Review: Vixen Episode 3

A Song of Water and Fire

Spoilers Below

So, it seems there was some news in the comic world I neglected to mention last time. In addition to her exposure on her own show, Legends of Tomorrow, and other live action DC properties, it seems Vixen’s been picked to join the upcoming Justice League of America title alongside other comic versions of Arrowverse characters like Black Canary, Atom, and Killer Frost. Quite a big step up from only being known as John Stewart’s rebound from Hawkgirl on Justice League Unlimited so many years ago.

But back to the show! We begin with…pretty much the exact same opening as the first episode, except now this is in real time. Eshu tells Mari she looks just like her mother, which confuses her. They fight, with Eshu throwing fire blasts around and Mari using a petting zoo’s worth of animals to get away. She tries taking him head on, but can’t take the heat, and so decides to get out of the kitchen.

…that was bad and I should feel bad.

She regroups and meets with Macalester, who suggests meeting with someone who knows something about the magic, which means it’s back to Africa to meet with a bed-ridden Kuasa. I didn’t mention the specifics in my summary of Season 1, but Kuasa’s plans as the Big Bad of the story was to take back the totem from Mari by using a certain type of poisonous spider in order to sever Mari’s connection to the magic and steal totem for her own use. She managed to pull it off, but Mari was able to get away long enough to run into a Deus Ex Machina which purged the poison and let her retain the animal powers in order to reclaim it from Kuasa, then use the same spider to poison her as well, but with no instant healing because she’s the bad guy. When we see her now, she’s incredibly weak, but still burning with rage over being so rudely stopped from killing her own sister and getting superpowers. See, Mari was the REAL villain the whole time! It’s all here in my Reddit thinkpiece next to how the Empire from Star Wars was actually good and that Luke and the Rebellion are actually symbolic of Chinese Communism!

Mari asks about Eshu and how he knew their mother, so Kuasa explains in flashback, as all explanations should be done. See, also revealed back in Season 1 was the fact that Zambesi was destroyed by raiders, who wiped out the villagers, including her and Mari’s father, and are about half of why Kuasa became so evil. At the time, the holder of the Spirit totem was their mother, who ran into Eshu, the general of the raiders, while holding baby Mari. As it turns out, the raid was for that totem, which means he’s been looking for them for a long time. The mother (who has no name, according to the credits) managed to beat Eshu back with her totem’s powers, but became injured. With more men on the way, she decided to run off with Mari, leaving Kuasa behind. And there’s the other half of an evil origin story. But now, with the man responsible for the death of her father, her village, and the reason her mother left her behind actively hunting her sister and the other totems, Kuasa has a new reason to fight. Mari asks if there’s a way similar to the spider thing they could use to hurt Eshu, but it seems a lot of that got lost in the raid. However, if you’ve ever seen Pokemon or a typical camp fire, you can probably guess which of the other three should do more damage: the Water totem, and they’ll need to bring Kuasa, the old baddie, along to beat the new one. You could say it’ll be…super effective.

…alright, I’ll stop.

So, aside from virtually repeating the same scene from the first episode, this moves the plot forward nicely. The main surprise was the reintroduction of Kuasa, who I was certain would be left by the wayside after last season. Not only that, but there seems to be some hinting that she’ll be the one to pick up the Water totem and join Mari in the fight against Eshu, which plays on a favorite trope of mine in bringing back the old bad guy to fight the new one. It also develops her character in that the foe Mari only has so much connection to is actually more linked to Kuasa’s past and growth, as well the indirect killer of her father. An Inigo Montoya style confrontation is sure to be imminent. I mean, it’s either that or give it to Macalester and he’s…just…SO boring. He’s nothing but a walking exposition dumper, and I’m gonna be pretty annoyed if they follow through on him being Mari’s love interest.

There’s also the development of the totem storyline, and how it seems it will play out: introduce five totems exist, the new bad guy has one, go get the one he’s weak to in order to beat him. Develops two totems at once, and leaves a potential third season open to introducing the other two at once…assuming we get that far. But at least it seems to be using the existing pieces from Season 1 effectively enough, and that’s as much as we can ask for right now.