Yeah the twist was a total shock - and really very well done as a cheeky middle-finger to naysayers
as per
The blood shaping into the joker grimace, the “but I was meant to be …” - brilliant! I do wonder if he’ll be resurrected by some weird chemicals or something. Even though it would be retracting some of the awesomeness of this twist, I’d be ok with that if they do it as a surprise later in the season, as he does make a great Joker. If he’s up and at 'em next week, I will be disappoint.
This new captain, Barnes, walked onscreen and started in on his speech, and within 30 seconds I thought “this guy won’t last through the end of this season.” Probably the strike team members, too. Thought they did a good job with the character in this episode, though.
The inclusion of the Order of Dumas caught me completely by surprise, which is a good thing. Armando is right, it’s pretty much confirmed that we’ll see some form of Azrael(s) shortly. Enjoying the Firefly subplot, too. Hope they stick with what they have, though; if they make her fly around, that would be a bridge too far.
I still think the Firefly bit is good in concept, but the execution in this week’s episode just didn’t do a lot for me. The general idea of “abused girl goes nuts with power and goes on revenge spree” is fine, but most of the scenes just didn’t feel convincing to me. It looked like they were more worried about setting up flamethrower shots than making her a believable character. Nice effects budget, though. Wish Flash had that.
I was hoping Nigma would tell Kringle what he did, and she’d be all “sweet, let’s dress up all in green spandex and live a life of crime!” Ah well.
It has to be said that the flamethrower shots were pretty awesome though, the actress (or double) put everything into it, with that action pose and those jerky, insect-like head movements. A class performance that reminded me of Faora in MoS.
I wonder if the show’s veering off tone again though - the first couple of episodes the tone had a perfect balance between horrible stuff happening and it being camp, whereas the Firefly stuff was a bit too close to the bone in some ways, just sheerly unpleasant rather than fodder for camp black humour.
It’s a razor-edged balance to strike, but it’s good that they’re trying.
Got caught up on the last two weeks. I can’t say I’m feeling any real interest in where they’re going, except maybe some mild curiosity about what the Order of Dumas people will be trying to pull off. All the stuff about Gordon’s dark side and the Riddler-Penguin bromance and Bruce rebelling against Alfred…I dunno, maybe I’m just saturated after weeks of horrible thing after horrible thing. The gang wars from the first season held my interest a whole lot better.
I am enjoying the Riddler/Penguin thing. That moment when the Riddler bucks up the Penguin is class - I mean, normally, the Riddler is sort of an also-ran in relation to the bigger characters in the Batman mythos, but here we see the Riddler kind of dominant, with his own inner strength, which makes a change.
