Review: Vixen Season 2: Episode 1

Does CW Seed’s flagship animated series kick things off with a bang?

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Released during the break between Arrow’s third and fourth seasons, and Flash’s first and second, Vixen was made with the intent to introduce more mystical elements to the Arrowverse, as well as create more opportunities for superhero protagonists who are both women and people of color, AND tap into the part of DC’s fanbase that loves their animation. The long and short of the character herself is Mari McCabe, who is able to use the abilities of animals thanks to a magic necklace she wears. Being a web series, the episodes are pretty brief (5-6 minutes each), with only half a dozen given per season. With only so much time to cover, the first season more or less was an origin story for Mari; discovering her powers, chasing her mysterious past, and ultimately learning to be the hero that these stories tend to typecast you as…ER I MEAN the hero she was always meant to be. In a regular animated series, I could see this season being padded out slightly to cover what would be a normal two-part pilot that animated comic shows usually get. That season also wasted no time in bringing in Arrowverse regulars such as Arrow and Flash into the animated world, along with their actors. However, this led to mixed results, as it live acting and voice acting are rather different creatures, and it became clear that the actors lent for this were more reading their lines as normal, not helped by their respective characters lacking in the way of expression. Meanwhile, the cast exclusive to Vixen knew how to make their roles more…well, animated. Overall, Season 1 was a serviceable story for what we got, and even led to the actress making a live action appearance in Arrow’s fourth season. A predecessor of her powers will also show up in Legends of Tomorrow as part of the main cast. Airing alongside these shows, Season 2 of Vixen continues the six minute-six episodes format, while expanding on Mari’s story and powers and bringing in more cameos across the other shows.

We begin…in the middle, with a context-less fight scene that looks cool before cutting to the actual beginning. It’s something that is the equivalent of the writers jumping in front of the camera to plead with us to stay for the whole show. They did this last year too when they kicked the show off, having Mari running from Arrow and Flash to assure us that this was connected to those shows (ignoring the fact that a spin-off should be able to stand on its own without this neon bright connections to other shows). This could be accomplished far more effectively by simply having an intriguing prologue to set the plot in motion, but maybe they’ll learn their lesson if they get a third season.

So, we ACTUALLY begin by jumping back two weeks to a presentation by Professor Macalester, who was described behind the scenes as someone who “may or may not be a love interest” to Mari. This is an interesting bit of info, considering his only interactions with her in the first season were informing her about her necklace/Tantu totem’s abilities, and then selling her out to her evil sister in order to fund his own research. True love interest material if ever I’ve seen one. His presentation is actually about similar totems that come from Zambesi, the same African village Mari was born. These totems, along with Mari’s, allowed the villagers to control five elements in order to prosper: air, earth, water, fire, and spirit (Mari’s). That’s right, there was so little to take from established Vixen stories in the comics that they had to take from Captain Planet and Avatar. And even worse, this makes Mari into the Ma-ti of the group…although getting animal powers is admittedly a step up from just being able to talk to them.

Mari confronts Macalester after the crowd leaves, apparently only waiting this long because he went to Africa right after she got back from being kidnapped to there. The professor tries to apologize and explain that, aside from Mari’s Spirit totem and the Fire totem he found, the other totems are out there and it’s Mari’s business to help find them and learn more about their power. Of course, being a priceless jewel in a superhero universe, that Fire totem is just begging to be taken by a super villain. Just you wait…

After declining (and I guess letting that whole “letting me be kidnapped” thing go), Mari gets a call from Cisco Ramon, the resident tech guy and villain-named with the Flash crew. Weather Wizard, who can control weather but is unfortunately not an actual wizard, is forming tornadoes and a tsunami on the coast. She joins up with Flash and Firestorm, another hero from Flash’s show. He, or rather the two guys who make up Firestorm (long story), are regulars on Legends of Tomorrow, and Weather Wizard is arrested and imprisoned before that series starts, so the fact that neither of these things seem to have happened likely means that this season of Vixen takes place between the 7^th episode of Arrow and the 8^th episode of Flash, as well as before the Legends series began around the time of the other two shows’ 10^th episodes of that season. The fight goes well enough until Mari is nailed by a lightning bolt and plummets into the water. Holy shit! Was this just an elaborate fake out where the supposed hero of the story dies suddenly at the end of the first episode?!

…probably not, but let’s keep watching anyway! Because the first improvement I can say this episode has over the previous season is a slight, but distinct upgrade to the animation. At least for the first half, because the fight scene just kinda falls back into the same sloppiness. But it’s likely a small budget, so I guess it’s to be expected. I am glad we can go beyond the origin story, but the introduction of these four other totems is eyebrow raising. We only have six episodes, and just used one to introduce the concept. We do see someone using the Fire totem in the opening scene, so we know that will come into play later, but I can’t imagine they’ll dump the other three on us this soon. But then it’s a matter of how long they PLAN to make this show versus how long it CAN keep going, which I’m afraid won’t be long enough to give each of these things its own season. And yet, the appeal of a short series like this is that it’s very digestible and doesn’t require a huge commitment, so I’ll keep watching for the following five weeks.