Legion of Super Heroes: Dark Victory, Pt. 2

And here it is, the last of my Legion of Super-heroes episode reviews.

When we last left Brainiac Five, he was evil and had set a course for Colu. But he's clearly not all bad. En Route to Colu, he swings by Thanagar, where the ridiculous bird people give him a hard time. They're unintentionally ridiculous. Or perhaps intentionally ridiculous. I can't even tell.

"You are violating Thanagarian airspace. State your intentions or face our terrible wrath!"

The Thanagarian leader milks the giant cow and informs Brainy that he has grossly underestimated Thanagarian might, but Brainy fucks them up like the jobbers they are and digitizes the lot of them.

The Legion warns the Coluans about Brainy, but the Coluans brush them off and end the transmission. Lightning Lad sets a course Colu, but he says "But we won't beat him there. Not unless this cruiser can travel faster than...Superman." And then he stops when he realizes what he said.

Cosmic Boy breaks the silence by saying, "We should say our goodbyes now. With what's coming, we might not have another chance."

This is nicely done scene. The Legion grieves in silence, and those who can offer comfort do so. The coffin holding Superman rolls out.

I particularly like it when Blok puts his arm around Shrinking Violet and when we see Duo Damsel comforting herself. Then it is blasted from the Cruiser into a nearby star.

Brainy is intercepted by the Coluans, who seemingly overcome him, imprison him and begin the process of reprogramming him. Spoilers! It doesn't work.

Meanwhile, Superman X is in his quarters. Timber Wolf enters, and informs him that he missed the service. Kell just says, "I can't believe he's gone."

Timber Wolf: Hey, we'll get through this together. We're all taking the loss of Superman hard.
Superman X: Superman? I'm talking about Imperiex!

I thought that was a cool  exchange, and I actually didn't see it coming the first time. X says that his life's purpose has been taken from him and he feels so useless. Instead of confirming that he is useless, Timber Wolf gives him a tough love pep talk and tells him that Brainy's still on the loose and they'd better stop him. X says it's useless, that he's seen the future and Brainy wins. He then smacks Brin around a bit (yay!) and stomps off. Before he can leave the room, however, he feels Superman's awareness and realizes that he's still alive.

Meanwhile, Brainy is in his Hannibal Lecter restraints.

"Hello, Clarice."

The Head Coluan Lady says that he's resisting programming and that if he doesn't open himself up, they'll just delete him. Now, I personally, am not a twelfth level intelligence, but that seems like the smart way to go about it. Don't dick around with him, just overwrite him with zeroes and ones. Maybe there was something about him that they wished to preserve, so that was a last resort, but it seems like this dialogue was written by a person who didn't really know anything about computers.

Anyways, rather than reprogramming him, he reprograms them! Oh! Shocker!

Meanwhile, X dives into the sun and pulls Superman out. Then the Legion gives Superman a blood transfusion, so that he'll inherit X's immunity to Kryptonite, which is really a useful enough precaution that they should have done it proactively.

Brainy and his army of Coluans show up and try to digitize the ship, only to fail. Cosmic Boy tells him that Computo showed them how to prevent digitization.

There's a big fight. Brainy merges the assembled Coluans into the body for a super-sized robot and makes skullship into the head.

"And I'll form...the head!"

If that's not enough, he figures out how to bypass the anti-digitization devices they're wearing and starts picking them off one by one.

Superman asks Saturn Girl to project him into Brainy's mind. X tags along too and once there, they see that the original Brainiac is in charge and that Brainiac 5 has gone to pieces.

No disassemble! Number Five is alive!

Inside Brainy's mind, Brainiac is kicking the Legion's ass. Outside, he's also kicking their ass.

No, not Tyroc!

Superman and Superman X are overcome by Brainiac, so Saturn Girl combines them into one body. Here's a picture, because he looks kind of neat.

Sun boy tears up Brainy, but then Brainiac takes control of Lightning Lad's robot arm, saying, "I created that cannon." No you didn't. You installed it. When Lightning Lad wakes up in the Shrinking Violet even rattles off some ad copy for it. ("It's the cybernetic 4000. With models coming in both left and right, it fires explosive charges, lasers, and of course, lightning. All powered and amplified by your own bio-electric energy..") I put a new video card in my computer last week, but I'm not telling people that I fucking created it, jackass.

Inside Brainy's mind, the Superman and Brainiac 1 yell cliches at each other until Brainiac kicks his ass for the final time. But Brainiac 5 has reassembled himself and strikes down his ancestor. This hits the reset button over in the real world, and, inexplicably, turns Brainy into a biological organism. Even by the standards of this episode, that just makes no sense, and came completely out of nowhere.

Brainiac 5: His love is real. But he is not.

We end with a pep talk and Brainy leaving the Legion. Superman X opens a gateway back to the future, and the white Triplicate Girl returns from his time portal.

Superman X is sworn in as a for real Legionnaire, and the last scene is Brainiac reforming himself out of the wreckage, proclaiming to no one in particular, "Evil does not die. It evolves."

And thus ends the series. The first season was great, the second had its moments, but was ultimately disappointing, but I do like that they were moving towards a more serial method of storytelling and would have liked to see things explored further in a third season. The first season two parter worked as individual episodes, but this not as much. The Legion Abstract said it best "It's also an odd way to end a series. I'm sure that when the writers mapped out the season they didn't know it would be the last, so what can you do, but I'd like the Legion's final villain to be someone other than my favourite superhero." My thoughts exactly.