husband and a father, and if the world is really ending, he’d rather be home.

Up on the Waverider, Lois is womanning the command center and watches as Earth 73 is the next to get wiped out. With only seven Earths left, the Monitor starts to reminisce about all HE’S lost, his planet, his family. Lois asks about them and he starts to tell them, catching himself and almost smiling, if such an expression is possible for him. He says he understands why she’s such a good reporter.

RayClark appears then, weary from not being able to save people, and Lois gives him some encouraging words. Before he disappears again, she asks why he added black to his Zor-El crest, and he says that it’s to remind him that hope cuts through the darkness. And people keeping saying dramatic things about hope, which makes me feel like Kara is going to be the lynchpin in this whole saving-the-world business. (It would be awesome if it was also Lena because we know she loves her some Hope but alas I doubt we see her again until the crossover is…well, over.)

Down in the Anti-Monitor antimatter anticave, the Pariah shows up with a surprised Black Lightning in tow, who immediately starts to fight until Pariah explains that he just saved him from the destruction his entire world faced. And then Jefferson has the reaction I’ve been waiting for one of these snatched up people to have since Sunday: he starts to yell. “You should have saved my family, not me.” He also doesn’t understand how he could be grabbed but not also the people standing within three feet of him, but Barry calms him down with those big puppy eyes and his neverending well of empathy. The Paragon of Love breaks through to him, and Jefferson agrees to help, taking on the energy of the antimatter cannon for a while until they can sort out this treadmill situation.

Up on the Waverider, Kara goes to open the book again, feeling desperate for something to do, some way to help, but Kate won’t let her. Kara insists, and Kate stands up to her. Like literally, right up to her, practically nose to nose, and stands tall and speaks clearly and says she will stop Kara if she has to.

Kara replies that Kate wouldn’t be able to stop her, but Kate is pretty sure she has a fighting chance. Kate states her case one last time as plainly as she can: if Kara doesn’t succeed at bringing back Earth-38 and/or Argo, and something goes wrong, and Supergirl goes mad, they’re all doomed.

This gets Kara to walk away, at least for now, and Kate seems relieved.

I loved this scene for many reasons. They’re friends, these two, and that good faith didn’t disappear just because they disagreed. Neither of them ever raised their voice, or resorted to insults, or raised a fist. They stood their ground and marked their line in the stand and then quietly chose not to cross each other. Oliver has never met an impasse he yell at. Barry has rarely not done something he was told not to do. It just felt very refreshing is all. It was tense in a whole new, exciting way.

Down in the hamster ball of doom, Barry realizes that this might be what The Monitor prophesied. He might be destined to take Flash Gordon’s place, this might be why the headlines all said that The Flash vanished in the Crisis. (Though how a theoretical future newspaper wrote anything about the Crisis is beyond me…)

Nearby in Central City, Iris tries one more time, one on one, to get Henry to come with them. She tells him that she’s also human, no meta or alien powers, no supersuits or assassin training. Just a very smart, very kind, very pretty reporter. And humans have their purpose, too.

Iris encourages Ryan to think of his daughter and how cool it will be to be able to tell her he helped save the world, so he agrees to come with. (Side note, I did a Google, so I know who Ryan Choy is in the comics now, but I won’t tell you here in case you want to be surprised. I sometimes regret looking these things up.)

When the boys ask her how she knew what to say, she flashes back to when she said goodbye to Barry on the Waverider, and he told her that he might be a speedster, but she has powers of her own. Powers of intelligence and heart, for example. He tells her that this could be it, their last goodbye, but not to miss him too much, because he’ll always be running home to her.

And y’all, I keep thinking maybe I don’t like The Flash that much, but this show has made me cry real tears EVERY SINGLE WEEK this season. I don’t know if it’s Grant Gustin’s gentle voice or thoughtful expression or the way everyone else in the cast just looks at him like he’s breaking their heart every time he tries to say goodbye but JEEPERS it hits me out of nowhere every time. And this scene was no exception.

In the current time, Caitlin takes over for Frost so she can say a proper goodbye to her old pal Barry Allen. Cisco comes in too and the original Team Flash trio hug it out one last time. But seeing how many people love him, seeing how many people he loves, and knowing his time was well lived, Flash Gordon steals Barry’s speed and says that The Monitor wanted a Flash to die, so a Flash will die. Just not the Flash he thought.

So Vibe opens the portal to the treadmill and Flash Gordon starts running backwards on it to stop the death wave. (The sentences these wacky-ass shows get me to write, I swear to Rao…) Barry tries to protest, but Cisco tells him that he’s made the tough choice, just like Barry taught him to. So they all watch for a minute, but then get out just in time for Flash Gordon destroys the antimatter cannon, but dies in the process.

As he dies, there’s a flashback to the original Flash Gordon show, and I never watched it, but heck if it didn’t make me emotional!

Constantine, Mia, and Diggle eventually find Oliver’s angry soul on Lian Yu and talk him down until he remembers them. But before he can leave Purgatory with them, a man called Jim Corrigan aka Spectre appears. Constantine knows the name but not the face (because of the Constantine TV show, apparently) and he says Oliver’s soul has to come with him, because only he can “light the spark” to save everyone. (Is the spark a spark of hope aka Kara’s hope?)

He says goodbye to Mia, and goes with this random man who appeared in his personal Purgatory without, in my opinion, sufficient explanation, and Mia is so, so sad.

Back on the Waverider, The Flash and Black Lightning, arguably two of the kindest/truest/best men in the multiverse, have a very sweet bonding moment, talking about their dads and their losses, and Jefferson says a Dylan Thomas quote that I quite liked: “Rage against the dying of the light.”

If ever there was a time we needed that, right?

Elsewhere on the ship, Kate is still following Kara around, lest she try the book thing again. Kate reiterates that she just doesn’t want Kara to get hurt, and Kara understands. They compliment each other on their Hope and Courage, and in the spirit of bravery, Kate gives Kara her Kryptonite disk. Kara’s anger flares for a moment, but then it’s doused in sadness when she remembers what not fully trusting the last person who had Kryptonite cost her. She might not know how to fix her relationship with Lena, but she knows how to avoid breaking her friendship with Kate, so she takes a breath and tells Kate to keep it. Kate will never lose hope like Bruce did, and Kara will have the courage to trust Kate will never use the disk on her.

HEALTHY ADULT FRIENDSHIPS FOR THE WIN.

The fam all gathers back up again, and they decide that their next step is to find the Harbinger. Almost on cue, she appears. The Pariah is also here, and he’s meant to witness great tragedy… but by the time they put those clues together, it’s moments too late, and Lyla’s eyes turn white and the Harbinger starts to attack.

Lyla overpowers The Monitor and… absorbs him? Giving the Anti-Monitor just enough juice to start the antimatter wave up again, destroying Earth 1 and heading right for the Waverider. As a last ditch effort, the Paragon sends out a burst of energy and all the Paragons disappear. Those left behind stand strong, telling the Anti-Monitor that wherever they are, their heroes will fight to the very end. They hold their heads high and nod resolutely to each other as the anti-matter wave takes all of them too like this is the end of Infinity War and we know everyone can’t be gone forever but jeez does it still hurt to see them fade to dust.

When the Paragons reach their destination, Sara recognizes it as the Vanishing Point, a place that exists outside of time and space.

And probably in the dot above the i in Jeremy Bearimy. They realize they’re likely the only ones left in existence at the moment, but before they can really figure out what that means, Kal-El starts bursting red energy. Kara drops to her knees beside him, SO close to that one Crisis comic cover but opposite, and watches as RayClark transforms into none other than Lex Fucking Luthor. Kara is pissed, and frankly, same.

Because while I truly enjoyed Lex’s arc on Supergirl, and I think Jon Cryer is the perfect person for the part, and plays him so well… his story was over. The heroes won, Supergirl stopped him, Lena killed him. And it’s not like they lived happily ever after; it still set off a ripple effect, they still have a myriad of problems. So it feels supremely unfair that not only does he get to come back for no good reason other than to annoy us, but then to also take Superman’s spot at the end of the world, though I suppose if he had to be here, of course that’s who he’d replace. The ONLY good thing that could come of Lex not being dead is that the guilt of his death could not weigh as heavy on Lena’s conscience (even though she still has to reckon with the fact that she was willing to go there) not that she would know he’s alive again because SHE’S NOT IN THE CROSSOVER.

Eh hem. :descends off soap box:

Aside from that little rant, and the fact that I still don’t really understand The Monitor’s whole deal or where the Anti-Monitor came from, I’m thoroughly enjoying this epic team-up and all the cameos and nods to franchises past, present, and future. I’m especially enjoying the hero theme mashups, because I’m a huge nerd who listens to the Arrowverse score when I’m writing these recaps.

Unfortunately, Part 4 of the Crisis won’t happen until 2020, so we have to wait to see what happens in the Vanishing Point. Will the Paragons join forces to make a MegaParagon? Will their powers combine to create Captain Paragon? Only time will tell.

CW Crossover “Crisis on Infinite Earths” Part Two: Pretty Pretty Paragons

Long time no see! Crisis On Infinite Earths Part 2 didn’t feel the need for a previously on, presumably because the most recent episode was the night before, so I’m going to dive in, too.

We open in Central City on Earth 1, where Sara Lance, Kara Danvers, and Kate Kane are all mourning Oliver.

Kara is feeling bad that he sacrificed himself for her and Barry, but Sara says he saved a billion people; he was a hero, there’s no time for guilt. But Kara thinks doing a shot in his honor is a nail in his coffin she’s not sure she’s ready for. Maybe she can do this. Save Oliver, save her mom, save all the Earths.

The Monitor pops in and says he needs a Waverider, but Sara says she promised her team they wouldn’t do any more crossovers. But he doesn’t need her team, just her ship — specifically Ray’s lab — so the Harbinger beebops to another Earth to get one.

She ends up on Earth 74, where she finds Snart’s voice in place of Gideon’s, and Mick Rory the only Legend not in retirement or dead. She asks for his help, and as long as he gets beer, he’s in.

Once the team gathers, The Monitor is trying to inspire them, tell them about seven heroes they need to collect, but little baby Jonathan keeps interrupting with his little cries. They pass him down the line of heroes, who fought off shadow demons without a problem, but can’t seem to get this little guy to stop fussing.

Eventually, somehow unsurprisingly, Rory is the one that gets the baby to settle down, so he heads out with him.

The Monitor continues his speech about finding heroes he calls Paragons. He learned about this when he consulted the Book of Destiny from a past time stream. Which feels like cheating but okay. Totems shmotems. But when The Monitor pulls out the book, Lyla starts to flinch.

Mia asks if The Monitor can bring Oliver back instead of a stupid book (my words) but he says he grows weaker as the Anti-Monitor grows stronger and the Paragons are their only chance at stopping him.

Unfortunately, he only knows two Paragons’ names, and clues about two more. Kara Zor-El is the Paragon of Hope, because of course she is. Sara is the Paragon of Destiny; death is her gift. There’s a Kryptonian who has suffered a great loss, a Paragon of Truth. And a bat of the future, the Paragon of Courage. The Monitor said he got Felicity Smoak to help him get this information from the Tome of the Guardians, and it feels very unfair to have that happen off-screen, but I saw her in the play she was in here in New York and she seemed very happy during the talkback after so FINE I’ll allow it.

The Monitor tells Kate and Kara to go to Earth 99 to find Bruce Wayne and the Paragon of Courage.

Everyone is getting ready for their next task when Lex Luthor appears, causing Kara to lose it. She can’t believe her eyes. “Lena killed you,” she says, tears filling her eyes. The Monitor stops her from attacking him, saying he has a role to play, but this solidifies The Monitor as untrustworthy in Kara’s mind. Kara storms off, furious, and seeing Kara’s reaction, Kate decides to throw a little threat Lex’s way too. It was a classic friend move, the “we hate him” no questions asked solidarity.

Kate goes to cheer Kara up, telling her to put on her hope pants (not to be confused with her Supergirl pants or Hope’s pants) so they can save the universe together.

Elsewhere on the Waverider, Lyla is still feeling a little glitchy when she finds Lex. Left unsupervised for all of five seconds, he’s found a way to steal the Book of Destiny and a portal watch and plans to zap around the universe killing Supermen, just in case the heroes do save the world. When Lyla turns to The Monitor for help, he says that everyone has their part to play and that they should let him go.

Sara busts into the Waverider like, “I’m a Paragon?” because know what else she is? Perfect. Mia catches Sara up on what they missed: they’re going to head to another Earth to find a functioning Lazarus pit since Thea destroyed all the ones on this Earth. But Sara hates this plan. Like, a lot.

She tells Mia what she feels like probably no one told her, that your body comes back but not your soul. But Mia knows all about Sara. Nyssa trained her, after all. “She told me everything I need to know about you,” she says, and Sara is too dumbfounded by this girl she didn’t know existed before yesterday name-checking her ex-girlfriend to ask what the hell she means by that. Because you KNOW Nyssa al Ghul wasn’t shit-talking Sara Lance, so clearly this girl drew her own conclusions.

Anyway, Kate and Kara hop to Earth 99 and an angrier, nakeder version of Luke opens the door, sees who it is, then closes the door. Kate knocks a bunch then Kara almost shyly asks if she can just… and when Kate realizes that just because she’s more butch doesn’t mean she has to lead the charge, so she lets Kara kick down the door and stand in front of her when Luke points a gun at them.

An older gentleman comes down the stairs in a robotic exoskeleton, and Kate’s reaction tells us that it’s her cousin, Bruce Wayne. (Side note, Bruce is played by Kevin Conroy, who has done almost nothing but voice Batman since 1991. Okay fine that’s an exaggeration but seriously check out his IMDb.)

Bruce tells Kate that she’s dead in his universe, so she sits him down to explain how she came to be on Earth 99.

Mia, Sara, and Barry enlist the help of Constantine to find a working Lazarus pit on an Earth that hasn’t been obliterated yet, and despite Mia being snarky and mean (is she ALWAYS so mean or is this understandable trauma from her father dying??) they all head off together. On the way out, Sara pulls Constantine aside and makes him promise he’ll restore Oliver’s soul, but all Constantine can do is promise he’ll try.

Across the universe, Lois, Clark, and Iris head to Earth 167 to try to find the Paragon of Truth, since Earth 75’s Superman is already dead. They land in Smallville, where a Tom Welling shaped Clark Kent is chopping wood. I didn’t even watch Smallville and this was exciting; and he’s grown up so much since then that when he showed up on Lucifer a few years back, I hadn’t even recognized him. Anyway, while they’re trying to explain their problem to this Clark, Lex shows up with the book and bamfs them away so he’s left alone with this Earth’s Superman. But when Clark plucks the Kryptonite out of Lex’s hand like it’s a piece of rock candy, he reveals that he’s given up his powers. Lex is horrified, because Clark was basically a god and Lex can’t fathom wanting to give that up for anything. But Clark gave it up for his family, and when Lex realizes that even without being powered by the yellow sun, Clark Kent could still beat him to a pulp, he vanishes through a portal. This Clark’s Lois comes out of the house, and luckily no one is there to point out how much like Kara’s mother she looks (well, Kara’s mother most recently…) and it’s just a happy moment between Smallville‘s Lois and Clark as they head back inside to their daughters. Considering I’ve never even seen it, I was unreasonable happy for Smallville fans, I can only imagine how exciting this was.

Back to the future Gotham, where Bruce is laughing at the idea of being a Paragon of Courage. He shows Kate a headline and reveals that he actually turned into kind of a monster. Fighting bad guys drove him to badness, and he took one life, then another, until he fell down a slippery slope. Kate is sure he can still be redeemed, though. He can still be a hero again, and not just for Gotham.

But while Kate and Bruce are talking, Luke is keeping Kara busy in the library. He asks how she knows Kate, and I personally think it was a missed opportunity for him to ask if she was her girlfriend, but whatever. Kara notices a trophy case of mementos from Batman’s batbattles (a Joker card, the Riddler’s cane, etc) and before she can even fully process how serial killer it all is, she spots Clark Kent’s glasses.

In this universe, Batman and Superman didn’t learn their moms had the same name and use that as the sole basis for a truce, so Batman killed Superman.

When Lois, Clark, and Iris get to Earth 96, the Clark Kent they found is shaped like Ray Palmer. (A nod to Brandon Routh’s role as Superman in Superman Returns.) They see a crapton of plaques in his wall of all the people in his life he’s lost, and know they’ve found their Paragon of Truth.

But before they can get Superman back to their Earth, Lex shows up and uses the book to turn the Clarks against each other. The boys fly out of the building, fighting because of Lex’s petty bullshit, while the girls watch from the window.

When it’s clear the Supermen are evenly matched, the girls take things into their own hands, clocking Lex over the head and taking the book. When they can’t figure out how to undo what Lex did, Lois tries to reason with RayClark, eventually breaking through and getting him back.

Over on Earth 18, the Lazarus crew are in North Dakota. Barry and Constantine go to get Oliver’s body while Sara and Mia clean out the pit, despite Sara being a bit triggered by the whole thing.

Sars is midway through complimenting her old pal Felicity by complimenting Mia, the two finally starting to warm to each other, when they’re interrupted by Jonah Hex. But the girls work together and quickly overpower him, because they might be small and blonde, but they were literally trained by assassins. The cowboy didn’t stand a chance.

Kate and Bruce go to his Batcave, where Bruce continues to be a batgrump. Kara storms in, suited up, and tells Kate what she learned. Bruce leans in now, villain mode activated, and rants about Supers like some kind of Lex Luthor. He punches Supergirl, and when she surprisingly is sent across the room by it, he reveals that he has a Kryptonite crystal in the arm of his exoskeleton. Kate rushes to Kara’s side, her loyalties clear in this fight.

The North Dakota crew is waiting for Oliver to rise from the pit, getting a bit impatient and worrying it won’t work.

But then Oliver springs from the pit, wild and uncouth, until Sara tranqs him so he’ll chill out until they can get his soul back.

Kate fights her futuristic cousin, standing up to him and protecting Kara, until his suit malfunctions and fries him. His dying words to Kate are, “There is no hope,” but she’s standing right next to the Paragon of it, so hopefully she knows that can’t be true.

Back on the Waverider, Lex is in the holding cell while everyone gathers to report on their Paragon findings and try Ray’s Paragon detector. When they turn it on it points to the Waverider they’re on, so Ray thinks it’s broken, but The Monitor says it isn’t. The Paragon of Courage wasn’t Bruce Wayne after all: it’s been Kate Kane all along. The Bat of the Future.

And this is cool for a lot of reasons, but first and foremost because this means that of the four Paragons they’ve identified so far — undeniable heroes who will help save all of existence — three are women, and (at least) two are queer women. Not a bad start.

When Constantine tries to return Oliver’s soul to his body, he finds he can’t quite get his magic up. The antimatter is interfering, and suddenly Mia is wondering if this was a good idea after all.

On the Waverider, Kara brings Kate a beer because she’s had a day. Kate is overwhelmed with all this time travel and alien stuff on top of her new vigilante identity. And now she’s a Paragon? It’s a lot to take in.

Kara isn’t surprised though. Kate cares so much and tries so hard, and that has way more to do with being a hero than any of that sci-fi stuff. Kara says Kate is one of the bravest people she knows, with hair and daring second only to her own sister (okay fine that part was me), and that she’ll make her own destiny. To inspire her, she shows Kate a picture she found of a grown-up, well-adjusted, happy version of Kate and Beth from Earth 99. She says maybe Kate can get that back, too. Kate smirks at her and says she’s starting to sound like the Paragon of Hope after all.

Kara says that she also has hope that she’s going to get Earth 38 back, or at the very least try her best, and as she walks away, Kate thinks of The Monitor’s warning that recreating a world could drive a person mad, and pulls Bruce’s little Kryptonite disk out of her pocket.

And on one hand, I get it. She was just talking about how she’s not a time traveler who was raised from the dead a bunch of times, or an alien who is more powerful than a locomotive, or a speedster. She’s just a human with gizmos and gadgets. So I can see how she’s feeling a little in over her head, and I’m hoping that maybe she was thinking more of all the Supermen they’re collecting when she first nabbed the Kryptonite disk than of Supergirl, but it does concern me that she was thinking of Kara when she pulled it out just now.

The episode ends with Lyla being summoned to the Anti-Monitor, who has decided she’s his Harbinger now.

We continue with Crisis on Infinite Earths: Part 3 on tonight’s episode of The Flash, but before then I wanted to give you a quick scoop on last night’s Black Lightning, because even though it wasn’t officially part of the crossover, it’s all connected. (To the point that I wouldn’t be all that surprised if the skies got mysteriously red in Riverdale, Mystic Falls, and Horseshoe Bay this week.)

In Freeland, the red sky we’re all too familiar with by now rolls in, but with no Monitor or Harbinger to explain it to them, they are left to wonder what it’s all about. Jennifer, our little Lightning, tries to call her sister, Anissa (lesbian superhero Thunder, for the uninitiated), but before she can reach her, Jennifer’s powers go haywire and she passes out, ending up in a strange space out of time with two other versions of herself.

Gen is from Earth 1, where she’s in the Pit for releasing something in the water that took away all metas’ powers, including her father and sister’s, so the ASA couldn’t use them as weapons, though she was allowed to go home for Christmas. In this universe, Anissa is still closeted and a med student and dating a girl named Shaquandalyn, and Khalil is still alive. But Odell sends his men in to ruin their Christmas, killing Jefferson for having an underground meta railroad. Overall this whole sequence bummed me out because Earth 1 is The Flash and Arrow’s Earth and this simulation sucks.

On Earth 2, Jinn is dark and angry and storming into the school, where Jefferson is a teacher. In this story, she IS the weapon of the ASA her Earth 1 persona tried to prevent. Jinn’s family tries to have an intervention, but she ends up killing them all. The grass is not always greener on the other side of the multiverse.

On Black Lightning‘s usual Earth (I’m not 100% sure which Earth, actually…maybe 23, if it’s like the comics, but I have a feeling we’ll find out tonight) Anissa finds her sister glitching and is scared.

In the weird in-between space, the Jennifers all fight, but then the white wave sweeps through and the Crisis destroys all three of their Earths, wiping out everyone except Jefferson, who was yoinked away last minute. Presumably, to join our heroes for tonight’s installment of the crossover.

See you tomorrow to discuss Part 3 of 5, the last Arrowverse episode of 2019!

CW Crossover “Crisis on Infinite Earths” Part One: The Crisis Begins

After what feels like months of everyone on the CW saying the word “crisis” so many times it barely meant anything anymore, it’s finally here: the biggest crossover yet, Crisis On Infinite Earths.

We dive right in with the first hour, technically the Supergirl hour, with the Monitor giving a voiceover about how in the beginning there was one infinitude until the darkness was filled with life, split by possibilities, thus a multiverse was born. Eventually the age of heroes came, and chaos was kept at bay by champions. We see clips of our SuperFriends saving the world again and again, including multiple shots of Supergirl stopping Lex Luthor, because something tells me that will be relevant again soon.

The Monitor voiceover says these heroes found each other just in time.

We then cut across the multiverse to see the expanse of the Crisis. Earth 89’s Gotham City, Earth 9’s San Francisco, Earth X, Earth 66. They all feature a fun cameo by someone (including an old school Robin and the Titans from the DC streaming service. The Crisis is creeping over all of them, the skies turning red, the promise of destruction looming.

On Earth 38, in National City, Wil Wheaton is yelling about the end of times, saying not even Supergirl can save humanity now. But when a dragon comes in, Supergirl DOES save him, a fact she points out casually.

Supergirl doesn’t slay the dragon though; she doesn’t need to. That’s a man’s game. Instead she calls to it by name (it’s Spike from episode 406!) and talks him down.

She calms him enough to turn him back into a lizard, which she takes to the safety of the DEO. J’onn comes in and tells them that it’s the Crisis, that the Monitor told him about it, and Brainy confirms that there’s a horrible situation hurtling toward them and it will hit them in 5.3 hours if they don’t find a way to stop it.

And unfortunately, there’s one place that has even less time than that: Argo.

On Argo, completely unaware of the danger heading their way, Lois is teasing Clark with fake headlines about how the Man of Steel is having a hard time changing their new baby’s diaper. They’re cute and happy and cooing over their son, Jonathan, when Kara holograms in to warn them about the incoming danger.

Kara’s mother leads the charge of trying to get people to safety, first and foremost getting Jonathan into a pod just like Kara’s (maybe literally Kara’s?) so he can be shuttled to safety. I feel like it’s a design flaw that they don’t make these pods big enough for one grown being + a child, but fine. Child-sized pod it is. Lois, Clark, and Alura watch little Jonathan get shot off toward theoretical safety as the Crisis wave hits. Kara watches her family die. Again.

Meanwhile, on Earth (??), Oliver and Mia are having a father/daughter moment and possibly hinting at a spinoff of her own when they are interrupted by the red sky and Lyla. But Lyla isn’t Lyla anymore, she’s the Harbinger, and she’s here to collect them because the Crisis has begun. She then bops to Earth 1, first to Central City to get a willing Flash, and to Gotham City to get a less-compliant Batwoman.

In Star City, Sara and Ray, unlike their friends, aren’t mid-fight, but just mid-trivia. They are the only ones who are having a hiatus right now – this is the first we’ve seen of these time traveling pals this TV season – and so it was very funny that they’re just hanging out when Lyla arrives.

Lyla brings these heroes she’s collected like so many Pokemon to the DEO on Earth 38, and much to Kara’s delight, she snatched up Lois and Clark just in time, too. Unfortunately, despite the fact that I’m pretty sure they were all standing together, Lyla didn’t grab Alura. So Kara has officially lost her mother. Again.

Frustrated, Batwoman asks what the hell is going on, because she’s not used to being zip-zapped to other Earths, and she only recognizes a few of the people in this room. But Supergirl promises she trusts everyone and that she can too, so the Batwoman cowl comes off, and Kate reveals her identity.

Alex demands to know what’s going on, so Lyla tells her about the antimatter that’s destroying Earths, and how The Monitor predicted that Earth 38 is where they make their last stand. Their last chance to stop it.

As they stand there and talk about how Brainy is going to track baby Jonathan’s pod, they see a tower spurt up from the ground like someone planted a magic bean made of copper. Lyla (I keep saying Lyla but really she’s the Harbinger right now… Lyla’s just easier) tells them that they’re quantum towers, put in place long ago as a failsafe, and they’re here to help.

Brainy and The Atom nerd out about the science of it all, and Brainy is excited to have another smartypants in the room. On a roll, Ray offers to upgrade Kate’s suit with some of his tech, but Kate offers to relieve him of one or more of his appendages if he tries.

While Lyla tells them about the Anti-Monitor and his mission to destroy the world, Brainy’s computer bleep blops and he says he found Jonathan’s pod – somehow it ended up on Earth 16 in 2046 via wormhole. Seems a little shady, but I guess stranger pods have been knocked off stranger courses. (To the phantom zone for 24 years, for example.)

Oliver sympathizes with Superman as a dad, but tells him that they need him to stay, so Sara and Brainy offer to go with Lois on the baby saving mission. Because of course Sara is the first to offer to protect the (granted, far from helpless) fair maiden with no supersuit.

Before they leave, Sara stops to tell Oliver that fatherhood suits him. He’s come so far from the spoiled little rich boy she once knew. They both have.

J’onn and Alex are working on an evacuation plan, if it comes to that, and hoping that the alien refugees will offer their ships, despite how unwelcoming the planet was at times. The big problem they have right now is that they don’t even know where to go; all of space is being evaporated right now, and they don’t have a big enough portal to send everyone to the end of the antimatter’s path to even buy the heroes time. But then J’onn points out that if anyone could build one big enough, it’s Lena. Alex is unsure; can they even trust her after everything that just went down? But J’onn says they have to.

Clark is taking advantage of the feelings balcony, and Kara joins him. He says he feels selfish for thinking he could hang up his cape and just be a husband and a father. She understands; she often feels like the mistakes she’s made outweigh the good she’s done, but she promises him that the voices telling them things like that are just guilt and self-doubt. The truth is, they’ve saved the world before, and they can save the world again.

Clark looks at his little big cousin with awe and wonder in his eyes. Kara just lost her mother for the second time in her young life, she might actually be the Last Daughter of Krypton this time, and here she is giving HIM a pep talk. He asks how she does it and she tells him that she learned a lot the first time she thought Krypton was gone. She learned that Krypton wasn’t about the ground under their feet or the suns in their skies. It was about the spirit of the people, and their willingness to sacrifice and do what’s right. And that can still live on through them. As long as they keep fighting, Krypton will never die.

Elsewhere in the DEO, Oliver gives Mia her very own Green Arrow suit. She resists, saying no one should wear the hood if he can’t, but he’s been preparing her for his death for a little while now, and this is the next step. He begs her to at least try it on, and she agrees.

Oliver heads out to find Barry next, jabbing him a bit for being the last to show up, but Barry is a little distracted. He tells Oliver that he’s fated to die in the Crisis, and instead of reacting like most of his other friends and family did, with denial or anger or sadness, Oliver just shouts at the sky like he’s trying to summon a Janet. The Monitor hears his call and zaps him to his little floaty disk, where Oliver starts letting him have it – they had a deal. Oliver was supposed to die so Barry and Kara could live. But The Monitor said technically that deal is already done; this is an entirely new threat altogether.

Down on the ground, Alex heads to L-Corp to ask for Lena’s help. Lena is none too pleased to see her, since their last interaction involved Alex basically having a death beam trained on her.

Lena half-tries to feed Alex her cover story about the whole ordeal of the last episode being Eve’s fault, but Alex doesn’t buy it and Lena’s not really surprised. But she had to try.

Alex tells her about the antimatter wave and why they need her help. Alex takes this time to do what she maybe should have done sooner, but that Lena seems a bit surprised to hear: she apologizes. For standing by her side and lying to her day after day. Lena seems surprised to hear Alex admit it so plainly, to not deny Lena her pain. Lena says that she thought they really bonded when they hated Supergirl together, and Alex says that actually that was legit but she doesn’t have time to get into it right now; they’re desperate.

Lena waves off her apology. It won’t do Alex any good. Nothing she could say could undo this hurt. The friendship is broken beyond repair. But the world needs saving, and as she is tired of having to explain to people, she’s not a bad person. She will obviously put aside her personal feelings about a handful of people to save literally everyone in the multiverse.

When Lois, Sara, and Brainy get to Earth 16 in 2046, their trackers lead them to a rundown Arrow Cave. Sara spars with an old version of Oliver, who is surprised as all hell to see Sara both alive and also trained like an assassin. “You’re dead,” he tells her, which is something she’s heard before. She has died so many times I’ve lost count. But it never sticks, thank Beebo.

Lois thanks Old Oliver for saving her baby, and he doesn’t really confirm that he did? It’s a little confusing but if I’m being totally honest I skipped a few episodes of Arrow so it’s entirely possible we already knew Old Oliver 16 saved a superbaby.,

Back on Earth 38, the Tower Team is fighting off Dementors with their personal patronuses – arrows, rays, batarangs, etc. When she realizes that this fight is more than scooping up rabbits and bopping them on the head, Kate agrees to let Atom upgrade her weapons and keep all his appendages, so he does and it’s pretty badass, because teamwork.

Just when it seems like there are too many shadow demons to fight off, The Flash and the Supers arrive to help out and they seem to be keeping them at bay.

Meanwhile, Nia and Kelly are down on the ground, helping as many citizens of National City as they can get into Brainy’s spaceship.

In the lab, Lena is being sassy and talking science all at the same time, and it’s kind of amazing.

This moment is only made better by Alex meeting her on her level and giving her an idea, and then also saving Lena from some debris, proving once again that they make a good team.

On Earth 16, Old Oliver is having such a hard time wrapping his head around seeing a grown-up Sara before his eyes. He has carried so much guilt about her death and never got to apologize. Sara assures him that, at least on her earth, getting on the boat was her own choice. And there were thousands of possibilities as to what happened after, and in at least one, she’s traveling through time and is happier than she could have ever dreamed of being. So things may not have gone well for Sara 16, but the Sara in front of him is glad she got on that doomed boat.

Sara assures him that he’s a good man, on this Earth and every other, and says goodbye as the Crisis creeps closer.

When they realize the tower has stopped thwarting the rolling red doom, the Supers fly up to try to fix it. They try to buy more time by using their heat vision to power up the solar panels. To remind us once again who is more powerful, Kara lasts just a bit longer than Clark.

In the lab, Lena finishes up the portal, thanks in part to Alex’s sciencey suggestion. Alex says it was just a lucky guess and that Lena is the real genius, but in the flattery Lena catches herself and her expression becomes serious again. She reminds Alex that this doesn’t fix anything, that they’re not magically friends now. She said her and Kara showed Lena who they are. “I accept that,” she says. And I get that sentiment, I do. I get feeling like yours eyes were opened and needing to reconfigure your relationship with someone in your mind. Someone you thought was a very best friend is actually more of a one-way street than you realized. And your lives are too intertwined to extricate yourself entirely, so you just have to redefine your friendship, or your working relationship. And it hurts, and it’s hard, and it’s easy to fall into old patterns again — which sometimes leads to drawing harder lines than strictly necessary. Just because Lena was hurt, doesn’t mean she can never trust Kara or Alex at all about anything ever again. Just because she knows Alex doesn’t fully trust her either doesn’t mean she can’t have a good time making crazy science with her. I think Lena will get there, if she wants to. But they’re all going to need some time.

After the portal is ready, Alex and Lena join Nia and Kelly in the extraction mission. They’re shepherding people onto the spaceship, and Alex watches with hearteyes as Kelly uses Guardian’s shield to save a civilian.

As our SuperFriends all fight off shadow demons, The Monitor decides it’s time to go and starts zapping them off the planet one by one. But never, not once, not after the first person disappears, not as more and more go, do any of them even pause their fighting. They are so focused on the shadow demons that they get every last shot they can off before they’re yanked from this Earth. Oliver sees this happening and asks The Monitor if the planet is evacuated yet; when he says not yet, Oliver says it’s not time to go, and shoots an arrow at The Monitor to keep him from yoinking him, too. Oliver shoots and shoots until he’s out of arrows, then he drops his bow and runs into the fray as the spaceship successfully goes through the portal.

The Monitor takes everyone back to Earth 1, and tells them how many people were lost, how many were saved, and how many were saved specifically because Oliver bought them a few more minutes. Because he sacrificed himself. The team looks and Oliver lays dying.

The latest incarnation of HG Wells (#NotMyHGWells) is called Nash, and he shows up beside The Monitor, no longer really Nash so much as a man serving penance for releasing The Anti-Monitor. Which I guess is what all the hooey in the tunnel was all about? I honestly am not sure and I did NOT skip any episodes of The Flash. I just am so, so, so, so over this man and all of his many faces.

Anyway, a dying Oliver says his goodbyes to everyone. Tells Barry he’s the best of them, tells him and Kara that he died to save them so now they have to save everyone.

He says goodbye to Mia, and through her to Felicity and William. His last words are, “Keep me in your heart, okay?” Which is so Oliver because he never really was sure if he was worthy of love. So he phrases it like an option, a question mark, open ended for eternity.

Though, I’ll be honest… I find it hard to believe he’s dead. I suppose it’s possible, what with the multiverse, but a) this isn’t even technically his show, it’s Supergirl b) sure Arrow is ending but it still has half a season to go c) if Oliver Queen is for real forever dead and none of his family – John Diggle, any version of Laurel, William, etc – were even on the same Earth when it happened, that’s, quite frankly, bullshit.

The Monitor then says something that he perceives as bad: things aren’t going as he predicted. The timeline as he knew it is changing. He and his little sidekick say everything is doomed, but call me Kara Danvers because I think this is a good thing. If things aren’t going how he thought they would, that means none of what he saw was set in stone. Not the way this ends, not Barry’s death, none of it. Anything goes.

Tonight is hour two of five in this wild ride, and it’s technically Batwoman’s hour, so we’ll see what kind of shenanigans we get up to with our Gotham gal.

Boobs on Your Tube: Game of Thrones’ Lone Lesbian Lives!

Happy Friday, Boobs Tubers! This week, Kayla reviewed the very lesbian season three premiere of The Bold Type and another wackadoodle episode of Riverdale and made quite a list for you. Riese and Kristin released the second episode of To L and Back! Carmen wrote about the bisexual coming out episode of Abby’s. Valerie recapped a very Jane Austen Legends of Tomorrow and shared some big gay found family feelings about the season finale of The Magicians. Natalie hosted the finale of our March Madness Coming Out tournament; stay turned, results are on the way!

Some reminders from the TV Team:

+ I finally got caught up on Jane the Virgin and I promise cross my heart Petramos is coming to this website page in all its glory (along with some Rose and Luisa shakedown) this Monday. — Heather

+ Younger released a First Look video for Season Six, and I’ll be honest with you: It’s a lot of straight people, but if you love the show, still pretty cute. — Carmen

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The Chi 202: “Every Day I’m Hustlin’”

Written by Carmen

Lena Waithe’s The Chi returned to Showtime two weeks ago, and we’re getting to know even more about Nina and Karen – the lesbian moms of the show’s youngest protagonist, Kevin. In The Chi’s first season, Kevin witnessed a murder in his South Side neighborhood that became the catalyst for most of the show’s drama moving forward. In the second season, that murder charge is making its way to court, which means that Kevin may have to take the stand as a key witness.

In other shows, Kevin’s decision to testify would be fairly straightforward. What makes The Chi stand out is its instance on grappling with the nuances of a tween black boy being asked to work with the police and District Attorney. This is primarily played out via Nina and Karen, who rightfully worry that having their son “snitch” could mean a death sentence, not to mention his own emotional distress of having to relive the traumatic event in graphic detail for hours while being grilled by lawyers. At the same time, his moms recognize that his testimony might be the only way to bring the victim’s family peace. But is that peace worth the price it might cost their own family? There’s no easy answer. They debate it while washing dishes, while rubbing each other’s feet after a long day of work. It’s all knitted brows and hushed tones, trying to figure out what’s right. There’s just something about Nina and Karen – their love is quiet and domestic, but nonetheless impactful. Give me more black lesbians in love and fighting for their family. Please, please give that to me any day!

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The Flash 518: “Godspeed”

Written by Valerie Anne

Kathryn Gallagher, who was lesbian socialite Peach’s best friend in #YouOnLifetimeNetflix and also best friend of queer characters in the Broadway musical Jagged Little Pill, was on The Flash this week and I mistakenly started hoping she was Nora’s girlfriend in the future but before I even had time to come up with a ship name she was dead. So I guess it’s for the best they were just best friends.

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Arrow 718: “Lost Canary”

Written by Valerie Anne

I stopped watching Arrow at some point because I got too far behind to catch up on CW’s website, but of course when I heard my beloved Sara Lance was back for a visit, I had to check out this episode. Luckily not much has changed since I watched, and the emotional crux of the episode was all about Sara, who I have been following faithfully across time and space.

I was worried we’d never get this kind of explicit discussion of Sara’s growth over the years, because Legends hasn’t really talked much about it since the Death Totem incident. I thought they had moved on and were going to focus mostly on Sara and Ava’s relationship and growth. (Which is fine, I approve.) So I was thrilled when Sara showed up in Star City to help NuLaurel find her way back from the dark path she set out on when she thought her friends had abandoned her.

First up, we have to discuss how perfect it was to watch them mirror earlier seasons with Sara and Felicity, with Sara doing the Salmon Ladder and Felicity being impressed. They even talk about how Sara was flirting with her and Felicity was into it before they hug it out .

In the end, Sara finally gets through to Laurel. Even though it’s not really her sister, they have a bond, and they both loved the same Quentin in their own ways. Sara knows what Laurel’s going through; she went from cheating brat to literal assassin and now is a time-traveling hero. A legend, even. Redemption isn’t a box you can check, and becoming a good person isn’t a finish line you cross. It’s a journey and it’s making those choices every single day, over and over again, until it becomes second nature.

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Game of Thrones 801: “Winterfell”

Written by Heather

There were a lot of surprises on the season eight premiere of Game of Thrones. Second only to Bran Stark becoming the most meme-able character of the series in just 45 minutes was the shocker that Yara Greyjoy is still very much alive! I thought for sure she was a goner and probably we’d never even hear about her again! Theon rescues her pretty easily and heads off to Winterfell to try to continue to make up for, you know, ruining the lives of most of many Stark children. Not Yara, though. She gathers what’s left of her army and sails away, determined to retake the Iron Islands. Before she goes, she tells Theon to tell her ol’ gal pal Daenerys that if she and her troops need to fall back — or, like, if Dany’s just looking for a nice vacation and a little lesbian romp — she’ll have the Islands secured for her in no time at all. Dragonspeed, Salt Prince!

Boobs on Your Tube: Seriously How Does “Charmed” Keep Getting Gayer?

Welcome back to Boobs On Your Tube! Have you been following along with the first 24 hours of basketball March Madness? Well, we’ve got some good news for you: Thanks to Natalie’s relentless passion and hard work, we’re rolling out Autostraddle March Madness for you again this year! This very Monday, in fact, and we want to give you a sneak peak at the theme so you can start prepping your fandoms!

Yes! It’s best coming out! Get ready!

This week, Mackenzie McDade joined us to write two pieces: One on the “Black Girl Magic” episode of Queer Eye and one on Hulu’s new series, Shrill. Carmen recapped a disappointing finale of Black Lightning. Natalie recapped a solid but troubling Stef and Lena-centric episode of Good Trouble. Valerie Anne recapped ALEX DANVERS’ NEW GIRLFRIEND. And Kayla made a plea for all lesbian breakups on TV to be told in song and dance. Heather told you about Cameron Esposito’s surprise appearance on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, unpacked some facts about Gentleman Jack, and got hyped for Ellen Page and Lauren Morelli’s Tales of the City.

Some reminders from the TV Team:

+ The Fight for Wynonna is still on. — Valerie Anne

+ According to this Instagram post, Even Ashley Johnson and Audrey Esparza seem to feel as MAKE IT GAY YOU COWARDS about their Blindspot characters as we do.

PS. Natalie and I feel some type of way about the lack of Patterson/Zapata interaction this season.

— Valerie Anne

+ #SAVEODAAT. Also? Some TV Returns that might be revelant to your interests: Jane the Virgin (CW, 3/27), Abby’s (NBC, 3/28) — Natalie

Here’s what else!

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Legacies 115: “I’ll Tell You A Story”

Written by Valerie Anne

It’s been one episode and I already miss Penelope, mostly because her leaving has left Josie re-evaluating her life and looking so, SO sad. She’s taking Penelope’s parting advice and looking into this mysterious thing called The Merge but is finding that all the books that should have information about it has those specific pages ripped out.

Meanwhile, Lizzie is desperate to win her sister’s affections back, so she’s having Hope help her make a pie. Hope gives Lizzie a book about the Gemini Coven she got from Alaric’s office that she thinks will help win Josie’s favor.

But when Lizzie brings Josie the pie and the book, Josie isn’t having it. Lizzie concedes that she could live if they had separate rooms, but Josie knows it goes deeper than that. “We should have our own lives, we should be our own people.”

This sends Lizzie into a spiral and she’s on the bring of an Episode when Hope finds her and calms for, at least for now. Hope goes to talk to Josie, but Josie isn’t going to step in and save her sister this time. She says Lizzie isn’t taking her meds and thinks that letting her crash and burn is the only way she’ll learn. Hope is a little alarmed at this new take Josie has and leaves her be.

Josie goes to her room to get some things but Lizzie is there and is tired of playing nice. She yells that Josie was just as much a part of their toxic relationship and they both throw spells at each other at the same time. Surprising both of them, Josie’s spell ends up being stronger and sending Lizzie flying back.

Josie apologizes and runs away, leaving Lizzie knocked down and shook.

Hope calls her Aunt Freya (who I believe is the queer witch from The Originals?) and learns about The Merge, and, rightfully horrified, goes to Alaric and demands he tell the twins. So he does, and here’s what The Merge is: on their 22nd birthday, the twins will have to fight, and one will absorb the other, and only the strongest one will survive. Alaric explains that that’s why their mother is always traveling, because she’s trying to find a way to stop The Merge, but Josie knows this is a curse on their line and things don’t look great for them.

By the end of the episode, Hope has figured out that Landon (who we learn is a phoenix born of a mudman and related to the creepy Triad guy in whatever way mudpeople are related) has been kidnapped and she decides she’s going to “go all Wonder Woman” and assemble her Super Squad (aka the twins, MG, and Kaleb) to save him. Which I guess is how we’ll spend our season finale next week!

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All American 116: “Championships”

Written by Natalie

Last month, when the CW presented at the Television Critics Association Press Tour, All American wasn’t among the shows the network greenlit for another season. The network’s executives hope that the move to Netflix later this month will help build the show’s fanbase and justify a second season. I hope they get it. At its best, All American was responsible some of the best queer representation on television. Its willingness to center so much of the show around a black, masculine-of-center lesbian was truly unprecedented and, given what’s happened this week with Young MA, the necessity of telling those stories — and educating the audience on the experiences of MOC women — could not be more apparent. And All American was the rare show to give equal time and weight to initimacy between straight and gay couples. If “Championships” is the last we see of Tamia “Coop” Cooper, it’ll be a real loss.

As someone who really wants there to be a second season of All American, I found this episode wanting: it felt like a series finale, not a season finale. The episode kicks off at Spencer’s house, with Coop having a family meeting with Laura Baker about what to do about Tyrone. Her chosen family’s there — Grace and Spencer — but, much to my surprise, so is her actual family: both of Coop’s parents, Reggie and Janelle Cooper. I wish Patience had been there too…not only would it have created more tension but maybe I wouldn’t have spent the whole episode yelling “Where’s Patience, Coop?” at my television like I was watching season one of The Wire. Tyrone’s a person of interest in the attempted murder of Preach and while the LAPD’s on the lookout for him, he’s still out there…posing a real threat to Coop’s safety. Grace invites Coop back to stay at her house but she declines, promising to be careful on her own. Then Coop’s mom interjects: she wants her daughter to move back home.

“What happened to me no longer being welcome?” Coop asks, surprised by the invitation.

“Well, whatever our differences, we can’t work them out if you’re not alive,” her mom answers. I mean, true, but damn.

Later, Coop regroups with some other members in the gang and lays out a plan to get Tyrone. Malik’s not thrilled by Coop calling all the shots so she invites him to come up with a better plan. He can’t, of course, but still questions whether or not she can handle the heat that might be coming her way. If Tyrone comes, Coop promises she’ll be ready and she pulls out a snub nose revolver to re-emphasize the point. When Malik rolls stops by the apartment, as Coop and Spencer are packing up her apartment, he reveals that he’s heard from Tyrone: the dethroned gang leader has left town and is laying low in San Luis Obispo. Once things die down, Tyrone wants Malik to bring him some money. Coop takes in all the information and then leaves to cheer Spencer on in the championship game.

During the closing minutes of the game, Coop gets a text from Malik saying that Tyrone’s peeked his head out of the hole earlier than expected. He wants his money now and she texts back that they finally have an opportunity to get payback for Preach and Shawn. She let’s Malik know that she’ll meet up with him after she hits the bathroom…a reference so ridiculously out of place in the situation that what’s coming feels obvious. Coop’s checking herself in the mirror when Tyrone comes into the bathroom and points a gun in her direction.

“You thought you were smarter than me, huh? Guess you put faith in the wrong people,” Tyrone says snidely. “You was always weak. Now that’s why you’re all alone.”

But, it turns out, Coop’s not alone: just after Tyrone admits his role in everything and cocks his gun, two LAPD officers spring out and arrest him. It was a trap all along…Coop knew that Malik was disloyal she used that to trap Tyrone. While the story wraps up a little too tidily for my tastes, the one thing I appreciated about this week’s episode — and the one thing that’s been missing from this entire storyline, honestly — is that it finally treated Coop like she understood how to play the game.

Post Game Notes

+ If All American gets renewed— and, again, I really hope they do — they’ve really got to do something about the way they shoot these football games. “Championship”‘s scenes were almost offensive. I’m willing to ignore the fact that Spencer came right back into the game after his helmet came off on the field (that’s a penalty!), but it was raining when Spencer’s team stepped off the bus yet, somehow, the field managed to stay perfectly dry?! Plus, WHO PLAYS A STATE CHAMPIONSHIP ON ONE OF THE COMPETITOR’S FIELDS? No one, that’s who.

+ It’s hard to imagine that there’s something gayer than Coop on this show but the relationship between Olivia and Layla? HELLA GAY. I ship it.

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The Good Fight 302: “The One Inspired by Roy Cohn”

Written by Natalie

Last summer, I wrote this about an episode of Ackley Bridge:

You know how sometimes you want a thing so much and then that thing comes and, technically, it is what you wanted but also it’s not at all what you wanted? Like that time I wished for more diversity in the US Senate and then Harold Ford announced he was thinking about challenging Kristen Gillibrand in the primary? You’re like, “yes!” but also: “noooooooooo”.

That’s exactly the way I felt this week while watching The Good Fight. It was “yes, finally, Maia gets a storyline!” followed almost immediately by “oh, God, no…not this.”

This week, Michael Sheen joined The Good Fight as Roland Blum and he and Maia are forced to join forces to represent a pair of co-defendants. As the title suggests, he’s inspired by Roy Cohn who, if you don’t know, was the original Donald Trump. Blum is as loud and obnoxious as you’d expect, given the inspiration, and is just as committed to winning without regard to truth as our current president. In small doses, I might be able to find Bloom tolerable but here, on this show this show that’s been a refuge from the gaslighting, his presence is an anvil and now they’ve firmly fixed that anvil around Maia’s neck.

Blum comes into court, with his over-the-top theatrics, and accuses the prosecutor of being the real murderer, much to Maia’s consternation. Her client’s fate is inextricably tied to his so she tries to make the partnership work. When she shows up at his office, a gaudly decorated hotel room, to talk strategy, Blum strips off his pants, snorts some pills and then starts dispensing advice on their role as lawyers. While Maia’s committed to creating a coherent narrative, based on evidence, for the jury, Blum’s interested in creating the best story, facts be damned.

“You don’t get it. Who said anything about evidence?” Blum retorts. “We base the evidence on the story. We prove what helps us, we disprove what hurts us. Whoever tells the best story goes home with cash and prizes.”

He hands her fetanyl lollipop and tells her to suck on it before court so she doesn’t look like a teacher’s aide. She spots the picture of Blum with Roy Cohn and Roger Stone and he uses the opportunity to frame himself as Cohn’s living legacy. While she’s able to resist his drug pushing, the next day at court, Maia plays along with Blum’s courtroom theatrics, in an effort to curry favor with the jury. The next time that they’re in court, Blum’s theatrics continue: first with tossing Maia’s trial notes out of the window, then by calling a rebuttal witness to lie about prosecutor’s connection to a would-be murderer. When Maia threatens to tell the judge that Blum’s suborning perjury, Blum threatens her right back. For a moment, Maia backs down but then she comes back strong — using Blum’s own tactics against him — and gets a mistrial. While it feels like a temporary reprieve, the judge is committed to retrying the case and forcing Blum and Maia to continue to work together. UGH.

I came to The Good Fight late. Still smarting over what the Kings did to Kalinda Sharma — one of my favorite TV characters of all time — I refused to watch the show’s first season on principle but then they added Audra McDonald to the cast and I was powerless to resist any longer. I quickly fell in love with the show and its smart, incisive writing and standout performances, despite the queer storylines languishing on the canvas. But now, it feels like Maia’s falling into the same trap that befell my beloved Kalinda: after the revelations about the Rindell family and her father’s subsequent capture and imprisonment, it doesn’t seem like the Kings know what to do with Maia…much like they didn’t know what to do with Kalinda after her affair with Peter was uncovered. I do not like the way that this is going, not at all.

PS: Every episode of The Good Fight this season features these wonderful, educational animated shorts, scored by Jonathan “JoCo” Coulton. CBS is posting them, seemingly, a week after the episode airs so here’s last week’s short: NDA. It’s worth watching even if you don’t watch the show (but you should!).

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Charmed 115: Switches & Stones

Written by Carmen

I know that I say this every week and probably am becoming a bit of a broken record at this point, but seriously – I. Cannot. Get. Over. How. Good. This. Show. Is.

Charmed found itself as quirky and delightful (and at times, serious) as ever in what’s arguably its most feminist outing to date. The minute I found out that our demon of the week was going to be Medusa – or as Macy aptly calls her, “The Patron Saint of Slut Shaming” – I knew we were in for something special. THEN, just when I thought my feminist pop culture nerd heart couldn’t explode any more – the episode’s advertised “Freaky Friday” twist, in which Mel and Maggie switched bodies, came with a reference to both the Lindsay Lohan AND Jodie Foster takes on the family film classic!! (Side Note: Has anyone else noticed that the two leads of one of the most famous family movies of all time both grew up to be queer? Three leads if you count Gaby Hoffman’s lesser known take on the movie as an ABC TGIF television special in the 90s. All I’m saying is, there’s something going on there. Hmmmm.)

Before the body switch occurs, Jada and Mel go on a hot date to… Ireland? Well, specifically they’re macheting their way through the mythical Irish Isle of Hy-Bresal in search of this magical relic that will help the Keeper, that weakened S’Arcana sister rescued from Tartarus earlier in the season, regain her strength. Some enchanted weeds start to grow around Jada and Mel saves her life and it’s all very action packed and romantic, awwwww.

Feeling all warm and cozy from having her life saved by her girlfriend (again! this is like the second or fourth time!), Jada decides to keep pushing with that whole vulnerability and trust thing growing between them. After swearing her to secrecy from her sisters, Jada tells Mel the true identity of the Keeper: Fiona, Charity’s long lost and presumed dead sister! If you remember, Charity (one of The Elders) once had a sister named Fiona who was also in love with Harry, the Charmed Ones’ Whitelighter. But then Fiona got in good with the S’Arcana, betraying her sister and The Elders and everything that they held dear. Then she died.

Or so we thought.

Later, Maggie posing as Mel (we’re now deep into “Freaky Friday” territory here) learns from Jada that The Elders had Fiona banished. Well, first they tried to kill her, but it turned out that she was immortal. Then they banished her and never told Harry or Charity the truth. Maggie is heartbroken, because she’s finally starting to see The Elders through her sister’s eyes. They don’t trust powerful women that they can’t control. Instead, as Jada says with a shudder, they punish them.

Of course this is a PERFECT parallel to the episode’s main plot, wherein Macy learns the truth behind Medusa’s mythology: According to Charmed, Medusa was once a witch. After being raped by Poseidon, the other Gods turned her into a monster in order to cover his tracks. She was thrown away, and the powerful man who violated her was left unpunished. It’s disgusting and enraging, but mostly it’s a sad story that we know all too well.

Macy finds kinship in Medusa, who now moonlights by showing up on college campuses and turning rape culture standard-bearer frat boys into stone. The eldest Charmed One becomes the first person in millennia to offer to look the “demon” in her eyes. She wants Medusa to know that she really sees her, and not the monster that those men turned her into. It does the trick perfectly and dammit, despite being a “silly little show” about witchcraft and monsters I’ll tell you the truth – I was definitely left more than a little misty-eyed. As women, sometimes we really are our sisters’ keepers.

PS: Did I forget to tell you that the “Freaky Friday” bit came with two of my favorite one liners of the whole season? Maggie meets up with Jada (in Mel’s body), Jada compliments her “more femme look” (ha!), before kissing her (Ha!), and then all dazed from the power of Jada’s lip lock, Maggie goes …. “I’m starting to see what she [meaning, her sister] umm, I mean I see in you!” (HAAA!)

My second favorite moment? When Maggie’s boyfriend mistakes Mel for her sister and tries to go in for the make out, she pulls away disgusted and calls him “a cliché of a straight white male.” Right away he knows which Vera he’s talking to. 😍

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Quick Hits

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend 414: “I’m Finding My Bliss”

This week Valencia thought Beth was going to propose to her, and when she instead proposed they invest in some property, Valencia was pissed. She performed in a variety show that highlighted how awful some old-school Broadway “classics” are, and in her song played a woman who was kidnapped and forced to marry a pirate and has been stockholm-syndromed into thinking she’s okay with the situation but she’s not paying attention to the words, she’s just trying to make a point to Beth while wearing her wedding dress costume. In the end, Valencia tells Beth that she’s not going back to New York with her without an engagement ring on her finger. Which feels a little dramatic but then again, it’s Valencia were talking about here. — Valerie Anne

Roswell, New Mexico 109: “Songs About Texas”

I just wanted to let you know I’m a little sad that in the same episode, Liz touched Maria’s arms gently and called her “babe” can said Maria’s her own hero and Maria SANG ALANIS MORISSETTE…Maria also slept with Michael. I mean don’t get me wrong, I love a good angsty hate-fuck, but I felt lead on. I was really hoping Maria harbored feelings for Rosa she was going to project onto Liz. But I guess that was always a lost cause since Liz and Max are fated or whatever. The silver lining is that this means Michael’s bisexual, so that’s fun at least, to have more bisexual boy rep. — Valerie Anne

Arrow 716: “Star City 2040”

Confession: I don’t watch Arrow anymore. I lost interest and fell behind and was originally planning on catching up, but then I found out Arrow was ending after eight more episodes in its eighth season therefore won’t be a part of future crossovers, and I lost all motivation to catch up. I was only watching for Felicity at this point, and it was hard to see her be painfully underused. Laurel was great but she wasn’t OUR Laurel, yaknow? But then I heard Nyssa al Ghul was in this most recent episode! And at first I was going to make up a fanfic version fo why she was back and what she did but as I was reading a wiki entry about it, I saw that at 20 seconds, it marked Oliver Queen’s shortest screentime to date and I was curious enough to watch at least her scenes. It turns out Nyssa al Ghul trained Oliver and Felicity’s daughter Mia to be a badass, the same way she trained Sara Lance.

I heard whisperings that Mia Smoak might get her own spinoff show as Blackstar and based on the clips from this episode alone, it seems way more up my alley than Arrow has been of late. — Valerie Anne

Grey’s Anatomy 1518: “Add It Up”

A cute quick thing that happened last night on Grey’s is that The Chief (by which I mean, Dr. Webber. For me, The Chief will always be Dr. Webber) had his first non-binary patient. He stumbled over pronouns a bit, but with some persistent help from Jackson and Hellmouth he got on the right path. I appreciated the show demonstrating that even “older folks” can learn and adjust. Pronouns ultimately just aren’t that hard. Especially when it comes to respecting someone else’s humanity. Way to drive the point home, Grey’s. — Carmen

DCTV SuperFlarrow “Elseworlds, Part 3” Recap: Twisted Sister

We did it! We made it through another crossover! And even though, as always, Supergirl felt sidelined, even in her own episode, I think this was my favorite crossover yet. So let’s dive into it, because there was a lot to unpack.

Previously on the SuperFlarrow Crossover Event called Elseworlds, Oliver and Barry switched bodies but no one else on Earth-1 could tell so they went to Earth-38 to get Supergirl’s help. An all-powerful being called The Monitor gave a not-so-powerful human named Deegan a book that could rewrite reality to test out to see if this universe was ready to face something bad that’s coming. Oliver, Barry, and Kara enlisted the help of Batwoman, but the Monitor just hit the reset button as soon as they reached the big boss level. Rude.

Just like Barry took over Oliver’s opening credits, Deegan took over Supergirl’s, telling his own origin story, about how he was working in Arkham until he was given the power to do whatever he wanted. And now he’s the Superman in all black Oliver and Barry ran into at the end of the last episode.

And so there we pick up, with Dark Superman facing off against the adorably named Trigger Twins in their cute little matching cravats. I kept wanting them to burst into Greased Lightning or something. I was a big fan of their outfits. ANYWAY, they figure out that Dark Superman is actually Deegan and tell him that he can dress like a hero but he can’t fake being a hero. Deegan is determined though, so Oliver gives him his chance by knocking over a tower, forcing Deegan to choose between saving the children or stopping Barry and Oliver. He decides to play the part so Oliver and Barry book it. (Barry adorably hates being bad; it gives him a tummy ache.)

Dark Superman goes back to Star Labs, which is now more like SuperLabs, and has Diggle and The Meta Formerly Known As Killer Frost in tactical gear, applauding their leader.

An agent comes in to tell them of a disturbance in the cells, and Frost says it’s Subject 1, who has been fussy all morning, but Dark Superman says he’ll handle it. Subject 1 turns out to be Kara, who can tell from the look on Deegan’s face it’s not her cousin, even though they technically have the same face.

Kara asks him why he’s playing Superman and he says that in the first go-round he wanted to be The Flash, but then he saw her in action and knew she was the superior hero. She challenges him then, wanting to know why he choose Superman’s face, not her own. “Too afraid to be a woman?” she asks him, and it’s a miracle it didn’t shatter his male ego and save the day right then and there.

He ignores her question though and points out that she technically doesn’t exist on this Earth. So there’s no one to stop him from being a hero. Kara gets fired up but all of a sudden her ears are ringing, and it’s because Agent Alex Danvers is there bringing the pain.

Alex threatens her and talks to her like she’s a stranger, or worse, an enemy, and Kara looks back at her like Alex just threatened to kill her pet bunny.

Deegan sees this exchange and realizes Kara must know Alex on her Earth; he didn’t even plan that one. But he uses it to his advantage, saying that Kara better behave or he’ll kill Alex.

Oliver and Barry decide they need to go find Cisco so he can breach them to Earth-38 so they can get the real Superman and sort all this out. But on their way to find Cisco, they get scooped up by The Monitor. Oliver demands he tell them what the heck is going on, and The Monitor reads him as willing (though not eager) to die. Which is intriguing to him. He says that survival will be found if they can know their true selves, which is exactly the kind of riddle-tastic bullshit I expected him to say.

So Barry and Oliver restart their mission to find Cisco, and since everything in this reality is flipped on its head, Cisco is probably one of the bad guys, too. So they head to a baddie bar and find Gary bartending. Because of course he is. And even though he’s technically a bad guy, he’s still Gary at his core, nerding out about seeing his favorite criminals. (Even calls them Legends. Ba dum kss.)

Gary leads the boys back to Cisco aka The Boss, who is counting money and looking more serious than our Cisco ever dares.

At SuperLabs, Kara calls out to Alex and tries to reason with her. Alex says she’s heard about horrible, evil things Kara has done, but Kara promises that isn’t true, that none of this is real. But Alex won’t listen.

At the Bad Bar, Oliver and Barry fight Cisco’s henchpeople, lead by James Olsen. Who I’m pretty sure called himself, “Superman’s Worst Pal” and honestly if I’m wrong don’t correct me because I got a good hearty chuckle out of it.

Before James can kill Barry and Oliver, Barry uses his knowledge of Cisco’s brother to get him to at least hear them out. They think he’ll like their plan: to get rid of Superman. But they need Cisco’s breaches (which he has thus far only been using to rob banks) to do it.

Back at SuperLabs, Frost tries to get Alex to go home early, kick back, relax, maybe go on a date. Frost asks her if she has any boyfriends, and an eavesdropping Kara is confused. Alex says she doesn’t have a boyfriend, just went on one bad date or two with a guy from another department. Frost tells Alex to let loose and is maybe almost sort of flirting with her? But also that’s sort of Frost’s whole ~thing.

She warns Alex about letting her heart turn to ice, but Alex would really rather work. Frost shrugs and leaves her to it, and Alex watches her leave in what could be a, “Wow she almost found out my secret,” way or a, “Damn I wish I had been brave enough to use that opening to ask her out” look. Either way, we have a very unhappy Alex on our hands.

Oliver, Barry, and Cisco breach to Earth-38 and find themselves in the Fortress of Solitude, where I guess Superman and Lois Lane hang out sometimes. Anyway, Lois knows Superman has got to go, so go he does.

Back in the SuperLab cell, Kara tries to talk to Alex but Alex zaps her again.

But this time she’s stopped when Kara starts speaking in another language. Kara tells her it’s a phrase Alex Danvers taught to her in her reality, a phrase that means “pinky swear” that Alex taught her the first night they went flying together.

Kara tells this Alex that her Alex is similar to her in some ways, drawn to service, for example. But that her Alex is in charge. She’s a leader. Kara says that her Alex won’t just follow orders if she knows they’re wrong, she’ll “give them hell” and do what she believes is right. Her Alex doesn’t have powers, but she’s a hero with a big-ass heart. She has a found family, and she doesn’t have to hide who she is.

Alex is quiet now, looking at this stranger who is telling her things about herself she wishes she could see, too. Kara looks Alex in the eyes and says confidently that her Alex wants a wife and kids, and is optimistic that she’ll find them. It’s not an if, but a when.

Alex is a little floored by this but tries not to look too shaken. But Chyler plays the subtlety so well. Her eyes never leave Kara but there’s this intake of breath and you can feel it knocking one of her walls clean over. Being able to talk about it in the third person helps too, this is some other Alex she’s talking about, she says that Kara’s Alex sounds pretty awesome, and I think we can all agree she is.

Kara says that she might not be Alex’s sister in this reality, but she can tell that there’s still all the best parts of Alex in her. And it’s true; Alex was always Alex. Kara didn’t change her, not at her core. But when Kara came into her life, she gave her a fierce maternal instinct and sense of responsibility that might have taken longer to develop otherwise. Watching Kara come into her own as Supergirl (and helping her do so) gave Alex stepping stones to do the same. Having Kara there to test coming out on, even if it didn’t go the way she hoped the first time, having Kara there to hold her when she got her heart broken for the first time, having Kara at the dinner table when she wanted to come out to her mother. These were all factors in Alex becoming the Alex we know and love today. Maybe she would have gotten there eventually on her own, but why risk it with a Kara-less existence?

Alex asks Kara if she’ll really stop Dark Superman if she lets her out, and Kara pinky swears. So Alex agrees.

They start to make their escape, but before they can get too far, they’re stopped by Dark Superman and his crew. Frost snarks at Alex in a way that sort of implies she thinks she broke Kara out of her cell to take her on a date? It’s a little unclear but it’s Frost snark so I’ll take it.

Kara starts to cover for her, saying she tricked her, that it was her idea, but Alex steps in and says, firmly, “She’s my sister.”

When the boys get back from Star Labs with Superman in tow, they’re just about finishing telling him that they have no idea where Kara is when who do they run into but Kara. And also Alex. And everyone they’re facing. Fighting ensues! The Supermen fly off together, Cisco breaches back to safety, Oliver draggs Diggle and Frost into an elevator to fight them, leaving Barry alone with Kara and Alex.

And hilariously, Alex immediately attacks Barry. Barry’s not even mad about it, calling her a “badass in every reality” before Kara calls her off. Once she’s convinced Barry is a good guy, Alex leads them to Dark Superman’s Fortress of Solitude which is what we know as the Time Vault. They find the book in there, and Kara tries to open it so she can fix reality.

But unfortunately, she can’t do it and it looks a little like it’s trying to suck her brain out. They think it might be because she’s still weak from the power dampeners in her cell.

Alex says they can’t stay or they’ll get caught, so Kara decides to take the book to her cousin for help. When Superman gets the book, he opens it, and at first it seems like he’s fixing reality, but then Dark Superman grabs Barry and threatens to kill him if Superman doesn’t stop. Oliver appears, equipped with his Green Arrow suit, a kryptonite arrow notched and ready.

But Barry doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want another death on Oliver’s conscience, not because of him. He calls to Oliver, telling him that he doesn’t have to channel his darkness, that he can be better. So Oliver puts the kryptonite arrow down.

Unfortunately, this means Dark Superman has an opening to grab the book and fly away.

Alex has more questions about this whole rewriting reality stuff, and Kara does her best to explain. But she reassures Alex that no matter what, deep down, she’s still Alex. Alex recognizes that it must be this open-hearted but strong, bold but kind woman who helped this other version of herself. She says, “Your sister is a very lucky woman,” and Kara responds that she’s a lucky sister. The Danvers sisters will save us all.

Alex, in her Alexy way, knows Kara will save the world, and Kara flies off to do just that.

Deegan is working hard to change reality again, and Barry says that if he and Supergirl go around the earth enough times they can slow down time. Superman says he saw in the book that they’ll burn up and die if they do this, but Barry and Kara have to try because of who they are as people. So they zip off together.

Oliver smashes his way back to The Monitor and yells at him to cut this shit out. The Monitor thinks it’s funny that Oliver is barking orders at a godlike being but Oliver is determined. He says the Monitor told them they had to know who they were, and he does. He’s full of darkness. But you know what else he knows? Barry and Kara aren’t. That’s right, Oliver “Oliver First” Queen is actually defending and complimenting other people. Calling them good, calling them better. It’s truly a groundbreaking achievement. He says Barry and Kara inspire hope, and that they’re the best of us and that they can’t die. The Monitor is impressed. But he demands balance.

Back in the chaos, Deegan is still holding the book when the real Superman comes to fight him. Things are looking bleak when all of a sudden, Lois Lane shows up to save the day. With a cosmic anvil hammer.

Also with Brainy and J’onn in tow.

Lois uses the hammer to get the book away from Deegan, and he retaliates, sending her flying through the air. Luckily, just then is when Kara and Barry successfully slow down time, despite the fact that their precious lil faces are burning up.

During this period of slowness, Oliver shoots the book with an arrow, and Superman catches Lois Lane, just like he always does.

Supergirl and Flash stop burning up, the book looks burnt to a crisp, and Deegan is starting to look like his comic book alter ego, Doctor Destiny, with a mummified looking face.

Kara and Barry return to their friends and Oliver is pleased. Goodness prevailed.

The team heads back to Star Labs and Kara and Barry mock Oliver for smiling, not knowing the sweet, gentle things he said about them. Cisco opens a breach and sends the folks from Earth-28 home, and Kara says, “Peace out,” which makes me laugh because usually aliens are saying “We come in peace.”

Back on Earth 38, Smallville, Kara is saying goodbye to Clark as she gets ready to head back to National City. Clark tells her that regardless of what happens with the DEO, she’s still a hero, and Alex will always, always have her back. He reminds her that she’s so much stronger than him, and not in an accusatory way. He’s proud of his little older cousin, and he knows that the world is in good hands as long as she’s in its skies looking out for it.

Which is why he feels okay with his decision, and finishes telling her that news he was going to tell her back in Part 1 of this crossover.

Lois and Clark are having a baby!

And since it’s going to be a half-Kryptonian baby, they decided it’s best to go to Argo so the yellow sun doesn’t cause the fetus to claw its own way out of Lois’s stomach like a whole different type of Alien. They’ll live on Argo indefinitely, but like he said, Earth-38 is in good hands.

In fact, Lois interjects, it might even be safer because women are statistically better in a crisis than men. Which I guess is a fact that the writers learned at the end of this crossover script.

Also, are we getting an Argo spinoff with this Superman and this Lois Lane? Because we spent a lot of time in the Fortress of Solitude with just the two of them and Clark proposed and it was all sweet and cute but they already established they were leaving, so unless they’re planning on a spinoff, I’m not sure what the point of this was exactly. But it’s cute! It’s cute. I like Lois Lane. And wouldn’t mind seeing her be an investigative reporter on another planet.

Back on Earth-1, Central City, Oliver and Barry bond about how much they’ve learned by stepping into each other’s costumes. Oliver calls Barry a good man, and that he’s inspired to be better, and honestly if this is a turning point in Arrow, it could really do that show a lot of favors.

Their bro sesh is interrupted by a phone call: it’s Batwoman! She’s mad.

Deegan is in Arkham but the guy in the gold mask has been whispering through the cell walls, and those two together will surely end in chaos. Which I guess we’ll see on her potential new series.

The very last shot of this crossover event is a title screen that says something (I imagine another crossover?) called Crisis on Infinite Earths, coming our way in Fall 2019.

Overall I thought this crossover was very fun. Introducing a new problem for the crossover and having it more evenly span all three shows felt more successful and seamless this time around. Of course I’ll always want more women than they feature, but as much as I could have gone without two Supermen, I do like this actor who plays Clark on Supergirl so it didn’t end up being as obnoxious as it could have been. I loved the alternate realities and the heartfelt Kara/Alex moments, and I’m continually proud of them for exceeding my low, low bar and talking about queer stuff even on these crossovers when people who only watch Arrow or The Flash might not be expecting it. And I liked Batwoman a helluvalot more than I thought I would.

So now we rest our weary heads for a little over a month, and we’ll return with what will hopefully be an Alex-filled back half of Supergirl Season Four.

DCTV SuperFlarrow “Elseworlds, Part 2” Recap: Batwoman Returns

Previously on the Elseworlds crossover, a mysterious man with a very large tome gave an unhinged man the power to recreate the universe, and therefore Oliver and Barry seem to have switched existences. They recruited Supergirl to help them, and together the three of them learned their next clue to this mystery is in Gotham City.

One clever touch they had in this episode is that the whole opening sequence? The bit that’s in front of every episode that sort of recaps the prior seasons? Well Arrow‘s was re-shot with Grant Gustin as the Green Arrow, so it was Barry’s voice and face doing the things we know Oliver Queen to have done. It’s pretty cool, not gonna lie.

Before we get to Gotham City, we check in on Team Arrow in Star City. Curtis is talking about the weird lightning while Diggle gets attacked by… Deathstroke’s son? I’m going to be 100% honest with you up front: I’m totally caught up on Arrow, but the show has lost my interest aside from my growing investment in Felicity’s relationship with Laurel Ex-X, so I’m not entirely sure what this kid is up to, or if he’s only here because reality is fractured. He’s not relevant to this crossover though, not really, because before he can cause too much harm, our fearless trio drops in to save the day.

Once they handle that business, they head back to what serves as Arrow HQ now and when Felicity comes in, Barry-Arrow plays the part and they don’t let Felicity in on the switcheroo.

They just ask her to help find a pattern to the weird lightning and off she goes; her and Oliver are technically fighting but she’ll still do anything to help.

When she leaves, Diggle asks why they didn’t let her in, and they explain that it took too long to get everyone at Star Labs to believe them, and they just don’t have that kind of time.

Oliver-Flash tries to get Barry-Arrow to stay behind on their trip to Gotham, to protect Oliver’s reputation, but Barry isn’t having it. He wants to meet the Batman (who Oliver thinks is a myth). And speaking of reputations, he would appreciate it if Oliver put his Flash mask on when they’re in public.

Kara is over the boys and their squabbling so she scoops up Barry and heads to Gotham City, which seems to be made up entirely of alleys and rooftops. As they discuss how they’re going to find two specific people in this extra-dark city, Oliver says they can talk to his contact, Vesper, who he may or may not have slept with while he was a spoiled little rich boy. Kara is having a hard time imagining this old Oliver, so Barry helps by letting her know that once Oliver cheated on his girlfriend with her sister. (What he DOESN’T tell her is that the sister in question would later go on to sleep with Kara’s own sister.)

Kara says they should prep Plan B in case (not a sex joke) and before they leave the roof, they find a giant Bat-Signal. Barry is stoked, Oliver remains unconvinced. But as the camera pans back, we see a bat-like figure looming once again on a rooftop, watching.

While the trio of heroes looks for the radio station where Vesper works, they see armored cars escorting the rich, and are “welcomed” by some locals, who demand their wallets and phones, having no idea how outmatched they are. The man doesn’t take long before he takes to shooting at the newcomers, but Kara catches the bullet easily.

They fight and by the time the Gotham City Police arrive, the bad guys are all taken down and Barry-Arrow has his foot on someone’s throat. The police recognize him as Oliver Queen, recently released felon, and immediately take the trio into custody.

Back at Arrow HQ, Felicity is having a hard time finding a lightning pattern, but she says she has noticed that it kind of looks like a breach, which means she thinks they need Team Flash’s help. And lo and behold, great minds think alike, because Cisco and Caitlin are here to help. You see, they noticed that the weird lightning left as soon as Barry and Oliver did, so it’s clearly following them for a reason.

Caitlin mentions the body swap because no one told her they were keeping it from Felicity, and Felicity is like, “The what-now??”

In Gotham City, the newly imprisoned call DA Laurel for help, but she’s still got a little X left in her, so she leaves them there for a night. Frustrated, Oliver-Flash and Barry-Arrow yell at each other about how they handled the situation until Kara yells at them. She says that they were both wrong, and have teetered TOO far into the whole trying-to-be-each-other thing. They are like, “Oh would you have had a better plan,” all sassy and she says yes she would have swooshed them all away so there was no one left to fight and they huff because she’s right about that being a better plan.

But they’re in luck, because someone posted their bail for them. When they get outside to find out who their benefactor is, a man in a big black car is waiting for them. He takes them to a run-down Wayne building that appears to be long-abandoned. They wonder aloud if their mystery donor is Bruce Wayne, but Oliver says he left town three years ago, so if it’s him it would be one hell of a shock.

But then they look up and it’s sure as hell no Bruce Wayne standing at the balcony waiting for them.

They ask who she is and she says she’s about to rain on their parade. The reason she bailed him out is because she doesn’t want the Green Arrow in her city.

The boys are a little put off by her immediately telling them to leave but Kara just wants to know her name. (“Rain?” she asks, in a way that would get anyone except Kara Danvers punched. “Ms. Parade?”)

But her name is Kane. Kate Kane.

And she’s here to fuck us up.

Back at Arrow HQ, everyone is fighting about why they didn’t tell Felicity about the switch, but mostly she’s just bummed that it seems like Iris figured it out on her own but she couldn’t tell anything was wrong with her own husband.

But she doesn’t have time to dwell on that right now, there’s Science to do.

Kate Kane takes the trio to her favorite place: the roof. They ask about Bruce Wayne, and Kara thinks it’s suspicious that he and Batman left at the same time, but Kate claims to not know why he left. Vesper was a dead-end lead (because Oliver did screw her over… literally) so Kate says they can work in her building to work on their mission if it will help them leave faster. (Fun fact: the wifi password is Alfred. A detail that will surely delight my father.)

So they do indeed get to work, using the USB of data Oliver-Flash stole from the precinct to run some facial recognition on the man from Oliver’s sketch of Cisco’s vibe.

Back at Arrow HQ, Felicity and Caitlin get a rare moment of female bonding, so of course all they do is talk about boys. Caitlin explains that her and Iris have a lot more experience with alternate realities and identity stealing than Felicity does, so they’re more apt to pick up on subtle things like body swaps. She tries to reassure Felicity that she shouldn’t take this as a death sentence for their marriage.

Caitlin also explains that when Barry and Oliver explained the situation to the Star Labs crew the first time, they kind of sort of drugged them and locked them up. So it could have also just been a time crunch thing!

Felicity is starting to feel a little better, but she also thinks her issues with Oliver run deeper than this. She knows Oliver loves her, but she doesn’t feel like he respects or trusts her. Which is valid and true. Caitlin says that as long as there’s love, there’s something worth fighting for. But Felicity is left wondering if love is enough.

Anyway, back to more exciting news, Felicity thinks that she designed a machine that would help someone breach if that is indeed what the lightning is all about.

Back in Gotham City (Am I allowed to call it Gotham? The TV show by that name has me all mixed up.), Oliver finds out that they’re looking for a man named John Deegan, but he’s been MIA for about five years.

Kara tells the boys she’s going to suit up and give the city a fly-over, but in reality she wanders back down through the building to find Kate in her office.

Kate explains that Bruce is her cousin, so she’s taking this old building of his and turning it into a real estate development firm. Which seems random but I assume will be relevant when the Batwoman CW series is born. Kara tells Kate that her cousin is sort of frienemies with Bruce, which I guess is what you call it when you would totally kill a person if their mom’s name wasn’t the same as your mom’s name.

Kara asks if Bruce broke because he was carrying around a secret, but Kate says that watching this city rot beneath him made him have to be strong, so something like that wouldn’t have broken him. No, he left for a different reason.

Kara is curious about this Kate Kane character, asking why a billionaire isn’t dressed in blocky, solid business suits like a certain other heiress she knows. She also points out that Kate has more tattoos than she would have expected. In a way to either distract from the questions and/or disarm her guest, Kate gets just close enough to Kara and implies she has even more tattoos she can’t see.

Kara immediately recognizes this as flirting and immediately gets shy and awkward and giggly and tries to change the subject. (I bet she can’t wait to tell Alex about this.)

Before doing a fly-over her own self, she decides to ask Kate Kane if she knows Deegan, and sure enough she does. He’s a doctor at the Arkham Asylum. So off Kara goes in one direction, smiling and bubbly, and off Kate goes in another, dark and brooding. She heads downstairs to a Batcave of her own and comes face to face with her suit.

And the dramatic music/camerawork in this shot reminded me that it’s feasible that there are people out there who wouldn’t have put it together quite yet that Kate Kane was Batwoman and that was probably a pretty cool reveal.

Back at Argus, Felicity is sciencing around like the sexy scientist she is, and her breach-assist machine is working. And then all of a sudden, Jay-the-Flash is there shouting a message at them, saying that if they get the book they can fix this.

Caitlin, Cisco, and Diggle take this message to Barry, Oliver, and Kara, who have just showed up at the asylum.

They put it together that they have to find the Tome from the vibe, and Kara has an idea of how they can break into the asylum. She puts Caitlin in a wheelchair, name-drops her Earth mom, and says her patient needs a… special kind of treatment. Killer Frost flashes her eyes at the intake nurse and she lets them in.

While they’re doing that, the boys are sneaking around the creepy hallways to find Deegan there, looking all Dr. Horrible, no sing-along blog. Deegan is excited to meet Oliver Queen, meaning he recognizes the same face we do to be Oliver. I think what his excited rambling meant was that he was trying to become The Flash himself but messed it up a bit. But he’s enjoying this new reality, so he doesn’t want to change it back, thank you very much.

When it becomes clear that Oliver and Diggle aren’t going to take no for an answer, he presses a red button to release all the inmates and uses it as a distraction to run away. Kara and Caitlin use this chaos to their advantage too, and set out to find the tome themselves.

A fight ensues, and Oliver-Flash is speeding as many prisoners as he can back into their cells, but it’s a big place and he’s only one newly powered speedster. Supergirl flies around looking for Deegan with no luck. Caitlin finds an inmate frantically looking for something, and gets hit by a blast that causes her to go full Killer Frost.

One of the inmates, who wore a gold mask and had enough camera time for me to suspect he’s a DC villain I’m not familiar with, runs outside and is picked up by a man with a van who runs over Cisco. But before they can get away, Batwoman lands atop their van and stops them dead in their tracks. She grapple-hooks a bunch of men at once, throws a Batarang, does a superhero three-point landing. It. is. GLORIOUS.

Cisco and Barry-Arrow are pretty impressed. But Batwoman isn’t here to make friends. She says that they should have listened to Kate Kane when they had the chance. They should have left Gotham City.

Inside, Supergirl isn’t having any luck finding Deegan, and Killer Frost is having a hard time with this particular inmate, who has a gun labeled “FRIES” and I imagine will come back into play on the Batwoman series at some point.

Deegan goes to fetch his Tome and is about to wreak more havoc, but Supergirl stops him just in time, and swipes the book, but loses Deegan.

When Barry and Oliver show up to help Killer Frost, Fries knocks over a shelf with little glass vials on it, which break and release a gas into their air right around Barry and Oliver. Then all of a sudden, they’re hallucinating. Barry-Arrow sees Malcolm Merlyn (a nightmare to be sure) and Oliver-Flash sees Eobard Thawne (seriously though don’t we see enough of this guy) aka the Reverse Flash. While at first I thought this would backfire since they were seeing each other’s enemies, the boys got right to fighting anyway.

The thing is, to Caitlin, it looks like Oliver and Barry are fighting each other.

Caitlin sees a sexy stranger appear to help, and Batwoman easily takes down both men and helps them snap out of the hallucination.

The Team has the book now and are ready to leave, but they want to know if they can help Batwoman at all. She grumbles that they should just leave, and it’s noted she’s not all that different from Batman after all.

The boys and Caitlin head out, but Supergirl stays behind to chat with her.

Batwoman doesn’t want a tearful goodbye, but Supergirl doesn’t want that either. Supergirl mostly just wanted Batwoman to know that she knows she’s Kate Kane. You see, she has x-ray vision, which she used to see behind the mask, but APPARENTLY also through other things because she notes that Kate wasn’t lying about having a lot of tattoos.

Batwoman lets Supergirl know she knows she’s Kara too (oof these sentences) by saying she doesn’t think Kara has a single tattoo. Supergirl is sad to go; she thinks they would have made a great team. And Batwoman retorts, “World’s Finest,” which I imagine is a nod to the original Superman/Batman comics.

The team leaves Gotham City and heads back to Star City to give Felicity the tome so she can crack the coded lock. While she does that, Oliver and Barry have a heart-to-heart about what it was like to face each other’s enemies; they have a new appreciation for each other now. And maybe Oliver will learn to lighten up a little after all this, after seeing he isn’t the only one in pain, he’s just the only one (of the two of them) causing others pain because of it.

Oliver-Flash, despite knowing his face isn’t the one she’s most familiar with at this point, goes to Felicity to tell her to have hope; he thinks their relationship is going to be okay.

And then Jay-the-Flash shows up, though he says he’s not actually Jay in his multi-verse, nor is he Barry’s dad. He’s Barry Allen himself, from Earth-90, and he’s here to warn them about The Monitor, aka the Tome Guy, who has been testing different Elseworlds for some reason. As luck would have it, said Monitor is here on this very Earth right now, so the trio goes to talk to him. Well, all four of them do, but Monitor flickers Old Flash out of existence right quick.

The Monitor says something is coming, someone powerful, who will cause crisis across the multiverse and he’s looking for a universe that’s strong enough to fight it. He needs champions, and it just so happens this particular trio is the first to figure things out well enough to find the tome. Oliver asks for Kara’s help and Kara moves to attack him, but Kara finds she can’t.

Unfortunately, Monitor isn’t done testing them yet, so he gives the tome back to Deegan and tells him to try again. To think bigger.

Then reality resets and Barry and Oliver find themselves in VERY ADORABLE matching outfits, a newspaper with their photos on it blaring a headline calling them Trigger Twins. Neither of them have the Flash powers, and all of Oliver’s past enemies show up as cops to arrest them.

Faced with no other obvious choice, they take the cops down, but then find themselves face to face with Superman… dressed all in black.

And that’s it for Part 2! What did you think of Batwoman’s first episode? I was pleasantly surprised. I still can’t say for sure if Ruby Rose can carry a full show, but they didn’t have to mysteriously make Kate Kane have an Australian accent, and she had swagger for days. And there’s no denying they have her Bat-gadgets and Bat-suit sorted out. I’m officially more excited than I ever thought I would be for the standalone series; not a half-bad half-backdoor-pilot episode if I do say so myself.

See you tomorrow for the Supergirl episode and final installment of the Elseworlds crossover!

DCTV SuperFlarrow “Elseworlds, Part 1” Recap: Batwoman Begins

Hello and welcome to our annual CW DC TV Crossover Event! This year Legends of Tomorrow is off doing its own thing, so it’s just a SuperFlarrow crossover, which is fine by me; I think they realized they have too many big personalities to do a four-way crossover, and inevitably someone is uncharacteristically sidelined if they’re all around, so leaving our time traveling misfits to their mayhem feels right. (Especially after what happened last week…)

So this week things are a little shook up, and instead of a Supergirl Sunday, we’re starting this three-night event with The Flash. And for reasons I will never understand, this episode opens with the same exact scene that ended ALL THREE SHOWS last week. And once again it’s out of context. Old Flash in the ruins of an earth, dude with a big ol’ tome being rude about it.

Then we finally move on to something new, on Earth-1 (aka Barry and Oliver’s world) a professor with murder-hair is ranting to a half-empty classroom about humanity’s imperfections, scaring away students one by one and shouting about how no one is listening to him.

He goes outside to the parking lot and hears a voice calling his name, John Deegan, and Tome Guy shows up and gives him the book, telling him to dream big and play god, because sure why not.

The sky turns a weird color and strange lightning cracks across the it, and Oliver Queen wakes up in a room he doesn’t recognize. He hears Iris West calling him “honey” and goes into the kitchen to find her making him breakfast and kissing him, much to his confusion. He asks her where Barry is, and she looks at him like he started speaking a different language.

She calls HIM Barry and Oliver knows something is horribly wrong. She’s looking at him with heart-eyes that aren’t usually meant for him and while it’s very charming he’s very, very confused.

He makes an excuse to go to Star Labs, but she gets an alert first and says she’ll meet him there. As soon as she’s gone he tests out his speed and it’s kind of cute watching him stumble around. Iris comes back and gives him his suit-ring and I’m just going to say this now: I never appreciated how cute Barry looks in that suit until I saw someone else in the suit.

Oliver-Flash wonders aloud what Barry did to fuck up the timeline, and honestly it’s a dig I make at Barry about once a week so I would deem it well-earned.

Oliver-Flash tries to embrace his new powers and take out some baddies, and stumbles through it at first but eventually does good enough that Cisco thinks the police can take over from there. What they don’t notice, in all the confusion, is the huge mindless-Iron-Man looking thing that seemed to come to life in their wake.

When he gets back to the lab and the team checks him out and deems him fully functional, Oliver-Flash decides he needs help, so he says he’s going to pop into Star City for a bit and wooshes away.

Meanwhile, in Star City, Barry comes to mid-fight with Diggle. He realizes he has superior fighting skills, and quickly realizes he’s Oliver Queen. His first instinct is to be delighted, because he’s Barry Allen, but after a beat he realizes that actually this is pretty weird.

Barry thinks probably he should call Star Labs, but Diggle says there’s no time because they have to answer a call. Barry puts on the Green Arrow suit and looks very smol but much better than Oliver looked in his suit. He has a hard time distinguishing one type of arrow from another, but the bad guys end up in a pile anyway.

Oliver-Flash shows up and him and Barry-Arrow head back to Team Arrow’s HQ. Barry is loving his new skills, doing the salmon ladder just for funsies, but Oliver implores him to take it more seriously, so they head back to Star Labs for help.

After one more dig at Barry’s proclivity for fucking up timelines, they scan the boys and still find no trace that something is wrong.

And honestly this is a literal nightmare. To try to convince someone that your reality is real and having them tell you it’s not? No thank you! Oliver-Flash tries to talk to Iris but she drugs him because something is clearly going on here and she feels weird about it. At the same time, Stretch Armstrong (he has a different name like Mr. Bendyface but I literally do not care about him so here we are) knocks Barry-Arrow out. The two of them wake up in a Star Labs holding cell together and realize they’re in over their heads. Barry suggests they find a way to get in touch with Kara on Earth-38 to see if this is an Earth-1 or a multiverse problem.

They coach each other on how to best use their skills and make their way out of the cell, but find themselves face to face with Iris. Barry-Arrow uses his heart-words to get through to her, and even though she doesn’t recognize his face, she recognizes a Barry speech when she hears one, so she gives them the inter-dimensional extrapolator they need to jump worlds.

We jump worlds first though, and head to the Kent Farm on Earth-38 and finally get to meet the one and only Lois Lane.

Kara is on the farm helping them out and Lois talks about wanting to write about her adventures with Superman on Argo. Lois goes inside the barn for a bit, leaving the cousins to bond, and Kara does something I can imagine a younger Alex getting her to try: she opens two beer bottles with her thumbs.

Kara tells Clark how annoying it was when the president was demanding to know her secret identity, that he was almost as intimidating as Cat Grant. She feels bad for leaving Alex alone at the DEO, but it’s where she’s at for now. Clark tells Kara about how fun it was taking Lois to Argo and he feels selfish for leaving her alone to defend the planet, but she was fine and also he’s in love, and she can’t begrudge him that.

Clark tells Kara that he has something important to talk to her about, but they’re interrupted by Lois crying out inside the barn. When they get inside, they see Lois almost murdering Barry and Oliver until Kara reassures them that they’re friends not foes.

Oliver and Barry are delighted to see that Kara calls them by their correct names, so Oliver shows her that he has Flash speed now and she knows she has to help him. She introduces the boys to her cousin, Clark, and they clearly know who he is, because Barry starts to stutter and Oliver puffs out his chest a little.

Before they head back to Earth-1, though, Oliver-Flash teaches Barry-Arrow how to shoot, and Barry-Arrow gets back at Oliver-Flash for their first training session by hitting him with some hidden crossbows. Oliver does his usual grumble-growl at Barry, causing Lois to shout, “DECK HIM, BARRY!” from the porch.

It’s A Mood to be sure.

While they’re grumping around on the wrong Earth, Killer Frost and Gumby are fighting the big robot thing. After knocking them down, it suddenly uses a cool ice luge skill much like Killer Frost’s own to fly away. Back at Star Labs, they learn it’s called AMAZO and can basically learn any power if it gets the chance to scan the metahuman or alien in question.

When the team realizes the boys are gone, Iris tells them that she believes them now, and the team trusts her enough to go along with it. Also, Cisco got a really weird vibe where he saw the Tome Guy, so he knows something is fishy.

At the Kent farm, Barry and Oliver talk it out, and Oliver explains that as the Arrow, he draws on his pain to shoot his shots, and Barry says he does the opposite; he runs towards/for what makes him happiest. They decide they have to try to be a little more like each other (even though I’d argue they should both try to be more like Barry) and Kara comes out all happy that they finally kissed and made up.

She even mocks Oliver’s grumpiness and it is very cute. It reminds me of the good old days when her and Barry where Superfriends. Anyway, she agrees that they have to at least lean into the new skillsets they have if they want go get through this.

Cisco breaches in and apologizes for not believing them at first, but assuring them he’s on board now, that the whole team is. So he takes his vigilante, metahuman, and alien buddies (Leaving Lois Lane in the lurch) and heads back to Earth-1 to sort things out.

Back on Earth-1, AMAZO is destroying things, so the team works together to take him down, Barry and Oliver leaning into their new outlooks and powers to succeed, and taking a very necessary assist from the SuperCousins.

During the fight, Barry-Arrow even says Oliver’s classic line, “You have failed this city,” before hitting AMAZO square in the eye, causing him to explode.

They all go back to the lab and while everyone is excited that they beat the big bad, their original problem still exists. Figuring they’re not in immediate need of him anymore, Clark heads back to Earth-38, but Kara stays to help out.

Iris pulls Barry-Arrow aside and says that even though she could tell he was her Barry because of the way he talked to her, she saw him go all broody out there, and wants him to promise that when this is all over, he’ll come back to her. Not physically run home, the way he’s always promised he would, but also still be her fun-loving, mostly-optimistic husband. She doesn’t want him to become Oliver Queen. And frankly, neither do I.

Back in the lab, Cisco tells everyone about his bad vibe, so Barry and Oliver ask to see it. But when Cisco is showing them, Tome Guy breaks through the fourth wall (fifth wall? vibe wall) and looks right at them. He is surprised by their powers but not deterred in his plan; he says “none of you” can stop what’s coming, but he also said something about “men on this Earth” so I’m hoping it’ll end up being him not only underestimating the beings on this planet, but also women, and that Kara, Alex, Lena and Nia will be the ones to save them all.

Anyway, that vibe was a VERY bad vibe, and it gave Cisco a bloody nose. Oliver-Flash speed-draws what he saw, but Kara doesn’t recognize Tome Guy or John Deegan. Oliver doesn’t either, but he does recognize one building in the back, the name “Wayne” emblazoned across it, so he knows where they need to go: Gotham City.

And this is when we see our first official in-show look at Ruby Rose as Batwoman, standing on a rooftop, cape flapping in the wind, red hair gleaming in the dark night.

See you tomorrow night for Part Two of Elseworlds, and our first full episode with Kate Kane!

Boobs on Your Tube: Janet Smooches Janet Smooches Eleanor on “The Good Place”

This is our penultimate edition of Boobs On Your Tube of 2018! With TV nuzzling down for its long winter nap and our team prepping for travel and holigay shenanigans, next week will be our last Boobs Tube for a while. Don’t worry, though: When TV starts gearing back up in the New Year, we’ll be back!

This week, Valerie Anne recapped a really excellent Nia-centric episode of Supergirl and another awesome Sara/Ava team-up episode of Legends of Tomorrow. Kayla continued to wonder where the fresh heck Cheryl is in her Riverdale recaps. Carmen muscled through a Jennifer and Khalil-heavy episode of Black Lightning. Also, she made you a list of 16 gay holiday TV episodes you can stream right this very second (or weekend)! Heather made list of the best feminist movies of the year (that weren’t technically gay). And we loaded the Pop Culture Fix full of new gay TV trailers.

Here’s what else.

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The Good Place 309: “Janets”

Written by Heather

If you’re not watching The Good Place, there’s no way I can explain last night’s episode to you. If you’re watching The Good Place but you aren’t caught up, I am going to show you something that will help you prioritize your weekend. If you’re watching The Good Place and have seen last night’s episode, you’re welcome.

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Legacies 106: “Mombie Dearest”

Written by Valerie Anne

Friends, I’m REALLY into this show. I thought never having seen The Vampire Diaries or The Originals would catch up to me eventually, but it really hasn’t. There were some things in this episode that having friends tell me bits about the TVD lore made more interesting, but honestly I was fine not knowing, too. I think they’re doing a good job of balancing the Easter eggs for people who did watch while not assuming everyone has.

Anyway, in this episode, it’s the twins’ 16th birthday, and of course that means Lizzie is throwing a Sweet 16 party. Despite this occasion, Penelope is still feeling great about her “take Lizzie down to win back Josie” plan so she shows up to the girls’ room bearing cupcakes and bad news.

The general premise of this episode is that the twins’ bio mom comes back from the dead. Not to be confused with their birth mom. You see, Mama Jo died when she was only a few months pregnant with the twins, but they were put into a vampire’s body until they were born, because of course they were. Also, the force that is after The Knife can create sort of zombie sleeper-agents? So it resurrected Jo, meaning the girls got to meet her for the first time. Lizzie kept her at arm’s length, her defense mechanism being a cruel kind of snark, as usual, but Josie feels a real connection to her immediately.

After Josie finishes helping Lizzie get ready, Penelope shows up at her door asking if she needs a date to the party. Josie is still mad at Penelope for everything she’s doing to Lizzie, but Penelope still thinks Josie needs to open her eyes to the situation. She tells her to look at herself right now: the party, ostensibly also HER party, starts in five minutes, but Josie was so busy helping Lizzie get ready, she’s going to be late. Penelope tries to assure Josie that taking something for herself isn’t selfish, but Josie shoos her away.

As soon as she’s gone, however, Josie does end up taking her advice, and goes to see Jo and asks her to braid her hair. They have this sweet bonding moment and gosh it feels like the first time anyone in Josie’s family has looked at her, just her. Also during this conversation, Josie casually drops that she has an ex-girlfriend and that it’s complicated, and Jo doesn’t flinch, it’s A+ momming.

Less than A+ momming is when the sleeper-agent thing gets activated and Jo ends up burying Josie alive without having any memory of it. Dad gets Hope to help him, and Hope recruits MG for his vampire hearing and Penelope, who has never picked up a shovel so fast in her life.

After they save Josie, Penelope is like, “Hi hello I saved you, do you like me again yet?” and Josie says that there’s room in this world for all kinds of people and she likes being selfless, dammit! Penelope smirks that sultry smirk at her, taking a half-step closer, and says that works out, because she likes being selfish.

Then she leans in and KISSES HER.

And I whooped and hollered with glee, and laughed when Josie said, “I still hate you,” before kissing Penelope right back. I can’t wait to see what these two get up to next.

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All American 107: “California Love”

Written by Natalie

Every show has its heart. It’s not, necessarily, the central character, but, instead, the character or characters that ground the show and imbues it with warmth and familiarity. The nature of television dictates that, every now and again, the heart of a show must be tested but the hallmark of a good showrunner is knowing when to say when. Every character ought to have some struggle, relationships should never be perfect but you can’t do irreparable harm to the heart of a show…otherwise, you lose your audience (*cough*IleneChakenkillingDana*cough*). Thankfully, though, the writers of All American understand that the heart of its show is the friendship between Spencer and Coop and the fracture between them is repaired early in the episode.

After assuring Coop that she’ll always be his family, Spencer leans on his BFF for advice about his girl problem: he kissed Leila, who’s dating his teammate, Asher, and doesn’t know what to do next. Just as Spencer resigns himself to letting Leila go, in order to keep the peace on the team, Coop reminds him that some girls are worth the disruption. The Spencer she knows doesn’t give up, Coop reminds him. It’s enough to convince Spencer to go the Beverly Hills’ Homecoming Dance as long as Coop agrees to be his date. She agrees and, we are, graciously, rewarded with seeing Bre-Z rock this suit:

I am not entirely certain how those girls saw Coop in that suit and didn’t promptly dump their dates or, at the very least, have an existential crisis about their sexuality but I guess this ain’t that kinda show.

While everyone else is dancing (badly), Coop calls Spencer out for sulking over Leila. Spencer springs into action to save Leila from an argument with Asher about a banner. Annoyed that Spencer’s interjecting himself into their conversation (and relationship), Asher lashes out and, before a fight can break out between the two teammates, Coop steps in and pulls Spencer away. Later, Coop tries to negotiate a truce between Spencer and his Crenshaw rival, Chris, who’s at the dance as Olivia’s date. Before anything can get firmly resolved, Coop’s called away.

It’s Coop’s other world calling: the one where she’s crashing on Shawn’s couch and the one where she’s caught in the fallout over the shooting outside the barbershop. As with Spencer, Coop’s continually pushing Shawn to build a better life for himself and his daughter and she’s elated to hear that he’s got an interview with a record label. The celebration is cut short, though, as Shawn’s boss, Tyrone, summons him and Coop for a meeting. The barbershop shootout means the crew’s down one dealer so Shawn is tasked with picking up the slack, starting tonight…at the exact same time Shawn’s supposed to have an interview. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.

Coop interjects, pledging to pick up the package in Shawn’s stead, but Tyrone rejects it, flat out, tossing some homophobic taunts her way. The bullying catches me off guard…in part because Coop’s masculine presentation hasn’t really been challenged until now, but mostly because it just felt like bad writing. But anyway, Shawn pledges to be at the spot, much to Coop’s dismay. Later, Shawn assures Coop that he can do both — the interview and the pick-up — but when the label asks him to start right away, he’s forced to call Coop for help.

Coop rushes over to pick up the package but Tyrone’s already there. He claims that having a gay chick rolling with his crew is making them look soft…which, I take to mean that Tyrone’s never watched Snoop Pearson on The Wire. Coop tries to assure him that she can be an asset but when Tyrone asks her to prove herself — by handing her gun and the address for where some Crips hang out — she can’t do it. Taking her reluctance as a sign of disloyalty, Tyrone warns Coop and Shawn to watch their backs.

“Tyrone, man, he [is] not feeling me or you right now,” Coop admits to Shawn later. “And to be honest, I’m a little scared.”

And, despite Shawn’s promise that he’ll get Tyrone off her back, Coop probably should be.

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Quick Hits

Star 309: “Zion”

Hot word in the Atlanta streets is that Nina left her husband Mateo because she’s fallen in love with someone else!! To quote the narrator from Jane the Virgin, “It’s like something out of a telenovela, right?” We already know that the someone in question is Simone, of course. I think Mateo knows it, too. The look he shot the young singer before her set in the music festival was cold as ice. My gut tells me that we haven’t seen the end of Nina, but just in case, she sent Simone a beautiful bouquet of flowers to celebrate her career success. The attached card said, “You deserve this and more” – I agree, Nina. Simone deserves the whole world. Now who’s going to step up to the plate and give it to her? — Carmen

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Charmed 108: “Bug a Boo”

I took a poll of the TV Team to see who else thought that Jada, the new morally grey half-witch/half-whitelighter in town, was queer. Valerie agreed with me, and that’s enough for me to feel confident including her in our updates! If nothing else, Jada has no problem flirting with Mel to get what she wants. I obviously still miss Niko, but Jada’s bad girl energy is off the charts and I want more! Like Hansel and Gretel eating fallen candy off of a witch’s house, I wouldn’t mind seeing where this road takes us. — Carmen

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Crazy Ex-Girlfriend 407: “I Will Help You”

Well, Beth still exists! Rebecca went to New York to visit her mom in this episode, and instead of staying in the guest bedroom at her mother’s house, opted to sleep in Valencia and Beth’s comically small apartment. They pull down the refrigerator to reveal a murphy bed that acts as a guest bed, which seems extremely inconvenient because surely now their fridge is a mess. Anyway, Valencia ends up being the under-appreciated hero of the episode and really coming through for Rebecca, and Beth is adorably proud of Rebecca for standing up to her mother. Their relationship is just a background fact but I’m glad they’re keeping it up. — Valerie Anne

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The Flash 508: “What’s Past is Prologue”

Nora continues to be important to the central narrative of this season, but her queerness still hasn’t come up again. Sure, she’s busy time traveling with her dead dad to save the world, but I mean would it be THAT HARD to have Killer Frost flirt with her a little? Sheesh. — Valerie Anne

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The Young and the Restless

Last we checked in with Mariah and Tessa on Y&R, I was sure that Tessa was living on borrowed time but, for now at least, she’s been granted a reprieve. After a visit from Victoria, Tessa’s safety net is gone: the back-up copy of the video, gone, the leftover blackmail money, gone, and what little trust remained between her and the woman she loves, gone. Mariah’s at the end of her rope too and has spent most of the last two weeks wavering between staying and leaving.

Can I just say: nothing about how Mariah’s reacting to the revelations about her mother or Tessa make any sense? Why is she more bothered by the blackmail than the fact that her mother’s one of Genoa City’s Big Little Liars? Why is she holding Tessa to an ethical standard that the old Mariah — a con artist who was paid to gaslight Sharon — could never have met…standards that she’s only met after years of with her newly found family? Mariah’s sanctimony about this makes no sense.

But, just as I’m starting to believe that the only death that Tessa’s going to suffer on this show is Lesbian Bed Death, someone jumps Tessa from behind and puts a black bag over her head. Uh oh. Tessa, you in danger, girl. — Natalie

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Coronation Street

Kate wandered into the Bistro this week, her heart still set on having a baby with her boss/cousin’s husband, Robert. They decide to reach out Adam, one of the town’s attorneys, to get more information about what their arrangement might entail. Of course, he’s never dealt with anything like this, so he promises to reach out to a colleague for more information. Adam encourages Kate and Robert to tell their partners what they’re planning, while Kate makes him promise not to tell his law partner, Imran (AKA Rana’s brother). But when he intercepts one of Adam’s calls, Imran gets wind of Kate’s plan and rushes off to confront her.

Kate assures Imran that she and Robert are just trying to formulate a plan before she brings it to Rana. She begs for more time and promises to tell Rana when she has all the answers. Imran relents but urges Kate to tell his sister sooner rather than later. — Natalie

Lesbian and Bisexual Superhero Cheat Sheet: How to Get Caught Up on CW DC TV Before Batwoman Arrives

I have a confession. I was tasked to present you all with an abridged version of the CW DC TV Universe so that you can jump into whichever shows you want this fall and have all the good gay knowledge you need. Superhero TV and movie and comic book continuity can be confusing. And Batwoman is coming, after all! However, I’m a completist. I can’t just skip episodes of a show, or jump into a third season. I can’t do it! I think stories should be consumed the way they were written, for better or worse. In fact, if I was diving into this for the first time, I would watch every episode of every show in the order they aired in real life. Because of who I am as a person.

That said, I know things are terrible in the real world lately so I’m going to loosen my grip on the rules for now so you can get all the joy of Sara Lance doing the salmon ladder while Felicity ogles her and less of the Annoying!Laurel years and still get caught up in time to jump into any show you want this fall.

Let’s start at the very beginning, a very green place to start. (Note: I’m going to separate these watch lists by show, but you might need to do a little jumping around for crossovers’ sake!)

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Arrow

I remember really loving the first season of Arrow but as the years went on it became more and more about Oliver pushing people away only to learn he can’t do this on his own, but like over and over again. It’s exhausting. But Felicity is a delight and her and the crossovers are the only reason I watch anymore. But back in the day, things were good, and sometimes even gay.

Season One

While the memory of bisexual badass Sara Lance haunts the first season of Arrow, her corporeal self only shows up in flashbacks in the first two episodes, because she is presumed to be dead. And she might look… different than you think she will if you’ve seen screenshots floating around the internet lately. I think probably only these two episodes are totally necessary to get her backstory, and surely if you watch literally any other episodes of this first season you’ll hear Laurel and/or Oliver talk about her. I would argue that she was fridged, but don’t worry, Sara Lance can’t be taken down that easily. I’m also going to recommend episodes that feature The Huntress because I love her, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.

101: “Pilot”
102: “Honor Thy Father”
107: “Muse of Fire”
108: “Vendetta”
117: “The Huntress Returns”
123: “Sacrifice”

Season Two

This is the season of Sara’s triumphant return, and is also the season we meet her ex-girlfriend Nyssa for the first time. She’ll be important later. Honestly you could watch this whole season, but I’ll try to pick the ones I think make the most sense to watch. And I think this is the last season in which the flashbacks actually matter. From Season Three on you can fully skip them.

201: “City of Heroes”
203: “Broken Dolls”
204: “Crucible”
205: “League of Assassins”
206: “Keep Your Enemies Closer”
207: “State v. Queen”
208: “The Scientist”
212: “Tremors”
213: “Heir to the Demon”
214: “Time of Death”
215: “The Promise”
217: “Birds of Prey”
218: “Deathstroke”
219: “The Man Under the Hood”
220: “Seeing Red”
222: “Streets of Fire”
223: “Unthinkable”

Season Three

This season has more Nyssa than Sara but once again she is an ever-present force driving the narrative. Doing all the heavy lifting without even trying, our Blonde Bisexual Bird.

301: “The Calm”
302: “Sara”
303: “Corto Maltese”
304: “The Magician”
309: “The Climb”
312: “Uprising”
313: “Canaries”
314: “The Return”
315: “Nanda Parbat”
316: “The Offer”
321: “Al Sah-him”
323: “My Name Is Oliver Queen”

Season Four

This is the season I started to realize how amazing the character of Sara Lance really was, I think because the writers finally realized it, and as the emotional depth and complexity of the character grew, so did Caity Lotz’s acting.

401: “Green Arrow”
402: “The Candidate”
403: “Restoration”
404: “Beyond Redemption”
405: “Haunted”
406: “Lost Souls”

Okay let me break our regularly scheduled program to tell you something very important: a new show is about to be born. In one of the best backdoor-pilot-type-situations I’ve ever seen, Flash and Arrow joined forces to ship off some of its characters to a brand new show in a three-part crossover event. So whether or not you watch The Flash (I’d watch the first few episodes to see if you like it, and if you don’t, just skip to the crossover eps that will come up here) you should watch the following episodes in this order.

Arrow 408: “Legends of Yesterday”
Flash 208: “Legends of Today”
Legends of Tomorrow: 101 & 102 (Pilot)

We’ll talk more about Legends for now, but Nyssa still hangs out on Arrow for a few more episodes of Arrow.

412: “Unchained”
413″ “Sins of the Father”
418: “Eleven-Fifty-Nine”
419: “Canary Cry”

Season Five

I only have a few episodes of Season Five to recommend. Honestly this isn’t my favorite season. Things are still so dark and broody, Sara’s gone, hardly an episode goes by that passes the Bechdel test. Don’t be alarmed if you see new faces in these episodes I do recommend, I never warned up to them either.

Actually you know what? You can just jump into Arrow Season 5 with that year’s crossover. Just make sure you’re caught up to this point in Legends first.)

Flash 308: Invasion!
Arrow 508: Invasion!
Legends of Tomorrow 207: Invasion!

Then just watch the last two episodes of the season:

522: “Missing”
523: “Lian Yu”

Season Six

I’ll be honest with you, I’M not even caught up with all of these episodes yet. It’s… slow. Seeing Katie Cassidy play a version of Laurel from another Earth who is bad to the bone was fun, but overall it’s missing something for me. Too much growling, not enough found family love. So this might be controversial but I think you can start this season with the epic Legends of SuperFlarrow crossover:

Supergirl 308: “Crisis on Earth-X, Part 1”
Arrow 608: “Crisis on Earth-X, Part 2”
Flash 408: “Crisis on Earth-X, Part 3”
Legends of Tomorrow 308: “Crisis on Earth-X, Part 4”

Then watch 616 “The Thanatos Guild” to see Nyssa and skip the 15 agonizing episodes in which we all wondered if she was dead or alive. And the finale, “Life Sentence” because Sara bops back for a bit.

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Legends of Tomorrow

I understand the impulse to skip to the gay stuff, but Legends! Oh, Legends. It’s worth suffering through the douchebaggery of Rip for the first season to watch Sara’s evolution. BUT if you insist, here are the episodes I refuse to let you get away with not seeing.

Season One

I’ve mostly included episodes that were a grand ol’ time but also some that I think are important to learn more about who Sara is, the good and the bad. (Mostly the good, she’s never as bad as she thinks she is.)

We’ve already been over that you should watch the two-part pilot after the lead-in Arrow and Flash episodes called “Legends of Yesterday” and “Legends of Today,” but it’s worth repeating here again in case you bee-bopped your way down here first.

Here are other great eps from Season One.

105: “Fail-Safe”
106: “Star City 2046”
108: “Night of the Hawk”

I interrupt this regularly scheduled program to let you know who the guest star in Night of the Hawk was.

109: “Left Behind”
111: “The Magnificent Eight”
114: “River of Time”
116: “Legendary”

Season Two

Welcome to the golden ages of Captain Sara Lance, when she is finally rightfully put in charge and the world is better for it. Honestly this whole season was pretty great so I’ve just included my favorite episodes for those of you desperate to skip/if you’re at this point in the list and running out of time. (I swear I wrote this before I saw the name of the first episode of the season…)

201: “Out of Time”
202: “The Justice Society of America”
203: “Shogun”
206: “Outlaw Country”

(Here’s where the previously mentioned Invasion! crossover episodes happen, alongside 207)

212: “Camelot/3000”
213: “Land of the Lost”
217: “Aruba”

Season Three

Here’s where I draw the line. Watch every single one of these episodes. You just gotta. I don’t make the rules. (Oh wait, yes I do!) If you’re not really in it for the action, Season Three will let you get in it for the love.

And now you’re all caught up on the Sara Lance Chronicles.

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Supergirl

Well, well, well, look what we have here, a show whose queerness doesn’t rest entirely on the shoulders of an unassailable bisexual and her assassin girlfriend. I’m sure if you’ve been anywhere on the queer internet, you’ve heard of Alex Danvers and all her gay glory, but if you have yet to dive into the world of Supergirl, here’s a good place to start.

Season One

Honestly despite being the least gay, I think Season One was this show’s strongest season overall. Seasons Two and Three had some really, really strong episodes, arcs, scenes, etc, but as far as top to bottom quality goes, I think they hit it out of the park on their first try. Perhaps set our expectations a little too high.

101: “Pilot”
102: “Stronger Together”
103: “Fight or Flight”
104: “How Does She Do It? ”
105: “Livewire”
107: “Human for a Day”
113: “For the Girl Who Has Everything”
114: “Truth, Justice and the American Way”
115: “Solitude”
118: “Worlds Finest”
120: “Better Angels”

Season Two

This was also a great season of Supergirl, especially for Alex, so probably I’m going to recommend more episodes than not. Famed lesbian detective Maggie Sawyer swaggered into town and shook things up, and honestly we needed the gay to distract us from the tangible loss of an important Season One figure. We also meet sexy scientist and subtext superhero Lena Luthor so buckle up, kids.

201: “The Adventures of Supergirl”
203: “Welcome to Earth”
204: “Survivors”
205: “Crossfire”
206: “Changing”
207: “The Darkest Place”
208: “Medusa”
209: “Supergirl Lives”
211: “The Martian Chronicles”
212: “Luthors”
213: “Mr. & Mrs. Mxyzptlk”
214: “Homecoming”
215: “Exodus”
216: “Star-Crossed” (This is a cross-over that leads into Flash 317: Duet which I recommend watching because Melissa Benoist and Grant Gustin are so talented and have a lot of friendship chemistry but the overall plot was…problematic.)
217: “Distant Sun”
219: “Alex” (maybe my favorite episode of Supergirl ever)
221: “Resist”
222: “Nevertheless, She Persisted”

Season Three

Here’s the thing. In Season Two, while Alex was discovering who she was by way of falling in love, Kara was losing herself for the same reasons. So Season Three has its strengths but the Kara we knew disappeared. So these recommendations are mostly the strong Alex/Maggie episodes at the beginning of the season. And then the Season Three finale, which rekindled my dwindling hope and made me cautiously optimistic about Season Four.

301: “Girl of Steel”
302: “Triggers”
303: “Far From the Tree”
304: “The Faithful”
305: “Damage”
306: “Midvale”

Then you can jump into the Crisis on Earth-X crossover mentioned above.

And then… honestly… maybe just skip the rest of the season? There are some good Lena Luthor moments, but overall it’s just not the show I loved. Kara is a shell of herself, Alex becomes a glorified babysitter. It’s just all…ugh. Watch the finale (323: “Battles Lost and Won”) because it sets up the next season and then tell me if you share the same hopes for Season Four that I have.

And now it’s time for the newest kid on the block, brought to you by the other half of my CW crime-writing duo, Carmen Phillips!

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Black Lightning

Hey-yo! I’m quickly stopping by this post to ask, are you ready for a black lesbian superhero?!? Black Lightning stars Anissa Pierce, eldest daughter of the show’s titular character. Anissa also goes by Thunder. She’s got super strength, the ability to literally shake ground and pound through walls, and oh did I MENTION THAT SHE IS FREAKING BULLET PROOF????? One of my absolute favorite things is that in a time when queer women were just being killed off left and right on television (perhaps most famously on The CW), and in a real life political climate where black people become hashtags after falling victim to police and state violence, Anissa Pierce is purposefully bulletproof. She’s also social justice oriented, kicks ass, protects her family, and wants to use her powers to protect the black residents of Freeland. She’s absolutely everything I could have dreamed for in a superhero and I can’t wait for you to fall in love with her!

Season One

Black Lightning is a family drama, Jefferson Pierce (Black Lightning) is a retired superhero who’s forced back into that caped crusader life after his two daughters, Anissa (Thunder) and Jennifer are in danger. The central plot revolves around those three fairly evenly. The show is not set in what’s known as “The Arrowverse.” Instead, Black Lightning has created its own world and stands on its own footing (that also means it’s easier for you to catch up and follow along!). It weaves grounded portrayals of black pain and histories of race in America with DC comics lore and sci-fi spectacle. The result is like no other superhero show airing right now! This is a cut above, and if you’re anything like the rest of the Autostraddle staff — you’ll become quickly addicted.

The first four episodes, introduce the major characters – enjoy all the major gay!

101 “The Resurrection”
102 “The Book of Hope”
103 “The Book of Burial”
104 “Black Jesus
106 “Three Sevens: The Book of Thunder”
111 “Black Jesus: The Book of Crucifixion”
112: “The Resurrection and The Light”
113: “Shadow of Death”

(Thanks, Carmen!!)

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It’s Valerie Anne again! I hope you enjoyed this collection of suggestions and find it a helpful jumping off point.

If you don’t actually want to watch anything and only want to read about these shows until they come back on air, I wrote some Superhero Roundup Recaps, which were mini-recaps of feministy goings-on during Arrow Season Five, Flash Season Three, Legends of Tomorrow Season Two, and Supergirl Season 2TwoUNTIL Maggie Sawyer swaggered into town. After that, I started full and proper Supergirl recaps while of course keeping up with Legends of Tomorrow in various ways.

Then this year, the year of our goddess(es) 20Gayteen, gave us aforementioned black lesbian superhero on Black Lightning and Carmen gave us some glorious recaps.

Okay, you have until October to catch up, so go forth and kick ass, my vigilante-loving friends!

How “Legends of Tomorrow” Became One of the Best Queer Shows on TV

Legends of Tomorrow is one of the weirdest shows on television. With everything from Julius Caesar being loose in Aruba to a stuffed animal worshipped as a god of war, you truly never know what is going to happen next. The most dramatic lines of dialogue are, simply put, absurd — for example, “I think we broke time” — and the episode-to-episode plots are ridiculous in the best way. This season they went back to save Obama from a giant telepathic gorilla, and saved Elvis from his guitar, which was possessed by the ghost of his dead brother. On paper, it seems like the writers play mad libs with storylines, picking random nouns and locations out of hats and running with it.

And you know what? Maybe they do. It doesn’t matter, because the point of Legends of Tomorrow, much to my surprise, isn’t the action at all. It’s the character development. Legends of Tomorrow isn’t about the time-traveling adventures of a band of misfits; it’s about the misfits themselves, their inner struggles, their strengths and weaknesses, their interpersonal connections. Sure, sometimes they have to travel space and time to find six magical totems to defeat an ancient evil who possessed their arch-nemesis’s daughter, but mostly it’s just about this found family and how they work together.

When I first started Legends of Tomorrow, it was only to catch a glimpse of Sara Lance going all White Canary now and then. I figured I would suffer through some knock-off Doctor Who nonsense between chances to see Caity Lotz kick major ass. And the first season, that’s mostly what I did; I was watching this show for Sara Lance, everything else was just background noise. I watched Sara Lance open the eyes of Ali Liebert’s ’50s nurse character (if you know what I mean) in one of my favorite single-episode queer storylines ever, I got one last scene between Nyssa and Sara that felt a little like closure, and loved seeing Sara kick all-around ass, even as just one of an ensemble cast and genuinely did not expect to get anything more from it. I mean, the entire through-line of the first season was a reckless man endangering his “team” for his own selfish reasons.

I didn’t see myself getting overly invested.

But then in Season Two, there was a shift. The focus of the story started to drift away from Rip Hunter and toward Sara Lance. And when that started working working, the brilliant minds in the writers’ room leaned into it, hard.

In Season Two, Sara Lance, bedded the Queen of France, courted Lady Guinevere of Camelot and seduced literally every woman in Salem during the witch trials, and somewhere along the way found herself firmly in the Captain’s seat of the Waverider. Cut to Season Three, where Sara Lance, the unkillable bisexual badass, is officially the lead character of this show. Her team looks to her for guidance, defends her leadership to others, and respects her authority. When she falters or wonders if she’s really the right person for the job, they reassure her and support her.

Before Season Three aired, a producer casually mentioned that Sara would be getting a more long-term love interest, and then the show announced the casting of Jes Macallan as Time Bureau Agent Ava Sharpe. Jes Macallan, whose character on Mistresses dated a woman briefly once, and who has always been a very vocal ally. Sara and Ava were at odds almost immediately, but in that sexy kind of way? They were both fierce women with opposing objectives: Sara wanted to protect her team and Ava wanted to enforce the rules that Sara’s team was constantly breaking. Ava was the first woman in a long time to be able to go toe to toe with Sara Lance. Did it frustrate Sara? Yes. Did it scare her? Maybe a little. But did it intrigue her? Definitely. And I had to agree.

As the season went on, it became clearer and clearer that these two had feelings with each other. Ava went on a mission with the Legends and started to understand why they do things the way they do. Sara spent more time with Ava and started to understand why she viewed these rules as important to keep people safe. They started to learn that the other’s strengths didn’t have to be an opposing force, but that if they teamed up, they could just be doubly strong against their common enemies.

The thing with Sara though, is that she’s been through Some Shit™ and has a hard time letting people in. She lives and dies (often literally) for her teammates, but will never admit how scared she is to lose them. She thinks the demons she has to fight — literal and figurative — would be too much of a burden for someone else to share, so she keeps herself at arm’s length. So when it becomes clear that Ava has feelings for her, Sara denies it as long as she can. Eventually everyone on her ship, knowing her and, well, having eyes, sees what’s going on and urges Sara to take that step. She dives into battle for strangers without batting an eye, because it’s not death she fears, but heartbreak.

When Sara and Ava attempt to get together, their first date is thwarted by a mission, and lies they tell each other about it. Sara tries to use this as an excuse as to why the two could never work as a couple, because her life isn’t normal and she’ll never be able to go on a normal date without having to go save her team from, for example, the dread pirate Blackbeard. But Ava snaps back that she would never expect Sara to be normal, and that’s when Sara realized that maybe Ava does get it. Maybe this is what she was missing; she was trying to fit her odd-shaped life into a conventional box instead of trying to find something custom-built for her.

So Legends of Tomorrow surprised me. They had Sara jump into bed with Constantine (turns out that’s what they meant by reminding the audience she was bisexual) and then turn around and admit her feelings for Ava. What I thought would be a subtext ship forever became maintext almost immediately, with even the spaceship’s AI trying to nudge them together. And then, just when I thought they couldn’t possibly surprise me any more, having seen the way queer relationships on TV always go, they did. Because the thing with this show is, with a lot of their bigger antics, you can see the zag coming before they’re even done with the zig. Zig zag, zig zag, like a fun but predictable roller coaster. But every once in a while there will be a sharp turn you weren’t expecting. A zig where you expected them to zag, a zag when you thought the zigging and zagging was over.

There were two huge twists toward the end of Season Three that directly affected our girls, Sara and Ava. The first one happened when they found out Ava was a clone. Not the born-naturally-raised-separately kind of clone from Orphan Black, though. A 3D-printed-and-coded-to-follow-the-rules kind. In fact, they sort of seemed like AIs if we’re being honest. But Ava has no memory of being a clone, so her entire world falls apart; everything she knew was a lie, right down to her parents being actors. It’s, frankly, devastating. And at first Sara thought Ava lied to HER, but she quickly realizes that Ava had no idea where she came from, so she quickly switches gears from seeing it as an excuse to push Ava away to realizing it’s a reason to try to hold her close.

She reassures Ava that she’s extraordinary, that she’s one of a kind, that she’s special, but it’s hard for Ava to wrap her head around. She’s not even the first Ava who worked for the Time Bureau; hell, who knows if she’s even the first Ava to meet Sara Lance. Maybe some of those early episodes where Ava was coldest wasn’t OUR Ava at all! I don’t know. What I DO know was it added a really interesting layer to Ava as a character independent of Sara, as well as to their relationship as a whole. (She also dropped the info that she has an ex in Vegas. Is it a real ex? Does that mean our Ava has been around for a while? Is it an actor? WHAT IS REAL?)

By then I thought we were plum out of Avalance-related twists, but girl howdy was I wrong. Because in the penultimate episode, Sara sees Ava hurting and pushing back against the plan she knows will save them. Ava says the rules are all she has now, and Sara knows that’s not how she feels. So Sara does something that is scarier for her than all the battles she’s fought and she tells Ava she loves her. And while that was a heart-quickening shock, it wasn’t the twist that floored me. It was immediately after, when Ava scoffs that there is no “her” to love, and turns and walks away. Sara Lance finally said “I love you” to someone, after losing herself in the death totem and being more afraid of her feelings than ever, and Ava WALKED AWAY. It hurt like a knife in the gut but GOSH was it good. It felt real and raw and it didn’t slow Sara down too much as far as saving the world but fuck did it hurt.

But Legends of Tomorrow, this goofy-ass show that has blossomed into something truly spectacular, wasn’t about to leave Avalance shippers hanging until next season. In fact, when they wrote it, I don’t think they even knew if they would get a next season. So in the finale, they proved their love for us. When the Legends needed help, a bunch of characters from throughout the season showed up to fight by their side. Including Helen of Troy who has been training on Themyscira all this time and is a proper Amazon now.And, perhaps most importantly, including Ava. She seems to have spent some time figuring herself out, and asks Sara if she really meant what she said, when she said she loved her. Sara confirms, but before Ava can say anything back, they’re interrupted and the fight ensues. But the olive branch was extended and taken, and though there was too much going on for us to see some of the moments that lead up to it, what with the GIANT BEEBO FIGHTING THE TIME DEMON FROM HELL, there was still time for Ava to quite literally sweep Sara off her feet on horseback, and the season ended with Sara in Aruba promising her friends that her and Ava have plenty of plans together.

And! The best news of all? Legends of Tomorrow was renewed for a fourth season and Jes Macallan was promoted to series regular. This epic sci-fi romance isn’t over yet. Sara and Ava have fallen into a new category of characters lately; shows that see a thing working and lean into it, whether or not it was part of their original plan. Starting with Sara as Captain and now with Sara and Ava. The writers saw that it was working, saw that the actors had chemistry and the characters were making sense and the fans were responding the way they hoped, and so they do more of it. And maybe this was the Legends of Tomorrow writers’ plan all along. But either way, it feels great and I hope they continue to do this, to develop these amazing and unique characters within an absolutely absurd and hilarious show.

Because the show really is about the characters. And all I’ve talked about so far are the queer female characters. I didn’t even get into the snarky badassery of Zari, the Muslim hacker from the future on a quest to save her family; or Amaya, the elegant African vigilante from the past, known as Vixen and part of the Justice League before meeting the Legends. Three women on the ship, plus the ship herself, Gideon, and Ava. All given episodes that focused on their storylines, all important and invaluable members of the Legends team.

I think Sara Lance will go down in history as one of my favorite characters on television. Just look at how far she’s come. She started on Arrow as a vapid socialite trying to steal her sister’s boyfriend, then became a skilled member of the League of Assassins, then joined her sister and ex-boyfriend and their team of vigilantes as the Black Canary, then joined a time-traveling band of outcasts as the White Canary, and now she is their leader, Captain Lance. She has died too many times to count, once for so long that she came back a little feral. She lost her sister and can’t save her despite having a time machine that would theoretically let her do exactly that, because she knows it could just make things worse. Sara Lance has grown as a person a dozen times over, and while all that was happening, as she moved from Arrow to Legends of Tomorrow, as she is faced with more challenges and character work, Caity Lotz grew with her. She grew as an actress and an activist, and it’s been a wonder to watch.

In one of the best episodes of the season, “Here I Go Again,” Zari says to Sara, “You’re not just the captain of this ship, you are its soul.” And that’s the truth. Sara Lance is the heart and soul of Legends and Tomorrow, and as long as that badass, blonde, bisexual bird is at the helm, this ship is going to amazing places.

Boob(s On Your) Tube: Of Course The “Grey’s Anatomy” Spin-Off Has a Bisexual Firefighter!

Have you voted in the Sweet 16 of our Best First Kiss March Madness yet? If not, hop on over there and do that and then come back here to talk about the week in teevee!

Well, Toni and Cheryl had their first kiss on Riverdale and Kayla recapped that! Things are getting rough for Anissa as season one of Black Lightning draws to a close, and Carmen’s all over that commentary! One Day at a Time is coming back for another season! Sara Ramirez’s coming out on Madam Secretary was oh so very good.

And here’s what else!

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Legends of Tomorrow 316: “I, Ava”

Written by Valerie Anne

This week’s episode opens with Sara saying she’s leaving. Much like she (wrongly) thinks Ava will be better off without her, she (wrongly) thinks her team has a better chance at finding all the totems if she’s not there on the verge of a murder spree. She’s dead-set on leaving, nothing could convince her to stay…until Gary shows up and says that Ava is missing. Then suddenly Sara’s head’s in the game and she goes rifling through Ava’s desk to Ava’s parents’ doorstep in Fresno before you can say NOT NOW, GARY.

Sara’s nervous about meeting Ava’s parents, but once she’s inside she quickly becomes suspicious. She uses her detailed knowledge of her ex-girlfriend to call their bluff and it’s soon revealed they’re actors. They say they were hired to pretend they’re Ava’s parents, but one nuance of the way they said it was missed by the Legends: they said they were pretending to be Ava’s parents…FOR Ava. They don’t put it together til later that this means even Ava doesn’t know these aren’t her parents. But I did and I was SAD about it.

When they get back to the Time Bureau, Ava is there, looking like she’s been crying and/or is hungover; she says she was visiting her parents in Fresno, and since Sara knows this to be a lie, she steals Ava’s wrist tech thingy and steal the mothership to go to a classified time and place. 2213 was Ava’s first mission, and no one is allowed to go there, and Sara soon realizes why.

The city is full of Avas. It’s like Helsinki up in here, clones everywhere you turn. Sara starts to freak out a little but she, Ray, and Gary head to Ava Corp. Ray accidentally makes a new Ava and also wakes up a pre-made Ava. Sara is now disheartened. She thinks Ava lied to her about who she is, and that it means what they had was as fake as the carbon copy of her lying here.

Said carbon copy, upon waking up, threatens to kill them for breaking rules and, despite how weird it is, Sara fights her and has Gary tie him up. The real Ava shows up, confused, and Sara tells her to drop the clueless act. But as soon as Ava sees the clone of her own self being 3-D printed, she passes out.

When Ava wakes up she doesn’t remember why she fainted, and Sara is worried about telling her. But then, in the middle of Ava’s rant about seeing her ex in vegas and joining the dating app Upswipes and how she feels horrible about all of it, an entire Ava Army shows up.

Then Ava starts to properly freak. But Sara assures her it doesn’t matter where she came from, this isn’t who she is. HER Ava is not a mindless clonebot. She’s extraordinary. Ava (rightly) begins to panic about her memories not being real but Sara assures her she’s real. And so are her feelings for her.

She calls her a badass and says now is the time to get past this because they have to fight the Avabots.

And so they do, back to back, heart to heart. Back on the Waverider, it’s clear that Sara’s impulse to run has faded now that Ava is back, now that she knows that maybe Ava has as much baggage as she does.

And they’re going to get to the bottom of things. Rip recruited Ava, so that’s where they’ll start looking for answers.

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Star Episodes 209 & 210: “Climax” & “Rise From the Ashes”

Written by Carmen

So much has happened on Star since I recapped the first season for you last fall. Quickly, Star is a musical soap opera that’s follows the dreams of four young, poor, women of color: Star, the show’s protagonist; her younger sister Simone; their best friend Alex; and Cotton, their godsister who is transgender. The four young women all live with Queen Latifah, who plays Miss Carlotta, Cotton’s mother and Star and Simone’s godmother. Star, Simone, and Alex have been working together as a music group and are trying too claw their way into the industry, Carlotta is their manager.

When we last talked about the show, our focus was on Cotton. The role gave black trans actress Amiya Scott the opportunity to make history as the first out trans person to star as a series regular on network television. That’s groundbreaking by itself. Over the course of its second season, Star has extended its LGBT representation further, as teenage Simone explored her sexuality. The season opened with Simone being taken out of Miss Carlotta’s foster care due to her consistent drug use. She was placed in a detention facility, and that’s where she first met Karen.

Karen and Simone started off enemies. Karen made fun of Simone’s ambitions, mockingly calling her “Superstar”. She was jealous of Simone’s support system outside of the facility, as well as her racial privilege as a mixed race black girl. However, after Karen’s roommate committed suicide, the dynamic between the girls shifted. They became inseparable as they fought together to maintain their humanity while being treated as a statistic. When Simone was finally released from custody, Karen turned cold. She knew that Simone would forget her the second she got back to the outside. Simone held her best friend’s hand, and looked her in her eyes. She brought Karen in for one of the most romantic kisses I saw last fall, and promised that she could never forget her. Maybe Karen felt like she was invisible, but to Simone, she was the entire world.

Karen later runs away from the detention center, and into Simone’s arms. At first Simone hides her in the recording studio that she’s been working at with Star and Alex. She visits Karen during the day and together they make whispered promises of a future together. Simone is going to make it as a recording superstar, and she will use her fame and fortune to take care of Karen every step of the way. Karen’s eyes glisten. Simone holds her face in her hands and promises, “You don’t have to be homeless no more. Not when you got me.”

Then Simone, afraid of Karen being caught hiding in the studio, gives her girlfriend the keys to Miss Carlotta’s house to spend the night. She tells Karen that she’ll be safe there, but she didn’t know the house (along with Miss Carlotta’s hair shop on the first floor) would catch fire that night.

This week, in Star’s spring premiere, we found out that Karen died in the flames. It’s an awful and inexcusable use of the “Bury Your Gays” trope. The only brief thing I was thankful for was that Cotton, whose abusive ex-boyfriend likely started the fire, did not die along with her. Losing a trans black woman in an act of domestic violence would have been too cruel and true to life to bear as a cheap soap opera twist. However, losing young black queer women in brutal acts of domestic violence has a lot of the same real life implications. Queer and trans people of color, particularly low income queer and trans people of color, remain some of those most effected by violent hate crimes in this country. It’s impossible to think of young Karen, on the run and alone, dying in that fire and not think of those statistics.

In Karen’s death, Simone comes out to her family. She lost the love of her young life, and spends most of the premiere episode in mourning. Miss Carlotta knowingly hugs her, and promises her that they will face this devastation together. Simone cries with Star, and wonders out loud if this means she’s a lesbian. Star tells her that it doesn’t matter; their love comes first. Simone will always be her sister.

Star and Alex sneak Simone out of Miss Carlotta’s in the middle of the night, so the group can mourn together. They give Simone a can of spray paint and keep watch as the teenager marks a brick wall in remembrance of her young love. Just as Simone is finishing her memorial, the radio crackles alive. The girls finally have their first song on the radio. Simone looks up to the sky and thanks Karen, who she knows is looking down on them and protecting them.

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Once Upon A Time Episode 714: “Girl in the Tower”

Written by Carmen

We were gifted last week with Robin and Alice’s “meet cute” — and wow, was it one for the story books. Alice, still locked in a Rapunzel-esque tower due to Mother Gothel’s curse, wishes on her birthday for her freedom. As she blows out her birthday candle, giant ogre troll comes crashing into the tower. He gently offers Alice his hand. Just like that, our young curious mind is finally allowed to leave her captivity.

The next year on her birthday, Alice visits her father, the new Captain Hook (he’s completely separate from the Captain Hook of the previous seasons, even though he’s played by the same actor. This Hook is actually a decent human being. Anyway, please don’t ask the details). Mother Gothel has poisoned Hook, and the poison activates whenever Alice is around him, so she must keep her distance. New Hook is gathered around a campfire with Regina and Zelena. While spying on them, Alice is caught by Robin — who has her bow and arrow drawn on the intruder, not knowing who she really is.

Alice explains her situation and Robin’s face melts into a warm, heart filled, puddle. She promises to pass Alice’s love onto Hook. She shares with Alice that she’s on an adventure of her own. She plans to live up to her father’s legacy by shooting down the troll that has been wreaking havoc on her family’s kingdom.

Alice recognizes the troll in Robin’s story as her own wish troll from the tower. Robin sets off, and Alice chases after her. She will protect the troll at any cost. Together they spend the episode getting in and out of trouble. They crack jokes about their childhoods, they sneak around and get into mischief, and every time Robin looks at Alice her eyes turn into heart shaped emojis. Alice is fully whimsy that just barely covers the lonely depths of darkness. Robin has a rough edge on every word that is desperately trying to hide her softness. Together, they are simply magnetic.

Over the course of their adventure, Robin tells Alice the story of how she once hot-wired her Aunt Emma’s iconic yellow Volkswagon. She has to explain what a car is first, but Alice gets the joke. Later, when the two women are about to be engulfed by an angry mob set on killing the troll, Alice wishes the Beetle to them out of thin air! Robin is astonished, but Alice doesn’t think it’s a big deal — after all, in a wink to her original fairytale she tells her young crush, “I sometimes wish at least six impossible things before breakfast”.

Later, Robin helps Alice face a hard truth: Since Alice wished the troll into existence, she also has to be the one to wish the troll away. He may be her friend, but he’s causing a lot of hurt. Robin promises, Alice is not alone anymore. Alice has her.

In their cursed personas, Alice (she goes by Tilly in Seattle) is cleared from the murder charges that Gothel framed her for. That night, in the middle of street, she bumps into a new young woman under the streetlights. Margot (our Robin) is just back in town after spending a year backpacking across Europe. She has a copy of Alice in Wonderland cradled in her arms.

Watching Alice and Robin feels almost bittersweet. They are everything I ever wanted from Once Upon a Time. They are romantic and adventurous and full of charming, quirky chemistry. Watching them together feels like watching the early years of Snow White & Prince Charming. They are proving that Once Upon a Time could take their gift for big screen, fairytale romance, and apply it to their queer characters. As a long time fan of the show, on a certain level that feels validating — I knew they had it in them. But, it also feels infuriating, because if they had the potential for this level of compassion toward their gay characters, then they could have done this earlier.

This epic romance, no matter how bright or how great, taking center stage as the show burns off the remaining episodes before their cancellation is not what their gay fans deserved. There’s no way around that, and I promise not to mention it every time I write about the show over the next month. To do that would not be fair to Alice and Robin and the story that they’re telling. However, just watching it last week, I couldn’t shake the bitter feeling in the back of my throat. It’s now clear already knew how to write an gorgeous and exciting queer romance, they simply chose not to do it.

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Quick Hits

Arrow 616: “The Thanatos Guild”

NYSSAAAAAAAA

Eh hem. I mean. Hello, I’m here to tell you Nyssa was back on Arrow this week. She’s been unmentioned entirely since the island exploded, with no on-screen confirmation she was alive, until she showed up this week to stop a sector of the League of Assassins that grew back like a tumor from killing Thea Queen. She was fierce and funny (she called Felicity her sister-wife) and I’m pretty sure she went to a lesbian bar in a leather jacket. She successfully saved Thea’s life, and is now going with her on a journey to stop these assassins from raising Malcolm Merlyn from the dead. Whether or not we’ll ever see any of that on screen is debatable, but apparently Sara Lance is going to be back on Arrow for the season finale, and I hope against hope Nyssa will be there, too. I know Sara has Ava now, but I just want them to be friends. They’ve been through so much together. The rest of Arrow is still very boring, in case you were wondering. — Valerie Anne

Station 19 103: “Contain the Flame”

I would like you all to meet Maya Bishop. She’s a firefighter at Station 19 of the Seattle Fire Department. Station 19 is the much hyped Grey’s Anatomy spin off that premiered last week, and we here at Autostraddle have been keeping our eyes peeled for a gay lady firefighter in their midst. We are happy to inform you that Maya is our lucky gal! Maya is a former Olympian and best friends with Andy Herrera, the show’s protagonist. Last night, while sharing beer and vodka on the front porch of Andy’s house with friends, Maya recommended that they all engage in some better self-care. For Maya, that self-care means lots and lots of sex, with “a series of ladies and gents… monogamy is for the weak, or the very, very dedicated”. Introducing her bisexuality in the midst of a joke about being promiscuous definitely runs the danger of playing into a long established bi stereotype. At the same time, I love seeing a woman on television who is in charge of her body and her desires. Let’s see where we go from here! — Carmen

Fall 2017 TV Preview: Some Lesbian and Bisexual Characters for You

by Riese & Heather

Pumpkin spice is in the air and you know what that means: It’s time for fall TV. After Lexa’s death on The 100 and the waves of lesbian and bisexual TV character deaths that followed, summer TV rebounded in a pretty satisfying way this year. Wynonna Earp, The Bold Type, Orphan Black, Doubt, Stitchers, The Handmaid’s Tale, Master of None; even The Fosters has gotten back on track. But now it’s time to say goodbye and look toward the tempestuous embrace of traditional network TV. The news out of the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour wasn’t great. There seem to be very few new shows with queer TV characters this year. There are some returning favorites, though, and just a handful of fresh offerings. Here’s where and when you’ll find them.

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Sundays

Survivor’s Remorse, Season 4 (Showtime) – August 20th, 10 PM

Survivor’s Remorse is one of the most consistently excellent shows on TV, but it doesn’t get a lot of press or social media love because it always airs between summer and fall TV schedules, and it does so on Starz, which isn’t easy to access if you don’t have a hardcore traditional cable package. The show’s lesbian character is M-Chuck; she’s the sister of Survivor’s main character, Cam, a professional basketball player who lives with and takes care of his family. The show ended season three with M-Chuck on her way to Boston to find out the truth behind the rape that led to her conception. She’s working through that, now, in the first few episodes of season four. This show is funny and smart and relentless in its realness, shifting tone from comedy to drama and back again multiple times a season.

Top Of The Lake: China Girl, Season 2 (Sundance) – September 10th, 9 PM

The second season of this eerie British import continues to star Elizabeth Moss as Robin, who is basically what has become its own female detective trope (slightly reckless, incredibly determined, single or in unstable relationships, sometimes drinks too much, cares deeply about the case, is condescended to by men) and this season Nicole Kidman joins the cast as Julia Edwards, the adoptive mother of the baby Robin gave up as a teenager, who is having an affair with a female teacher at Mary’s school.

Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 8 (HBO) – October 1st, 10pm

Apparently Julie Goldman will be guesting on at least one episode this season as “Julie,” which is probably, you know, Julie Goldman, and as you likely know, Julie Goldman is a proud butch lez who’ll bring some real proud butch lez emotions to this show about white men who think they are very funny!

The Walking Dead Season 8 (AMC) – October 22nd, 9 PM

Lesbian character Tara is still alive on this show, which is basically all I have to say about it. Her girlfriend Denise died and she found out at the end of last season that the motherfucker who killed her didn’t even mean to (stray arrows in the eyeball, it happens to everyone!) and now she’s nursing another gravely wounded friend back to health. Tara’s not around too much, but when she is Stef always has big dreams for her creating her own little zombie-free Themyscira and living out her days in queer bliss surrounded by other living gay women.

Shameless Season 8 (Showtime) – November 5th, 9 PM

Season 8 of Shameless will introduce Nessa, “a tough, smart lesbian who lives in Fiona’s newly purchased apartment building.” Nessa will be played by Jessica Szhor and will “develop a strong relationship with Fiona.” It looks like my faves, lesbian Svetlana and bisexual Veronica, will be back, although I imagine their romance is over, which is sad. Some websites on the internet are attempting to torture me with teases like, “Nessa and Fiona are set to become best friends that may or may not result in passionate love,” despite the fact that we already went down the “could Fiona go both ways?” path in Season Two with Jasmine Hollander and also there was a big missed opportunity with Angela in Season Five. Just saying. Also Regina King is directing this season!

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Mondays

Supergirl Season 3 (The CW) – October 9th, 8 PM

Alex Danvers’s Season 2 Supergirl storylines were so good. Just so good. She came out to her mom, to Kara, to her friends/co-workers. She fell in love. She almost died but didn’t die, and never gave up on living with her very last breath. There were so many ways to swoon it was honestly hard to keep up. In the off-season, we learned that Floriana Lima, who plays Maggie Sawyer, has stepped down as a series regular, which most everyone assumed meant she was going to get shot in the face, but nope! Executive Producer Andrew Kreisberg told Entertainment Weekly she’s absolutely not going to die. She’ll be in the first five episodes, at least — “It’s some of the most emotional stuff we’ve ever done,” Kreisberg promises — and the door will be open for her to come back. Alex isn’t going anywhere!

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Tuesday

American Horror Story: Cult, Season 7 of AHS franchise (FX) – September 5th, 10 PM

As discussed, this season of American Horror Story is loosely centered on a Michigan lesbian played by Sarah Paulson who is horrified by the election of Donald Trump and starts seeing evil clowns everywhere while her partner, played by Allison Pill, tries to keep her own shit together. According to Variety, Evan Peters plays “a series of cult leaders” including Charles Manson, Jim Jones, David Koresh and Andy Warhol. Lena Dunham has a guest role as Valerie Solanis, the legendary author of the notorious SCUM Manifesto (SCUM stands for “Society for Cutting Up Men,” obvs) memorialized in the film I Shot Andy Warhol. (‘Cause she shot Andy Warhol.) Emma Roberts plays “a Michigan newscaster who is promoted above Adina Porter’s character ‘simply because she’s much more superficial and willing to do what it takes to survive.'” Murphy insists, “It’s not about Trump, it’s not about Clinton. It’s about somebody with the wherewithal to put their finger up to the wind and see that that’s what happening and using that to rise up and form power. And use people’s vulnerabilities about how they’re feeling afraid… and they feel like the world is on fire.” It feels highly likely that we will end up adding more characters to the #buryyourgays list this year due to this particular program.

Legends of Tomorrow (The CW) – October 10th, 9 PM

As the captain of the Waverider, Sara Lance was basically the lead character in Legends of Tomorrow‘s second season. Not bad for a bisexual woman who only came back to life after fans made their voices heard loud and clear when Arrow murdered her! Sara also did some really solid time-traveling making out, first with Betty McRae and then with then with Guinevere in Camelot. At San Diego Comic-Con, EP Marc Guggenheim told fans Sara is getting a new love interest in Season 3: “It’s definitely time for Sara to settle down, or at least have a relationship that’s more than a roll in the hay. It’s hard when you’re traveling through time.” He also said it’s time to “reestablish Sara’s bisexuality,” and since she’s only been smooching women since Nyssa showed up on Arrow all those years ago, it seems likely that “reestablishment” means a male love interest.

Marvel’s Runaways (Hulu) – November 21st, Streaming

Karolina Dean has been a lesbian for a long time in Marvel’s written universe, and now she’s going to be a lesbian in the cinematic one! I don’t want to spoil her coming out arc for you; it’s very dramatic! But I do want to tell you exactly how gay she is: She absorbs the sun’s energy and radiates it back out into the world as a rainbow. The Runaways are runaways because they want to fight the evil forces in the universe and all their parents are monsters. The show boasts a legitimately diverse cast and looks like a lot of fun.

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Wednesday

Broad City Season 4 (Comedy Central) – September 13th, 10:30 PM

FINALLY FINALLY ILANA AND ABBY ARE BACK. This season Ilana will be searching the planet for the orgasms she’s been unable to have since the election of Donald Trump, which will inevitably involve hooking up with other ladies, right? Also, look out for a guest spot from Wanda Sykes!

Star Season 2 (Fox) – September 27th, 9:00 PM

Star slipped under our radar in Season 1 but I watched it all a couple of weeks ago and was actually blown away by it. Trans model/actress Amiyah Scott plays Cotton, a self-described “hustler” who works as both a dancer and a stylist at her mother’s salon in Atlanta. Her mother is played by Queen Latifah. Their relationship is tempestuous. Cotton’s storyline hits a lot of the same ol’ beats (to have surgery or not to have surgery, etc.) but it doesn’t center on them. Cotton is funny and smart and beloved and her complicated motivations and relationship with her mom inform all of her decisions. There’s also a gender non-conforming character named Miss Bruce (played by Miss Lawrence), who was a breakout star in Season 1 and has been upped to a regular for Season 2.

American Housewife Season 2 (ABC) – September 27th, 9:30 PM

Katie is the main character on American Housewife and sometimes she has second breakfast with her two best friends, one of whom is a lesbian named Angela. That’s all Angela does. She’s a sounding board for Katie and her problems and we only find out about her life through throwaway lines of dialogue. We don’t ever actually see her life. She’s got an ex-wife whom we met once. They hate each other’s guts. That’s really it. Middle America loves this show and there’s a black lesbian from time-to-time which is something!

Riverdale Season 2 (The CW) – October 11th, 8:00 PM

Riverdale’s adding a new character, Toni Topaz, and she will indeed be a bisexual lady. There’s also been hints that Cheryl Blossom will explore her own sexual fluidity this season. Whatever happens, you’ll hear about it on Tumblr for sure.

The Shannara Chronicles (Spike) – October 11th, 8:00 PM

Eretria revealed that she’s bisexual in Season 1 of The Shannara Chronicles but it didn’t really go anywhere, but according to the most recent trailer, it’s going somewhere (gay!) in season two! Here’s a bit of TV trivia for you from Valerie Anne: Shannara‘s new queer gal is played by Vanessa Morgan who is also going to be the bisexual Toni Topaz on Riverdale and also played the bisexual Bird on Finding Carter.

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Thursday

Gotham Season 4 (Fox) – September 21st, 8:00 PM

Gotham definitely killed Barbara last season. Electrocuted by her own girlfriend. Which, you know, happens when you’re both troped-up bisexual psychopaths. But then at Heroes and Villains Fan Fest in Nashville, David Mazouz (who plays young Master Bruce) seemed to indicate that she’s still alive? I don’t know, man. This show is not good with its women. It lost me when it banished Rene Montoya and every episode since then has gotten worse and worse w/r/t good queer rep.

Grey’s Anatomy Season 14 (ABC) – September 28th, 8:00 PM

Our beloved Arizona Robbins had a pretty controversial relationship on Season 13 of Grey’s Anatomy. For one thing, no one’s ever going to compete with Callie Torres. But for another thing, she was paired up with Eliza Minnick, who is both loathed by viewers and the characters inside the show. Bailey fired Minnick in the season finale and it was honestly just so satisfying to everyone. Probably that means another broken heart for Arizona. Maybe Minnick will meet up with Erica Hahn in the Parking Lot of No Return and they can have a nice brunch.

Will & Grace Reboot (NBC) – September 28th, 9:00 PM

“When we started it was revolutionary to have two gay characters,” Debra Messing said at TCA, according to Vox, “We were ‘LGB,’ but we stopped at B. My hope is we can now finish the alphabet.” What this really speaks to is that Karen’s bisexuality was so downplayed that the cast members have also forgotten about it. Well, I haven’t, and I pray for its return!

How To Get Away With Murder Season 4 (ABC) – September 28th, 10:00 PM

Annalise Keating is one of the most important characters on television, played by one of the greatest living actors. I’ll quote our TV writer Natalie from the QPOC roundtable we published a couple of weeks ago: “It’s hard to divorce my love for Annalise Keating from the woman that plays her because so much of what makes me feel seen is that she’s portrayed by someone who looks like Viola Davis. Annalise Keating is a dark-skinned black woman, who isn’t a size zero and whose natural hair hides beneath impeccable wigs. Hollywood has a very narrow definition of what a beautiful black woman ought to look like —*cough* Halle Berry *cough* — and Viola Davis upends all of that.” There’s no word yet whether or not Famke Janssen’s Eve will be back for any episodes in Season 4, but here’s hoping. She’s Annalise’s lifelong love.

Arrow Season 6 (The CW) – October 12th, 9:00 PM

Oliver and William watched the island of Lian Yu explode with basically every Arrow character on it in the Season 5 finale. Those characters included our much beloved and criminally underused Nyssa al Ghul. I’ve gotta believe The CW of all networks isn’t stupid enough to kill another lesbian, but I guess we’ll find out soon! There was a time I believed Donald Trump couldn’t get elected president!

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Friday

One Mississippi Season 2 (Amazon Prime) – September 8th, Full Season Streaming

While One Mississippi‘s first season ended with Tig Notaro says the second season will take much less inspiration from her real life. She told Deadline: “There are people that I’m dating [on the show], and checking things out with, and checking out the spark that got started with the Kate character. That’s definitely in season two.” Gay love! It’s in the air in Bay Saint Lucille! You should watch this show if you are not watching this show. It’s so smart and so so funny and THERE’S A LESBIAN LEAD and no gays have been buried.

Transparent Season 4 (Amazon Prime) – September 22nd, Full Season Streaming

A show beloved by queers and Jewish people alike and often recognized for boldly tackling complicated material is going all-out this season by sending its characters to Israel, where they will confront checkpoints, have spiritual revelations and inspire hot takes. “Transparent” came in #1 on our list of Most Critically Acclaimed Queer-ish TV shows.

Once Upon a Time Season 7 (ABC) – October 6th, 8:00 PM

[Deep sigh.] Once Upon a Time is promising, once again, a gay thing. EP Edward Kitsis told EW: “This [revamped] iteration [of the show] is reflecting the world today. It will not be anything more than just one of other love stories that are happening. I don’t think it’s an arc, it’ll be a character who is gay and that’s who they are and they exist in the world. They don’t have a sign that says ‘special episode.'” That is a thing I will believe when I see.

Jane the Virgin Season 4 (The CW) – October 13th, 9:00 PM

Luisa’s been perpetually in and out on Jane the Virgin over the course of the show’s run, but it seems likely that she’ll play a much bigger role in Season 4 on account of she now owns literally everything in Miami. Or at least everything entitled to the Solano heir, which Rafael is not. He lied to her about having cancer, and so she taped back together their dad’s shredded will and showed up at his door with it and who’s the psychopath now, my dude? (It’s still Rose. Rose is always the psychopath.) All signs point to a loyalty showdown this season, with Luisa choosing between her lover and her brother once and for all.

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TBD

Life Sentence Season One

This mid-season replacement stars Aria from Pretty Little Liars as a girl who thought she was going to die but then found out she wasn’t going to die after all! And then it turns out that her Mom is having a relationship with another lady because life is just damn full of surprises.

Superqueero Roundup Recap: Hide and Seek in Refrigerators

So, after this week’s string of CW DC shows, I’m left with a question. Did they decide that they were allowed to play into the “women in refrigerators” trope but only with one refrigerator? So every time they want to kill a female character solely to further the plot of a man they have to resurrect the last woman they killed for that reason? Obviously I’d rather there be no refrigerators, but I don’t hate women coming back to life.

I’m getting ahead of myself like some kind of Barry Allen. Let’s zip back in time to Tuesday and start from there.

The Flash 309: Draco Malfoy and the Philosopher’s Stone

That title isn’t even a metaphor you guys. In this episode, we learn that Julian used to be Indiana Jones and found the Philosopher’s Stone, which is why the god of speed, Savitar, is using him as a puppet he calls Alchemy.

Flash Sr from Earth 3 gets paid a visit by Alchemy, too, so he comes to our Earth to hang out with Team Flash for a bit. Though when he comes face to face with Savitar, the god calls him by name and says that he, Garrick, is not who he’s after. It’s just Barry.

When Team Flash finds out Draco is Dr. Alchemy, they put him in a cell in Star Labs, but he thinks he’s being framed. Barry takes off his Flash mask to get him to trust him, and finally gets Julian to admit that he has been blacking out and losing time. For…years? I think for years. YEARS. He has been losing time. And people around him have been dying. And he didn’t feel all that concerned about it.

Anyway he admits that this all started when his sister died and her ghost appeared to him to tell him about the Philosopher’s Stone. So he followed her, found it, and inadvertently released Savitar and became Dr. Alchemy.

Well, now the box is in Star Labs, and now Cisco’s brother is appearing to him, and CISCO opens the box, releasing Savitar.

Savitar throws Barry around like a ping pong ball and Wally tries to help and they’re shouting at Cisco but he’s drunk on box fumes and wants his brother to be alive again. But eventually it’s Caitlin that gets through to him and helps him grip reality and ignore the box’s pretty lies.

So Cisco closes the box.

They decide that since Julian is the puppet Savitar uses to talk to them, maybe they can use the puppet to talk to the master, too, so they hook Julian up to the box with some wires to have a chat. Savitar speaks through him and is surprised no one is kneeling to him. He claims to know their fate, and issues a prophecy about the members of Team Flash: One will betray Barry, one will die, one will “suffer a fate worse than death”. Actually technically he just said fall. But. Probably not talking about a little stumble on the sidewalk.

Anyway, Savitar is generally not a frolicking-through-a-field-with-a-flower-crown kind of god and sounds really evil and angry until they break the connection and the box becomes just a box again.

Flash Sr. decides that their best plan is to throw the Philosopher’s Stone box into the Speedforce so no one be lured into the same trap again, even though I feel like maybe there was a way to store it in the lab with like a few types of materials inscribed with warnings in multiple languages or something.

However, Barry gets sucked out of the Speedforce and somehow ends up in the future, where he sees Savitar kill Iris dead. Flash Sr. pulls him back out and Barry straight up panics. But Flash Sr. says that what he saw was only one possibility for the future, and that surely the CW DC universe wouldn’t fridge another woman so soon after Laurel took her sister’s place in the wretched refrigerator.

Barry doesn’t feel eased by the fact that it’s not a sure thing, because it’s still a likely/possible thing, but Flash Sr. says there’s no point in stressing about it right now, just go enjoy Christmas with your family.

Of course, the weight of the world and its many futures is a lot for his narrow shoulders, so he’s looking rather gloomy. (Iris is looking cute though.)

Anyway, aside from the looming fear of Savitar’s prophecy, Christmas is lovely, with Wally getting his Kid Flash suit and Julian giving Barry his job and lab back.

Oh and Caitlin makes it snow over the whole town even though she’s been wearing magic-quelling fitbits to avoid turning into Killer Frost.

I am VERY concerned about this Iris flashback, though I feel like maybe since we’ve seen it, it can’t happen now? Right? Promise me?

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Arrow 509: A life for a life

We open with Artemis bringing Prometheus intel about Team Arrow, including photos she took herself. Prometheus points out that wanting to kill Oliver for killing people seems a little dumb, but Baby Bird says she wants Oliver to make him wish he was dead instead.

Meanwhile, the whole town is gathered for a Christmas party Thea, effectively mayor at this point, threw.

Carly Pope returns to us this week as Susan Williams, clad in a little red dress to slay us all.

Felicity and her boyfriend Billy are there too, and she awkwardly introduces him to all of her friends as if she’s embarrassed to be with him at all. It’s even more than your average everyday Felicity awkwardness, and as she tries to navigate what she can mention around who – for example, what her boyfriend knows vs. what Curtis’s husband knows – and opts for chugging booze instead.

Oliver gives a speech about Die Hard and It’s A Wonderful Life, neither of which better be clues to how the second half of this season will go. After, he introduces Felicity and Susan, and it’s just about as uncomfortable as you can imagine.

Angry that he feels like Curtis is lying to him, his husband Paul decides he’s had enough of this party and heads outside. Curtis goes out to talk to him but Prometheus attacks, knocking him out after a bit of a brawl.

This reveals two things. One, Billy realizes now that Curtis is part of Team Arrow, and two, Team Arrow knows that Prometheus knows that Oliver is the Green Arrow. But they don’t KNOW they know they know. You know? (Just kidding that sentence is just extra complicated because unlike Team Arrow I’m trying not to assume Prometheus is a ‘he’ partially because we simply don’t know for sure and partially for reasons I’ll discuss later.)

Back in the Arrow Cave, the team does some research and figure out that Prometheus is linked to a drug company whose CEO Oliver killed four years ago. But as Felicity points out, “In our town, people we think are dead end up being alive almost every Wednesday.” This is possibly some on the nose foreshadowing, but her referencing the day Arrow airs reminded me of, “Dawn’s in trouble, must be Tuesday,” and for that I am very grateful.

The team heads to a warehouse to find the man they think might be Prometheus, and they do find Prometheus, but he gets away with the help of a little bird.

Felicity kicks herself for not vetting her better, but no one blames her for once.

One other funny-ish moment was Wild Dog thinking that if alternate timelines were a thing, maybe that means he and Thea dated at one point. Rag Man thinks this is a hilariously impossible dream in any reality, and frankly so does Thea.

Felicity figures out that the man Oliver thought he killed, Clayborn, is indeed dead, so he can’t be Prometheus. While she’s solving that, her boyfriend poked around Clayborn’s old office, and gets himself kidnapped.

So Felicity uses the evidence he managed to text before getting snatched to figure out that Clayborn did have a kid, and that kid would be about 30 now.

So the Team gets to work. Even Thea suits up again, for Felicity.

Thea tells Oliver to stop assuming he has enough control to be the only factor in something like someone becoming a masked serial killer. And he’s affected a lot of people in a lot of ways, so he can’t let the bad things consume him and outweigh the good.

Eventually Oliver ends up alone in the warehouse with Prometheus and while Prometheus monologues about how every life Oliver touches ends in death, so Oliver touches him and he dies. But turns out it wasn’t Prometheus at all, but Billy. He goes back to tell his team and Felicity is so, so sad but, unlike the men in her life, her brain still works when her heart is broken, so she knows this is Prometheus’s fault.

Oliver tells them all they’re doomed for knowing him but they don’t care, they’re in this now.

But he’s not wrong. Because on top of killing Felicity’s boyfriend, Curtis and his husband break up (their storyline in this episode was really heartbreaking to watch because Curtis being sad is like a sad puppy) because Paul says he can’t live the life of a vigilante’s husband and Curtis can’t NOT be Mr. Terrific. And side-note maybe I just don’t watch a lot of shows with gay male couples but the use of “baby” during their conversations made me happy…until all the words after it made me sad.

Also Diggle gets a call from “Lyla” and it’s a trap and a SWAT team gets him.

Oliver, distraught, decides to try not being alone for once, and goes to see Susan. Susan, who has a suspiciously-zoomed-in-on bottle of Russian vodka she pours for Oliver. Susan, who could be around 30. Susan, who showed up around the same time as Prometheus and managed to quickly sidle her way into Oliver’s life. I’M JUST SAYING.

Feeling better about Susan saying similar things as Thea and kissing his face, Oliver heads back to Arrow HQ, but there he finds someone he wasn’t expecting.

Oliver looks about as surprised as I am, and what the ACTUAL FUCK is happening? How did we not know that was coming? Did you know? I didn’t know!

So I have a few theories. One was that Sara messed things up when she told Darhk his future and it’s just rippling through now. (This one seems the most unlikely but is my favorite because Sara gets to be selfless but then also get what she wants.) Two is that somehow the Philosopher’s Stone from Flash ended up in Star City and he’s hallucinating like Cisco did. (That one was from my friend and seems like a bit of a stretch.)

And one I made up myself because I love a lady villain is that Susan is Prometheus and used drugs from her dead father’s company to drug Oliver and make him hallucinate for maximum impact.

Though I’ll admit when Laurel first died I was sure that what she whispered to Oliver was that they had to fake her death, but that hope had since faded. What do you think? Help a girl out. While you think on that let’s move on to the last show of the week….

Legends of Tomorrow 208: Speakeasy

This week we go to Chicago in 1927, where Al Capone rules the streets…and now with a little help from Damien Darhk, Reverse Flash, who have now recruited Malcolm Merlyn. I think I’m going to call them the Toothache Trio because they just keep coming back even though they’re annoying and we keep thinking they’re gone.

On the Waverider, Sara is trying to keep her boys in line, and it’s a bit like training puppies, because they’re excited about their toys, when she just wants them to not destroy everything in the house.

Luckily she has a really strong, “Hey!” that would put any child or manchild in line.

 Sara tells Jax it’s just sibling rivalry.

When Gideon tells them about the aberration in 1927, they suit up and head out, and realize their mission will be to save a man named Ness so he can eventually take down Al Capone. But when they do save him (well, when Amaya and her dolphin powers save him), Darhk is in the distance all happy because they took his bait.

While Ness is recovering from being pushed in a river with cinderblocks tied to his feet, Ray and Nate decide they’ll do what he would have been doing at this point and get Al Capone’s ledger.

While they do that, someone has to go undercover, and Sara wants it to be Mick, but he’s feeling particularly ornery this week.

So Sara says she’ll just do it herself.

And she looks better in the outfit than Mick would have anyway.

So Mick stays back to “watch” Ness and try to talk Amaya into being “bad” and hallucinate that he’s talking to his old buddy Snart.

Jax and Stein are having a hell of a time trying to figure out if the club they’re in serves booze when Damien Darhk appears like a snake from under a rock.

And fighting ensues. The fight ends with Stein and Sara being taken by Reverse Flash.

The team is a bit at a loss now, because they have two missions and no captain. So Mick takes charge and decides they’re going to think outside the box on this one. (The box being the law.)

Sara and Stein wake up tied to chairs, and Merlyn comes in to offer Sara a deal. He was the one who blew up the Queen’s Gambit, so if she gives him the amulet, he’ll go back and never do that, thus changing the past nine years entirely. He says she can go to college and meet a nice boy or girl and live a normal life. (He sort of sounds like he adds “or girl” like he wants to be respectful of her identity but also is mad he feels compelled to offer her any kindness because she’s his prisoner.) And of course, she’d have Laurel.

But Sara knows that the timeline is too important; what if doing that somehow sets off a genocide? It’s too risky. Plus, then she wouldn’t be a badass fighter and she never would have met Nyssa. So, no dice. “I’ll take a nightmare that’s real over a dream that’s a lie.”

Meanwhile, Amaya and Mick are going all Bonnie and Clyde, hijacking one of Al Capone’s delivery trucks.

Since they’re tied up, Sara takes this opportunity to ask Stein why he’s been so squirrely lately, and he confesses about his daughter. She’s pretty pissed that Mr. You-Can’t-Save-Your-Sister is suddenly all about the daughter he created. Sara says she’s not real, but Stein’s memories of her are. Sara is furious, saying it’s Stein’s fault Laurel is still dead, but Darhk interrupts. He knows torturing Sara I’ve-literally-been-a-feral-cat Lance won’t get him anywhere, so he takes Stein. Reverse Flash stabs him with a tech-y looking thingamabob and Stein screams, making Sara twitch in her seat.

But don’t worry Amaya saves her. Nate finds the ledger, they fight their way out, and go back to the Waverider. But Stein is acting even weirder than usual, making Jax a little suspicious.

Despite being told by the ghost of boyfriends past that he should stop being so nice to everyone and risking his life for skirts and nerds, Mick compliments Amaya on a job well done, and she smiles a sweet smile and hugs him in return.

Which Snart thinks is hilarious and gross. Which is how you know it’s definitely not Snart, but something in Mick, because Snart respected Sara more than that.

Speaking of Sara, she goes into the library to talk to Stein, because she doesn’t hear Jax’s warning; Stein isn’t Stein, but the speedster in disguise. Everyone fights and fights and fights and eventually Sara ends up face to face with Merlyn.

She bests him and pins him to the ground with a knife to his throat, but she can’t kill him, because he knows where the real Stein is. So she trades the amulet for Stein’s life and they go save him by the river.

Once they’re all settled in, Stein asks Sara why she went against her own code and risked history to save him, and she says they’re family. She can’t save Laurel, but she can protect the family she does have. Which now includes his daughter, Lily.

The Toothache Trio puts two pieces of the amulet together and now they have a 3D starmap compass to find the Spear of Destiny to rewrite history, starting with Rip Hunter.

Rip Hunter who is apparently in 1967 posing as the hot-headed American director of Legends of Tomorrow: The Movie.

But is that before or after history is rewritten?

Only time will tell. And by time I mean a lot of it. About a month and a half, to be exact until our legion of superqueeroes returns to us. See you on Twitter in the meantime!

Superqueero Roundup Recap: Legends of SuperFlArrow

Hello and welcome to the biggest crossover event IN THE HISTORY OF THE MULTIVERSE.

Just kidding I have no idea if this is the biggest crossover. But four shows crossing over at once FEELS like a brand new thing and it was really nice to have all of our friends hanging out. I do think that they leaned too heavily on Oliver and Barry, which makes me appreciate our female-driven Supergirl and Legends of Tomorrow even more than I already did.

We have a lot to get through, so let’s get started. We start in Central City with The Flash.

And what we start with is an alien invasion.

Lyla comes to Star Labs to give everyone the rundown of what this crossover is going to be about: There are aliens on Earth, they’ve been here before, and they do not come in peace. Knowing they’re in over their heads, Barry goes to get reinforcements.

His first stop is scooping up Oliver and Diggle from their dumb fight with their dumb new Villain Vigilante and tellling them about the aliens. Thea had dropped by to get Oliver to sign papers but she’s very excited by this news and is willing to come out of retirement to sick Speedy on the bastards.

Felicity is concerned everyone has lost their minds, but Barry says they have more people they can recruit. For example, Stein and the Legends (a nickname Thea called “egotistical but catchy”), who they call from time and space, and Kara Danvers, who Cisco reluctantly goes with him to fetch. (He’s still salty about the Flashpoint stuff so he’s not speaking to Barry about personal matters at the moment.)

We get to see the scene we saw during Supergirl again, including Kara’s very determined Ready to Help face.

They go to a hangar and Barry introduces Kara to Team Arrow, Team Flash, and Team Legends.

Oliver is surprised because she doesn’t look like an alien, but Kara is quick to show them what’s so super about her by flying up in the air and using heat vision to draw her crest in the ground.

Felicity. Is. PUMPED.

They decide that Barry will be in charge, since it was his idea to get everyone together; he’s used to working as a team, but really he’s just a mouthpiece for Oliver’s idea, which is to use Kara and her powers as training for the fight against the real thing. Sara thinks this puppet show is hilarious and doesn’t hesitate to say so.

When they break to get ready for training, Barry proudly brings Kara over to Oliver, so excited for two of his favorite people to meet. Oliver barely looks her in the eye and basically just says, “Don’t hold back,” and she agrees but she’s concerned he doesn’t like her, a very rare occurrence for her. Barry assure her that he’s just a major grumpface and that he’ll warm up to her.

Stein and Jax take this little break in the action to tell Barry and Oliver about the message they got from Future Barry about not trusting anyone when they are called back to help in a war, but Oliver says they can only deal with one totally wackadoodle problem at a time.

Training is really great and actually everything I ever wanted out of this crossover. All of these great warriors who have traveled through space and time, many of them trained by the League of Assassins, some with fancy science suits or metahuman powers…all of them very easily knocked down by Kara, who looks damn delighted.

While picking themselves up from their most recent knock-down, Thea admires the badassery of Supergirl, and Sara admits it’s “kinda hot.” It’s also kinda precious.

Eventually Oliver asks Kara not-a-hair-out-of-place Danvers for a five-minute break. Which must have been very humbling for him and I loved it. While they’re on their break, Cisco finds Barry’s message and makes Barry ‘fess up about Flashpoint. Sara is so pissed. Here she is fighting the temptation to save her sister at every turn and Barry’s just mucking up timelines all willly nilly?

Diggle is also upset (though not as upset as Twitter) to learn that John Jr. used to be Baby Sara. But the President (not President Wonder Woman on this Earth) has been kidnapped by the Dominators so they don’t really have time to argue about Barry’s mistakes. Since everyone is having a hard time trusting Barry right now, and Oliver seems to be on his side, they’re both benched, and Supergirl will lead the charge to save the president and she’ll take along Sara, Mick, and Firestorm.

When they get to a building, Kara uses her x-ray vision to make sure they’re in the right place, inciting some lewd comments from Mick. Sara is SO EMBARRASSED that Mick is being gross in front of a pretty girl.

Side note, Entertainment Weekly posted a list of things that ended up not being filmed for the crossover due to time constraints and one was basically my dream come true: Sara asks Kara if she wants to get a drink after all this is over, and Kara is like, “I think you’d rather meet my sister…” ALAS. WE HAD TO LISTEN TO WALLY CONTINUE TO WHINE EVEN THOUGH HE HAS THE POWERS HE’S BEEN WHINING ABOUT WANTING.

Anyway, they go in to save the President, but it’s a trap. The Dominators kill the President and brainwash our friends. As their brains are being taken over, Mick, who had previously said he would never call her Supergirl and would only ever call her “Skirt” and would never want her help, cries out, “Supergirl, do something!”

Mmmhm.

Felicity and Cisco can see Supergirl, Sara, Mick and Firestorm going ham on some innocent people. They send Oliver and Barry to figure out what happened, but Wally knows they can’t do it on their own, especially with Supergirl on the wrong side of this, so he goes to help…and immediately gets knocked out.

Barry has an idea: he tells Oliver to lead everyone but Kara into a bunker and challenges Supergirl to a race across the city.

He leads her to where the mind control hub is and tricks her into breaking it, snapping everyone out of their possession and returning them to normal.

Most of our heroes gather to celebrate and decide what comes next (Supergirl is scanning the city for more hubs).

But before they get very far they are abducted. Just beamed right the fuck up. Well, everyone except for Barry.

And then we seamlessly move into Arrow, though at first it doesn’t seem that way.

Oliver is running through the woods (like he did for the first five seasons) and runs all the way home. To his fiance. Dinah Laurel Lance.

But of course it’s just a hallucination, because they’re all in pods on the Dominator spaceship.

Cisco runs to the Arrow Cave to help out, and uses his vibing powers to find out where their missing friends are. Curtis is hella excited because he gets to hack alien tech, though it doesn’t go well at first. There is tech they can use, but an evil cyborg doctor has them. (Which…what?! I hope we learn more about her next week??)

Back in the hallucination — we’ll call it Arrowpoint, since it’s basically Oliver & Company’s Flashpoint — Thea gives her big brother a “Hōzen” for an engagement present (which is another throwback).

Then Mama and Papa Queen stroll in, alive as can be, beaming at their beautiful grown children.

Outside, another reunion is happening in the form of the Lance sisters finally being face to face again.

Sara takes note of Laurel’s necklace though, and when she says it’s a canary, Sara twitches and has a series of choppy flashbacks that she can’t quite make sense of.

Later that night in Arrowpoint, Oliver and his father are attacked by a thief on the street and Oliver accidentally channels his inner Arrow but before he can kick ass or be ass kicked, a hooded vigilante saves him.

When he gets back and a worried Laurel greets him, Oliver realizes he’s starting to have flashes of memory, too — including how Laurel looked during her final hours in the hospital.

That night is also the rehearsal dinner, where Sara and Laurel are being cutie patooties, making my heart ache for everything we could have had.

Laurel is worried that Oliver won’t show, since he’s already late and was acting weird. Sara assures her sister that Oliver loves her, and Laurel jokes that at one point she worried that Sara and Oliver would get together. Sara laughs this off and says she prefers girls, then proceeds to flirt with one while Laurel meets Arrowpoint’s Ray Palmer.

And I do want to talk about this for a second. Because I saw some people on Twitter worried that this statement meant that Legends was pulling away from Sara being bisexual and making her a lesbian. Which I don’t think is the case. I think if that’s what they were going for, Sara would have phrased it more along the lines of, “You know I’m not into guys.” I think all the stuff with Snart and what has previously been equal opportunity flirting shows that they know she’s bi and will stick by that. And I could be giving them too much credit here, but based on what they’ve been doing in this ‘verse with Alex Danvers, I think they’re actually portraying something I think is kind of a rare thing. (I mean, rare is an understatement since it’s a rare subset of the already rare bisexual representation.) I think they’re having Sara be a bisexual women who, as she said, prefers women.

One of the biggest misconceptions about bisexuality (though there are many) is that it’s 50/50. You are equally as likely to be attracted to men as women. When, in reality, it’s much more nuanced than that. It’s a spectrum. I know bi women who consider themselves 70/30 with a preference to women, 90/10 with a preference for men, etc. So I think having Sara be bi but mostly date women is a super cool thing. Assuming that’s what they’re doing and that they keep having her call herself bisexual like she did in the ’50s episode. But we’ll see! Either way, I’d love for her to have a real relationship with someone soon. The flirting and calling ladies hot is great and fun — but if they’re not careful they could go too far into “slutty bisexual” trope territory. Basically what I’m saying is they need to bring Nyssa back. #brokenrecord

Anyway, when Sara meets Ray, they have a flash of remembering but try to push past the weird feeling and focus on the party.

Elsewhere in Arrowpoint, Oliver finds Arrow HQ purely on instict, scaring the crap out of Felicity, and royally pissing off this reality’s Hood/Green Arrow, who is actually Diggle.

Oliver tries to sort out his jagged shards of memory and tries to help Diggle remember too, and maybe they can tell it’s not really Felicity because she has a Stranger Danger mentality that the real Felicity doesn’t have.

Eventually he pisses off Diggle, because Diggle is this world’s Oliver, and gets kicked out.

In the real world, while on the hunt for Dominators, Wild Dog is openly rude to our precious cinnamon rolls Kara and Barry because they aren’t humans and therefore must be evil. They are confused because has he been paying attention?

The next day in Arrowpoint, everyone is getting ready for the big Lauriver wedding. (Olivel? Did people ever even ship them? I dunno.) Thea hugs her mama and in a flash she remembers everything, so she hugs her mama a little tighter.

Oliver walks in on Sara helping Laurel get ready and Sara is PISSED. She tells him that he should be grateful she couldn’t kick his ass ten times over (which is funny because she can).

Oliver panic-apologizes to Laurel and starts rambling about wanting to get married right this very second, wedding plans be damned; he’s flailing because this reality feels like it’s slipping through his fingers and he doesn’t understand why. But to further prove his point, Diggle shows up with more memories, and says he saw a building that didn’t feel right. Oliver saw it too; it says Smoak Technologies. Because no matter what dimension or simulation we’re in, Felicity Smoak is their beacon.

They go outside to figure out what to do when the simulation sends a failsafe in the shape of Deadshot. Sara appears and kills him on instinct, and then is kind of like GUYS I’M A NINJA WHAT IS HAPPENING.

They deduce that they’re in a shared hallucination and Sara remembers getting abducted with Ray and Thea. They have to get to Smoak Technologies and they have to go now.

In the real world, Wild Dog tries to fight the cyborg doctor and ends up almost getting himself murdered. But Barry and Kara save his ungrateful butt and look adorable doing it, with dramatic wooshing and hair flips and smiles and even a high five.

Wild Dog “doesn’t do apologies” and calls her “sweetheart” but says he’s glad that some people who have powers do in fact use them for good. And he thanks them for not murdering him for sassing them. And since they’re good people who know they’re good people and don’t need this jerk in a hockey mask to tell them they’re good people, they smile and accept his non-apology.

Sara finds Ray and he’s glad someone put words to the weird feelings he’s been having, so he’s in. Next she goes to talk to Thea but she’s like, “Yeah, no shit this is a hallucination.” But she wants to stay.

Oliver tries to talk some sense into his sister but she fights him with so much logic: They’re just vigilantes, there are people like Flash and Supergirl out there now. And what comes next? They’re on an alien spaceship, it’s not like they can stroll home. Arrowpoint is real enough for her; she doesn’t want to lose her family, not again. So Oliver hugs her tight and says goodbye and wishes her all the happiness this place can offer.

Outside, the simulation throws more failsafes at them, this time it’s Deadshot plus Merlyn plus Darhk plus people from HIVE. Everyone fights their demons, including Thea, who reiterates that she can’t lose her family, but this time is talking about the people fighting beside her.

Thea gets to kill Merlyn, and Sara gets to kill Darhk, which is very satisfying to watch. But also there’s this really cool moment where Thea shoots an arrow to Sara (not unlike she shot one AT Sara once) and Sara catches it and shoves it into Darhk’s middle (not unlike he did to Laurel once). It’s a revenge like she’ll never get in the real world, and I’m glad we got to witness it.

After they’re done with the bloodshed, they’re faced with their final challenge. Laurel, clad in her wedding dress, comes running outside, crying out for her sister and begging her and Oliver not to leave.

They have to be a different kind of strong this time, but they hug this Laurel close, and Sara says a goodbye she didn’t get to say to her sister, and they head to Smoak Technologies. There they find a portal and hop out of Arrowpoint, Oliver pausing a moment to let all of the people from their past saying some of their most inspirational lines of the past 100 episodes.

Once in the spaceship, the gang finds a dropship, and despite Oliver thinking she would be the last one to know how to fly a space pod, Thea is the one who gets it to drop off the mothership. They’re eventually intercepted by the Waverider, and realize they were abducted because they were the only non-meta humans there. And even though they’re free, they have a bigger problem: The Dominator Mothership is heading right for earth.

Which leads us right into Legends of Tomorrow, because the next step in their plan to stop the alien invasion is to go back to the ’50s to steal one and interrogate it.

The teams split up again. Nate, Amaya, Mick, Felicity and Cisco will time travel while Barry goes to talk to the new president, bringing Sara and Ray as backup. Kara, not used to being the last one picked for dodgeball, volunteers to help with backup, which: Kara. The strongest one there by a lot. The only one whose show is named after only her. Offering to be backup. Bless. But Oliver pulls her aside instead.

Oliver wants Kara to stand down. She’s an alien, and he feels threatened by that fact. He tries to tell her it’s not personal, but she’s a Kryptonian on Earth and a woman in a patriarchal society, she’s heard this kind of BS before and it’s absolutely personal.

But she doesn’t argue with his request for space, not that he gave her much of an option.

Team Time Travel heads back to the 50s, and Cisco and Felcity are so thrilled…until they’re told they have to stay on the timeship. No newbies allowed. So our three Legends head out, with Nate in his brand new suit, which looks a bit like Megaman cosplay.

They watch Dominators abduct unconscious soldiers, until finally they find a straggler and take him down.

One storyline I’m only going to mention briefly that I do wish they had saved for a non-crossover episode was that Stein has a daughter now. He acts super squireelly around her until Caitlin tells him to snap out of it and he realizes his daughter is actually pretty awesome.

So over the course of the episode, he goes from thinking of her as an aberration to deciding to keep her. (Also I know I said I’d talk about the Killer Frost episode this week but there’s too much going on so I’ll try to loop it into next week’s episode!)

Anyway, in the ’50s, the men in black come and tranq the Legends, meaning Felicity and Cisco have to leave the comfort of their computers and come help.

And help they do.

On their way out, our heroes save a Dominator who is being tortured by the men in black who kidnapped them, and keep a transponder as a reward for sending him home.

When Barry and his backup go to meet the president, it’s the head of the MIB that meets them instead. He says that Barry broke a truce humans had with the Dominators and so now they’re demanding the Flash or else they’ll drop a metabomb that will kill metas and humans alike.

See, the Dominators are worried about metahumans, and evil people getting them. Because then those evil powered people might invade their own planet. Cisco is panicking; he thinks maybe freeing that Dominator wasn’t the best choice. And then he joins the long, long list of people who come to a realization “on their own” that Felicity tried to get them to come to hours ago.

Barry is 200% ready to turn himself in to save the world, but guess who’s not letting him do that. Everyone, that’s who.

Even Cisco, who has forgiven him and calls him a friend again.

The metabomb is dropped, so the team splits up again. Cisco and Sara are in the waverider, trying to stop the bomb from falling using the tractor beam.

And everyone else goes to fight the aliens one on one while Barry sticks little pain bombs that Stein somehow mass produced in the past day using all the bedazzling gems he could find.

During said fight, Oliver gets thrown off the roof and would have plummeted to his death but Supergirl, without a moment of hesitation, swoops down to save him. Oliver gives her a nod and she gives him a look full of more understanding than he’s earned.

They defeat this particular group of Dominators, but there are more strewn around the city, so Felicity sends SuperFlash to take care of that. Meanwhile Firestorm diffuses the bomb using their powers and sheer force of will.

The megateam all comes together again and watches the diffused bomb sprinkle down harmlessly. Oliver says, “They did it,” and Kara lets out an exasperated, “No, Oliver.” It’s such a good tone. And Barry elaborates: WE did it.

The new President, who is a woman of color, because even with alien invasions this Earth is better than ours, honors everyone for working together and saving the world. A cute moment here is that Mick, who might be evolving after all, leans over to ask Sara’s opinion about whether or not the president is hot. Sara checks her out and confirms, and Mick nods like he appreciates her input.

After the ceremony, the gang goes back to the hangar to have a celebration drink. There are some cute moments, like Sara having a flask and Ray saying Kara looks like his cousin. Then Kara goes to talk to Barry and Oliver, just beaming, loving that saved-the-world feeling.

She calls Oliver and Barry this world’s “mightiest heroes” and Oliver is a little taken aback to how extraordinarily kind she is, even though he has given her every reason to be cold to him. To his credit, he genuinely apologizes to her. And she doesn’t say “it’s okay” or “you don’t have to apologize.” She smiles and accepts his apologies and says that his team looks to him and that their hardships make them stronger.

Oliver Queen could learn a thing or two from Kara Danvers.

Cisco gives Kara a going-away present in the form of an interdimensional transponder that will help explain any other crossovers they want to do in the future, which delights me to no end.

Oh also? Kara’s legacy on this Earth will be that she inspired the new president to start a DEO and got the grumpy old guy who heads the MIB relocated to Antarctica. And she BEAMS at him and never has anyone been so adorable when destroying an enemy.

After Kara goes home and most of the rest of the squad is gone, Sara looks to Oliver and says that they’re really the reason this whole thing started.

She gives Oliver a hug and heads back to be the captain of her own show.

Diggle calls Barry the best man he knows, which you can see visibly lift a burden off Barry’s tender heart. After he leaves, Oliver and Barry decide to try to be normal for a second and go get a drink. Between Flashpoint and Arrowpoint, they realize that their life could have been happy and shiny, but normal is overrated and not nearly as fulfilling, so they toast to their lives, just the way they are.

The end. Phew! That was a lot! When this week started I was like LET’S DO A FOUR-WAY CROSSOVER EVERY WEEK. But now that it’s done I realize that you can’t live at Disneyworld and I, too, like things the way we have them.

Supergirl is on hiatus until the end of January, but we still have another week of our other SuperFriends. See ya then!

Superqueero Roundup Recap: The Good, The Bad, And The Bisexual

This will be a quick recap; not too much to report. I think probably after the CW DC crossover we’ll just keep Sara updates in the Boobs (On Your) Tube, unless something hella queer happens. That way I can focus all the energy I’m not using to fight racism/the patriarchy/Death Eathers in this post-election world to write my Supergirl recaps.

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The Flash 306: Brr, it’s cold in here

This episode mostly revolves around Wally starting to remember having speed in Flashpoint, and Alchemy tempting him into getting them again. While everyone is focused on that, Caitlin stresses about what actually having powers means, and while she figures it out, she swipes some power-quelling cuffs. Eventually she’s busted wearing them and confesses about her ice powers to Cisco.

She makes Cisco vibe her so that she knows she won’t become evil, and he does, but he sees a Killer Frost vs Vibe battle and is worried, so he lies to her. However, Cisco is a terrible liar and eventually has to come clean about it. He implores Caitlin to tell the team so they can help, but she says it’s too late to save her. Which I still don’t understand. Barry has powers and he’s not evil. Jesse has powers and she’s not evil. HR is a version of Wells that isn’t evil. Even Magenta wasn’t naturally evil. I don’t know why she thinks that since she has powers and on one earth she was evil she’ll automatically turn evil. She’s discounting her own free will. It breaks my heart.

Side note, Barry complains to Iris about Wally wanting to be a speedster so badly, and Iris tells him to check his privilege because he doesn’t know what it’s like to be a human in a metahuman’s world.

She herself doesn’t even really have much to offer these days, beyond clever strategy now and then.

That is, until Wally gets possessed by Alchemy and Iris punches him out.

When the team regroups about The Wally Problem, Cisco decides to out Caitlin. So she’s forced to reveal that she has Elsa powers.

Caitlin yells at Cisco for outing her and storms off, and Barry follows. She uses more gay code by saying things like she tried to deny her powers and suppress them but it got to the point where she couldn’t ignore them anymore. And then, for reasons I will never understand, Caitlin apologizes to Cisco for getting mad about him taking away her agency and outing her to everyone.

Joe gets the SWAT team in place and they join Team Flash in the fight against Alchemy, using Wally as bait. They go into an abandoned subway, where a cult is worshipping Alchemy and his creepy mask and his Jigsaw-esque voice. A fight breaks out, Flash gets hit with some light beams a bunch of times, then a monster only he can see appears, and Wally turns into a pole? A lot happens very quickly, it’s actually very unclear what envelops Wally and makes him look like a lava tree. But the monster attacking Barry calls itself the god of speed so probably it’s not great.

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Arrow 507: Oy with the vigilantes already

Arrow starts with a brand new vigilante stringing up some bad guys and delivering them to Star City’s new task force. Oliver is mad someone’s stealing his thunder, but Felicity says that maybe this new person is doing them a favor.

Oliver calls the new player a psycho and Artemis (rightly) asks what gives him the right. I feel like maybe Ollie should have been like, “Hey let’s find this person and have a chat.”

Also I’d like to say that they all started using male pronouns for this new vigilante awfully early. This person is wearing a rigid body suit and a full face mask and using a voice changer. I mean I feel PRETTY sure it’s the new DA guy? But considering this team has seen a good many women kick ass and take names, it’s a little annoying they jump to the dude conclusion so quickly.

Anyway, they foil a bank robbery, come face to face with this vigilante, who originally doesn’t want to fight them but will if they have to, but Oliver makes it clear there ain’t room enough in this town for the both of them.

The OTHER baddie that’s been plaguing us this season, Prometheus, remains a mystery (and also has been unnecessarily gendered) is still afoot, but the end of the last episode lead us to believe maybe it’s actually Quentin Lance. When he finds the throwing star, he finally confesses to Thea that he’s been blacking out, so she tucks him into a rehab. Also they all just run with the idea that he’s being framed/messed with and that he’s not actually Prometheus.

Also, Susan Williams flirts with Mayor Oliver Queen some more, and this time he flirts back. BUT she also plays pool so she might get along with Maggie Sawyer if you know what I mean.

I feel pretty sure she’s up to no good. Then again I don’t trust anyone except the core team, and don’t even really like anyone right now besides Felicity and Thea.

And why not Artemis you ask? Because girlfriend is working with Prometheus, whoever they may be.

Dun dun dunnnnnn.

And last but definitely not least (especially this week) is…

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Legends of Tomorrow 206: Cowgirl Up

This week we zip back to the wild wild west (also a Will Smith song that was stuck in my head the entire episode), to Colorado in 1874.

The Legends are following an aberration lead, and it takes them to their old buddy Jonah Hex, who is about to be hanged. Nate runs in without waiting for orders and ends up getting them in a tussle, but it’s fine because Sara’s a sharpshooter and shoots Hex out of his noose. Hex huffs about being saved by “a filly” and when Amaya sharply informs him that the “filly” he speaks of is their captain, he’s confused. Sara regards him coolly while he wraps his head around the fact that she’s in charge, and says, “Whoever breaks her is in for a ride.” Which is gross in every decade. Rory lets him know she’s also into other fillies, which…was dumb and unnecessary, but Sara lets it slide because it’s better he know he doesn’t have a shot. She waits out their conversation with the patience only a queer woman who has been around men who think they’re tough shit even though she could kick all their asses her whole life could muster.

Once they stop discussing her personal life, she gives them all their assignments, sending Mick to the saloon and Amaya to watch over him. Stein’s been getting headaches so he’ll hang back, and the rest of the boys are sent to pretend to be accountants and see what they can learn.

At the saloon, Amaya hates her assignment a lot.

Especially because Rory is befriending Turnbull, the man he was supposed to be fighting to lure him outside.

So she takes shots until Hex loses his patience and brings the fight to them.

After the fight, Sara tells Hex to man up and follow her orders, and he says he can’t because he’s on a mission for revenge. He doesn’t think she can possibly understand, but she can, because of the whole #JusticeforLaurel thing.

Amaya goes to talk to Mick and says that she saw him lose control during the fight, but he insists it’s just the real him, that he’s an animal. Amaya, knowing plenty about animals, tells him that they’re not vicious by nature, and that he can control it, but he’s not so sure. He doesn’t even really feel like part of the team, he doesn’t feel like they trust him.

But Sara trusts him enough to include him when she gives out more orders. Hex is impressed but she quite literally tells him, “This isn’t my first rodeo.”

Eventually they foil Trunbull’s plan and stop him from using dwarfstar to start his own country and all’s well that ends well. Hex is impressed and actually gives her a compliment, saying that she is a better captain than most men would be. To which she responds what I imagine she’s been holding in all this time: “Good thing I’m a woman then.”

Ray uses the recovered dwarf star to make new suits for him and Nate so maybe they’ll both stop whining now, and Sara comes in to tell them to quit broing out (her words) because their friends in 2016 need their help.

Next stop, crossover.

We still have two weeks to go before the crossover, but I’m VERY excited about it.

Superqueero Roundup Recap: The World Needs Heroes

The last time we came together to talk about queer TV, it was to flail around about Alex Danvers realizing she had Big Gay Feelings for Maggie Sawyer. Since then, the world turned upside down.

I know it may seem trivial to talk about TV right now, but let me tell you why I think it’s important that we do. This week we learned that racism, sexism, xenophobia, and homophobia weren’t dealbreakers for enough of America, so they elected a demagogue (a word I confused for demogorgon at first — which also isn’t wrong) into office, a man who has publicly said horrifying racist things, who talked nonchalantly about and was charged for sexual assault, and whose running mate has worked to divert AIDS research funding to gay “conversion therapy” and tried to jail gay couples in Indiana who applied for marriage licenses. Etc, etc. You know the facts. They’re all devastating. So now, we fight. People are organizing in all kinds of ways — donating, marching, etc. But one other way to fight against those who are doing it wrong is to highlight and reward those who are doing it right. (And it helps that these shows give us something to smile and laugh about; we need to stay strong, and lifting our burdened spirits in any way we can is a great workout.)

I don’t have a lot of money to give, but I have time, I have a voice, and I have a platform. So I’m going to continue to use those things to support those to support us. I’m still going to speak out against those who wrong us, who hurt us, who don’t understand us, but I’m also going to celebrate those who love us and who want to tell our stories and tell them well.

Supergirl, a fierce feminist show with two queer women, one a woman of color, will get its own recaps every week. The Superqueero Roundup will include brief recaps of Flash and Arrow (Flash has more people of color on the main Flash team than not most episodes; sometimes it’s even when Jesse Quick zips in town, and though Arrow sometimes slips up with their Strong Female Characters, they do have Felicity, Thea, Artemis, and men of color on the team, including a gay Black man), and a longer update on what badass bisexual Sara Lance and her newest partner in not-crime, Amaya (who is a woman of color and unstoppable force), are up to.

When Lexa died, the community joined together and said, “Enough is enough.” Now we face a bigger challenge than before, but our feminism is intersectional and we are not alone. It’s a new battle, a new war, but we have more soldiers, we have more voices, more ways to organize and resist.

I hope you will join me in raising up the voices of love to drown out the voices of hate.

“Never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it.” – Hillary Clinton

And so it begins.

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Arrow 506: Counting (Throwing) Stars

This episode was spent mostly chasing around Prometheus, whose signature move is throwing stars. This will be more important later but right now it’s only important because it leads to Felicity doing throwing star noises and it’s adorable.

More Prometheus victims fall, with seemingly no connection, until Felicity and her computer realize that the names of the victims are anagrams for other names — names that were on Oliver’s kill list from early in the series; the list of people his father gave him with the instructions to kill them dead after shouting, “You have failed this city!”

This would normally be exciting — they found a clue! — but there’s one big problem. The JV Squad didn’t know that A) Oliver was not only the Green Arrow, but Arrow and that random man in a hood that used to run around the city and B) that Oliver used to be, as Ragman puts it, a serial killer. They’re all pretty upset that this man who they have been trusting with their lives is a secret-keeping assassin, especially Baby Bird.

But she’s not willing to let innocent people die just because she’s mad, so when Felicity’s algorithm pulls a list of potential targets, she joins the team in splitting up to protect them.

Baby Bird’s target is the one Prometheus is after, so they tussle for a bit; she gets a good arm scratch in but ultimately needs the Green Arrow’s help to scare him off/escape the exploding train. They lose Prometheus, but save the guy he was after.

Susan Williams is still around, interviewing and flirting with Oliver, much to Thea’s chagrin.

She’s also running stories about the Throwing Star Killer, causing panic and riots in the streets. Classic reporter stuff.

Felicity comes out to her boyfriend as a member of Team Arrow (and confesses that she stole evidence off his desk), and at first he calls her a criminal, but then realizes she means well and asks questions

Using aforementioned stolen evidence, Felicity figures out that the throwing stars are made from arrows melted down from the past five years, which means it has to be someone who has access to SCPD evidence.

And that leaves us with Thea, who finds out that Quentin Lance never really quit drinking. She promises to be there for him, but he’s not interested in anyone’s help right now.

And at the end of the episode, Lance wakes up from a drunken stupor to find a cut on his arm where Baby Bird cut Prometheus, meaning maybe it’s him who won’t let Oliver let go of his past and move forward.

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Legends of Tomorrow 205: Pantsuit Nation

There’s some tension on board the Timeship today because Jax thinks they could be making a real difference, but Sara tells him they have to do as they were taught and protect the timeline.

Meanwhile, Amaya and Nate are watching time seismographs so they can figure out where to go next, and Nate starts asking questions about his grandfather. Amaya snaps at him and tells him that the members of the JSA didn’t “fraternize” outside missions, and thinks that it’s something the Legends could potentially learn from.

The seismograph points them to the White House on December 7, 1987, the day before Reagan signed a treaty that would ultimately lead to the end of the Cold War. They decide to split the team up to figure out what the bad guys are up to: Nate and Vixen are going to check out the ’80s version of the JSA while Sara and the boys go on a tour of the White House.

Once they’re all dressed in ’80s garb, Amaya says she’s offended by shoulder pads. She doesn’t understand the point of them. Nate tries to explain that it was an attempt for women to appear more formidable but our little Vixen sees through him: They wanted to seem more manly. She’s confused—surely by the 80s, the glass ceiling is shattered and women are considered equals?

Nate doesn’t have the heart to tell the poor dear that the year 2016 prove that we’re further from that than we even thought.

When they find the JSA training facility, it’s abandoned and dusty. Amaya feels hella guilty for leaving them in the 40s.

At the White House, Ray and Mick see Darhk and they give a cute little “Sara, no!” even though there’s no stopping that little Canary when she has her eyes set on an enemy. Especially when it comes to #JusticeforLaurel.

Everyone fights and then yells at Sara for letting her personal vendetta get in the way. But her sister brought her back from the dead, doesn’t she owe it to Laurel to try to do the same in return? The team is not as easily swayed by Sara’s pleading eyes as I would be.

At the JSA facility, Amaya and Nate find Obsidian aka Todd, who is old af now. He tells them that the JSA went on a mission but never came back. He hadn’t gone because he was…not invited. Amaya understands and Nate doesn’t push. Amaya apologizes for leaving. They decide to hang out for one more mission together.

On the TImeship, the Legends make a plan. They have Gideon hack Dahrk’s schedule and find out he has a shady meeting in the park. Sara sends Mick and Ray to scope it out, since she knows she can’t trust herself to do it. Which is a very responsible, self-aware, captain-y thing to do. Ray even calls her “Cap” afterwards. It’s beautiful.

Darhk meets with a KGB agent, but Young Stein ends up interrupting, getting himself hella stabbed, and causing the present-day Stein to also collapse to the ground. (But why? Timey wimey.)

They get the Steins to the med bay, where they fight with each other, but heal up just fine. Once Old Stein is up and moving again, he tells Sara that the reason he gave her such a hard time is that she’s not an assassin anymore, she’s a captain, and he believes she can move forward and not revert to her old ways.

Then the Legends strut on into the White House to go to a fancy dinner, Sara looking like a proud member of Pantsuit Nation, the song Danger Zone playing in the background.

Sara chats with Amaya about what she would do if she found Rex’s killer, and is a little surprised to learn that Vixen’s first instinct is arrest, not kill. She takes that to heart as she pots Darhk and calls her team into action.

Fighting ensues and the team splits up: Ray and Mick go to find a bomb (which Ray dismantles), Firestorm is off to save Stein’s wife Clarissa (which they do), and Sara is going to stop Darhk.

Sara comes face to face with her nemesis, and tells him that she lost her soul once but she won’t lose it again.

She then does what might have been her biggest mistake to date; she tells Darhk how his future goes wrong. I assume she does this because she has every intention of arresting him, but before she can, Thawn zips in and (reverse) flashes him away.

The one bit of good news (besides the whole lack of bomb and wife being safe thing) is that Sara had already stolen the item the KGB gave Darhk.

Back on the timeship, Amaya thanks Todd for helping (and taking a bullet for her) and asks if he’d consider joining them on more missions. He says his Obsidian days are over, and besides, he has someone who loves him, and he’s waiting for him at home.

That’s not a typo! He said “he'”! That’s why he wasn’t invited on that mission that one time, he’s hella gay, and Amaya loves him anyway, even though she’s from the ’40s.

Amaya finally gives in to Nate and admits that her and Rex were going to run away together, and that Nate’s grandfather loved to sing. That he had a contagious optimism and that he was a real great guy. Nate is very happy to learn this.

Meanwhile in Bad Guy Land, things go from bad to worse when Thawne puts Darhk in a bubble and takes him into the timestream with him, armed with the knowledge of how he is eventually defeated. Surely that will go well.

Superqueero Roundup Recap: Canonically Queer

Welcome to your Superqueero Roundup Recap, the place where Valerie Anne recaps all the queer and feminist goodness on all of DC’s superhero shows the day after they air. These recaps (and wee-caps) are posted in reverse chronological order, with the newest ones appearing up top. Make sure you’re following us on Twitter so you’ll know when this roundup recap is updated!

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Legends of Tomorrow 204: Aberration Palooza

I don’t know if they hired more women to run this show or if they just figured out what was working and what wasn’t because this season of Legends of Tomorrow is getting smarter and fiercer and I’m loving every minute of it. It’s unsurprising that the two best show in CW’s DC line-up are the ones where women are in the lead.

This week we’re going back to Mississippi in 1863, the height of the Civil War, because the Legends got a distress call from a time pirate and they have to make sure he doesn’t muck anything up.

Sara tells Ray that he should stay on the ship and be their eyes in the sky, but everyone knows he’s sort of second string now that he doesn’t have his suit and that Sara’s just trying to spare his feelings.

Stein pulls Jax aside and suggests maybe he stay behind, too, and he knows that it’s because he’s black and they’re about to head into the Civil War. But Jax lets him know that there’s literally no time or place they could go where racism wouldn’t exist at all, so he’ll be fine.

So everyone dresses up and heads on out. (Amaya is confused as to how she’s meant to fight in a dress, but Sara lets her know it’s all too possible.)

When they land and find the time pirate’s ship, they hear someone calling out for help. Everyone flinches but the Original Legends are ready to stay on task. Amaya is new to the team though, so she can’t resist the cry for help. The team decides (wisely) that they’re better off helping her and getting this over with than fighting her so they stop some Confederate soldiers who are chasing a man through the field.

They find out that this man, Henry Scott, has been sent to steal plans from the Confederate Army, but before they can send him on his way, the Confederate soldiers they killed get back up and are…well, zombies.

Sara and Vixen kick ass (despite the dresses, Vixen is surely glad to learn) and the team takes down the walking dead.

Unfortunately, Scott got too badly injured in the battle to survive it, but passes on his mission before he dies.

Ray gathers that some of the nonsense the time pirate said in his distress signal was about a bioweapon (apparently TX90 isn’t a fancy calculator from the future) and he’s probably spreading it to the soldiers. One of said soldiers spread it to Mick.

Captain Sara checks the future news and sees that if they don’t follow through with Scott’s mission, the war goes the wrong way and the world as we know it will cease to exist, so they have to try to finish what Scott set out to do.

Jax knows it has to be him; the reason they sent freedmen to carry out tasks like this was because they could move virtually unnoticed. Sara is worried about this plan.

But she knows he’s right so she lets him go, and asks him to take Amaya with him.

Meanwhile, Nate and Sara are going to go talk to Ulysses S. Grant about this whole zombie apocalypse situation. On the way, Nate cautiously tries to ask Sara if maybe he could take the lead on this one, and she does this amazing thing with her face and voice and is like, “Because you’re a man?” but really it’s because he’s a Grant fanboy and wants to look Cool and Tough.

On their way to the plantation to steal the plans, Jax and Amaya stumble across a slave woman being whipped and even though everyone’s hearts are breaking and blood is boiling, Jax knows they can’t do anything to save her. He says that it could affect too much in the future, and worse, it could blow their cover and then they wouldn’t be able to steal the plans, and then the Confederate Army will win.

When they finally find General Grant, you can see Sara physically trying to restrain herself from taking charge as Nate introduces him as Colonel Sanders and fumbles through his explanation of the situation. Finally Sara can’t take it anymore and is like brb and comes back with a zombie head that’s still grumbling and growling and says THIS is what is heading toward you right now.

And then Sara starts talking strategy. With Ulysses S. Grant. Gah, I love this show.

Jax makes it to the plantation house and no one really pays attention as he heads into an office to look for the plans. But on the way to check another room, he bumps into a woman. He does what should be considered polite, putting a gentle hand on hers to steady her and apologizing to her face. But the head of the household saw it and points out that this is not the way slaves are meant to behave. Jax remains impressively calm, head held high, but this motherfucker of course is pissed because he’s a racist asshole and drags Jax down to the basement to be chained up with other slaves.

Somewhere in the tussle of getting him down there, Jax’s comm was knocked out, but back on the Waverider, Stein is hit with the most intense blast of sadness and fear and anger that he has ever received from their psychic connection.

But even though Jax needs their help and Sara needs their help, Stein and Ray are dealing with Mick the Zombie right now so every duo is on their own.

Down in the basement, the other slaves know instantly that Jax isn’t a slace, because his name is Jefferson Jackson and his hands haven’t seen a day of manual labor. He tries to explain why he’s there and that he needs their help, but what can they do? He asks them how they stand it, how they don’t lose their minds, how they don’t just lie down and give up. And one woman looks him square in the eye and says it’s because that’s what they want. They want to break them, they want to own them, but they won’t let them win. So they sing a beautiful, mournful song and they stay as strong as they’re able.

Amaya, unable to reach Jax, gets tired of waiting and strolls into the party. A beautiful woman, she doesn’t go unnoticed, and her accent goes full southern belle but her attitude is full snark and he scolds her for sassing her “better” which earns him a look not unlike how a hungry lion would look at a gazelle who strutted too close to the pride.

Amaya lets this shitticket lead her down to the basement but as soon as she has eyes on Jax, she kicks his ass, takes his keys, and frees Jax. Jax meanwhile has changed his mind. He wants to free these slaves. He promises them that it gets better and the writers put a very important line in there: “Nowhere near perfect. Not even close. But better than this.”

They’re a little wary of the danger that comes with running, but then one woman recognizes Vixen’s amulet; she has ancestors from the same village. So she trusts these newcomers to protect them, and the rest of the prisoners take her lead.

The zombies have reached the plantation, so Jax and Amaya split up — Amaya is going to take their new friends to safety and Jax is going to finish Scott’s job and find the plans. One of the men from the basement knows where the plans are, so he goes with Jax and pulls them from behind a picture; someplace Jax never would have looked on his own.

The head of the household sees them and is freaking out about the zombies and Jax, with an impossible kindness, says that if he gives them weapons they can help each other, but the man would rather get eaten alive by zombies than do that so get eaten alive by zombies he does.

Back at the soldier camp, Nate is trying to talk strategy with Grant but he’s a dope. Sara is throwing knives behind them to clear her head because she’s the best. Finally she has an idea to solve for the fact that they don’t have enough ammo to beat the Confederates and the zombies, so she pulls Nate aside to talk to him about it.

Grant tells Sara that she better put her plan in motion STAT because it’s already quite clear to him that she’s the one really in charge. Their plan is to use Nate’s Steel-iness to blow up the zombies so she tells him run fast, run hard, don’t die.

Grant isn’t sure if Nate is brave or dumb (I argue he can be both) and he watches with Sara as Nate runs into the herd of zombies with a flare, turns into Steel, shoves the flare into a box and makes it go boom.

Meanwhile on the timeship, Mick turns back from being a zombie just in time to not eat Stein’s face. He was worried he went into some kind of gay blackout (rainbow out?) and was trying to kiss Stein and Stein would have much preferred that to what was actually happening but it’s all good now.

At the plantation, Jax drops an oil lamp on the zombies and gets them good. On the way out, he stops and they watch the plantation burn for a bit before heading back to join their team.

Back on the battlefield, Sara is literally commanding Grant’s troops while they try to see if Nate survived the blast. It’s so beautiful. Then Nate comes crawling out from under the heap of bodies and Sara is so relieved and happy that she didn’t lose one of her teammates on her like third day as Captain.

Jax delivers the maps to Grant and officially becomes the hero of the Civil War — though since he’s a good kid he says his name is Henry Scott to honor the man who was supposed to do this job. It’s obviously super important that Jax and Henry Scott are the real heros of this episode; the world doesn’t need more White Savior stories. (Speaking of which Civil War heroes, have you ever watched Octavia Spencer as Harriet Tubman on Drunk History? Once again, a Comedy Central sketch show where people are literally snozzled gets it more right than Hollywood.)

Grant welcomes the former slaves into his camp, saying there’s food and water for all of them, taking off his hat to greet them.

Grant pulls Sara aside to give her some advice, leader to leader. She won’t ever get used to putting men in harm’s way, but Grant tells her that as long as she believes in her cause she can’t regret her decisions. As long as her intentions are true, she doesn’t have to bear the burden of guilt. Oh, Ulysses S. Grant, that kind of naivete is what’s going to lead you to having one of the most corrupt White House administrations in history! He’s right about the fact that sometimes you gotta put people in harm’s way, though, especially if your whole thing is traveling through time to save the world. And it’s nice to have these moments where Sara’s place as leader is cemented!

Once back on the ship, Mick gives Ray Snart’s ice gun, which is a little cold (no pun intended) in my opinion but at least Ray won’t feel so useless anymore.

Stein goes to check on Jax, and asks if he’s okay. Because he just witnessed first hand the very worst of humanity, and even though Stein can literally feel what he’s feeling, he knows he can’t possibly understand what he’s feeling. Jax says that yes, it was the most terrible thing he’s ever seen or experienced in his life, but that he found something he didn’t expect to: Hope. These people were literally beaten and chained but they somehow held onto their dignity and their faith.

Jax is inspired by their ability to find a drop of hope in an ocean of darkness, and Stein is inspired by Jax’s ability to take that away from this horrible experience.

Y’all, Legends of Tomorrow got REAL this week. I’ve always admired that they don’t back down from comments about race and sexuality — like when they went to the ’50s and Sara and Jax had to tell Stein to check his old straight white man privilege, especially when talking to a Black man and a bisexual woman. But this? This got so real. And hopeful, but not in the sugar-coated way. They acknowledged the racism is still a huge problem, but let Jax find a way to not be just wholly traumatized and broken by being in Mississippi in the Civil War. And it was interesting that they managed to balance such heavy-hitting topics with a zombie army.

I’m curious as to whether this was a special episode, or if they plan on taking on culturally significant topics like this more often. Or if this was just a way to get to know and love Jax a little more.

Heather’s Note: 

I couldn’t help but wonder if the zombie Confederate army was thinly veiled symbolism to represent the 2016 election. Our heroes took down Confederate soldiers. The end! The good guys win! But the fight against racism in America has never been that easy or clean-cut and what we’ve witnessed in the rise of Donald Trump isn’t just a delusional rejection of the realities of systemic racism in our country by a presidential candidate/political party, but a complete resurrection of unabashed, fully-formed, naked racism. An endorsement by the literal Ku Klux Klan.

And if this episode really is an allegory, it’s even more important that Jax was the real hero of the story. Because we already know based on polling that the people swaying the 2016 election in Hillary’s favor are people of color, including Mothers of the Movement, President and Michelle Obama, and Black voters whose ability to cast their ballot has been severely limited by Republican legislatures and who are facing the threat of violence at the polls on election day. A zombie Confederate army.

I have a feeling we’ll be back to some fluffier stuff next week, since we’re heading to the ’80s, the era of glam rock, jumpsuits, and really questionable hair choices.

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Arrow 505: Needs More Women

Okay so maybe this was obvious to everyone else but I finally realized that the problem with this season of Arrow is not just one thing. It’s a combination of things. 1) There’s not nearly enough Felicity, that’s plain to see. 2) Needs more women. But I say that about everything always because it’s always true. But the one that hit me this week was a little more specific: It needs more women being badass vigilante fighters. Laurel has been fridged, Thea has been benched, Nyssa is nowhere to be found. Artemis is great but she’s just a kid. So far she’s just doing everything Oliver says. Which is fine, and she holds her own, but I want more.

One bit of potentially good news on this front is that they cast Lexa Doig to play Talia al Ghul, and hopefully they’re not dumb enough to have Talia come to town without Nyssa close on her heels.

Okay on to the episode.

Rene is still kidnapped by Church and Felicity is angry at her computer for not giving her the answers like it always does. Team Arrow: B Squad comes in, and Diggle is back, too. They’re all heading out again to look for their lost Dog but Oliver seems uncharacteristically calm and hopeful, so everyone is suspicious.

Oliver goes off to do mayor stuff and Ragman and Baby Bird find some blood and know they’re on Rene’s trail. Felicity uses this information to find where Church has Rene now, and Oliver swoops in to save him.

Church got away and didn’t put up much of a fight, and Rene says it’s probably because he gave up the identity of the Green Arrow. So the Team spreads out to try to stop that information from getting into even more of the wrong hands.

Oliver can’t help though because he has to do some mayor stuff with Thea, including but not limited to talking to a stubborn dude about zoning while Susan Williams sits nearby just to make him sweat.

Literally they couldn’t even think of a fake reason for her to be there. Oliver was like, “Why is a reporter in a private political meeting?” and Thea was all, “Hell if I know, but it’s Carly Pope, just go with it.”

The duo kind of steamrolls Oliver, much to Thea’s disappointment. I’m starting to think she should be mayor.

Since heaven forbid Felicity ever just be single again and not pining for anyone, Felicity enjoys a little afternoon delight with her boyfriend. He got a promotion and is part of the Anti-Crime Unit now, and when he asks if it’ll be weird for her that he’ll be working for Oliver, she lies lies lies and says it’ll be just fine.

Prometheus drops in on Church and tells him to leave the Green Arrow alone and I swear to Bob if Prometheus is Malcolm Merlyn I’m going to throw a fit.

Anyway, Oliver arranged another interview with Susan Williams, despite Thea’s protests (SHE IS VERY EVIL AND I DON’T LIKE HER AT ALL OR THINK SHE’S PRETTY OR ANYTHING SHUT UP) and Susan is surprised too, but Oliver just wants to know what he has to do to win her over.

Oliver asks for a month of patience to prove that he can be good at this job and Susan not only agrees but gives him her number. This is unsettling until we find out that she’s blackmailing a dude for insider info on the mayor and finds a picture of Flashback Oliver and laughs and laughs and laughs and hopefully plans to rid us of those godforsaken flashbacks once and for all.

Mayor Queen goes back to the stubborn politician and plays his card in such a way that he strongarms him into changing his mind and Thea is proud of her big brother.

On the way out of the building, they get attacked, and Oliver gets very shot.

I know you were worried about the straight white lead male character getting shot square in the chest multiple times, but he’s fine. It wasn’t even Oliver, it was someone called The Human Target. He rips off a Pretty Little Liars-style unrealistically realistic mask and throws it at Felicity, who immediately goofs around with it.

Then Oliver does that thing where he takes a man’s word and decides to let Felicity move on with her new boyfriend (that said boyfriend told Not!Oliver about) because this dude told him to instead of just because she’s an independent human being worthy of his respect.

He goes to see Felicity to tell her that he’s sad she didn’t tell him she had a new boyfriend.

And then gives her the permission to date she didn’t ask for.

Eventually Team Arrow fights Church again and arrest him, Oliver wins the zoning thing he was working on, and all seems to be tied up in a neat little bow.

But then the transpo vehicle taking Church to prison is attacked by Prometheus. Church tells Prometheus that the Green Arrow is Oliver Queen, expecting it to gain him some bonus points, but instead he is killed for his troubles.

The end. Tomorrow it’s back to what really matters: Sara Lance. This year the CW DC TV universe is like a sandwich where the insides are fine and sometimes you’ll eat it, sometimes you’ll just pick at it but the bread! Oh man the BREAD! It’s fresh and bisexual and delicious and even when you know the middle bits might be disappointing, you look forward to that sandwich every week, for the bread.

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The Flash 305: Let THAT Go, Shittickets

Yet again not much to report on The Flash, but who knows how any of this will play into the Legends of SuperFlArrow mega crossover so let’s do a brief overview shall we?

The monster of the week is a giant alien creature that appears and reappears at random, stomping around a ten block radius, not doing much more than setting off car alarms and wreaking general havoc. The team works together with Julien, Barry’s metahuman-hating lab partner, to try to figure out where this creature came from and how to stop it. Barry also tries to figure out why Julien is so damn grumpy all the time, and it turns out that he moved here to America to escape his past as a child wizard who was always second-best to the Boy Who Lived, only to find out he was onced again passed over for being chosen when everyone around him got powers. And they’re all using it for evil, and he has first hand experience as to why that’s just dumb. But in the end, the monster was a hologram created by a regular-human child and The Flash stops Julien from killing the kid dead, so Julien decides maybe he’s capable of being wrong and gives both metahumans and Barry a second chance.

Hooray.

Iris doesn’t do much this episode besides ping back and forth between Barry and her father, giving one food and the other dating advice. But she’s still got some snark so hopefully that’ll come back out soon.

At Star Labs, the team tries to figure out what the new Harrison Wells — sorry, HR — is all about, and after being suspicious about how he’s not actually helpful and finding a shady recording in his bag, they find out that he’s not a scientist at all, but a novelist and an “idea man”. But they decide maybe they could use some ideas eventually so they let his goofy self stick around for a few more weeks.

The real story in this episode, for me, was Caitlin’s, because it still feels like a bit of a coming out metaphor. So Caitlin realized she has powers a few months ago, but she’s been keeping them from everyone. Finally they’re becoming so obvious she’s having a hard time denying them, so she goes to an expert for help: Dr. Carla Tanhauser. Who also happens to be Caitlin’s mother.

Dr. Tanhauser is rude and stand-offish when Caitlin asks for her help — she’s a very busy woman and she hasn’t got all day — but then Caitlin slams her hands down on her mother’s desk and Elsas the shit out of it. This gets her mother’s attention and she agrees to run some test.

The tests prove her powers are very strong, and that she’s not only freezing things, but absorbing their energy.

Mama Tanhauser is somehow the cold one in this relationship, though, and accuses Caitlin of disappearing for three years and only returning because she needs help.

But Caitlin says that their relationship was never the same after her father died, and when she says Caitlin can’t know what it’s like to lose your husband, Caitlin says that actually yes she knows exactly what it’s like. Her mother doesn’t react to this news practically at all, it’s very strange.

Caitlin is done being poked and prodded, so she starts to leave, but her mother’s lab assistant won’t let her leave. He has been living in Dr. Tanhauser’s shadow for years and examining Caitlin’s powers could be his ticket to be his own scientist.

So she goes Killer Frost on his ass.

Her mother comes in before she can actually become a killer, thaws her daughter out and sends her on her way.

Later, Mama sends Caitlin a message that tells her maybe not to come out to anyone just yet — ah no, sorry; my metaphor got away from me. She tells Caitlin not to use her powers, because they could be too difficult to reverse; they’re getting stronger the more she uses them.

But even as the message plays, Caitlin gets worked up and she ices the whole computer. My advice would be more like learn how to embrace your powers and use them for good, find some metahuman friends, go to the metahuman pride parade, write TV recaps for a metahuman website. It’s going to be okay, my little Snow angel.

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Supergirl 204: Canonically Queer

Hello. I am Valerie Anne, a very professional television recapper at Autostraddle dot com, and I shall remain calm while recounting the events of this week’s episode of Supergirl.

HAHA JK I’M STILL SCREAMING WHAT IS AIR

Eh hem. Okay, I’m sure we can find a happy medium here. I just can’t believe this is happening. When I fell in love with Supergirl, I wasn’t even that mad there wasn’t a queer woman on it right off the bat. It was being co-created by a queer woman, and the show was feminist and fierce without it. I figured I could wait until season three or four, if that’s what it took to get the show off the ground.

Then in swaggered Maggie Sawyer. And y’all. I think this is gonna be good.

I mean almost right off the bat (after Mon-El being told he’s under house arrest at the DEO), Alex gets a phone call, and it’s Maggie inviting her to check out a dead body together. It’s very romantic.

The reason Maggie thought of Alex first is because a) she’s always on her mind probably b) the body they found was an alien who appears to have been killed by another alien. Supergirl drops in, too, and Maggie looks at her like she’s a shiny, blue-and-red third wheel. And Kara can barely keep up as Maggie and Alex theorize about what happened, finishing each other’s thoughts at a breakneck speed. Kara suddenly regrets getting between them and realize the Sawyer and Danvers duo has it covered.

Kara takes the story (about the aliens, not about the chemistry between Alex and Maggie) and pitches it to Snapper, but she is grossly underprepared and he lets her know. But he doesn’t write her off completely; he tells her to go get more information and come back.

Meanwhile, J’onn goes to visit M’gann, who goes by Megan on this world. She tells him that she was put in an internment camp by white martians until one helped her off the planet 300 years ago. And frankly, that’s as much as she wants to discuss it. He asks her to mind meld with him but she’d prefer a fella buy a girl a drink first so she asks him to leave her be.

At the DEO, Winn got the name of a suspect for the alien murder, and asks Alex if she wants him to organize a team for her to take with her, but she only needs one person on her team. (Spoiler alert: it’s Maggie Sawyer.)

The alien doesn’t look nearly as happy to see them as I would be, and starts to fight them, and I hope they’re both wearing bulletproof everything because every time they smile at each other their lives are 2x more at risk than they were before.

They end up kicking his ass and are about to arrest him when some dudes with a van come and take him away, against his will.

Back at the DEO again, the Danvers Sisters use their sweet doe eyes to ask J’onn if he’s okay.

At the threat of pouting, he confesses that he thinks he came on too strong with Megan. He misses the bond Martians could have with each other, a connection he thought he’d never get to experience again, and the fact that it’s so close but so far is really throwing him for a loop. But the Danvers girls know how to win over a lady, so they give him some advice and send him on his way.

Kara goes to talk to her hologramama, who tells her to believe in herself, and Mon-El interrupts. They chat, and I don’t know if it’s just from the high of other stuff going on in the episode or because I’m into anyone who makes Kara smile (and who is not Winn) but I didn’t hate this scene. It didn’t feel romantic or sexual but they had a cute tete-a-tete and maybe he can stay for a bit if he wants.

BUT sorry bro we have more important things to talk about.

Maggie calls Alex and invites her out, telling her to wear something nice. Alex obviously doesn’t ask any questions, and shows up in a back alley dressed to the nines. And my friends, we have seen this fierce human being go up against the biggest, baddest aliens without batting an eye, but when Maggie Sawyer tells her she cleans up nice, Alex Danvers stammers. She tries to return the compliment but she trips over her words and can barely look directly at the perfect woman in front of her.

Maggie holds her signature smile and says she’s not all business as though she hasn’t been fully dimpled every time she’s near Alex.

Then Alex literally says, “But this is, right?” Those are her actual words. As in: “This is definitely for sure not a date, right, but just a 100 percent business situation between two co-workers whose jobs sometimes involve standing really close in fancy clothes and staring into each other’s eyes?” Which is the exact thing you say when you want it to be a date. And the mixed signals continue as Maggie confirms it’s business, gives her a masquerade mask, and takes Alex by the hand.

And you know, I almost said, “Takes Alex by the hand and leads her right out of the closet,” which would be a joke in most other recaps, but I think my dreams of Alex being canonically queer for longer than we’ve known her might come true. She doesn’t seem alarmed about her feelings, and she wasn’t embarrassed to be vibing with Maggie in front of Kara, or calling her giddily in front of Winn. We’ll see, I guess.

Once inside, Maggie grabs them both a glass of champagne and they settle in to see what’s happening.

Enter Roulette, who is here to introduce the first two fighters in her underground alien fight club.

And I mean DAMN, Dichen Lachman maybe really does run an underground alien fight club? Because I’ve seen her play calm, cool, and collected, but this is next level. She slinks around in a slinky dress with a slinky snake tattoo and introduces the next fighters, one of which is the undefeated champion, M’gann aka Miss Martian.

Suddenly Maggie realizes they’re in a little over their head, and wishes they had called for backup, but don’t worry, Alex had Kara standing by in case this wasn’t a date after all. Roulette is thrilled when Supergirl drops in, and has someone all ready to fight her. He’s called Draga and, well, yikes.

Luckily, before she gets turned into dragon food, Alex and Maggie have broken up the party and opened the cage, sending Draga and everyone else running.

In what might have been the second-gayest subplot of the episode, Mon-El ends up tricking Winn into taking him out drinking, but it ends in too many shenanigans and broken bones to be considered a date. And besides, second place in the gayest race this episode went, once again, to Kara and Lena. But we’ll get to that.

First we have to talk about J’onn finding out that Megan was in the fight club and FLYING INTO HER APARTMENT UNINVITED. Very rude. She promises him she’s never killed anyone, and the humans aren’t using her, she’s fighting for herself. She says she’s trying to make a new life for herself and forget the past. And she’d appreciate it if he’d leave her alone.

She tells J’onn that Roulette’s real name is Veronica Sinclair and that he is welcome to take that information and GTFO.

Supergirl pays Ms. Sinclair a visit, but Roulette isn’t afraid. She’s caressing a glass of champagne like it’s Cruella DeVille’s cigarette holder and does something scarier than trying to fight Kara: She tries to stamp out her hope. She tells her that nothing Supergirl can do will ever stop humans from hating aliens, from seeing them as less than, as animals they’d rather see fight in a cage. That’s something she’d bet on, and she only takes safe bets.

Kara paces around the DEO, desperate not to lose this game of Roulette. Part of the issue is, it seems like these aliens are fighting voluntarily, or at least joining up voluntarily, so she has to find a way to show them that they’re worth more than that.

J’onn is being less than helpful (and less than kind) and Kara gets it out of him that he went to yell at Megan again and she scolds him for it, but then she realized that she was doing the same thing to Mon-El and goes to apologize. She is patient and kind with him, and he promises to behave. He also gives Kara a tip for fighting Draga and Kara is starting to see him as an individual, not just a Daxonian.

J’onn goes back to Megan and apologizes for trying to tell her how to live. She doesn’t look very happy to see him, even with his kind words, and we learn why when he gets zapped and kidnapped by Roulette and her goons.

When Alex realizes Megan and J’onn are both missing, she sends Kara back to the warehouse, but the fight club is long gone. But don’t worry, Kara knows exactly who to go to for help. She storms directly into Lena Luthor’s office, despite protests from Lena’s assistant, and this is what Lena Luthor, sister of Lex Luthor, CEO and founder of an entire corporation, about Kara Danvers, newbie reporter: “Kara is to be shown in immediately.” All the time. An open invitation. Always. Kara literally goes, “I am?”

And it’s not over! Kara asks if Lena knew Roulette, and she says that she went to boarding school with the Sinclair girl but didn’t much care for her, so she gives Kara the location of the event. Kara is very appreciative and says she owes Lena big time, and Lena looks like she has every intention of having Kara make good on that promise.

I wrote in my notes that at this meeting of the fight club, everyone is wearing “weird fly sunglasses” and what I MEANT was that everyone kind of looked like flies but also they looked about as cool as someone who would use the term “fly” to describe something so it’s a win-win.

Roulette says that the Green Martians have to fight to the death, and though reluctant at first, Megan will do what it takes to survive, so she starts punching on J’onn. He eventually talks her down and she decides she’s not going to kill him, but Roulette had a backup plan, and that back-up plan is Draga.

Maggie and Alex show up and start to clear the room, and Supergirl drops into the cage to fight Draga. This time, she has a secret weapon, and goes right for his weak spot, taking him down easily(ish).

Maggie and Alex are ready to arrest Roulette, but she has an army of aliens standing around her. Kara gets between her humans and these aliens and reminds them that people like Roulette are the aliens, that they should be fighting against the people who call them dangerous, not proving those people right by fighting each other.

Everyone is moved and they let Maggie arrest Roulette. As she’s being dragged out, Kara Danvers looks Roulette right in her snake-eyes and says, “It’s not a good idea to bet against me.”

Outside, Alex sees Maggie uncuffing Roulette and Maggie says that Ms. Sinclair has friends in high places and they have to let her go. They assure her they’re not done with her yet and resentfully watch her leave a free woman.

Alex reassures Maggie that she’s still a great cop — she says it almost like Tony the Tiger she’s so eager to pay Maggie the finest compliment she can think of: “You’re a GRRRREEEAT COP!” — and offers to try to turn the day around by buying Maggie a drink. And you know that feeling? That feeling where you really want to say something but you’ve been too scared to say it but finally you’re just doing it and you’re trying to play it cool but really you’re a little dizzy and you can actually feel your heart thumping a little too hard and a little too fast but you also feel a bit like you’re floating? You can SEE that feeling on Alex’s face as she asks Maggie out.

And for a second you think she’ll say yes!

But then Maggie says maybe some other time, and a woman sidles right up to Detective Maggie Sawyer and kisses her on the mouth.

So, a few things here. 1) I was wrong last week, she really did have a date. 2) Two women kissed on the mouth all casually on a family-friendly CW show about an iconic superhero. And no one flinched. Well, except for: 3) ALEX.

You know that feeling when you feel a bit like you’re floating but then all of a sudden reality comes crashing down around you and damn it you didn’t mean to get your hopes so high but now here they are in tiny pieces on the ground next to the shattered remains of your heart? Alex’s face does all that in a moment. And I’m gutted.

But encouraged! I’m so here for the slow burn and I do hope that this is just a new dating situation and Maggie’s gal pal will be on her merry way soon enough. In the meantime, we’ll just enjoy what I feel confident we can call a Queer AF Alex Danvers. You don’t set up shot of a person standing between two other people’s faces trying to play it cool while they kiss if you don’t mean it.

Okay, let’s wrap it up! Kara gets approved for her story about the aliens, then goes to offer Mon-El the support she was meant to give her cousin before the whole time-hole thing.

J’onn goes to talk to Megan again, this time knocking on the door and also letting her know that he wants her in his life, bond or no bond.

As soon as he leaves, Miss Martian shifts again, but this time she isn’t the Green Martian she’s shifted into before, but a big ol’ White Martian.

Which…didn’t surprise anyone on my Twitter feed, but I didn’t even know what the heck she WAS when she transformed! I don’t know how you had the mental capacity to Nancy Drew that fact in the same episode as Alex and Maggie’s flirtation ramped up, and I am very impressed.