DC Star Girl this week closed “Infinity Inc.” two parts that paused the season 3 murder mystery storyline. What a fun Easter eggs they were in the middle of what would otherwise be sorry serious episode?
I’ve probably said before in these pages that I’m not a big fan of “mindscape” episodes that place characters on other planes of existence to get their stuff in order. Among Star Girl, The flash spirit titansto name just DC series, such episodes seem to arrive at a pretty steady rate.
Yet here we are again, and again in the Shadowlands, from which Shade, with technical problems, cannot extricate himself or Pat. Instead, as they wait for Jennie to remove the darkness from her Green Lantern ring, and in doing so, restore her full power, Richard Swift and Pat are confronted with haunting images/faces rooted in their deepest fears and anxieties. For Swift, that came in the form of The Gambler and then, more devastatingly, his sister, whose dying bed he hadn’t been able to run to two years ago because of her supernatural obligations.
For Pat, the punches to the stomach were manifested by the specter of her grossly disapproving father (Hey, major crimes‘ GW Bailey!) and the suggestion that Mike will one day hate Pat as much as Pat apparently hated his own pop. But as Pat maintains, he never really hated his father.
As Swift and Pat deal with their black and white demons, Courtney and Jennie at the Helix Institute attempt to shut Todd out of his sinister obsidian form, only to be KOd again by an angry, dark pulse of energy. (Notably, as cameras pan through the halls of the facility, we get a glimpse of DC characters Tao Jones, Penny Dreadful, and an unseen Corcharo the Man-Shark, who were part of the supervillain team Helix in the comics.) Jennie lands in a power-dampening cell, while Court arrives at Nurse Love’s office, who struggles to make it clear that while Jennie’s unpredictable powers could start a fire here or there, Todd’s could consume the entire world in the void of the Shadowlands. In short, brother and sister should never be united.
Later, Courtney learns more about Helix from Mister Bones himself, who explains how, having been born with translucent skin and what was called a “touch of cyanide” (which killed his own mother), he sees high school as a way to teach to people with similar problems. , isolating powers to live “alone”. Courtney, however, argues that no one should be resigned to being alone, so she urges Jennie to try one more time calling Todd, despite her own brother’s protests. This time, Jennie’s careful approach works, Todd reverts to his human form and absorbs the darkness that had infected his ring, Swift and Pat return from Shadowland and everyone is happy.
Pat then convinces a reluctant Swift to serve as Todd and Jennie’s mentor, teaching the sons of Green Lantern Alan Scott to hone their respective powers. The twins agree, though Jennie points out that she has a previous commitment to go to New York and help Sandy Hawkins, aka Sandman, Wesley Dodds’ nephew. (It seems that Sandy has been suffering from the same fateful nightmares that plagued her uncle, including one that led Jennie to find Todd.)
Meanwhile, Mister Bones suggests to Nurse Love that the Helix Institute may be better suited to building her own “team” of empowered people…
At the end of the episode, Courtney and the audience wonder again who has been spying on the people of Blue Valley if not, as Helix bosses Mister Bones and Nurse Love insisted. Then the camera pans out into the city sewers, into that room full of monitors, and we see a caped figure throwing a fist at the screen Hourman Rick looked at last week.
What did you think of “Infinity Inc. Part Two” and its various names?
