After a side trip for a backdoor pilot for a potential spin-off series, Black Lightning continues with what is unfortunately the final season. Tobias Whale is pulling out all the stops in his bid for power in Freeland and his war against Jefferson Pierce.
Well into season two, Batwoman is starting to more actively clash with the False Face society and their leader, Black Mask. With the chaos of Safiyah out of the way for now, as far as we can tell anyway, Team Bat can focus on troubles closer to hand.
Supergirl’s sixth and final season is off to an odd start. The Girl of Steel herself has been exiled to the Phantom Zone, so she’s away from all her friends and allies, which is an odd choice for the show winding down.
Life probably hasn’t been normal for Barry since he was a kid, and less so since he got his powers. Lately, it’s been even stranger, as the team clashed with Mirror Monarch and dealt with the aftermath.
episode seven of the season was a “back door pilot” for the potential series, which they called “Painkiller.” It has a good bit of potential.
“The World Is Watching” was the perfect title for last episode, as John Walker crossed the line, killing one of the Flag-Smashers in a spectacularly brutal way, and using Cap’s shield to do it. Now, the ramifications roil through the world of the major characters as everyone tries to figure out what to do next.
Batwoman’s second, and very impressive, season is achieving a lot of complicated and difficult things at once. They’ve replaced their lead character, reoriented the main villain, and shaken things up for a few of the supporting characters. The show is also tackling social justice issues, and doing it in a good and engaging way.
Last episode of Supergirl was another hybrid sort of thing, being officially the premier of the sixth and final season, but also sort of the finale of season five, all smushed together due to COVID complications. Now, we’re dealing with the new issues introduced last time, as various subplots and status quos are set up for the coming episodes.
After a somewhat rough start, trying to recover from the COVID complications in producing a show, Flash is settling in to their 7th season. It’s a bit odd not having a Wells around, although it’s been hinted that will change at some point.
Things get even uglier on “The Boys,” which is quite an achievement. You keep thinking they’ve hit the bottom on how bad things can go, and then find out you’re wrong. There are grim events, interesting flashbacks, and some cracks in the ranks on “Female of the Species.”
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier has done a great job of exploring the post-Blip world. The complications were largely glossed over in Spider-Man: Far From Home, and WandaVision has a somewhat tighter focus. In a world that’s been through so much, and lost two high-profile heroes like Iron Man and Captain America, it makes sense there’s a lot of upheaval going on.
The Arrowverse is still trying to sort out the various effects of the COVID pandemic on their production schedules. With delays slowing down Superman and Lois, Supergirl returns to take their time slot for that show’s final season. Last season ended on a different cliffhanger than was intended, as the season lost three episodes out of their original schedule.
Now team Flash has to figure out what happened and how to find, let alone beat, this new threat. But that’s only the start of their troubles in “Fear Me.”
One of things I enjoy so much about the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the way they circle back to tie up loose ends you might not even have thought of. All the Easter Eggs are great, too, but I really like how they devote some thought to “What have we not cleared up so far?”
The Boys is a brutal, ugly, and arguably sick and twisted series about superhumans as celebrities. It’s also remarkably well written, with a lot of detail and some great interlocking plots.
