Courtney and Pat go to great lengths to try to get the whole gang back together in order to stop Eclipso. Mikey continues his search for Thunderbolt.

The slightness of the barrier between good and bad has been a constant theme in Stargirl since its maiden season, and one that the writers have developed a lot through this second series. Here, as the gang try to prepare for what they hope will be the final showdown with Eclipso, that truth leads them down some interesting paths.

For Courtney, it means reaching out once again to Yolanda in an attempt to persuade her to once again don the mantle of Wildcat. Unfortunately, Courtney’s way of doing this is slightly clumsy – she means well but she’s really still not prepared to confront the sort of darkness that Yolanda knows intimately. That means that it’s down to a very unexpected source to try to tempt Yolanda to come back, and to spill a few revelations along the way.

I’ll be honest, this doesn’t quite work, mainly because it feels like the writers maybe left this one an episode or two later than they should have and therefore decisions have to be made more quickly than they organically would in order to get us set up for the big finish. That said, Yvette Monreal continues to knock it out of the park, and she’s ably matched by her fellow cast.

On the darker side of the Dugan-Whitmore dynamic we have Pat, who takes it upon himself to try to sort out Rick’s family problems and get the poor lad out of jail. Being Rick, he tries it the nice way, but when that doesn’t quite get the result he’s after, we see hints at a harder side of the character. The script has hinted at this before to be fair, but it’s never quite been this overt. We know that there’s a steely resolve to Pat and we know there must be something special about him because he’s spent his life fighting alongside superheroes. But here, we get a real sense of the quiet strength lying underneath that mild-mannered exterior, and the lengths to which he might go when he absolutely has to.

Beth and Doctor MacNider spend some time getting to know one another and pooling their joint resources, though Beth is unsettled by Courtney’s apparent alliance with Cindy (and who can blame her) and that’s where the real interest lies in the episode. Cindy is a bad individual, this much we know. But we also know that she’s been hurt by what life has put her through, that she fees some measure of guilt/remorse for what happened to both her birth mother and her step mother. Like The Shade, Cindy is a character who’s bad without necessarily being totally evil. Here, we see various sides to her, from the snarky mean girl we are used to, to something else entirely. Can she be trusted? Likely not, but is she needed? Almost certainly.

As for Mikey, his search for Thunderbolt leads him in unexpected directions. It’s been great to see him really grow as a character this season, and here we see perhaps the most profound example of that yet. All in all, things are set up for a doozy of a finale.

Verdict: Some elements feel a little forced/rushed but overall another cracking instalment. 8/10

Greg D. Smith