Chris is in prison; Flag Sr is building something awful in the Quantum Unfolding Chamber and everyone’s lives are about to change.

With the Earth X plot largely wrapped last week, this is an interesting combination of tidying up and setting up what’s next. As the episode finishes, we get a very clear idea of what Man of Tomorrow will be about but we also get what feels like a slightly fumbled ending.

The core of both is oddly Rick Flag Sr. This episode sees him effectively spring Luther’s entire control team and put them to work helping him map the QUC to look for a site for… something. The actual plot is great, and we’ll get to that in a moment because what resonates here is the human cost. In the space of a few minutes, we see numerous ARGUS teams exploring the doors in the QUC and being murdered by a wide variety of SCP-like nightmares. It’s a neat sequence, which tips from comedy over into outright horror and moves basically the entire cast further along. Bordeaux, Harcourt, Economos, Fleury and Judomaster all become so disgusted at what they’re doing that it propels them out of ARGUS and into Adebayo’s life. By the end of the episode and season, they’ve established Checkmate, an intelligence organisation designed to do actual good instead of ARGUS’ moral bankruptcy. Oh and it’s founded by Adrian’s recovered drug money which is just wonderfully tight plotting. It’s a great idea, and it sets up a fascinating third season or an eventual return for the characters elsewhere.  It’s smart, economical writing that gets Fleury, Judomaster and Bordeaux on side and also sets up World Of Tomorrow. After a dozen ARGUS agents are killed, they finally discover a habitable world and name it Salvation. Flag Sr enacts Luther’s plan to remove all metahumans from the planet and imprison them there and in doing so becomes almost cartoonishly evil and chummy with Luther’s ex goons. It’s a weird beat, one that feels like the C of an A,B,C we never got the B for. Flag, in one episode near enough, shifting from troubled but principled to all but evil. I suspect there’s more to it, as someone else calls him out on the rapidity of the decision but it still feels janky and off.

That’s also because this is so much of a set up for Man of Tomorrow, a movie still almost two years out. It at least commits to that entirely, and there’s no vague dangling sense of ‘SOMETHING COMING’ that Marvel has gone to again and again with increasingly frustrating effect. But there’s also a sense of this being Peacemaker and the 11th Street Kids being sacrificed for the sake of a long term plot. One that opens, but does not resolve, in the season finale of their own show.

What makes this especially galling is that there’s a bunch of lovely character moments here. Adebayo and her wife maybe reconcile and Danielle Brooks steps up throughout the episode to do a lot of the heavy lifting as Ads becomes the leader she was always capable of being. Economos and Bordeaux, and to a lesser extent Fleury get some nice beats too that expand them but keep them very much as the people we’ve come to know and like. Judomaster and Vigilante get short shrift once again but Vigilante and Fleury are a great double act I’d love to see explored further.

But, at last, this is the Harcourt and Chris Show. We see what happened on the boat, and we see both Cena and Jennifer Holland show how well they can play sweet natured romance. Chris and Harcourt are broken, but broken in complementary ways that heal one another and when she finally admits that, the musical celebration montage that follows is as joyous as it is earned. Even if it finishes with Chris being kidnapped and dropped in Man of Tomorrow.

Verdict: This is a good end to a great season. The cast are great, Gunn finally gets to fully uncork on the music and the setup is fascinating. But because this is the first time it’s been done in this new DCU it takes some getting used to. Here’s hoping we see all these characters again, and soon. 8/10

Alasdair Stuart