Review: Vixen S2: Episode 6

Well, water didn’t work, so you know what might? WATER!

Spoilers Below

We reach the end of Mari McCabe’s journey for the year. It’s been short, rushed, and not very thought out at points, but let’s see if we can go out with a bang.

In the finale, frightened civilians run through the burning streets of with no hope for survival. Or, as it’s known in Detroit, Thursday. Macalester rushes against them clutching his book. Now all he needs is a piece of toast in his mouth and he’s ready for Anime School. Soon enough, he runs into Mari and Eshu in the middle of their fight. Eshu leads her to an alley and tries to psych her out by telling her she can’t beat him, that she’s not worthy…which would have an actual impact on the story if that doubt was ever there. And it really makes me annoyed for Eshu’s character, since he sells himself well as a physical threat. His design is very imposing and he has a background in fighting and warfare…but he never gets a chance to demonstrate the mind a general should have or be anything more than a throwaway bad guy. If Vixen were a half an hour show, he’d be a monster of the week. It makes Mari’s “inspirational speech” about not needing hope or faith or magic to beat him ring pretty hollow when she hasn’t really developed at all. I’ll get into it more in the overall review next week, but it seems pretty anticlimactic.

Their fight goes airborne for a moment as Macalester pursues them, eventually making it to the harbor and crashing onto a dock, where it’s revealed that Eshu’s heat and be quenched…by WATER!

…I’m sorry?

Didn’t we JUST try that by having Kuasa user her WATER totem to make WATER out of thin air in order to DROWN Eshu, which was then evaporated, leading to him burning her alive despite her blocking him with WATER? What in the Sahara Desert makes DOCK water more effective than MAGIC water? If anything, the one that is boosted by MAGIC should be work exponentially better than the kind that’s coming out of a sewage pipe!

And the thing is there are multiple ways to explain this and have it make sense. Maybe it’s that Kuasa was too headstrong and got tripped up by Eshu’s military experience. Maybe Eshu decided to set everything around them on fire so that she couldn’t gather enough moisture to make use of her power. Maybe Kuasa had to put some of her soul or something into the water in order to make it work right. ANY of those, amongst others, would have been an acceptable explanation instead of “Hmmm, we’ve miraculously figured out that water works well to get rid of fire!” when you JUST TRIED THAT AND IT DIDN’T WORK.

But yeah, Mari pushes him into the bay, using her animal powers to breathe while she takes his totem and resurfaces. Macalester is there on the dock waiting for her and the totem, to which she responds that HE should giving HER jewelry. And I pray to god this is not the beginnings of them hooking up because I am not entirely unconvinced that he isn’t an android. Eshu takes one last grab for her, but is shaken off Mari smacking him unconscious with a spirit gator tail slap. Then she just…leaves him to drown. Our…hero?

Back on land, Macalester tells her what I already summarized last time: That, in order to break the totem’s connection to its user, you need to…break it. Though apparently spider poison and fire work just as well. And it turns out it needs to be broken by someone with great “agbara” (apologize if I’m spelling that wrong), which you can gauge by the context of the sentence means strength. So, Mari builds up all her animal spirits at once in order to lay down a thunderous impact to finally destroy the Fire totem once and for all. And then Macalester drops the fact that that word means strength like it’s some sort of twist or meaningful compliment for Mari and I need my vomit bucket.

We return to the museum for the wrap up as the exhibit goes off well enough showing the fragments of the totem (which makes Mari acting like smashing it would actually affect the success of the exhibit in any way kind of confusing), and Mari gets to make emotionless eye contact with Laurel and Ray before getting a text from Cisco. They all meet up with Oliver and Barry, with Oliver stating he was unsure if she was going to come…even though Mari got to Monument Point in the first episode without any hesitation, so screw you, Oliver. But yeah, Mari says that no matter where it is, it’s her calling to help people in need. And as cars are pushed across the street by an unknown threat, Oliver asks if she’s ready to prove that. She says to call her Vixen (even though I’m pretty sure next to no one actually called her that this season) and the team flies into battle. The end.

Like I said, plenty to go over in the review covering the entire season, but here are the major points about this episode. Multiple points feel like they are the payoff to a number of character arcs and a plot set up that was never actually set up. Mari didn’t seem to have any hang-ups about being a hero, yet she apparently has a reputation of being flakey with her super peers and sticking to Detroit. There seems to be some mystery relating to her mother, Eshu, Kuasa, and her former village, but nothing about the fight with Eshu reveals anything like that. The totem powers seem to be mysterious and have certain rules and parameters, but they are broken and used pretty easily. Lotta focus, not a lot of actual content. But what does this say about the season overall, and what should this show try going forward, assuming they gets a chance? Find out next week as I look back on this past season.