With Jordan’s designs finally revealed, the JSA face their biggest challenge to date.

Inevitably, when the penultimate episode ever to the show was so enjoyable, the ending will always have a tough challenge. While this is mostly met, it’s fairly easy to see the joins here where stuff was done to tie off the show for good following its cancellation. Does that mean it’s bad? No, but it adds to the disappointment of knowing we’re done seeing the adventures of these characters on the screen.

As far as the Reckoning of the episode title itself, that’s fairly straightforward. Our two teams face off against one another, the guy you thought was dead triumphantly returns at the right moment, the conflicted guy stuck in the middle changes loyalties at the exact moment you’d expect (twice, in fact) and our hero overcomes the greatest challenge which faces all superheroes in any medium since forever – self-doubt – to win the day. None of this is especially new or inventive, but it’s tempting to cut the writers some slack on that score when you consider the seismic shocks they delivered last time out, especially given how well-crafted they proved the season to date to have been.

Then, well, then there’s the aftermath. The epilogue if you will, and whereas I’m sure most of this was locked in from the start, a couple of time jumps at the very end (three months and then ten years) smack of last minute ‘we just got cancelled and need to tie off the loose ends.’ This frustrates because it means instead of getting to see what feel like planned-out ideas for the future adventures of our heroes play out on screen, we simply get to hear about them in a quick monologue instead. One in particular feels like a seed the writers had deliberately left themselves to blossom into a whole season, but is here reduced to an aside.

So? Does this stick the landing for what has been, overall, one of the quieter successes of the DC TV stable for me? Yes. It’s satisfying, if formulaic, in how it resolves most of its plot threads and as easy as it is to spot that last minute tying-off it’s done well and frustrates more at the missed opportunity of seeing it all than anything else. If this is to be the final send-off for the characters it’s a pretty good one, I just feel like I would have liked to see more.

Verdict: A satisfying conclusion to the plot threads woven this season but one which can’t help but make the viewer sad at the loss of the opportunity to see more. 8/10

Greg D. Smith