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: 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.

Superqueero Roundup Recap: Maggie Sawyer And Alex Danvers Walk Into A Gaylien Bar

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 203: Captain Sara Lance

I’m not going to lie to you, despite the lack of lady-loving, this was my second favorite episode of Legends of Tomorrow to date. (The first being “Night of the Hawk” because I doubt this show will ever do better than Sara and Nurse Betty McRae falling a little bit in love.) It was just so fun! And with Sara in charge, it finally feels like the show found its stride. Even their mission went better than any they ever tried under Rip’s guidance. If you had asked me three years ago if Caity Lotz could carry an entire show on her tiny (yet very strong!) shoulders, I would have answered, “I don’t know? But I’d love to see her try?” But now if you asked me if I thought she could carry the rest of this season, I would punch the air with both fists and shout, “YES!” I don’t know if she’s grown as an actor, or if the writers have finally figured out how best to utilize her (maybe both), but this episode has me pretty damn excited about what’s to come.

But let’s start at the beginning. With an unexpected but very welcome twist: Vixen is back. Now that it looks like she’ll be sticking around for a minute (insert squeals of delight here), I reckon we can call her Amaya now and then.

But for now she’s Vixen, and she’s knocking the Legends out one by one. Even Captain Sara Lance.

Vixen finds Mick last and is going to slit his throat on the spot, but a thus-unconscious Nate comes to in that moment and turns into a metal person and they manage to contain her. Nate is VERY excited about this turn of events and runs through every iteration of Nate Heywood’s alias before deciding to go by simply Steel. (Even though I thought Citizen Steel sounded pretty cool.)

Sara appoints Ray as Nate’s new mentor and goes to chat with an angry little Vixen.

Sara finds out that Amaya wants to kill Mick because she believes he killed Rex Tyler, since Rex said a time traveler killed him, and he’s the only time traveling criminal she knows. But Sara tells her that they’re also seeking an evil time traveler, and Mick has been with them since they left the JSA. Sara lets Amaya go, after making her promise to behave; they apologize to each other and decide to let bygones be bygones.

Amaya immediately wants to go back to save Rex but Sara says they have to go for the source. She tries to convince Amaya they know what they’re doing, that they’re professionals, but of course as she’s saying this, they find the boys goofing around. And said goofing directly results in the ship door being smashed open and Nate and Ray being sucked out into the timestream.

Vixen doesn’t understand how this team is still (mostly) alive, and honestly even Gideon agrees at this point.

Nate and Ray both land in mid-17th Century Japan, though a few miles away from each other. Nate gets put on a woman’s cart and she takes him to her father’s place, where he learns her name is Masako and she’s engaged to a warlord against her will.

Meanwhile, Ray has a less welcoming entrance, and Samuris take his armor and hold him hostage.

Amaya isn’t trying to kill Mick anymore but she still hates him a lot and isn’t shy about it. She tells him there’s no such thing as ninjas and he growls at her until Sara tells the children she’ll send them right back to the hellscape that is 2016 if they don’t shut up.

Besides, Sara’s basically a ninja. (Amaya doesn’t fully buy it. Yet.)

Sara, Amaya and Mick think they find Ray but it turns out to be the warlord in Ray’s suit. Sara lets him know that she was League of Assassins, Class of ’09 (which is the year I graduated college, whatever it’s fine, we’re not soulmates or anything) and then does some stunning swordplay that will only be the first of many times she makes me swoon with her fighting-that’s-more-like-dancing this episode.

Eventually Vixen even joins in with her animal powers and they get away, collecting Ray as they GTFO.

They find Nate, too, but Nate wants to stay to save Masako from her arranged marriage to a man known throughout history for murdering his wives. But the thing is…he can’t get that metal skin thing to work. Sara teases him for having performance issues, leaves him with Ray to figure it out, and takes Vixen to go defend the village. Mick is gonna nap.

Meanwhile, not to be forgotten, Stein and Jax find a secret message from an older version of Barry Allen (as in, a Barry Allen who is over 60 years old, not like…a previous timeline version…ugh time travel is so hard to recount) and tells them a secret that only Rip was supposed to know, that the Legends aren’t supposed to ever find out.

Anyway, Ray teaches Nate how to break the suit, and both men whine about how hard it is to be a vigilante that relies on a supersuit or magic instead of years of torture, hard work, and training like Sara.

Speaking of our White Canary, she and Amaya are evacuating the village when the Samurais return. The leader is impressed by Sara’s skills and asks who her master is, but Sara “Ta-er al-Sahfer” Lance has no master.

And she does more badass fighting and it’s beautiful and graceful and strong and it’s just a dream come true.

Vixen even joins in the fight — and listen, I miss Hawkgirl so much, but damn am I glad Vixen joined the fray.

The boys are all still a work in progress, but Sara and Amaya make a damn good team.

Even Masako shows up for a little girl power action.

But of course Steel has to come save her. If they hadn’t been allowed to play in this fight the dudes would have all fallen on their swords, so, whatever. Sara dealt with her enemy just fine without them.

Steel fries the supersuit, Masako tells him to go float himself, and we find out that the sword she gifted him was Katana’s sword, so we haven’t seen the last of this family.

Back on the Waverider, Vixen gives Mick a throwing star as proof ninjas exist (and a peace offering), and Sara scares the poop out of Firestorm by asking them what their secret is even though she just means when did you learn how to fix a damn timeship.

After a little bit of discussion, the Legends realize they don’t really have a solid lead on where to go next to follow what they don’t know is the Reverse Flash, so they decide to just jump into the timestream and see where fate takes them. And this decision isn’t really up for discussion, because Captain Sara is in charge now!

Wasn’t that fun?? I had the most fun. I hope the rest of the season keeps this fun tone and lady badassery. What did you think?

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Arrow 504: New Team Rising

I mean, okay, Arrow is reforming a new team with the loss of Laurel and Thea wanting to wear less leather, fine. But why haven’t we called Nyssa in yet? Just saying, I think the rookies could use a professional assassin. I know I could.

Anyway.

First things first, Baby Bird has a real name now, and it’s Artemis. She also has her own bow and arrow set.

New Team Arrow goes on a mission and are still pretty bad at working as a team. Plus Ragman quit because even though he doesn’t blame Felicity for what happened to his family, her perfect face still reminds him of the tragedy and it hurts too much.

Meanwhile, Lyla swings by the Arrow Cave and quickly realizes, based on the lack of scolding, that Felicity doesn’t know that she and Oliver plan to break Diggle out of a military prison against his will. Because what Lyla knows to be true is indeed true, and Felicity thinks this plan is dumb as shit.

So instead of doing their usual ignore-Felicity-until-we-don’t schtick, they just don’t involve her. Felicity tries to send New Team Arrow to stop Oliver but it doesn’t go well. It’s a little bit like when a puppy tries to stop you from leaving the apartment. It’s really cute that they’re trying but definitely not keeping you from doing it.

While Oliver is Out of Town, a band of baddies lead by a guy named Church steal some weapons from the Anti-Crime Unit’s evidence locker. They need all the help they can get with Oliver out of town, and instead of calling Nyssa, Felicity goes to see Rory, all smiles despite being more torn up than his rags inside.

Rory thanks Felicity for reaching out, but he’s still not ready to come back to the team.

Felicity returns, yells at Wild Dog a few times for calling her Blondie, and eventually figures out where Church and his baddies are off to next. Wild Dog wants to go, and Curtis is ready to follow him, but Artemis and Felicity are a little too smart to want to go in leaderless.

But then Ragman comes and they take a vote and everyone heads into the fray. Felicity sends them off with one order: “Do not die.”

Oliver and Lyla’s plan takes a little turn but eventually they get Diggle out, after convincing him that he can make his penance by being Spartan.

New Team Arrow’s first solo mission goes…not terrific. (See what I did there?) Curtis gets a throwing star in the back and Wild Dog gets kidnapped. Lance and Felicity tells the team to leave Rene behind; they’ll get him later.

Thea is worried about how this decision will affect Lance, and he’s like, “If anything is going to make me start drinking again, it’ll be about my daughters, not this kid.”

Felicity is stressed about sacrificing yet another person, but Rory won’t let her beat herself up. They promise to keep each other from drowning in guilt in order to both work on the same team, a plan that sounds just fine to Felicity.

Oliver makes a dramatic re-entrance and is ready to clean up the mess his team made, starting with finding and saving Wild Dog (who is being tortured by Church).

See you tomorrow for a Sara Lance update!

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The Flash 304: Frozen Fractals All Around

Between Sara Lance bedding the Queen of France and starting a queer coven during the Salem Witch Trials, and Maggie Freaking Sawyer on this week’s Supergirl, I’ve seen what’s in the light and don’t want the shadows anymore. So as much as I love Iris, Caitlin, and Jesse, I spent most of this episode of The Flash feeling pretty salty that they’re the only one in this franchise who hasn’t given us any queer women yet. But let’s check in on Central City anyway.

The monster of the week was a straight couple who knew Snart (RIP) and got hit by the particle accelerator blast. The dude, Scutter, can now move through reflective surfaces and the woman, Rosa, can give people extreme vertigo. The team names them Mirror Master and Top. They’re losing their touch.

Iris’s deal this episode is Barry’s being squicky about kissing her in front of Joe and Joe is being weird about seeing HIS CHILDREN MAKE OUT and sorry B you two are cute and all but I’m with Joe on this one. Eventually Iris sits them all down and tell them to figure their shit out or she’s done with both of them.

Also Joe is dealing with his own romantic drama with a very attractive lawyer named Cecile who we saw briefly before and who I feel like we haven’t quite seen the last of.

Jesse Quick is learning how to be a superhero and still has some learning to do but is really getting the hang of it and is enjoying zipping Wally around the city in the meantime. She eventually has to leave with her dad, but she promises she’ll be back. And she looks super cute in her lil mask so I do hope she will.

Oh also she is the one who takes down Rosa, who rather likes being a Top.

Caitlin works most of the episode with Wells and Cisco to find a replacement Wells for when this Wells goes back to his Earth. Which seems unnecessary but whatever. They pick one wearing a weird hat who may or may not be shady. Caitlin eventually becomes a key part of saving Barry from being trapped in the mirror Scutter put him in, but it seems to activate her powers even more, giving her a hair stripe like when Anna got hit by Elsa’s ice blast, and blue lips that might make it hard to hide her powers from her team for much longer.

That’s really all. They’re still on the hunt for Dr. Alchemy, still on a slightly altered timeline but mostly everything is fine, and they’re now able to open breaches at will, which I imagine is how they’ll eventually get back to Supergirl’s world.

See you tomorrow for an Arrow weecap!

P.S.

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Supergirl 203: Maggie and Alex and Wonder Woman, Oh My!

Hello! Are you okay? I’m not okay! I’m better than okay! It’s still too soon to label Alex Danvers, but what we definitively got from this week’s episode of Supergirl was queer woman of color Maggie Sawyer, queer bartender/ex-girlfriend Darla, and woman of color M’gann aka The Last Daughter of Mars. All of which instantly make this feminist show even better! Plus, Maggie’s scenes all involved Alex and a lot of them were just between Maggie and Alex, and VERY flirtatious. I would say I didn’t want to give you false hope, but as President Wonder Woman said, “It’s hope…how can it be false?”

We pick up where we left off, with Kara telling the unconscious mystery alien that she’ll be by his side always and him coming to and grabbing her by the throat. They fight and despite Alex showing up WITH A BAZOOKA, the mystery fella gets away.

They can’t focus all their attention on that though, because the President of the United states is coming to National City, and she wants to visit the DEO because her newest movement is passing a law that grants aliens the same rights as humans. Everyone has their own opinions on this, but Kara is the very most excited because she gets to greet the President as soon as she lands.

But before President Wonder Woman is even off the plane, she’s attacked by fiery doom. Supergirl saves the President, and starts to investigate the scene with her sister. They see scorch marks eye-width apart, so they figure it’s the guy they found in the Kryptonian pod.

But then Alex spies something afoot. A pretty girl she’s never seen before in her crime scene. Alex comes in hot, demanding to know who this woman is, and the woman responds that she is Detective Maggie Sawyer.

She says that she’s part of a task force that investigates the left of center, and Alex says she’s part of the US Government, and they fight over jurisdiction as they get closer and closer and stare at each other it’s a miracle one of THEM wasn’t accused of having heat vision. Maggie ends the conversation with, “See you around, Danvers,” and we were officially doomed.

Meanwhile, in what would have been the news of the episode any time BMS (Before Maggie Sawyer), Kara goes to interview Lena Luthor, who is VERY HAPPY TO SEE HER. They talk about the President’s new movement and Lena says that she developed a tool that would let you test someone’s skin and tell if they’re an alien or not, which she thinks will make her a fortune and also be a good thing for the nation. So, plot twist, Lena’s a monster. But a beautiful monster! Kara fiddles with the test so that she passes it, and goes off to write her first article as a reporter.

At the DEO, Winn tracks the Mystery Alien’s DEO bracelet. Alex and her Bazooka run off to get him, but find Maggie instead.

Maggie has figured out that Alex is DEO but Alex ignores her follow-up questions on this front. After a brief trip back to the DEO to get scolded by Kara for going in alone, Alex gets a phone call from Maggie to see how the local cops deal with aliens. And, of course, Alex is quick to accept.

Alex decides to pull out all the stops and rolls up on her motorcycle, and Maggie says some motorcycle-y things and honestly she could have said other things between that and “I thought I’d buy you a drink,” but I blacked out.

Maggie knocks on a door and says the password “Dollywood” (which you will never convince me was not a direct nod to Heather Hogan) and takes Alex into what can only be described as a gaylien bar.

Members of this bar include: a woman who uses her sideways-blinking eyes to check out Alex, and a woman who used her tongue powers to learn English from Maggie once (but is now her ex.) Maggie explains that she grew up a non-white, non-straight woman in Nebraska, so she relates to these aliens quite a lot.

I think it’s worth noting here that Alex doesn’t flinch at the knowledge that the bartender is Maggie’s ex or that Maggie called herself not-straight. It was a Non-Issue, just the way I like it.

Anyway, after a little bit of a run-in with a dude with wiggly skin and a fiery woman, Alex knows that the Mystery Alien was trying to contact his home planet. They figure out that he was trying to get in touch with Daxon, Krypton’s arch nemesis. Kara immediately decides this guy is a nogoodnik and thinks that means that Lena is right.

She goes to see Lena, who is, yet again, super happy to see her. And Kara doesn’t look too upset to see Lena, either, despite their earlier conversation.

They have a conversation that would have been uncomfortable and angry if anyone except Kara Danvers was having it. Lena says she was pleasantly surprised that the article Kara wrote didn’t villainize her, and Kara said she did write that version, but her boss scrapped it, and she realized that there are bad aliens. This is all music to Lena’s ears.

Cut to President Wonder Woman signing the new treaty, which gets interrupted by more fireballs.

Alex and Kara both get hit and the Firestarter grabs Maggie, much to Alex’s dismay.

Oh, and Kara did the classic Wonder Woman outfit-change-spin to put out the fire on her supersuit and it was beautiful.

Alex goes back to the gaylien bar and asks the wiggly-skin man about the redhead and he continues to be difficult. A beautiful bartender (who is not Darla from earlier) gives Alex a lead when she hears Maggie is in danger.

Maggie is tied up and forced to listen to the Firestarter’s rage about this treaty and how it’s basically just a way to trick aliens out of hiding. Supergirl drops in to fight the alien while Alex sneaks in to untie Maggie.

The Danvers Sisters take out the Firestarter and Maggie is hella impressed.

Maggie does a little badass move of her own and Alex, well, she lets out this little, “Oh!” noise that I can’t even describe to you.

Alex patches up Maggie, who is very impressed by the DEO HQ, and they flirt and they flirt and they flirt and holy crap. At one point Alex says, “You did something for me too,” and I swear I thought she was going to just come right on out as bisexual, but she just says that she’s realizing now that not all aliens are bad. Maggie says they make a good team, and Alex tries to quasi-U-Haul and tells Maggie to stay at the DEO for a while to rest up. But Maggie has places to be. Alex makes a nervous joke, asking if Maggie has a hot date, and Maggie says she does and that she can’t keep the lady waiting. And then Alex’s face does a thing. It’s partially disappointed that Maggie might not be single, partially impressed at Maggie’s general swagger and air of confidence.

What’s weird is, the way Maggie said it didn’t actually seem like she had a real date. She said it in the way sometimes TV characters do when they are actually going to see a relative in prison or a secret kid but not actually a date at all. Or she could be going on a date with Kate Kane WHO KNOWS. All I know is that it didn’t feel like a coincidence that these two had so much screen time together.

To wrap up the other stuff going on, Kara apologizes to the Daxonian for jumping to conclusions and learns his name is Mon-El. President Wonder Woman makes an invisible jet joke and then reveals (to us only) that SHE’S actually an alien. And J’onn goes to the gaylien bar in his Martian form only to find out that the bartender from earlier (the one who helped Alex, not Darla) is M’gann, the Last Daughter of Mars.

Can you believe it? Our time has arrived! The future is female and queer af, with Supergirl leading the way. It’s like they pulled the bait-and-switch but finally not on us! “Hey, here’s Superman, all you folks who weren’t watching because it was #toofemale, come on over…JK SUPERMAN’S GONE AND SURPRISE WE’VE TRIPLED OUR BADASS LADY COUNT!” And don’t even get me started on how great this Maggie Sawyer already is, not being coy or shy or secretive about being not-straight, and Alex being super intrigued by her without being awkward and embarrassing about it. And I’m so here for a slow burn. For Alex to keep pretending to be unwilling to work together until finally she can’t take it anymore and it’s a beautiful collision of leather. (I mean, it’s definitely going to be Alex, right?) Tell me all your Maggie Sawyer feels and lets flail around together in the comments until tomorrow’s Ladies of Arrow update.

Here’s a gif of Alex watching Maggie leave to kick us off.

Superqueero Roundup Recap: The Danvers Sisters

Hello! Welcome to the second installment of the Superqueero Roundup Recap, the place where I recap all the queer and feminist goodness on all of DC’s superhero shows the day after they air. Make sure you’re following us on Twitter so you’ll know when this roundup recap is updated!

I have a sneaking suspicion this week will be low on the Queer-o-Meter but Maggie Sawyer is coming to us on Supergirl next week officially doubling our lady-loving lady count, maybe more if our dreams for Bisexual Alex Danvers come true.

These recaps (and wee-caps) are in reverse chronological order, with the newest ones appearing up top!

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Legends of Tomorrow 202: Captain Sara Lance

I feel like there are more elegant ways to begin a weecap, but instead I will simply share the first thing I wrote in my recap notes:

SARA GETS THE VOICEOVER, BITCHES!

It’s a good sign of things to come.

We start where we left off, with the Legends of Tomorrow facing off with the Justice Society of America. Jax immediately tries to hit on Stargirl, but Stargirl immediately shuts him down.

I like her already.

The JSA doesn’t trust this band of weirdos yammering on about time travel and want to take them into custody, so a battle ensues. I love their group fight scenes and this was a double group fight scene and I liked it quite a lot.

Eventually the Legends get put in a cage and we find out that the Steve Rogers Cosplayer, better known as Commander Steel, is New Guy Nate’s grandfather.

Rex Tyler appears and asks what’s happening, and Sara starts to answer, and then Rex Tyler risks his whole damn life by INTERRUPTING SARA LANCE and then CALLING HER MA’AM and then saying he was talking to the team leader and TURNING TO STEIN. It’s a miracle all of his bones stayed unbroken in that moment.

But she continues to stay calm, cool and collected, even as the team runs through their sorted pasts, and remind everyone that our Canary is an Assassin.

Rex eventually lets them go and Ray points out that the JSA has very admirable team dynamics, and maybe they need a leader. The boys all puff out their chests and Stein is like, “Well Rex WAS just NATURALLY drawn to the leadership I OOZE from my pores,” and Sara rolls her eyes and lets him be in charge the way you let a toddler try to tie their own shoes even though you know they’ll just end up with a knotted mess and eventually ask you to do it for them anyway.

Sara wants to send Nate home but then he realizes that his dog tags are gone, meaning something in the past changed. And sure enough, his notes have changed (but not his memories, because time travel is confusing) and the JSA is going to die in 1942 if they don’t go back, despite a very explicit warning to never go back to 1942.

The Professor’s plan is to pretend to be Hitler’s favorite singer, I don’t really know (or care) why, because it gives us Sara dressed to the nines.

Vixen is there, undercover, and none too pleased to see the Legends again.

Stein sings Edelweiss while Nate figures out what the bad guy is up to, but before they leave, Ray gets busted not doing the Nazi salute, and a fight breaks out. They all make it back to the timeship, where they’re all confused but generally unimpressed by the technology on board.

But Sara says they’re going to help the JSA whether they like it or not. Stein tries to be In Charge and make a plan but Sara has a better plan and comes up with it faster and says it more forcefully. Even the sexist from the ’40s concedes that she’s right.

Sara pulls Nate away from the group and says that on top of being in charge without letting anyone know she’s in charge and trying not to flirt with Vixen, she’s noticed that Nate is a hemophiliac. She says they’ve only almost died all the time without him and probably they’re no better for him being there and she doesn’t feel like being worried about him dying at every turn so probably she should just go home.

The team goes off to find the amulet the Nazis have and some shit goes down and they GET the amulet, but Vixen and Ray are kidnapped by a SuperNazi. Stein is in full panic mode now. He’s too busy weighing all his options and trying to figure out how to make everyone happy; he doesn’t have the tactical training for this, and he knows it. The JSA is ready to sacrifice Vixen and Ray and ditch, but Sara hands him a firm NOPE on that plan.

He shrugs her off, saying she doesn’t have the authority to make decisions, but Stein comes in and practically begs her to take the helm. He says that Sara is the beating heart and steady hand of this team, and it’s TRUE. So Sara Lance is put in charge.

Meanwhile, Ray is doing science for the SuperNazi, stammering and stalling, while Vixen spouts off fiery quips at him to try to get him to stop, even though the Nazis are threatening her if he doesn’t do it.

But Ray reveals his plan and smacks people around with a microscope and they get out. Vixen doesn’t have her amulet, but she’s a blackbelt and much more useful than Ray without his supersuit, so they dash. Ray is going to inject himself with the serum he made to fix that very fact, but the team swoops in and saves the day. Sara gives Vixen back her amulet and I say again Vixen gives Sara a very interesting look and maybe she’s just excited that Sara is a Canary and she has animal powers but I don’t hate it. Until this promised gay character is revealed, the potential crackles everywhere! Anyway, Ray uses the serum to save Nate’s life and everything is just fine.

Well, until the Reverse Flash kills Rex Tyler.

That’s it for this week’s Superqueero roundup! Until next week when we flail around about MAGGIE FREAKING SAWYER.

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Arrow 503: Popular Opinion

The theme of this episode was much like the last: Oliver resisting trusting his team and him ultimately listening to Felicity and trusting them – and I mean literally quoting Felicity at a press conference. The new squad is still learning how to work with The Green Grumpface and each other, but they have masks now and have been let into the Arrow Cave, so they’re on their way to becoming a real part of Team Arrow.

Let’s do a quick check-in on the ladies, shall we?

Let’s start with Lyla since her part was the smallest. Diggle is in jail (I think he’s being scapegoated for something?) and he’s hallucinating big time, so Lyla goes to Oliver for help at the end of the episode. (PS. Barry’s stupid timeline change didn’t affect the folks of Arrow much at all but it did DELETE BABY SARA FROM EXISTENCE and instead Diggle and Lyla have a son named John Jr. And I get how but I don’t get WHY. Ugh. CHANGE IT BACK, BARRY.)

Anyway. On to Felicity.

Her biggest thing this episode was that the newest member of the team, Ragman (not his real name, don’t care about him enough yet to learn his real name), is from Havenrock, the city Felicity redirected Darhk’s missile, killing tens of thousands of people. But, as Curtis points out, saving millions.

Eventually she realizes she can’t keep this guilt bottled up, so she tells Ragman that she was the one who chose Havenrock as the destination, but she doesn’t quite go into enough detail as to why, so I’m not sure he’ll understand right away. I AM glad that they’re addressing this though, because Felicity is a kind soul and you know this fucked her up right good. Anyway, for now, Ragman walks away without saying anything to her, leaving her a little more broken than before.

Baby Bird, despite her extremely badass parkour skills, is still trying to find her place on the team. She wants to follow the rules like a good little vigilante, but gets influenced by the Wild Dog.

But she works well with the rest of the crew and has a cute little sister rapport with Curtis, who is wearing a Fair Play jacket as an intro into his code name, Mr. Terrific. (Which is cheesy af but suits him because gosh darnit Curtis is terrific!) Baby Bird, while still officially codename-less, has upgraded to an adorable little mask.

She also asks Felicity the rules about dating while also being a vigilante (which…it’s adorable that she thinks there are rules) and Felicity’s short answer is DON’T DO IT.

And last but definitely not least is Thea, who is still fighting for justice even without her Speedy outfit, and who wins what Kristin Russo would call the Sexual Tension Award for her interactions with guest star Carly Pope. Carly Pope, you may remember, played Sam on the show Popular, where you probably shipped her with her arch-nemesis and step-sister Brooke, but what you MIGHT not know, but definitely should, is that she played queer in a cheesy campy badass movie called Concrete Blondes. It’s like DEBS: All Growed Up.

Anyway, Carly Pope is in our DC Universe to shake things up as news anchor/journalist Susan Williams.

She comes onto the scene tearing Oliver Queen’s administration apart by saying it was a bad idea to hire drunk fool Quentin Lance. Thea goes to talk to her and try to get her to correct her story, and Susan seems very accommodating. And either Thea has lost her edge or she’s distracted by Susan’s beauty because she’s just like, “Sweet thanks bye,” even though she’s a journalist and therefore obviously out for the best story.

So of course, as everyone but Thea could have predicted, Susan twists Thea’s words and makes Oliver look extra incompetent. But Oliver holds a press conference and doubles down on Thea’s decision to hire Quentin Lance and won’t let Thea resign and it’s fine. If he’s learned anything from Felicity it’s that he needs to trust his team, so trust he does.

Thea, not one to be toyed with, storms right up to Susan Williams, and gets SO CLOSE TO HER FACE and tells her that if she EVER messes with this Queen again, it’s off with her head.

In real life confrontation makes me VERY UNCOMFORTABLE but on TV it makes me shout NOOOOOW KISS. It’s a very confusing time for us all. Anyway, I doubt Susan Williams will back down, and she’s around for a few more episodes at least, so that dynamic should be interesting.

That’s it for Arrow, see you tomorrow for some Sara Lance hijinx!

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The Flash 303: Lady Speedster

Buckle up, kids, because this week we had Iris in dresses, Caitlin getting sassy, a lady speedster, and a girl with misandrist superpowers. But don’t worry, I’ll make it…quick. (hehe)

We begin with Iris, ready for her date with Barry, looking lovely as ever.

That’s really all there is to report about this first scene. Even Iris admits it was boring. Luckily, Cisco calls them into Star Labs because a breech is open that they decidedly did not open. But don’t worry, it’s not another Zoom coming to torture us for another season, it’s just Harrison Wells and his daughter Jesse. Though his daughter is a little different from the last time we saw her, proven by her flying out of the breech like a bat out of hell and zipping around the lab in a flash of yellow light.

Caitlin Snow offers to test her in the SpeedLab, which sounds a lot like superflirting to me. Barry didn’t know they had a SpeedLab, and neither did Wells or Jesse, so Wells figures out that Barry mucked up the timeline again.

Meanwhile, the metahuman of the week is a young girl named Frankie with misandrist powers. Her foster father starts being a real ass, and her eyes turn purple and she throws a light post at him with her mind. It’s pretty badass. The problem is, she doesn’t remember doing it.

Back at Star Labs, Wells is stressed about Jesse’s new powers. He knows she’ll want to be out and proud about having powers, but he thinks it’ll be safer if she keeps them to herself. He knows that Caitlin and Jesse have a special relationship and asks Caitlin to talk to his daughter. Caitlin’s eyes grow wide and she’s like I DON’T HAVE POWERS I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT I’M PERFECTLY ORDINARY I CAN’T HELP YOU SORRY.

At the police department, Draco Malfoy figures out that the light post couldn’t have been bent by hand and starts SCREAMING in the face of traumatized little Frankie, thus activating her misandrist powers again. Her alter ego Magenta takes over and admits that Alchemy is to blame/thank for these powers.

It turns out the girl has always had dissociative identity disorder, and Dr. Alchemy preyed on that to create Magenta. Plus her foster father has a history of being an abusive monster so probably she was just trying to knock some sense into him with the light post thing.

Jesse is ready to head out to find Magenta before she can hurt herself or someone else, and Wells begs Caitlin to have The Talk with her. Caitlin reluctantly agrees and tries to talk to Jesse, but Jesse doesn’t want to hear it. At first she thinks people want her to take it easy because she’s a girl, but Caitlin is just like, “Well if I had powers, which I definitely do not, I would take it slow and not rush into things.”

But Jesse will not be closeted by anyone, especially not her father. Just because he can’t accept that she’s different now doesn’t mean she has to hide who she is. Wells turns on Caitlin for this not going well but Caitlin finally snaps; she won’t take the blame for this.

She says that maybe if Wells celebrated Jesse’s new identity instead of fearing it then it would bring them closer together.

With this in mind, when the Magenta drama comes to a head, he sends Jesse off to help Barry save the day.

And save the day they do.

Afterwards, Jesse and Wells have a heart-to-heart, where Wells names her Jesse Quick and gives her a supersuit. He explains that he was just scared; the world’s not always welcoming or safe for people like her, but she’s always been his hero, so he’s ready to let her be that for other people, too. (There’s a reason superhero stories have always resonated so strongly with gay people!)

He even gives her a supersuit of her very own. And joined PFLAG. Wait, sorry. I ran too far with the metaphor. I’m back.

Anyway, Iris and Barry go on another date and she somehow looks even lovelier and it goes even better even though he has to dash away again because the work of a speedster is never done.

See you tomorrow for an update on Felicity, Thea and the gang!

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Supergirl 202: The Danvers Sisters

We start the episode with the Krypton Kids tag-teaming some superhero stuff. It’s still pretty adorable, fine, whatever. When they get back to the DEO, J’onn gives them a hard time because they’re off having #toomuchfun and not following protocol, but Kara yells at him because she knows he’s just upset because him and Superman are in a fight.

To try to cheer Kara up, Alex reminds her that they have Sister Night tonight. But Kara invites Clark.

Alex puts on a brave face and says, “The more the merrier.”

At CatCo, Kara is nervous but excited about her first day as a reporter; that is, until Cat introduces her to her new boss, Snapper Carr. He stares at her, unimpressed, while she tries to make a good impression, and then he walks away from her mid-sentence. Which poor sweet Kara doesn’t know what to do with.

Later that night, Clark shows up at Sister Night and then ASKS ALEX TO GIVE HIM A MINUTE ALONE WITH KARA. On SISTER night! The nerve! But whatever it’s fine because he’s there to say he has to go back to Metropolis. But before he does, they have one last mission to go on: Someone is about to jump off a bridge and needs the SuperDuo’s help. Except it’s not really a person at all, but Metallo, who can shoot Kryptonite beams out of his chest like some kind of defective Care Bear.

The fight leaves Supergirl wobbly and Superman a little shaken, but they get back to the DEO in one piece. Clark blames J’onn and his Kryptonite hoarding, and he admits a shipment went missing, but he and Alex failed to mention it. Before they can fight about it, Cadmus releases a Mr. Robot-style message essentially declaring war against “the aliens.”

At this point, these people have taken Alex’s father and are threatening her sister, so she’s feeling very No More Miss Nice DEO Agent.

When Kara shows back up to work at CatCo, Snapper tells her she’s in the wrong place. He doesn’t have to hire her just because Cat said so. Kara says, “This is the job I chose,” but he gives her the brush-off and tells her she has to earn a place on his team. Literally. He won’t even give her a chair.

Kara stomps to Cat for help, but Cat tells her that it’s time to stand up for herself. She calls her “Kara” over and over again and calls her smart, talented, astonishing. Astonishing! Oh to be called astonishing! By Cat Grant no less! Who doesn’t give compliments easily. She tells Kara to own her power.

This is especially important advice for Kara to take right now, because Cat is taking a leave of absence. She’s taking her own advice and taking a dive into something new.

Kara sits down, overwhelmed, and I relate to Kara often but never so much as when she sighed and said, “Everything is changing so fast.”

Kara tells Cat that she’ll miss her — and we all will, so much — and Cat gets choked up. They hug and it’s beautiful and gah I’m really going to miss their dynamic.

Cat tells her to get her head in the game and show Snapper what she’s made of. No protégé of hers will be beaten down by a MAN.

When Kara confides this onslaught of emotions to Alex, she offers her ice cream, like a good big sister. But in return, Kara says that maybe she wants to move to Metropolis. She positions it like it would be doing everyone, including Alex, a favor. And finally Alex can’t be silent anymore. They take care of each other, that’s their whole deal. In fact, it’s Alex’s only deal! She’s sacrificed so much to be there for Kara, as a sister and as a DEO agent, and it’s all been worth it, unless Kara is going to up and ABANDON HER. She hasn’t even gone on a date in two years! In another timeline, she becomes a doctor and goes by Lexie instead of Alex and is trained by the greatest bisexual TV character in all of space and time!

Kara doesn’t get what Alex is saying though, so she continues to emotionally punch Alex in her heart’s face by saying Clark “understands” her and makes her feel less alone. Alone! If there’s one thing Kara Danvers has never been it’s alone! Alex points out that Clark abandoned her to live with the Danverses.

Before they can break my heart any more, Metallo strikes again — but this time he’s a decoy, because there’s a SECOND Metallo, and he’s destroying Krypton Park in Metropolis. The Supers are too late to stop the damage, and are pretty sad about it.

Meanwhile, at the DEO, Alex is super angry at her sister, but channels that energy into finding the person who stole the Kryptonite. And it’s Jackson from The 100.

She asks him to transport some Kryptonite, and follows him, knowing he’ll take her to his leader. And sure enough, it’s a trap.

The Queen of Cadmus tries to recruit Alex, tries to prey on the very things Alex mentioned earlier, that her whole life has been affected by these Kryptonians. But Alex’s love for Kara is stronger than that, and also Kara had been looking for her to apologize anyway, so the sisters work together and get away from the baddies.

Kara apologizes for being a brat and says that she knows how important Alex is, that she’s the one who made Earth feel like home, not Clark. They both agree that they’re better together and THANK KRYPTON THAT’S OVER because I hate when they fight.

Winn makes anti-Kryptonite shields for Kara and Clark, giving them a fighting chance against the Metallos. They use the fact that Cadmus doesn’t think anyone supports Supergirl and Superman anymore, and split up, having Alex and J’onn as backup respectively.

Also Alex has some kind of supersuit that is amazing albeit a little bulky.

Together, the Danvers sisters kick Metallo’s ass and save the day. (Superman and J’onn do fine too.)

Supergirl flies to Cat’s balcony — THEIR balcony — to say goodbye. Cat says kind things about Supergirl and her amazingness, and tries one last time to get her real identity from her, and they say goodbye for now. (Side note, I love the way that Kara is just naturally more at ease with Cat when she’s Supergirl. I don’t love the amount of disbelief I have to suspend to buy that Cat hasn’t figured out who she is yet.)

Kara musters all her courage, fueled by the people she loves who believe in her, and marches up to Snapper’s desk and tells him that he’ll give her a chance OR ELSE.

He still plays gruff, but says if she comes back tomorrow, he’ll try to teach her something, which is just fine for Kara.

Clark says goodbye for real, taking the rest of the Kryptonite and a promise to find Alex’s father with him. Kara goes to talk to the stranger from the mystery pod and says that she’ll be there for him when he wakes up. And in return she gets a giant alien hand around her throat.

What did you think of this week’s Supergirl? Next week, Maggie Sawyer! And President Wonder Woman! Lena Luthor! All the ladies!

Check back Wednesday for an update on the ladies of The Flash, which will now be ABOVE this post! So depending on when you’re reading this you could have already read my recap of The Flash…oof, even the real world is too timey-wimey wibbly wobbly sometimes.

Superqueero Roundup Recap: “Supergirl” Is As Fun And Feminist As Ever On Its New Network

Well, hello there! And welcome to this brand new column! Column? Is it still called a column if it’s not a newspaper and not particularly columnular? Doesn’t matter. Hi, I’m Valerie Anne. I’m a former writer for AfterEllen, and I’m so happy to be joining the Autostraddle team to write about teevee! How much do I love teevee? Well, I need a spreadsheet to keep track of the shows I watch and recap. (It’s color coded…I swear I’m a Hufflepuff.) How much do I love Autostraddle? I’ve been to back-to-back A-Camps (miss you, Charlotte Jo), and was an A+ member long before the straight white dudes who run Evolve Media torpedoed AfterEllen and made it unrecognizable. I love you and I love teevee and I’m excited we’re sharing this space and our abundance of feelings with each other.

This is a Superqueero Roundup Recap. What’s going to happen is: Every week, a post just like this will go up on Tuesday, and it will start with a recap of the goings-on over in National City on Supergirl, where we’re eagerly awaiting the arrival of Maggie Sawyer and the promised coming out of one established character (please be bisexual Alex Danvers, please be bisexual Alex Danvers). Then, as the week goes on, I’ll update that VERY SAME POST with recaps (or wee-caps, depending on the queerness of each show each week) of The Flash and Arrow, as is relevant (mostly probably these will be like “Iris is still the smartest most beautiful human in Central City,” “Nyssa is still nowhere to be found in Star City,” etc), and of course I’ll be recapping Sara Lance’s adventures as she zips her beautiful blonde bisexual self through time and space. Maybe she’s going to romance the Queen of France this year? That footage exists; I have laid eyes upon it.

These recaps are in reverse chronlogical order. Thursday’s Legends of Tomorrow up top, Monday’s Supergirl at the bottom!

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Legends of Tomorrow 201: Seductress of Time

So, okay, let’s start at the beginning: this show has it’s issues, this we know. There are too many main characters, most of them men, and they spent most of last season wasting the potential of one of their badass women by forcing her into a love triangle. But now Hawkgirl is gone (sob), along with one of her triangle points, and we’re left with just Sara and the Guys. But it has its merits; every episode is a new period piece, and Sara doesn’t put up with anyone’s shit, and it’s really fun to watch. Plus, the costumes!! And even though they easily could have buried the lead with Sara’s bisexuality, or even ignored it entirely, they have made it clear that she was bi from the very beginning, and hit the ground running with it in this season two premiere. So let’s get into it.

We open with none of our Legends at all, but instead with someone named Nate Heywood going to see Oliver Queen. One thing they seem to be doing this season (which is great for me and this megamix of a recap) is starting to do crossovers and intertwine stories right off the bat. Nate tells Oliver he’s a time detective and that Oliver’s friends Sara Lance and Ray Palmer are in trouble. They say that an atomic bomb went off in New York before the atomic bomb was invented, which doesn’t really make sense to me, timeline wise? Unless the time ripple just never caught up to present day? I don’t know, timey wimey stuff makes my head hurt.

Oliver and Nate go to the bottom of the ocean to find the Waverider there, sunk and abandoned. Except for Mick Rory, who was in statis. They wake him up and he begins to tell the story of how things went so very wrong.

It all started in France in 1637, where Rip Hunter, Jax and the Professor are dressed as the Three Musketeers, Ray is keeping an eye on the King, and Sara is playing handmaiden to the Queen. The Queen sees that Sara is sad about the loss of her sister, and decides to…cheer her up.

Rip keeps trying to get in contact her to see if the Queen is safe, but he doesn’t have to worry about it, because Sara has her eyes…and hands and lips on her. Men with laser guns show up and the boys are all fighting inside while Sara is doing some tumbling of her own.

When she finally emerges, Jax teases her about what she could possibly have been doing with the queen, and she casually threatens to feed his own eyeballs to him, and the team heads back to the ship. Rip gives her a hard time for “seducing the Queen of France” but Sara lets him know that the Queen started it.

So Sara slept with the queen, Ray used future tech and Firestorm fused in front of the locals, Mick stole royal jewels. Basically they’re all still really bad at being a team of time traveling heroes.

But before Rip can finish his lecture, they feel a timequake and know something is wrong; a nuke hit in 1942 and they have to find Einstein and keep him from the bad guys to stop it before it ripples and catches up with them and ruins everything.

Sara zips off to the library, asking Gideon (the ship’s AI computer system) where Damien Darhk, sister killer extraordinaire, will be in 1942. When they land and split up, Sara says she’s going to visit a grandfather for help, and definitely not anything even remotely nefarious.

Ray doesn’t believe her so he decides to follow her. Sara is off to kill Damien Darhk but Ray stops her because they overhear something about uranium, blah blah, plot stuff, what’s important to note here is that Sara Lance had a thigh holster under her dress from which she pulls her gun.

Anyway, they save Einstein but when they have him in custody he confesses his ex-wife, Mileva Marić, is the smart one.

Ray rats Sara out to Rip, who says it’s impossible to do anything wrong when they’re rogue time travelers with no rules to follow.

She sasses Ray and tells him to get off his high horse and leave her alone with his rich white boy holier-than-thou attitude.

So the team stalks off, not in the best place, dynamic-wise, but ready to rumble. Especially Sara, who makes a beeline for Darhk again. Damien doesn’t know why she’s so dead-set against him (because he hasn’t murdered Laurel yet) but recognizes her as League of Assassin-trained and is highly amused by her determination.

Rip eventually calls her off and the Legends go back to the ship with a new plan to stop the bomb. Fly straight into it. But Rip doesn’t want to risk his team’s life, so he hits the “eject” button and sends everyone but Mick Rory to a different point in time.

That’s the end of present-day Mick Rory’s story, so Oliver goes back to brood in Star City and Nate Heyworth goes time traveling with Mick to save the team. Ray is frolicking with dinosaurs, Firestorm is a court jester duo for a petulant medieval child monarch, and Sara Lance is — wait for it — IN THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS.

When they find her, Sara is about to be hanged, but she’s highly unconcerned about this. A terrible man shouts at her and accuses her of corrupting the women of their town, but Sara insists it was all very consensual corruption.

After making a local lady swoon one last time, she knocks down her captors, and takes down Nate when he shows up, too. Ray steps forward and says Nate’s on their side, and Sara looks ready to get back to business.

And I have mixed feelings about this. Most of me is very excited: I’m obsessed with Salem and witches and the fact that probably all those accused of being witches were just badass feminists and/or queer af, and I do love that when people continue to accuse Sara of being predatory (but only when she hooks up with women) and she continues to let them know exactly what’s what. I also love that she’s like a one-woman bisexual revolution. She’s always been very confident in her sexuality, and the fact that she’s bringing that confidence to places and times where just about every queer woman is closeted is kind of amazing. Of course the women of the time would be drawn to her. (Also, look at her. C’mon.) On the other hand, this trend could quickly and easily veer over into stereotype territory if they’re not careful. Based on the very beautiful and lovely and AHHH ALI LIEBERT COME BACK TO ME storyline between Sara and Nurse Betty McRae, plus the heartwrenching and tragically beautiful and AHHH KATRINA LAW COME BACK TO ME final scene between Sara and Nyssa, I’m more apt to trust that the show will continue to handle Sara’s sexuality with a respectful playfulness. It’s never been A Thing and it doesn’t seem like it will ever be A Thing and I think that’s a Beautiful Thing.

Anyway, Rip is gone, saving the timeline is up to them alone now, but probably also this Nate dude, and they start by going back in time and having Einstein publicly declare Mileva Marić his partner.

Meanwhile, Darhk is on to a new shifty plan, and it is revealed that he’s in cahoots with Eobard Thawne aka The Reverse Flash aka The Same Dude Wreaking Havoc on The Flash.

On their way back to the ship, Ray tells Sara he’s ready to help her get #JusticeforLaurel, and as if invoked by the word, the Justice Society of America shows up, looking ready for a fight.

And Sara feels some kinda way about it.

What did you think of this week’s CW DC superpalooza?? What are you looking forward to most from these shows?

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Arrow 502: There’s no B(e an asshole) in Team

Not much to report on Arrow this week, BUT there have been some interesting developments re: Team Arrow. Once upon a time, the team consisted of the Green Arrow, Black Canary (x2), Speedy, Overwatch, and Spartan. But Sara Lance became the White Canary and switched shows, Laurel Lance took her sister’s place in the refrigerator, Thea couldn’t control her bloodlust so she quit to wear power suits, and John Diggle hung up his goofy helmet. All that was left was Oliver and Felicity. So Felicity suggests they make a new team. The people she suggests are Evelyn Sharp, Rene Ramirez, and our very own Curtis Holt. (Curtis, you remember, being happily married to a man. And adorable af.)

And what happens is essentially this:

Felicity: Oliver, you can’t do this alone, you need a team.
Oliver: No I don’t.
F: Yes you do.
O: Fine I’ll try.
O: *assembles team*
O: *yells at them and hits them a lot*
O: See this isn’t working.
F: You’re really bad at this. Maybe try leading them and teaching them instead of torturing them?
O: But one time this is how someone trained me and it was horrible and it traumatized me and look at me now…is that not a solid lesson plan?
F: Oh, honey.
O: *growls for 45 minutes straight*
F: *waits patiently*
O: *does what Felicity originally told him to do*
O: I’m so smart, look at this team I assembled all on my own.

At least Felicity seems relatively happy while she’s quietly being the most right and saving Oliver from himself over and over again.

(Side note: she’s dating someone named Billy Malone which is seems like the PERFECT supervillain alias if you ask me.)

Meanwhile, Thea quit to basically be Overwatch but for Oliver’s mayorship. I’m hoping she either puts her speedy suit back on soon or decides to take over as literal mayor, but until then, business casual suits her just fine.

One thing I will call out about what Felicity said to Oliver was that she called him abusive. Said the word, “abusive”. And so did Curtis later. It wasn’t just, “hey, be nicer,” it was telling him in no uncertain terms that his behavior was unacceptable. He wasn’t knocking them down to build them up, he wasn’t forging them in fire to make them stronger; he was trying to scare them out of this life. He was just being cruel. He was afraid that if he went too easy on them, they’d die like Laurel did, even though that logic makes no sense because even Sara Lance got murdered and she also spent time on Lian Yu, plus trained with the League of Assassins. But Felicity and Curtis wouldn’t give him a pass on it and it was amazing.

So eventually, thanks to these pep talks from Felicity, Thea and Curtis, plus a run-in with a radioactive mummy, the Green Arrow takes off his mask and lets down his guard and tells his new recruits that he’s Oliver Queen. Which…I don’t feel like was necessary just yet? I feel like probably there was some middle ground between “don’t be a monster” and “reveal all your secrets”? But whatever, after a moment of shock from Evelyn and Rene (now called Wild Dog because no one consulted Cisco on this one), the team is officially assembled.

That’s all she wrote, until tomorrow. Because toniiiight, toniiiight, Sara is baaack toniiiight!

Look, even Felicity is excited about it.

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The Flash 302: Felicity Felicis

Okay so The Flash hasn’t had any queer women on it (yet?) but it’s part of this CW DC Universe and will eventually be involved in the Legends of Superflarrow crossovers so I thought it was worth it to check in on the badass ladies of the show briefly. Also that way if any of them come out we’re ready for them.

This week’s episode was the second of the season, and basically what’s happening is that Barry keeps mucking up the timeline because he tried to save his mother from being murdered when he was a child and was then SUPER SURPRISED when things didn’t go smoothly. He keeps trying to fix it but he keeps making it worse. So he does what every smart person in a pickle would do if they were able: He goes to Felicity Smoak for help.

Felicity eats her food and listens patiently to his problems before telling him to smarten up and go fix the mess he made.

Barry’s friends are all slightly different than the ones he once knew, and he tries to fix their relationships without telling them what happened, but eventually Iris tells him to smarten up and tell the truth to fix the mess he made.

Heck even Caitlin tries to help him, though she’s slightly gentler about it, smiling sadly at him, knowing he’s doomed.

Because let’s face it, Barry would have ripped apart the fabric of reality by now if it wasn’t for these ladies.

Oh also on top of all his friends being different and slightly more angsty than his original timeline, he has also managed to make an enemy of Draco Malfoy, who is now a crime scene investigator of paranormal goings-on.

After some advice from another speedster, Barry realizes he can’t keep messing with time, so he accepts this new reality as his own. Luckily, by treating his friends the way he remembers them, they’re all starting to become their old selves again, slowly but surely.

Well, except Caitlin. But Barry doesn’t know that yet.

That’s really all you need to know for now. Who knows what this will mean for Barry’s future, or how it will affect the timelines of the other shows in the universe, or how this will get him to National City again, or if Sara Lance and her crew of time travelers can fix what he broke, but I guess we’ll find out before too long.

I’ll leave you with one last screenshot of Iris because LOOK HOW BEAUTIFUL.

See you tomorrow for a wee Arrow update, then Friday for THE RETURN OF SARA ACTUALLY-I-WAS-LIBERATING-HER LANCE.

Supergirl Episode 201: “The Adventures of Supergirl”

Here are the things I was afraid of going into this season: That the network switch would also cause a tone shift, that Kara’s storyline would suddenly be all about Romance, and that too much focus would be put on the recurring role of Superman. Instead, we had the same borderline cheesy, optimistic, goofy, funny show with so much heart! Plus, with Kara deciding not to date James and Superman seeming content playing the role of super sidekick and staying out of the spotlight (despite all the promos), my relief is almost too much to handle.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s get into the episode, which isn’t explicitly queer, but promises have been made and I intend to hold The CW to them.

We pick up where we left off, with Kara and her crew toasting to the love that makes them family, even though they’re from at least three different planets between them. It was a nice way to be like, “In case you forgot, or are new here, this is what our show is about” right off the bat.

And, in true fashion, almost as soon as they clink glasses, something precarious streaks across the sky. Which looks like a job for Supergirl. Her and J’onn follow the streak and find a pod that looks like hers, and inside, they see a stranger.

J’onn takes Supergirl to the new DEO office, since CW let them out of the cave. She’s pretty when she finds out that they could have been in here the whole time, but is soon distracted by the news that the man in the pod is indeed not human. Kara recommends Winn for the job and heads off to get ready for her date with James, a real human boy. She tells Alex all about it and Alex can tell that she’s not particularly excited.

Cat Grant texts Kara, of course, and Kara rushes to her side, even though she’s not her assistant anymore. There were rumors that Cat was getting sidecarred this season, but here she is with a highball glass in her hand, telling Kara to woman-up and find her calling.

Later that night, after using her powers to speed up the getting-ready montage, James arrives at Kara’s door with pizza and potstickers.

But before they can even sit down to eat, they see the news that the Venture, a space shuttle launch scheduled for that night, has caught on fire and is plummeting to Earth. So it’s Supergirl to the rescue! But, since this is A Very Big Deal, a little ways away in Metropolis, a bumbling reporter named Clark Kent sees the news and rips off his clothes to join his cousin in the sky.

I think the moment I let out the breath I’d been holding ever since the Superman casting announcement was when The Man of Steel flew up and hovered near Supergirl until she gave him permission to help. She could have said, “I got this,” (because she single-handedly maneuvered a plane around a bridge to safety before she’d ever even tested her powers), but it was her decision to accept his help and work as a team. And I can so be down for some cousinly teamwork.

Plus, after they save the shuttle, they’re talking to some excited kids, and the first thing Kara does is tell them that she used to change his diapers.

Because it’s her show and she’ll do what she wants to.

Kara brings Clark to the DEO to try to help ID the stranger, but Clark doesn’t recognize him. Winn comes in and tells them that the pod passed through the Well of Stars, which surely will be important later. Winn also found out that the Venture didn’t just randomly start burning up in the sky, but was tampered with. So Clark and Kara go off to investigate, starting with the passenger who mysteriously didn’t show up for the launch: Lena Luthor.

And y’all.

Lena Luthor.

Is.

Katie McGrath.

(For those of you who aren’t familiar, Katie played Lucy Westenra on the short-lived show Dracula, where she pined for Mina Murray and made out with Lady Jayne. She also played the fiendishly sexy Morgana on BBC’s Merlin, where she had, um, real chemistry with the actress who played her sister. She’s got on-screen queer experience, is what I am saying, both purposefully and accidentally.) Anyway, Lena was adopted by the Luthors when she was four, which I feel like is probably only relevant if she’s not human? Lex was very welcoming to her, so she is sad that he’s now a supervillain behind bars. She wants to make a name for herself that has nothing to do with her family, which Kara can relate to. Lena is very cooperative and gives the Kent/Danvers Duo the information they came for.

Not too long after they leave, Winn realizes that the explosion happened suspiciously close to Lena Luthor’s empty seat, so not only was she not behind the explosion, but she was the target of it. The Kryptonian Cousins fly off to save the day, Superman killing drones left and right while Supergirl saves the damsel in distress.

Back at CatCo, Kara tries to reschedule her date with James, but he can tell something’s not right. Taking the advice Cat and Clark gave her to follow her heart, she confesses that even though she thought this was what she wanted, she looked into the grey-green eyes of Lena Luthor and just isn’t sure about anything anymore. Right?

Knowing she’s distressed, Cat offers Kara more advice. She says she knows it can be scary, taking a road that will lead you so far from where you’ve been, but that even though change is scary, it’s important.

Kara goes with Lena to the renaming ceremony, where Lena is planning on changing her company from Luthor Corp to L Corp, so that it’s not associated with violence and evil, but living loving laughing dreaming, etc.

An explosion hits and chaos ensues, Supergirl flying around and saving James and others, Superman eventually joining her to tag-team RESTRUCTURING AN ENTIRE BUILDING to save the day.

Meanwhile, Alex Danvers saves Lena Luthor and then Lena saves Alex back.

Back at L Corp, Lena thanks Clark for writing an article that portrays her as the badass she is, and then asks why Kara isn’t on the byline. Kara insists she’s not a reporter, but Lena says “You could have fooled me,” with a smirk that makes Kara practically gulp.

Oh and also she hopes to see Kara again.

Kara zips back to CatCo to tell Cat that her eyes are open now and she’s ready to take the next step. Kara wants to be a reporter. She wants to seek the truth, she wants to tell people’s stories. Cat isn’t surprised at all, and is almost relieved she came to the conclusion on her own.

Then Cat feeds the SuperCat fan fiction by saying things like, “I can see me in you,” and “You inspire me,” and using her real name instead of calling her Kira. She says, “I can see the hero in you,” and I’m still pretty sure she’s known about Kara’s secret(s) all this time.

And just to further ease any worries, back at the DEO, Kara asks Clark if it bothers him that the National City news is giving Supergirl most of the credit for the recent saves, but Clark doesn’t mind in the slightest. He’s just happy to be hanging out with his little big cousin, and looks forward to learning about Krypton from her.

The tag scene shows the bad guy Lex sent to kill his sister getting injected with some superstuff and an elegantly creepy woman welcoming him to Cadmus and calling him Metello, so I think we’ve officially met this season’s Big Bad.

What did you think of the first episode of the new season of Supergirl? Who do you think they’ll pair Maggie Sawyer up with, if anyone?

See you back here tomorrow for a quick update on… The Flash! (See what I did there?)

UPDATE: Looks like Maggie Sawyer will arrive in episode 203, “Welcome to Earth.” Looks like (please be bisexual) Alex Danvers will have a feeling about it.

UPDATE #2:

And finally, in the 4-show crossover, #Arrow's Diggle will be astounded by Kara (of course), and Sara Lance may have a little crush on Kara.

— KryptonSite (@KryptonSite) October 11, 2016