Review: Vixen S2 Episode 5

Burn, baby, burn! Vixen Inferno!

Spoilers Below

Eshu stands atop a burning building and talks into a cell phone to claim responsibility for the wildfires consuming the city while also saying he is no longer a representative of the Zambesi government. This instantly raises some questions. For one, how is he getting his cell phone footage to show on so many screens? Second, as far as we’ve been told, Zambesi seemed to just be a tiny village that Eshu wiped out as a general, so what government could they possibly have? Third, how did he become a representative of it in the first place (assuming it wasn’t a cover), and why is he now distancing himself from them? And lastly, what is his plan here? Just burn things until Mari comes out? How does he know she’ll come back to save people? Heck, how did he even know she was the mother of the woman he killed?

Anyway, he says that Mari is the only person who can come out to stop him from burning everything down, because he wants her totem and will probably just piss off once he has it. By the time he’s done, Mari and her team of hastily gathered supporting characters (basically Legends of Tomorrow cut in half with no time travel) have arrived to save the day. Mari then gets a call from Macalester, who is here to do basically his only job, which is dumping exposition. This time, it’s to say he found a “song” which tells that the weakness to each of the totems is by crushing their center, or soul. Essentially, break the thingie and it will no longer work. Thanks, Encyclopedia Brown.

And luckily, they don’t have to waste time developing character while looking for Eshu, because he somehow sees them from high up on that building and lands in flaming fashion to begin the fight. I mean, I know we’re short on time, but it shouldn’t be so obvious things are being rushed along. He then says he wanted to handle this as human beings…which makes as much sense as Kuasa’s mad ramblings the past couple of weeks, which is to say none at all. But the fighting begins in earnest, with Mari, Canary, and Atom immediately taking the offensive. Since it’s her show, Mari naturally gets in the first few moves, but there is just enough time with Laurel and Ray to justify them being here, even if they get taken down in no time flat and their actors must have been pretty bored with how little they contributed vocally.

Then we get our own main event with Kuasa finally jumping in (not sure what was taking her so long) to face the man who killed her father and village. The two sisters double team Eshu, with Kuasa throwing out ranged water attacks and Mari laying down hit after hit up close. Kuasa then tries enveloping herself and Eshu in a large body of water (maybe to drown them both at once and sort it out later?) but he somehow gets out of it with even more fire. I guess we’re not playing by Pokemon rules. This leads to a final struggle of the elements, between two people who only got their powers maybe a few hours apart from each other, and one of them having what is established to have the clear advantage in power type…and yet, after a couple seconds, Eshu obliterates her in a wave of inferno. Dayum. I guess burning the shit into thin air works just as well as “crushing the soul”.

But yeah, that’s the penultimate episode. They brought back the villain from last season, introduced a new power for her and gave her a redemption arc, only to kill her off and destroy that power in the very next episode. I know we’re on the clock, but you could at least keep the totem of all things. The fighting between multiple elements was flashy and tense, but Eshu’s victories seem less earned and more because they need to raise the tension before it’s entirely deflated in the next episode. And as said, it’s nice to have some Arrowverse connections around, but they seem to basically fill time and take up space, which is a tad disappointing. Next week is the finale, which hopefully won’t be as Deus Ex Machina as last time, or at the very least will keep the Fire totem around for future use. See you then!