Guest stars galore join another spooky Stargirl
Some familiar faces come back to haunt Pat, Barbara, and Mike
TV Reviews Stargirl
For the third week in a row, Stargirl delivers an episode that toes the line between successfully suspenseful and just a touch too sleepy. After Yolanda, Rick, and Beth had their own experiences with Eclipso’s nightmare visions, it’s the Whitmore-Dugan family’s turn to get haunted this week. While Pat goes full “out damned spot!” in the basement, Mike and Barbara are threatened by two generations of pissed off Mahkents. But while the visions provide the episode with its requisite horror-tinged action, the biggest fireworks actually come from flashbacks to Pat’s past. After a season of teases about just what the original JSA had to do in order to stop Eclipso the first time around, we finally get the answer: To imprison Eclipso back in his diamond, you have to kill his current human host.
It’s a reveal that’s not quite as shocking as the episode thinks it is—especially since we already full-on saw Yolanda kill Brainwave last season. I suppose there’s a distinction between killing someone in the heat of battle and going to their home specifically to murder them, which is what Sylvester Pemberton winds up doing to a possessed Bruce Gordon. But the weight of the JSA’s moral compromise never fully lands. For one thing, I’m not sure the show has ever particularly established “no killing” as one of the central tenets of the original JSA, so it feels like a bit of an overly convenient moral roadblock here. And for another, having the murder takes place offscreen means the episode loses the ability to emphasize the cold, clinical horror of what young Pat becomes complicit in when he drives Sylvester to Bruce’s house.
And yet while the reveal itself is fairly pedestrian, the episode still manages to do some interesting things with it. I love that Stargirl retroactively justifies why the ISA so easily beat the JSA back in the big 2010 Christmas Eve battle that kickstarted the series. It turns out the team slowly drifted apart after Bruce’s death, when the weight of what they had done started to change the group’s dynamics. Though they came together again years later to fight the ISA, they weren’t the same JSA they’d been. Their spirit was broken, which, more than anything, is what allowed the ISA to defeat them so handily. It’s a savvy retcon that helps justify why the JSA 2.0 were able to succeed where their better-trained predecessors failed. For a show that’s always tied its heroes’ abilities to their inner confidence, a broken spirit really is the biggest threat of all.
And that connects to the other smart storytelling choice Stargirl makes with the JSA murder reveal: It gives Courtney the chance to be justifiably pissed at Pat. While Courtney has spent the season deeply committed to her family’s “no secrets” pledge, it turns out her stepdad was withholding a huge piece of information from her the entire time. Brec Bassinger perfectly conveys the pain and anger that Courtney feels when she finally learns the full truth about Eclispo—especially considering that information could’ve helped her team make more informed choices in their own battle against the demonic spirit. But the other shoe really drops when Courtney tries to bring Barbara into the equation: “What’s my mom going to say?” Courtney fires at Pat. “She knows,” he replies.
It’s a gut-punch, and Bassinger makes you feel every inch of it. Courtney’s always felt an “us against the world” partnership with her mom and a deep superhero bond with Pat. So to learn that her parents conspired behind her back with their own secret is a massive blow, both as a superhero and as a daughter. And it tests the bonds of this still relatively new blended family. Though Eclipso fails to create any physical damage the way he did with Rick and his uncle last week, it’s clear why he appears in smug, smiling little boy form at the end of the episode. Eclipso is playing a long game here, and he seems to be winning. Especially now that Courtney herself just might be in the mindset to be manipulated by fear and self-doubt.
While there’s nothing else as revelatory in the rest of the episode, it does at least offer some fun, high-profile cameos. It’s a blast to see Neil Jackson make a surprise return as Icicle in Barbara’s fear vision, where he’s just as creepy as ever. Elsewhere, frequent Flash cast member John Wesley Shipp pops up as this Earth’s version of Jay Garrick’s Flash, who, along with Pat, serves as the moral backbone of the JSA. (“We’re talking about victimizing a victim here” Jay reminds Sylvester.) And in addition to some extended screentime for the original Wildcat and Hourman, Joel McHale also gets his most substantial role on the series to date, which he handles with aplomb and some impressive dramatic weight. But the episodic performance that actually impressed me the most was Hunter Sansone’s genuinely unsettling turn as Evil Cameron in Mike’s nightmare. While I wasn’t rooting for Cameron to go bad before, this episode suggests it could be a lot of fun to watch him do it.
Still, with three episodes of character-centric horror under its belt, I’m ready for Stargirl to pick up the pace heading into the season’s final run of episodes. Part of the reason the stakes of the Bruce Gordon reveal don’t fully land is because I’m not sure who Eclipso’s current host actually is (or if he even has one now that he’s been freed). Unless Mike somehow took on the role when he briefly picked up those diamond shards back in “Chapter Seven,” I’m assuming the position still belongs to Cindy—although she’s currently presumed dead in the show’s universe. Along with the many dangling threads the show has introduced this season (shoutout to Jennie and Jakem!), that’s a big piece of the puzzle that still needs to snap into place in the final four episodes of the season.
Stray observations
- Umm, so can we talk about the timeline here a bit? Though the season-opening prologue of Rebecca McNider’s death was definitely coded as taking place in the 1950s, apparently she died sometime when Pat was an adult and the JSA was fully formed. Since we know Charles McNider was canonically born in 1914, is he just supposed to have been a super old dad?
- Part of Stargirl’s pitch has always been about a younger, more diverse group of heroes replacing the old white men of the past, but it wasn’t until the funeral scene that I fully realized just how homogenous the original JSA really were.
- Rex Tyler’s Hourman name drops Green Lantern, Spectre, Doctor Fate, and “the Hawks” as other JSA members who tried and failed to defeat Eclipso.
- Sylvester specifically mentions that Eclipso threatened his family, which makes me very curious about who that entails. Is he just talking about his parents or does he have a spouse and kids out there somewhere?
- “Pat, I love you. But when have we ever been prepared enough to make you happy?”
67 Comments
I thought this was excellent. I think the character studies have been really effective, even if they’ve been slow. I really appreciated the timeline clarification that this was before the Christmas Day Massacre we saw last season, and that it explained why that happened. The timeline is always going to be a bit murky—it’s simultaneously 2021 with cars from the 1950s, after all, but there seems to be some internal consistency. I appreciated that Jay Garrick voted against the murder, as I’m so familiar with him from The Flash and that kept up that portrayal. Shade also seems consistent, which I appreciate as well–still against Eclipso, but willing to fight the JSA in other circumstances. Really looking forward to where we go from here.
I was genuinely shocked last week when someone, don’t remember who, got into a contemporary car. I’d forgotten they had those in Blue Valley.
I think Barbara drives a modern car, which is particularly odd given Pat’s love of old cars.
She does, but that was in this episode and I hadn’t seen it for a while. It was probably Rick’s teacher I was thinking of from last week.
– Until they showed Bruce Gordon, I thought that the opening would be about the Shade.
– “They’re sending us home.” Who’s ‘they’? Isn’t Barbara one of the bosses, if not THE boss?
– So Charles McNider does seem to be blind.
– I like how Jay is treating Pat. Sylvester, on the other hand, is a real jerk.
– Courtney is still trying to reach Yolanda.
– Strange. The way that Sylvester is treating Pat is way different to how he treated him at the funeral.
– Is Sylvester supposed to be older than Pat now?
– Why was the Cosmic Staff in a display case? (And it almost looked to me like that was a different staff. Similar, but different.)
– I didn’t catch what the Shade said to Barbara at the end. Something about someone named Everly or Beverly?
– I’m glad that they actually had a discussion like that. I like when killing a bad guy isn’t a black or white thing, but a moral struggle for the heroes…
– But it does strike me strange that these heroes that either fought in WWII, or grew up after WWI, can’t see that sometimes it comes down to killing.
– And the show explains why the ISA beat the JSA.
– Courtney won the battles, but lost the war.
– Does Eclipso have a human host now?
Theory: At the end of the season Eclipso is going to try to kill Yolanda, like he did in the comics. When he does this, Courtney will kill him with the staff.
Per my closed captioning, The Shade said he needed “Emily”. I don’t believe that’s a character we’ve seen before?
I was a little concerned that the Shade appearing to Barbara was part of Eclipso’s trick, and was very relieved when he turned out to be himself. I don’t know that Barbara necessarily needs to have another villain be sweet on her, but I do like that he’s willing to help her out when she’s isolated from the rest of her team.
Barbara is 100% a villain magnet. Don’t know why, but I’m fine with it.I know it’s established McNider was blind, but the goggle has such a huge visual display element that it makes no sense to me. Why would a blind person put text in the display?
To be fair, she’s a hero magnet too. I think of Pat as a full fledged superhero ever since that first robot rescue.My guess is that the goggles send the visuals directly into your mind. I base this on the very weak evidence that I don’t think Eclipso creates visual images in front of your eyes. It seems more likely to me that Eclipso creates the hallucinations directly inside your brain. If that were true, and I agree that it might not be, then the only way the goggles would be able to show you the real world behind the hallucination, would be if they too sent the image directly to your brain.
I believe the Shade told Barbara, “I need Emily” (presumably his female relative that she reminds him of?)
I’m not sure how knowing the big secret would have helped the new JSA fight Eclipso. As mentioned in the review, it’s not obvious Eclipso has a human host at all right now, so what would they have done differently? And while it’s not exactly the same, didn’t Courtney and Yolanda keep a very similar secret from the rest of the team? If anything if Pat had spilled the beans right away like he should have then it would have made Yolanda feel even more guilty.
And more like she was the only one who could/would make the hard call to kill Eclipso. I wonder if that’s why he took her out first.
Yeah, I did not care for this episiode and even this was off. I do not see how this “revelation” really does anyone any good as Eclipso does not have a host that we know of..so why is Courtney so mad and how would it have changed anything? I did not get that
I am also confused by this business about Eclipso’s host. He briefly possessed Cindy to be able to kill her step-mother (and that was clearly against her will), but I thought the big denoument of the hallway battle was that Cosmo shattered the diamond, thus freeing Eclipso in his naturally demonic form? He ate Isaac and ate/banished Cindy, so unless Artemis didn’t run *quite* fast enough, I don’t know who was left for him to possess.However, maybe that’s also the key to the new JSA defeating him? If he’s not in a host, then they just have to kill Eclipso himself? I thought this episode was a little slow, but still effectively creepy. I am extremely grateful that whatever Mike thought happened to Buddy was never shown on screen. I also was genuinely surprised when the Whitmore-Dugan’s were all arguing in the kitchen and the camera pulled back and showed creepy little boy Eclipso still out there. I was hoping that, in facing their fears, they’d beaten him back at least a little while.
If Cindy is the host maybe Eclipso sent her into the Shadow-world so that the JSA couldn’t kill her there & re-imprison him
The shadow world that Shade sent Mid-Nite to? That makes sense as a way through against this guy. But we’ve seen no sign that Mid-Nite even knows the way out.
I’m thinking Shade finds Dr Mid-Nite (perhaps w Beth’s help?) and together they make it out. Perhaps w Cindy too?
Man, fuck hallucination Cameron. Killing Buddy? For shame!And yeah I’m guessing Eclipso wants Courtney’s friends and family out of the way before he goes after her. Make her easier to take down since she has the means to hurt him.
and the staff’s energy is also linked to her somehow. If she feels alone and isolated, she might not be able to give the staff as much energy.
The original Ted Grant Wildcat was kind of a jerk. Sylvester and Rex also voted to kill Bruce Gordon but at least they both seemed to feel bad about it. They were all assholes to Pat though, except Jay Garrick. Maybe that sense of douchey entitlement and arrogance was the root of their defeat by the ISA, who at least thought they were trying to do something good. Well some of them. Maybe
Rex didn’t seem that mean to Pat about it, but they barely interacted.
It seems so strange that someone can dedicate his entire life to helping and protecting those who are weaker than him, putting his life on the line every day, all the sacrifices, and yet have it in his heart to be so mean to a genuinely good friend, just because he doesn’t have powers.
– McNider was born in 1914? Was that established in the show itself, or is that the comics version? I’m pretty sure he was in the final battle during Episode 1’s prologue, and that was around 2010 in-universe. The beginning of this episode DID say “decades ago,” but that could just mean mid-80’s at this point.- I figured it was just an Eclipso illusion, but part of me also wondered if Cameron was real when he first appeared. Of course, the fact that he was completely dry was an early tip-off too.- I know that Blue Valley jail probably isn’t as bad as, like, Riker’s, but it was still hilarious that Pat basically blew off Rick for the time being.
– If not for the scene in Barbara’s car and the funeral flashback, you could almost count this as a bottle episode, since the vast majority of the action stayed in the Dugan household.
– What exactly is the dog’s name? I thought it was Max, but both Mike and Courtney continuously called him “Buddy” in this episode.
– I know that it would have felt off for many, many reasons, but I was kinda, sorta hoping that JWS’ Flash would have been Wally West, just to round out the trifecta for the dude.- The pace is pretty slow, sure, but I’ll take slow and suspenseful over the increasing trainwreck Supergirl’s latter half has become.
Yep, this Dr. Mid-Nite was established as being that old last year.
I think we’re supposed to look at it as comic-book time – like Batman’s 70+ years of crimefighting history. Stretched and distorted and not directly mappable on the linear time we know.
To the extent that I try to rationalize it- we know this takes place in a different universe than the main CW-Verse, if only because of the Jay Garrick Flash. So, I just assume that the history, timelines and fashions of this universe differ from ours. They kind of stuck with a 50s aesthetic, or, perhaps this is the 1960s for them, and they just have more advanced technology than we do. It’s kind of like how “Archer” seems to have a lot of different eras worth of technology all existing at the same time.
I don’t worry about actual decades. I just assume each of the relevant time periods are allusions to comic ages – 7 Soldiers/Bruce Gordon are in the Golden Age, and the original JSA are Silver Age, which I guess means that Courtney and the kids represent the dawn of the Brornze Age.
As per the Wiki, the dog’s real name is Max, but he has three nicknames: Buddy, “Demon Dog”, and “Good Doggy”.
They’re all good doggies, Mack.
I think that the distinction between what Yolanda/Mike did and what the original JSA did is that the JSA killed someone who was essentially just another innocent-ish victim of the villain, while Yolanda and Mike both killed people who were actual villains. That’s what went against the mission of the JSA; they were killing someone for the greater good, which is exactly what the ISA wanted to do.
The JSA needing to kill Gordon sounds like military guys in Viet Nam being forced to shoot kids that the Viet Cong had strapped up with grenades and sent walking toward them.
The most Icicle II ever gets to do is as a hallucination.The Spectre couldn’t stop Eclipso?
Maybe to defeat Eclipso they need to trap him in a new host body to kill? I’m leaning towards it being Sylvester since him being alive again seems pointless otherwise.
Since McHale has been announced as a series regular for next season, that would be unlikely.
Not impossible, but even an Arrowverse villain eventually departs. Except for Alice, but that’s Gotham.
Star-Spangled Kid was the mentor for Infinity Incorporated, which is what these kids are becoming. 100% he’ll ‘train them’ next season.
Yeah, I liked the reference, but if the (un)living embodiment of the wrath of god can’t defeat Eclipso, it’s unlikely a troubled teen can.
Eclipso in the comics was The Spectre’s predecessor who went bad. They’re on the same power level apart from the limits placed on Eclipso’s power, basically being trapped in the diamond. Very much the same weight class, can’t take a win for granted.
This is one of the places where DC’s fuzzy theology makes so little sense. Jehovah (or one of his vice-deities) is so concerned with criminals getting away with stuff that he deputizes Jim Corrigan to clean up the mess, but when there’s an Eclipso-level threat (that he apparently created), he looks the other way and whistles.
I thought maybe The Shade or McNider, eventually released from that dark realm, might intentionally become the host and then kill themselves. This would save the kids from having to do it. A bit dark maybe but it has already been a dark season. Or maybe someone else fills that role – hopefully, since I like both actors and hope they stick around.
During the cold opening, I was reminded a bit of Norman Osborn’s chat with the Green Goblin. Especially when the mirror came into play.
I knew this secret of Pat’s could have as big an impact as the one Luke Skywalker kept from Rey:In fact, I’m reminded again of that two-parter from Smallville, considering the number of lines a JSA member (I name no names for fear of spoilers) crossed the line. Hence why the need for the next generation to be better. Of course, Yolanda was already heading down the dark road by Season 1’s end, so I’m sure they’ll find a new Wildcat soon.
This show is sticking so close to canon (other than Infinity Inc. all being teens) that I can’t imagine they replace Yolanda with someone else.
Part of Stargirl’s pitch has always been about a younger, more diverse group of heroes replacing the old white men of the past, but it wasn’t until the funeral scene that I fully realized just how homogenous the original JSA really were.The first JSA issue back in the 40s could have told you that:
When did they say the opening scene of S2 was in the 50s? Just looked it up on Youtube and it just says “Decades Ago.”I think McNider is just supposed to have longevity as part of his superpowers.
The decor, dress, and cars are all 50s era. The wrapping paper and doll are old but I can’t pinpoint an era. The modern day has mostly people driving 50s cars though so who knows.
The show did a pretty good job of making Bruce seem complicit, which is fine I guess. But the difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense. Grand debates about “no killing” have to engage the audience, not just the fake people dancing inside the TV box. I was just sitting there saying “uh… this dude made a deal with a devil, felt some remorse, but then explicitly resubscribed and expanded it in the intro teaser.”I do agree with the reviewer that this episode didn’t artfully marry theme and plot function. Eclipso’s out of the diamond. He’s free. That’s already been established as a Big Fucking Deal that makes everything about his diamond-imprisonment days moot. If they try to backpedal that, it’s going to be embarrassing. That leaves us with the possibility that the writers hammered the hell out of this particular bit of comic book magic trivia solely for the sake of this episode. That’s inefficient.I’ll go ahead and marry those two complaints to arrive at my third: every episode that goes by where Free Eclipso is just kinda fucking with people is retroactively robbing weight from his big victory: getting free. And I completely understand that his power set and approach to villainy tracks with this new ramping-up of these particular types of shenanigans. But it’s not working from a narrative, literary perspective. The urgency is draining from the arc even as everybody keeps saying “he’s getting stronger.”Didn’t Joss Whedon talk about this, way back when? I think he did. People aren’t jazzed when a villain has some insular, personal preference against nuking the good guys, even if it all tracks. The villain needs a genuine obstacle between him and that goal (even if it’s not his ultimate goal.) Otherwise it feels like the same old wheel-spinning, no matter how artfully you dress it up.
These are good points, and the crux, for me, was near the end of the fight against in the school: I really didn’t expect Eclipso to emerge (seemingly fully) so soon and so easily. On the other hand, surprise of course is often good, as can be unpredictability (esp. avoiding tropes and familiar storytelling patterns, in my view). In some ways these past few episodes have seemed like Eclipso is just toying with his enemies, taking his sweet time. This episode did seem sluggish at times, and thus there may have been some drain on the urgency, but I remain optimistic that I’ll really enjoy the final few instalments. By the way, I have to give the team high praise for how Beth fared last episode, because the pattern across so much fiction is that she should’ve been as messed up as Yolanda and Rick. That was a very pleasant surprise, and improved her character considerably in my eyes (though I already liked her for several other reasons).
Just how old is Pat? If the flashbacks were back to the 50’s, Pat would be around 65+ now. Aside from Jay, the rest of the JSA seem to treat him like crap. I’m surprised he isn’t somewhat resentful remembering them, especially Starman after how he told Pat he couldn’t have the staff passed on to him after he died (apparently)
I like that Pat has a photo of himself as a kid sidekick — or maybe “former kid sidekick”, I guess — in which he has a three-day growth of beard.
Pat wasn’t a kid sidekick. He was an adult sidekick for a kid, which is a weird concept frankly.
I’m beginning to think Pat’s power is ageless-ism
Not only is Pat unresentful, he thinks very highly of the way they treated him, since he decided to treat his own son that way, when Mike decided to become a sidekick too,
Did this JSA get trapped in an alternate dimension where time didn’t pass like the comics?
In the comics, Pat got caught up in some time travel stuff (I want to say whatever brought Shining Knight forward from King Arthur times) which is why he could be around in WWII and plausibly be married to Courtney’s mom in the 90’s.
Am I just somehow missing it, or are the Stargirl review almost never on the front page anymore? This is the first time it’s been on there in ages, and it’s still “below the fold.”
The Spectre and Dr. Fate couldn’t stop Eclipso. Oh, and Green Lantern was kicking around too, helping out. Riiiiight. Also JSA are douchebags, huh?
The thing with Eclipso is that his power seems to grow exponentially with each person it consumes. If we look at it, it only took one or two people consumed to go from a voice that had close range mind control powers, to being able to distort reality and climate at a long distance. The Eclipso that the JSA fought might have consumed hundreds of people and who knows what kind of powers it would have had then.
Good point. Also, Dr. Fate’s death in Smallville (wouldn’t have been credible at all in the comics) was a warning that we can’t assume the comic-book level of power for him in any live action show, and I’d extend that to this version of the Spectre and GL.As for the douchebaggery, it has become blatant so steadily (going back to Starman’s comments to Pat at the very beginning of the series) that I have to think there’s some plan here by the people in charge of the show. Nothing else carried through several episodes has seemed so unsubtle and out of character (compared to the JSA’s camaraderie over decades of comics).
Hoo-boy was this creepy.Cameron was legit terrifying the way he stalked Mike and flash-froze Buddy. I kinda wanna see him as a villain now; if not the character exactly, then maybe the actor. Hell, both Icicles were terrifying; Cameron was more brute force, but Jordan was psychological. Kudos to Amy Smart and Neil Jackson for bringing that heat.I wish we would’ve known more about the original JSA before this fallout, but they all felt pretty lived in. Fuck, Ted Grant, though; at least everyone else was conflicted.Yo, that kid is creepy as fuck!
Poor Cameron. The kid seems to have a good heart, but I don’t think the writers will be able to resist the giant Chekhov’s icicle forever.
I hope they do. Haven’t seen much from his grandparents lately, and he and Courtney are cute together.
I’m not so sure. They’re both cute individually, so there is certainly quite a bit of accumulated cuteness when they’re together, but he seems to be the kind of boyfriend that thinks it’s so cruel and painful that she has a life and plans outside of him. Even though they were not even planning to meet and just ran into each other.
I didn’t realize how big the Stargirl universe was; I thought this was mostly just the CW creating a bigger world for a marginal DC character.
Are you familiar with her genesis? Geoff Johns created her in what was— I think— his first professional comics work. She’s based on and named after his sister who died on TWA 800. She’s been a central part of his JSA run and later writers kept using her, possibly because by then, Johns was very high up at DC.
Wow, the JSA sure were jerks to Pat, weren’t they? Hasn’t Pat portrayed himself as an actual member, though? Or am I mis-remembering? (Unless they made him a ‘full’ member when they fought the ISA? The ‘broken JSA’ idea was a neat twist to that particular plot, though).I’m pleased this version of Jay Garrick was a decent person. Now I want to see The Moral Adventures of Jay and Pat. I don’t like how this episode otherwise seems slightly at odds with what we’ve seen/know about the JSA already – in other words, it feels like a lot of the info from this episode should have been revealed already eg. why only some JSA paraphernalia was in the HQ. Speaking of, is Dr. Mid-Nite’s owl still sat in there? Overall, this episode also felt like it was spinning its wheels a bit – there was some really cool stuff (The Shade is trying to return!) but I think that knowing these visions are just that robs the show of a lot of its drama and suspense. If we now know that the characters aren’t really seeing who they think they are, then we’re sat waiting for them to realise this themselves. Last week gave us a great Inception mindfkkk with Rick, so here’s hoping something equally diabolical happens again. And where on earth is Sylvester? Is he walking to Blue Valley?
I’m not sure the show has ever particularly established “no killing” as one of the central tenets of the original JSA
That kind of goes without saying, doesn’t it? The “good guys don’t kill” trope? Isn’t that the reason why Yolanda has a problem with having killed Brainwave?
I wouldn’t even call it a “trope” for this show. It seems that they really want to present “killing is bad” as such a basic, obvious, fundamental, and universal truth that, as you so eloquently put it, “it goes without saying.”
Is it just me, or was Eclipso acting pretty Venom-y in the opening scene? 😀
This is the best show on the CW, but this might have been the weakest episode for the reasons listed here. It never made sense how the ISA beat the original JSA with what we learned of their rather limited powers, and I felt this episodes retcon was a little too trite and it was probably better not explained. And the timeline not adding up was always fun before (with its anachronisms) now for the first time seemed just sloppy. And I agree the whole “we don’t kill” thing really did not land precisely because they did that Supergirl thing of creating a new rule out of thin air than expecting us to act like it is a big deal when they break that rule. Stargirl is usually a lot better than that.And even the haunted house stuff was a little off. Pat, Mike and Courtney (unlike Yolanda and Rick) are wise to all of the eclipso stuff and it is an illusion and once again, Stargirl is usually better than having character conveniently forget revealed plot points for episode filler. This was a “C” for me.
a) Most of the JSA treats Pat like crap, but he speaks well of them.b) The JSA needed a tiebreaker, but when Pat votes no to killing Bruce Gordon yes still wins 3-2c) Eclipso taunts Pat over the killing of Gordon.I think Pat is still lying. He votes yes to ingratiate himself with the JSA but Starman voted no. Pat kills Gordon in a normal mortal way. This causes a split between Starman and Pat, which is why Starman wouldn’t let Pat have control over the staff.