Marvel has followed up the casting of Jessica Jones, with news of who will be playing Luke Cage. Mike Colter (American Horror Story, The Good Wife) has won the role of Luke Cage in Marvel's Luke Cage Netflix series. Again, I am not very familiar with Cage or Colter, but the show should be interesting. The character will appear in Marvel's A.K.A. Jessica Jones first and then move onto his own series.
Marvel has cast fan-favorite actress Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones. The series will be titled Marvel's A.K.A. Jessica Jones. The official synopsis of the show says "After a tragic ending to her short-lived Super Hero stint, Jones is rebuilding her personal life and career as a detective who gets pulled into cases involving people with extraordinary abilities in New York City." This will certainly be interesting. I am not very familiar with Ritter's work or Jessica Jones, but I will give this show a chance just because it is Marvel. What do you think? Spoilers Ahead Agents of SHIELD just became something. Ever since the Captain America episodes last year, the show has seen a huge uptick in quality and has gotten better every week since. This episode is everything SHIELD could be and everything it wants to be. It is the show that really connects it to the MCU and actually starts a story for the show that hasn't started in the movies, yet. The episode started off a bit slowly. I wasn't really down for the meeting for Skye and her dad. I figured it would be lame and boring. It wasn't. It wasn't great, either, though. I was a bit put-off by the huge contrasts. Whereas Skye was very closed off and defensive, her father was very open and emotional. Still, it was clear from this conversation that we were building to something huge. From this, we see a rescue attempt from Coulson and May, while Fitz, Simmons, and Triplette try to blow up the underground city. The whole rescue scene was pretty awesome. I though Skye shooting Ward was pretty awesome, and it really made me happy to see her not give him another chance. It also brought the death of Whitehall, who never really got fleshed out. But it did give The Doctor another reason to hate Coulson and their fight was pretty amazing. It was cool to see that Coulson still has some moves. And Skye choosing Coulson over her dad and the mystery he knows the answers to was another great moment. Bobbi and Blood were really not important to the episode. There was a brief moment where Bobbi looked a little guilty doing something. I am not sure what is on that flash drive or who it is for, but it certainly looked bad on her. I am hoping it was just the way it was shot and not Bobbi actually being a bad guy, because I like her. Now for the interesting stuff. This episode really blew this whole show open. As soon as Skye goes underground to stop Raina, we know something big is about to happen. Well they just changed the whole landscape of the MCU. The Inhumans are now a part of the MCU and extended universe. And most shocking is that Skye is actually Daisy Johnson, a.k.a. Quake, and that her father is Calvin Zabo, a.k.a. Mister Hyde. I am not sure how big Calvin will be the rest of the show, but I think he will be the villain of the second half. Or he will at least help Skye contain her powers at some point. Skye is now a huge character in the entire MCU. It is great to finally know the whole mystery behind her and who she really is. In the comics, Daisy Johnson is a pretty important person. I hope they keep that over in the MCU. She even becomes Director of SHIELD at one point. It will be interesting to see what this leads to for her in the show and even more interesting to see how much of the show now spills over into movies. On a smaller note, I really have to praise the performances of Kyle MacLachlan and Chloe Bennett this episode. They both had a lot of different angles to play and a lot of different emotions to deal with. I loved MacLachlan being able to really switch from a calm mode to a more monstrous mode (a la Jekyll and Hyde). Bennett was much more subdued in her performance. I loved her switching from cold around her father and HYDRA, to breaking down whenever she is alone. There is obviously a lot going on with her, and that will be further amplified by her powers and by her losing Triplette. Overall, this was the best hour of TV that I have seen in a long time. The show really broke ground on something new for the MCU, which I have to imagine was the point of the show in the first place. There was a lot of exciting things happening, and I really can't wait for March to get here. This episode was pure perfection and by far the best episode of SHIELD.
Spoilers Ahead Goodness. The Flash really knows how to go on break with a bang. The episode brought the introduction of the Reverse-Flash, although he isn't going by that yet. The episode was really good, this week, and set-up a very interesting second-half of the season. This week actually had some real story progression. One of the smaller things they did was finally have Barry admit his feelings for Iris. This whole secret has been one of the only aspects really dragging the show down, and now that the secret is out there, it should really open the door for some interesting exchanges in the future. I wonder what will happen when Eddie finds out. I am curious how this will affect Barry's relationship with Iris. It is certainly a good thing that his feelings aren't secret anymore. The Firestorm story stuck out like a sore thumb. None of it was particularly interesting and it didn't affect this week's story at all. I like the idea of Cisco and Caitlin being more than lab lackeys, but this story just felt so out of place. I am not familiar with the Firestorm character, so I don't know how spot on they were, but I am willing to bet that the other guy was talking and not Ronnie. If that is the case, then this will be intriguing to watch. The powers looked good, too. I feel with more time, Firestorm will be a very interesting character. The big story of the week was the introduction of Reverse-Flash. The character is being set-up to be the big bad of this season. His introduction didn't disappoint either. The character was perfectly menacing and powerful. I'm glad they made him beat Barry, because it puts Barry in a position he hasn't experienced yet. And all those knowing lines about the future were really cool, too. I can't wait to see more of him and get to the bottom of this mystery. As for who he is, well that is still up for debate. I know we saw Wells with the suit and the voice, but there was a little voice in the back of my head saying this is too easy. I want it to be Wells. I think Wells is the best character this show has. But I am not entirely sold on Reverse-Flash being Wells, yet. There are too many questions, and there are still some hints about it being Eddie. Some of the red flags of it not being Wells are the fact that he was still injured (rather than healing quickly), the complications (even with time travel) of him beating himself up, and just the fact that the reveal seemed to neat. I would love for Reverse-Flash to be Wells, but this mystery of who Wells is and why he is doing what he is doing are some of the more interesting aspects of the show. Overall, this episode was the best of the series. It introduced The Flash's greatest enemy and really helped jump start the second-half of the season. I am really excited for the rest of the season. The door is certainly wide open for great things now.
Some Spoilers Ahead We are back this week with a review of the much anticipated crossover event featuring The Arrow and The Flash. This has been an episode that I have been looking forward to. However, it didn't quite live up to the expectations. The episode was branded as Flash vs Arrow, and that was very much a key point in the episode. I felt they did a really good job at handling the differences between Oliver and Barry, along with The Arrow and The Flash. If you haven't picked up on it, these two men are very different people in the way they go about things. I loved all the scenes Barry and Oliver shared, but I was also a bit disappointed at how dark they painted Oliver when compared to Barry. This was very evident in the training sequences, although I felt that was partly because Ollie felt Barry wasn't taking things seriously and partly because he had no interest in training Barry. I was did like the contrast in how Oliver sees this as his life and therefore takes it much more seriously, while Barry sees it as a gift and finds the fun in his job. The whole contrasting characters thing was a very interesting route to take. The actual story wasn't very strong. It didn't really progress either story in either series. It was instead Team Arrow coming to Central City to try and work on finding Captain Boomerang, who we were introduced to at the end of Arrow last week. This story didn't pan out much. Meanwhile Barry was tracking down Prism, and that story wasn't followed much. He did turn Barry into a rage monster, which spurred on a lot of events in the story, but neither villain really made their presence felt. They both got the shorthand, and Prism's story was handled fairly quickly. It was a bit disappointing that neither villain was given much of a shot. Angry Barry was an interesting thing to see. He was much more aggressive and stand-offish. More than we have ever seen him. It is a bit scary, too, when you see how much power he holds. I was really intrigued by him going after Eddie. It didn't make much sense to me. I guess his distaste for Eddie was amplified by the anger and he decided to take him on. Angry Barry spitballed into a fight with the Arrow. The fight with The Flash vs The Arrow was pretty awesome. Again it was a great contrast between the characters. Whereas Oliver had to use his brain and gadgets, Barry just used brute force. The FX in these scenes were particularly great. I was wondering the whole time if Oliver would wind up putting an arrow through Barry. It really did seem like the best way to go at one point. The fight did not disappoint at all. The secondary characters didn't have much to do. Diggle was pretty darn funny in this episode. I really enjoyed watching him try to wrap his head around Barry's powers. Cisco also had some funny bits. I was more intrigued by Barry dealing with Caitlin and Felicity, considering there could be romantic intentions between any of them. They threw nods both ways. Nothing bit came of them, though. Harrison Wells knew Oliver Queen is the Arrow and mentioned that, but nothing serious came of that either. It was nice to see Oliver earn the respect of Harrison Wells and Joe, though. I was just disappointed by this episode. It could've been so epic. In the end it just wound up to be an episode of The Flash with an appearance by Team Arrow. It didn't hold any real consequences to the stories of either show. Instead it just brought them together to fight against each other. I felt if it brought them together to fight a big villain and actually had real consequences this episode would have been just amazing. The episode was pretty good. I just wished it was so much more. Still I am impressed that they found a story to tell that didn't seem to forced. Hopefully the producers will use this episode as a learning experience and craft something truly special next time they try something like this. And maybe it could start a certain team we have been hearing about. Tune in to Arrow tomorrow for the finale of this two-part event.
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