s7 & s8 thoughts (spoilers)
Yes, I need to do Prey-Legion episode wrap ups. I keep spending the time working on work instead. It's an issue.
Brainiac's Master Plan
This started clicking together fully in my head about 2 hours before Legion aired as savingpeople can attest. Had KK resigned, I think we would had her infected with Brainiac, Chloe working against Lex (and dead Nois). Instead, they rolled her plot into Chloe's which is fine by me. You can se the set up for it in Veritas (Brainiac leaves with Kara, Lana's infected the obvious opener is she's "cured" and Brainiac is gone until, whoops, not gone). Arctic is a little big repositioning of that, but the set up plot lines there do start in arctic.
I have to say I am very impressed with Brainiac's manuvering, or rather taking advantage of the situtations in the narrative. So I think I've nailed the timeline of plans down and it's kinda nifty (and interesting that they point out this is Brainiac 4 in her which I'll get to in a minute).
* In s5 he crash lands (B1) on the ship of Zod's groupies;
-- his plan: to trick Kal-El into brining down Jor-El's Fortress, to use said Fortress to open up the Phantom Zone, to make Kal-El the vessel of Phantom!Zod
-- how he gains ability to set such plan off: gaining a professorship at Kansas A&M to be in Clark's orbit (by faking a background of Milton Fine) and gaining trust based on playing up LuthorCorp issues: His key plans in doing this: (a) stalking Clark enough to help save Chloe's life in Thirst by knowing the project ##, (b) injecting a bit of himself into Clark directly, influencing his perception of reality and altering his thoughts, (c) faking a disease in Martha Kent to get Clark's allegence.
-- what he uses: Brainiac has his ship, it's hard drive, and himself all of which come in as plot points later on
-- how he fails: Lionel, seemingly Oracle!Lionel, tips Chloe off that Milton Fine is weird. She tails him and sees him disolve into the ship, leading her to go help Clark and free him. Clark impales Brainiac 1 on some ice crystals in the Fortress. Brainiac's ship "disappears"
* Later in S5, we see Brainiac 2 whom actually has multiple copies of himself doing things.
-- his plan: to create a human vessel to house Zod, to trick Kal-El into letting him take over the Fortress with the nanites left over from his death
-- how he gains ability to set off such plan: Upon his first death, he moves the ship to Honduras. From the ship this time he clones four of himself. He collects deadly viruses from around the world, and sets up the cover plot that he is a US Government Agent; he targets LuthorCorp's interest specifically, playing another layer off his previous orginal set up. He specifically chooses Lex this time to modify. Puts himself as Martha's pilot as a hostage situtation should things go bad it seems like.
-- what he uses: himself, ship, and previous knowledge of Lex and Clark. Uses Lex's developed anti-virus shot to prepare Lex's body for a long term posession, godes Clark into using a crystal connection. Computer system to stop world's ability to stop him.
-- how he fails: One of his selves is killed by the touch of Lion-El (presumably Jor-El some how did that). Other versions of him are taken out once Clark daggers him and is used to download Zod into Lex. Zod destroys the ship (saving only the HD which is later destroyed) thus killing Brainiac.
* In S7, we see Brainiac 3's evolution. The dust from the exploded ship liguified and got out.
-- his plan: first off is to obtain a body (which includes zapping Dax-Ur to regain his smarts) then to go back to Krypton and store Doomsday on the ship to have him wipe out the Planet & Kal-El (presumably because at this point he knows Zod is dead), potentially to stop Kal-El from reaching Earth ever (thus releasing Zod)
-- how he gains ability to set off such plan: he manaages to colllece into a liquid and Clark unwittingly lets him out where he gets into the body of Casey draining her of minerals and reprogramming her to give off a Kryptonian message. He drains enough people (leaving a trail) to get a body and then uses Bizarro to get ahold of Dax-Ur; noting Bizarro and Clark having the same weakness in Lana. He uses Dax-Ur's mind to heal himself. Then he targets Kara (instead of Kal-El) and Lana, adjusting her central nervous system leaving Lana aware, not in control, and in pain.
He and Kara leave to go to Krypton, he stuffs Kara in to the Phantom Zone, and where he has a two prongged attack (a) stop Kal-El from going to Earth thus allowing Zod to be released later through Kara & her Fortress [Apocalypse shows us that world], (b) jab a Doomsday with programing on the ship. He fakes being Kara and probably his death too (he kills himself on Krytpon) (note: I think initally they also toyed with Kara being the one posessed long term by Brainiac in epsiode 18 but when they decided not to sign Laura on, they nixed that too) Also seems to add in the launch sequence for the Fortress Collaps, hence Level Three ("Veritas") things to de-power/kill Clark, and once again sets up Lex to do it for him when he can't.
-- what he uses: himself, Clark's key, Lana, Kara, and such. Really, way more complex here.
-- how he fails: Rather than Clark trying to stop him, it's Chloe whom he remembers and takes over just like he did Lana. Chloe's power however kicks in, and whether that kept healing her and Brainiac inside of her (my guess) or merely depowered him as he copied bits of himself over, she goes into coma. Clark realizes that Brainiac is Kara and kills him, 'freeing' Lana and Chloe. He's unable to stop Lex, and gets depowered and the seed crystal of the FOS is floating around, yet again.
* In s8, this is what we have
-- his plan: to take over the body of Chloe Sullivan and use her Vessel to stop Clark from stoping him and to bring out Doomsday's true nature (and to bring Doomsday to him), to absorb all the knowledge on Earth, to destroy Earth (seemingly again because Zod is gone) via Doomsday whom he is controlling.
-- how he gains ability to set off such a plan: Staying in Chloe's body over apparenlty a period of 7 months he is able to control her (which is perfectly canonical based on how he's treated others) - by erasing her memories, having her loose time, giving her super computer "powers", giving her access to his memory banks, being able to hack into the FOS seed crystal, obviously the data death is his fault given the code eyes. He is running a plan and program to play upon the 'feelings' that SCIENCE!Experiment!Cloaked!Doomsday will be drawn to him; meaning Doomsday as set up was set up so he would find it, and Doomsday would be attracted to him; likewise that program of feelings should work both ways so Davis' "Clarkness" I believe was programmed in by Brainiac as well (to get him to Doomday, it's a twoway street).
Implicit in the feelings dialogue is that Brainiac purposefully is pushing the Doomsday in Davis to come out of the camoflauged set up he put togeter. He wanted Chloe to pick Davis (over Clark, see Abyss' rewritten memory) and for Clark to erase her memory for him to get into the Fortress again; since the Chimmy wedding goes along as a way to both split up Chlark and his bigger objective to drive Davis into a Doomsday Rage, that seems to be part of his pushing as well as Isis is. Once free, he imprisons Doomsday on ice to finish his metamorphosis. He starts downloading all the information from the FOS (filled with 28 Galaxies) and the human race; and notes Clark won't kill him in Chloe's body.
-- what he uses: Jimmy's guilt proposal, Davis, Chloe
-- how he fails: The Legion tripple team him to power him down; Clark talks to Chloe (awake, inside wanting Clark) as Legion pulls him out into one depowered mass.
Now in the comics Brainiac 5 is good but Brainaic 12 comes from an infected Lois, so I'm not ruling out seeing him again though since they've wrapped him up that feels like a finale season thing. Do I think this version of the Persuader was sent back by Brainaic? NO. I think he came back on his own, thinking if they let Brainiac live then Superman won't become the Alien Poster Boy and thus humans will be a-okay. The big flaw there, of course, we know, that Doomsday is already on Earth -- I'm thinking "history" recorded it differently (which is why I'm interested in seeing when Doomsday proper shows up). I actually think he was the portal into SV is the "Real Story" vs. what "History" told us about them.
I think it's clear though that Brainiac manipulated things. Davis likes Isis, go to Isis. Chimmy is so clearly their own set of road blocks to push Davis to crazy town, and as the end of Legion showed to stall out Chlark immediately hook up post sayonce (cause seriously if she wasn't married, there would be no way to get around that).
Legion retro-actively fixed Chloe and left her with stuff (like Jimmy) which she's going to haveto on her own work through. Which is good, I think cause it should mean Chloe standing up a bit at a time, I do believe.
But I do think Brainiac infection went from going to be Lana's (then KK wasn't coming back post Veritas), then in 150 they started it up in Kara (the milk scene) and decided to go for full out Brainiac replacement cause I think by Quest they knew in the writers room they needed to cut he - and four eps isn't long enough to do said arc justice. So they set it up for being KK or AM in the finale, then AM doesn't resign (and then she does). Had KK and MR come back, I think Lana would have housed Brainiac (they love Evil Lana and s7 was setting up evil Lana, and she wanted more interesting things to do), and AM would have been the one dealing with the DP and LuthorCorp. KK left, and AM got both story lines [which is why it's so interesting that they didn't split those storylines up - instead they completely STALLED the LuthorCorp story arc by giving one to Lana and not dealing with it until Lana returns).
** I have to add in here it means that Brainiac targeted Clark every time, but specifically targeted Lex (twice), Lana (once), and Chloe (once). Core four has all been either a Vessel of/for Brainiac or targeted to be one. Way to go villain!
Lana Lang: Isis
I'm thinking in the long run it's Lana who gets creditted with Isis & public acceptance of SuperHumans (which is unfair to Clark, but it's a branch off of Isis' orginal tree and something It hink Kk would say is heroic and is let down for all her fans - those who want her evil and those who want her with Clark). I think it's clear that Lana is Lana because they are going to be setting her up to being Miss Independant in tahat way is my guess now that she's suffered like an MF might suffer at Lex's hands (even though he's keeping her alive, but let's not bother with the details of how messed up their luv is). Because KK's not back for good, they can't give her LuthorCorp. This would give her power to come back later as an equal "player" on her own terms. That's Lana's way of taking down Lex/exposing him.
It's ironic cause we all know that Lana is a xenophobe, we all know that these people messed her up, we all know Isis is always going to be about Lex -- but again "history" won't remember that. They'll remember her as changing the woooooooooooorld; when really it's built as a reaction to her prior stance on 33.1 and the WoW. And yeah I doubt it will statisfy anyone but KK so that's my guess.
But it also means in the long term Isis isn't Chloes (which first because as much as Isis is Chloe trying to play hero like Clark right now, how she helped them wasn't hand holding, it was telling their story) -- which should mean if Lana leaves with Isis, then the Isis set should be shut down, turned into something else, and Chloe can start moving back where she needs to be.
Future Mechanics
So now that we've played out Brainiac's versions (I suppose you could play them out a bit differently in thinking all of s5 is one version; the s7 one on Earth is another; the one that comes back from Krypton is another; and then there is the one in Chloe, but the basic patterning is the same with his goals) in the past, and we know Legions B5 is going to the future I think it's time to look at the future some.
This episode was the fanboy's having their teeth kicked in. Al those MYYYYYYYYYYYYYTHOS yelling comic boys, it's like Action. Only instead of the villains (being noted as crazy purists who can't tell the lines of reality) now they are misguided heroes (they make asusmptions and chose actions based on incorrect information, they don't know and worse yet for the majority of the episode do not pay attention to the REAL story laid before them, thus their thought processes are wrong).
The show clearly IMO cleared one route that is going to happen in both timelines: Chlois and I'll explain why.
(1) The "Orginal" Timeline
-- Clark has the Phantom-sucking crystal from J'onn J'onzz. It's differences in shape/type I suppose would allow him to extract Brainiac safely from the host. That means orginally, the host lived in the orginal timeline (which seems ignored for later dialog in the episode).
-- He must find and confront Brainiac in this timeline, use said crystal on him (that Brainiac doesn't know about which is backed up with the Brainiac/Imra "history rewrite" quote)
-- Chloe is saved and alive
-- But she's not remembered in history; in fact they don't even know who the host was despite it happening on Jimmy's wedding day, at Clark's farm, to Lana's best friend
-- Which implies not only does Chloe Sullivan live, the public record of her has been completely erased/altered (which apparently includes the WOW)
-- They only remember Lois, Lana, and Jimmy
-- Lana is remembered for Isis and she's remembered for the "great" things she'll do to in the future on her own, free from Clark
-- The baseball is never found
It's the Legionairres whom, without the crystal, say We don't know about her -> she must then be not a major player -> she probably died then -> So who cares if we kill her for the greater good?!
Answer: Clark does. :)
(2) The "Altered" Timeline
-- Persauder comes back in time via Legion ring to stop Clark from stopping Brainiac. I don't think this shows Brainiac sends anyone back from the future (as there is no Brainiac there); he's part of the Human Reform League (could they not say Fatal Five on air?) which of course as this is probably known as one of the first big things Clark's done -- Brainiac is finally defeated, which has taken about 3 years remember -- it is probably recorded as a day in which Clark makes a mig step towards being Superman, towards being beloved by Earth, and saving Earth. You stop Clark here, and it would end him before Superman begins which means the Legion isn't going out and heroicing up the galaxy; I don't think there is any sign Persauder had realized about Doomsday. The fact that they called him a hack, I think is meant to imply his plan wasn't very good.
-- The Legion doesn't know Chloe name, but they find out she worked for Isis, at the Torch, at the Daily Planet; that she's the expert on SuperHumans, that she helped Clark embrace who he is - leading them to consider alternatives to their thought that Chloe is nothing, namely (1) she changes her name [and thus always changes her name], (2) she dies to make Clark the hero.
-- Legion talks to Lana so Lana will push #2 on Clark, and even Lana Lang says that she won't advocate Chloe's death, thus rejcting #2; She makes Clark reject it too (although he already had)
-- The Legion tries to kill Chloe, assuming #2
-- Clark confronts Brainiac (and the Legionairres); we find out Clark won't kill her, and won't allow her to be killed, thus proving #1
-- The Legion + Clark get Chloe safe, and in return they have a brain sized mass of Brainiac (Rather than in the crystal) which they turn into Brainiac 5 (which all comic boys should know is a part of their team for a while now)
-- Garth takes Clark's baseball
The baseball to me is the key saying the "orginal" timeline wasn't really that orginal at all and what they wrote is a paradox. They never found the baseball, never knew what happened to it. Garth goes to the past and picks it up as a token in 2009. Afterwards, say 2500, they obviously can't find the baseball because Garth took it back to 3009. In the "orginal" timeline they could never find it, because it was impossible to find - Garth always takes it back home.
Which would imply that the Legion always comes back to collect Brainiac and get Brainiac 5 for their team.
Which means Chloe always is cleared out from Brainiac.
Which means she always lives.
Which raises the question why is she erased from history. If she's dead, that's done, there is no reason to short change her. The only reason to *erase* her would be for protection, is what they say.
Which begs the question, what is her NEW identity. Given that they only have heard of Lois, Lana and Jimmy; that we know she can't be Jimmy cause she's not a guy, and they know Lana from Isis (and I think the photos secured Lana to them, I think Isis and being a player on her own is what she's remembered for - free from LuthorCorp, Clark, and her own past xenophobia)... then they leave only one option open for whom her identity is.
Which is pretty spectacular if you think about it - it's a way of giving Chloisers the comic book perspective in saying she's Lois and she's always Lois as far as history is concerned. Now I think it's also a way historically to bump up Lana - if you "remove" Chloe, then Lana's role in his past becomes much more focused and without a balance of whom really sacrificed for him too, she becomes then the only heroine of his past if one erases the knowledge of Chloe (of course this is assuming they don't do some kind of name flip out -- IE Chloe didn't go to SHS with Clark Kent as his best friend, but Lois Lane did; it also seems to me that things like the year books then must be destroyed given that photo in Abyss).
Which ties in perfectly that Chloe and Jimmy are going together to the future as a team; just not the team the show wants people to think they are right now.
Anyway, yeah it setups should they go Chlois, that is always their future. Always.
And that's fantastic.
There is no Place like Home
Throughout S8 there has been a lot of Odyssey and Home refrences, mostly because I do think in the long run the Fever Letter is getting paid off and they are working on setting that whole arc up. So some notes/thoughts on all of that. Odyssey is about a home coming and I think we've gone over in the past whom each of the guys are in relation to Chloe's Penelope.
What I see is them setitng up Clark's own small romantic gestures, that keep building as he works his way back to her; it's an interesting form of lowkey wooing, which I actually like and reminds me quite a bit of s1/s2 Clark in his thoughtfulness. He's still a BDA, I don't think he fully realizes what he's doing (but I think he's getting there) or what he wants, but there you go. Anyway it's quite clear that's he's now working to keep her in his orbit, and a lot of that is built upon their past:
-- He wanted to be reuinted with her working at the Daily Planet, together, in Plastique (it's not that easy thanks to Brainiac & the nature of this arc)
-- He's upset when she just didn't confide him right away with how her life changes in Plastique
-- He considers them to be more than friends.
-- He decides her happiness is more important than her worrying about how he feels about marrying another man!! in Plastique
-- He takes her as his plus one to Ollie's charity event in Toxic
-- He's upset about Brainiac in her head, her not wanting his help, and so on in Toxic
-- He comes to her for help in Instinct, and is still upset when she says he can't help her
-- He regrets not realizing Chloe loved him when she loved him; his eyes weren't open, and the advice was basically "open them" in Instinct
-- He makes the concious choice to reject hooking up due to loneliness in Instinct (IE he's not looking for a Lana rebound here)
-- He tries to salvage her engagement party, and supports the engagment because it makes her happy in Committed
-- He invites her to dinner/movie nights (which apparently are more like Saving the World Nights) in Prey
-- He reschedules their date nights, basically when the world doesn't need saving in Prey
-- He's upset about her trusting someone other than himself, and he wants to protect her in Prey; he's flat out jealous
-- He's still having her as his go-to girl (and is apparently willing to put her in danger, but not let Ollie put her in danger) in Identity
-- There are more hugs when she rescues him from the Phantom Zone.
-- He's the one who finds photos first so she won't forget their connection in Abyss (the year book)
-- He's the one who finds her favorite book when she first comes to town (new info from Abyss)
-- He's the one who restores the Fortress to try to save her knowing last time it opened up the Phantom Zone
-- He's the one who takes her memories to try and grant her a happy life with the man she loves (and of course he thinks it's not him) thus fully giving her up
-- He's the one who bridal carries her to his Kryptonian Fortress (paralleled by dooms later)
-- He even has her wedding in his human Fortress
-- He promises it will be perfect (Tempest throw back, you know it's doomed)
-- He is the one who saved their flower from the Spring Formal, and only lets her borrow it (renamed homecoming to link Chloe to Penelope, and borrowed for the wedding to Jimmy, meaning he's going to get it/her back)
-- He is the one that rescues her from Brainiac, and makes sure she lives; he won't let her die
-- He's the one carrying her to his human Fortress bridal style again
-- He's the one targeted to be hurt by Brainiac infecting Chloe, specifically, because she's special; he could NEVER hurt her
-- From spoilers, we know he's the one who finds her favorite book yet again, and has a birthday party for her (yet again, and paralleling to Oracle now - only two characters to get TWO birthdays on the show)
-- He's the one who WANTS her to bother him with her issues in Turbulence, and for her to know he's always got time for her
There are more things coming up, I'm sure, but there is the repeated theme of Clark making moves towards her and owning up towards how loosing her is making him feeling. And this isn't getting into the glaring hints that Chloe still loves him (Prey, Abyss).
It's also not getting into the meta parallels. Chloe to Kara -> she's his home, she makes him feel like he belongs, she's his family (included paralleled cut line from Plastique). Chloe to Alicia -> another name lost to history, the first wife, the other blonde, the one who makes him feel special and normal at the same time.
It makes me think that the baseball of a home run of course was "found" (I think that's code for the Legion now finding out about Chlois in a way) or realized. Home run is literally finally clearing all the bases and running home; Odyssey is about Odysseus clearing all his trials (bases) and getting home to Penelope; the change of the Spring Formal to Homecoming (which was Lana's dance, Chloe got the Prom's which was orignally a sequental thing Lana, then Chloe) means that Clark came Home with Chloe literally.
But we literally saw Clark running home in the episode - he was running to his Fortress, the piece of his Kryptonian home -- then later he took Chloe and ran her to his Earth home. They point out that he shouldn't be running - he should be flying; and once again connect Chloe in danger to Clark's advancement as superman.
So perhaps next time instead of running home, he'll fly back some where. :)
And then maybe Chlark can finally get that home run too. ;)
Stalls
And the Chimmy wedding at the end of Legion not only was meant to press Davis over the edge, but clearly to stall out Chlark/Chlois some more (IE no hook ups or confessions happen of what Brainiac said or anything because *she's married now, and Chloe's not a cheater*). Clana is our next set of stalls until about episode 14 when she leaves. Then 15-17, enter Chimmy as smore more stalls and clearly broken/breaking for good. So what do we add in as a potiental new stall in 17? The assumption of Cnois on Chloe's part (though I think clearly it's not true Cnois given wack-a-doo Clark).
I think Chloe at Isis as Isis is done - I do think they'll roll that right back over to Lana. The sides for Hex imply that maybe Chloe will go back to journalism (hopefully she will in the re-write) but if they are hoping for an s9, they may think of another 'on track, but not there yet' type stall. Whatever the orignal one was (rather than journalism) it can't be a major one because Legion didn't support it, but I suspect Hex in a lot of ways was a slow down for more hurdles -- now it reads like a QL episode set up and it really playing up that EDLois is getting everywhere cause men find her hawt, not because of any actual talent or skills or innate goodness.
Given that I think they are setting up Ollie and Tess co-running the DP (which is not really better, Ollie needs to kick her out completely) and it's not really saved yet, I think they have the ability to fire off the DP staff coming up again. Or better yet blow up the building (hey what can I say, I like explosions). Ao I think the whole "Nois has contacts too! and is well liked too!" is something fairly easilly dealt with -- especially if you have people go underground for a bit. Doesn't make me happy but it does seem to underscore that she's not earned ANYTHING she has.
In fact given the upcoming Doomsday battle, it makes it easy to wreck the DP, kill a bunch of people, and slide in that way now doesn't it? Hmmm.
More thoughts later, I suppose. Feel free to comment, I'm still trying to digest Legion.
Brainiac's Master Plan
This started clicking together fully in my head about 2 hours before Legion aired as savingpeople can attest. Had KK resigned, I think we would had her infected with Brainiac, Chloe working against Lex (and dead Nois). Instead, they rolled her plot into Chloe's which is fine by me. You can se the set up for it in Veritas (Brainiac leaves with Kara, Lana's infected the obvious opener is she's "cured" and Brainiac is gone until, whoops, not gone). Arctic is a little big repositioning of that, but the set up plot lines there do start in arctic.
I have to say I am very impressed with Brainiac's manuvering, or rather taking advantage of the situtations in the narrative. So I think I've nailed the timeline of plans down and it's kinda nifty (and interesting that they point out this is Brainiac 4 in her which I'll get to in a minute).
* In s5 he crash lands (B1) on the ship of Zod's groupies;
-- his plan: to trick Kal-El into brining down Jor-El's Fortress, to use said Fortress to open up the Phantom Zone, to make Kal-El the vessel of Phantom!Zod
-- how he gains ability to set such plan off: gaining a professorship at Kansas A&M to be in Clark's orbit (by faking a background of Milton Fine) and gaining trust based on playing up LuthorCorp issues: His key plans in doing this: (a) stalking Clark enough to help save Chloe's life in Thirst by knowing the project ##, (b) injecting a bit of himself into Clark directly, influencing his perception of reality and altering his thoughts, (c) faking a disease in Martha Kent to get Clark's allegence.
-- what he uses: Brainiac has his ship, it's hard drive, and himself all of which come in as plot points later on
-- how he fails: Lionel, seemingly Oracle!Lionel, tips Chloe off that Milton Fine is weird. She tails him and sees him disolve into the ship, leading her to go help Clark and free him. Clark impales Brainiac 1 on some ice crystals in the Fortress. Brainiac's ship "disappears"
* Later in S5, we see Brainiac 2 whom actually has multiple copies of himself doing things.
-- his plan: to create a human vessel to house Zod, to trick Kal-El into letting him take over the Fortress with the nanites left over from his death
-- how he gains ability to set off such plan: Upon his first death, he moves the ship to Honduras. From the ship this time he clones four of himself. He collects deadly viruses from around the world, and sets up the cover plot that he is a US Government Agent; he targets LuthorCorp's interest specifically, playing another layer off his previous orginal set up. He specifically chooses Lex this time to modify. Puts himself as Martha's pilot as a hostage situtation should things go bad it seems like.
-- what he uses: himself, ship, and previous knowledge of Lex and Clark. Uses Lex's developed anti-virus shot to prepare Lex's body for a long term posession, godes Clark into using a crystal connection. Computer system to stop world's ability to stop him.
-- how he fails: One of his selves is killed by the touch of Lion-El (presumably Jor-El some how did that). Other versions of him are taken out once Clark daggers him and is used to download Zod into Lex. Zod destroys the ship (saving only the HD which is later destroyed) thus killing Brainiac.
* In S7, we see Brainiac 3's evolution. The dust from the exploded ship liguified and got out.
-- his plan: first off is to obtain a body (which includes zapping Dax-Ur to regain his smarts) then to go back to Krypton and store Doomsday on the ship to have him wipe out the Planet & Kal-El (presumably because at this point he knows Zod is dead), potentially to stop Kal-El from reaching Earth ever (thus releasing Zod)
-- how he gains ability to set off such plan: he manaages to colllece into a liquid and Clark unwittingly lets him out where he gets into the body of Casey draining her of minerals and reprogramming her to give off a Kryptonian message. He drains enough people (leaving a trail) to get a body and then uses Bizarro to get ahold of Dax-Ur; noting Bizarro and Clark having the same weakness in Lana. He uses Dax-Ur's mind to heal himself. Then he targets Kara (instead of Kal-El) and Lana, adjusting her central nervous system leaving Lana aware, not in control, and in pain.
He and Kara leave to go to Krypton, he stuffs Kara in to the Phantom Zone, and where he has a two prongged attack (a) stop Kal-El from going to Earth thus allowing Zod to be released later through Kara & her Fortress [Apocalypse shows us that world], (b) jab a Doomsday with programing on the ship. He fakes being Kara and probably his death too (he kills himself on Krytpon) (note: I think initally they also toyed with Kara being the one posessed long term by Brainiac in epsiode 18 but when they decided not to sign Laura on, they nixed that too) Also seems to add in the launch sequence for the Fortress Collaps, hence Level Three ("Veritas") things to de-power/kill Clark, and once again sets up Lex to do it for him when he can't.
-- what he uses: himself, Clark's key, Lana, Kara, and such. Really, way more complex here.
-- how he fails: Rather than Clark trying to stop him, it's Chloe whom he remembers and takes over just like he did Lana. Chloe's power however kicks in, and whether that kept healing her and Brainiac inside of her (my guess) or merely depowered him as he copied bits of himself over, she goes into coma. Clark realizes that Brainiac is Kara and kills him, 'freeing' Lana and Chloe. He's unable to stop Lex, and gets depowered and the seed crystal of the FOS is floating around, yet again.
* In s8, this is what we have
-- his plan: to take over the body of Chloe Sullivan and use her Vessel to stop Clark from stoping him and to bring out Doomsday's true nature (and to bring Doomsday to him), to absorb all the knowledge on Earth, to destroy Earth (seemingly again because Zod is gone) via Doomsday whom he is controlling.
-- how he gains ability to set off such a plan: Staying in Chloe's body over apparenlty a period of 7 months he is able to control her (which is perfectly canonical based on how he's treated others) - by erasing her memories, having her loose time, giving her super computer "powers", giving her access to his memory banks, being able to hack into the FOS seed crystal, obviously the data death is his fault given the code eyes. He is running a plan and program to play upon the 'feelings' that SCIENCE!Experiment!Cloaked!Doomsday will be drawn to him; meaning Doomsday as set up was set up so he would find it, and Doomsday would be attracted to him; likewise that program of feelings should work both ways so Davis' "Clarkness" I believe was programmed in by Brainiac as well (to get him to Doomday, it's a twoway street).
Implicit in the feelings dialogue is that Brainiac purposefully is pushing the Doomsday in Davis to come out of the camoflauged set up he put togeter. He wanted Chloe to pick Davis (over Clark, see Abyss' rewritten memory) and for Clark to erase her memory for him to get into the Fortress again; since the Chimmy wedding goes along as a way to both split up Chlark and his bigger objective to drive Davis into a Doomsday Rage, that seems to be part of his pushing as well as Isis is. Once free, he imprisons Doomsday on ice to finish his metamorphosis. He starts downloading all the information from the FOS (filled with 28 Galaxies) and the human race; and notes Clark won't kill him in Chloe's body.
-- what he uses: Jimmy's guilt proposal, Davis, Chloe
-- how he fails: The Legion tripple team him to power him down; Clark talks to Chloe (awake, inside wanting Clark) as Legion pulls him out into one depowered mass.
Now in the comics Brainiac 5 is good but Brainaic 12 comes from an infected Lois, so I'm not ruling out seeing him again though since they've wrapped him up that feels like a finale season thing. Do I think this version of the Persuader was sent back by Brainaic? NO. I think he came back on his own, thinking if they let Brainiac live then Superman won't become the Alien Poster Boy and thus humans will be a-okay. The big flaw there, of course, we know, that Doomsday is already on Earth -- I'm thinking "history" recorded it differently (which is why I'm interested in seeing when Doomsday proper shows up). I actually think he was the portal into SV is the "Real Story" vs. what "History" told us about them.
I think it's clear though that Brainiac manipulated things. Davis likes Isis, go to Isis. Chimmy is so clearly their own set of road blocks to push Davis to crazy town, and as the end of Legion showed to stall out Chlark immediately hook up post sayonce (cause seriously if she wasn't married, there would be no way to get around that).
Legion retro-actively fixed Chloe and left her with stuff (like Jimmy) which she's going to haveto on her own work through. Which is good, I think cause it should mean Chloe standing up a bit at a time, I do believe.
But I do think Brainiac infection went from going to be Lana's (then KK wasn't coming back post Veritas), then in 150 they started it up in Kara (the milk scene) and decided to go for full out Brainiac replacement cause I think by Quest they knew in the writers room they needed to cut he - and four eps isn't long enough to do said arc justice. So they set it up for being KK or AM in the finale, then AM doesn't resign (and then she does). Had KK and MR come back, I think Lana would have housed Brainiac (they love Evil Lana and s7 was setting up evil Lana, and she wanted more interesting things to do), and AM would have been the one dealing with the DP and LuthorCorp. KK left, and AM got both story lines [which is why it's so interesting that they didn't split those storylines up - instead they completely STALLED the LuthorCorp story arc by giving one to Lana and not dealing with it until Lana returns).
** I have to add in here it means that Brainiac targeted Clark every time, but specifically targeted Lex (twice), Lana (once), and Chloe (once). Core four has all been either a Vessel of/for Brainiac or targeted to be one. Way to go villain!
Lana Lang: Isis
I'm thinking in the long run it's Lana who gets creditted with Isis & public acceptance of SuperHumans (which is unfair to Clark, but it's a branch off of Isis' orginal tree and something It hink Kk would say is heroic and is let down for all her fans - those who want her evil and those who want her with Clark). I think it's clear that Lana is Lana because they are going to be setting her up to being Miss Independant in tahat way is my guess now that she's suffered like an MF might suffer at Lex's hands (even though he's keeping her alive, but let's not bother with the details of how messed up their luv is). Because KK's not back for good, they can't give her LuthorCorp. This would give her power to come back later as an equal "player" on her own terms. That's Lana's way of taking down Lex/exposing him.
It's ironic cause we all know that Lana is a xenophobe, we all know that these people messed her up, we all know Isis is always going to be about Lex -- but again "history" won't remember that. They'll remember her as changing the woooooooooooorld; when really it's built as a reaction to her prior stance on 33.1 and the WoW. And yeah I doubt it will statisfy anyone but KK so that's my guess.
But it also means in the long term Isis isn't Chloes (which first because as much as Isis is Chloe trying to play hero like Clark right now, how she helped them wasn't hand holding, it was telling their story) -- which should mean if Lana leaves with Isis, then the Isis set should be shut down, turned into something else, and Chloe can start moving back where she needs to be.
Future Mechanics
So now that we've played out Brainiac's versions (I suppose you could play them out a bit differently in thinking all of s5 is one version; the s7 one on Earth is another; the one that comes back from Krypton is another; and then there is the one in Chloe, but the basic patterning is the same with his goals) in the past, and we know Legions B5 is going to the future I think it's time to look at the future some.
This episode was the fanboy's having their teeth kicked in. Al those MYYYYYYYYYYYYYTHOS yelling comic boys, it's like Action. Only instead of the villains (being noted as crazy purists who can't tell the lines of reality) now they are misguided heroes (they make asusmptions and chose actions based on incorrect information, they don't know and worse yet for the majority of the episode do not pay attention to the REAL story laid before them, thus their thought processes are wrong).
The show clearly IMO cleared one route that is going to happen in both timelines: Chlois and I'll explain why.
(1) The "Orginal" Timeline
-- Clark has the Phantom-sucking crystal from J'onn J'onzz. It's differences in shape/type I suppose would allow him to extract Brainiac safely from the host. That means orginally, the host lived in the orginal timeline (which seems ignored for later dialog in the episode).
-- He must find and confront Brainiac in this timeline, use said crystal on him (that Brainiac doesn't know about which is backed up with the Brainiac/Imra "history rewrite" quote)
-- Chloe is saved and alive
-- But she's not remembered in history; in fact they don't even know who the host was despite it happening on Jimmy's wedding day, at Clark's farm, to Lana's best friend
-- Which implies not only does Chloe Sullivan live, the public record of her has been completely erased/altered (which apparently includes the WOW)
-- They only remember Lois, Lana, and Jimmy
-- Lana is remembered for Isis and she's remembered for the "great" things she'll do to in the future on her own, free from Clark
-- The baseball is never found
It's the Legionairres whom, without the crystal, say We don't know about her -> she must then be not a major player -> she probably died then -> So who cares if we kill her for the greater good?!
Answer: Clark does. :)
(2) The "Altered" Timeline
-- Persauder comes back in time via Legion ring to stop Clark from stopping Brainiac. I don't think this shows Brainiac sends anyone back from the future (as there is no Brainiac there); he's part of the Human Reform League (could they not say Fatal Five on air?) which of course as this is probably known as one of the first big things Clark's done -- Brainiac is finally defeated, which has taken about 3 years remember -- it is probably recorded as a day in which Clark makes a mig step towards being Superman, towards being beloved by Earth, and saving Earth. You stop Clark here, and it would end him before Superman begins which means the Legion isn't going out and heroicing up the galaxy; I don't think there is any sign Persauder had realized about Doomsday. The fact that they called him a hack, I think is meant to imply his plan wasn't very good.
-- The Legion doesn't know Chloe name, but they find out she worked for Isis, at the Torch, at the Daily Planet; that she's the expert on SuperHumans, that she helped Clark embrace who he is - leading them to consider alternatives to their thought that Chloe is nothing, namely (1) she changes her name [and thus always changes her name], (2) she dies to make Clark the hero.
-- Legion talks to Lana so Lana will push #2 on Clark, and even Lana Lang says that she won't advocate Chloe's death, thus rejcting #2; She makes Clark reject it too (although he already had)
-- The Legion tries to kill Chloe, assuming #2
-- Clark confronts Brainiac (and the Legionairres); we find out Clark won't kill her, and won't allow her to be killed, thus proving #1
-- The Legion + Clark get Chloe safe, and in return they have a brain sized mass of Brainiac (Rather than in the crystal) which they turn into Brainiac 5 (which all comic boys should know is a part of their team for a while now)
-- Garth takes Clark's baseball
The baseball to me is the key saying the "orginal" timeline wasn't really that orginal at all and what they wrote is a paradox. They never found the baseball, never knew what happened to it. Garth goes to the past and picks it up as a token in 2009. Afterwards, say 2500, they obviously can't find the baseball because Garth took it back to 3009. In the "orginal" timeline they could never find it, because it was impossible to find - Garth always takes it back home.
Which would imply that the Legion always comes back to collect Brainiac and get Brainiac 5 for their team.
Which means Chloe always is cleared out from Brainiac.
Which means she always lives.
Which raises the question why is she erased from history. If she's dead, that's done, there is no reason to short change her. The only reason to *erase* her would be for protection, is what they say.
Which begs the question, what is her NEW identity. Given that they only have heard of Lois, Lana and Jimmy; that we know she can't be Jimmy cause she's not a guy, and they know Lana from Isis (and I think the photos secured Lana to them, I think Isis and being a player on her own is what she's remembered for - free from LuthorCorp, Clark, and her own past xenophobia)... then they leave only one option open for whom her identity is.
Which is pretty spectacular if you think about it - it's a way of giving Chloisers the comic book perspective in saying she's Lois and she's always Lois as far as history is concerned. Now I think it's also a way historically to bump up Lana - if you "remove" Chloe, then Lana's role in his past becomes much more focused and without a balance of whom really sacrificed for him too, she becomes then the only heroine of his past if one erases the knowledge of Chloe (of course this is assuming they don't do some kind of name flip out -- IE Chloe didn't go to SHS with Clark Kent as his best friend, but Lois Lane did; it also seems to me that things like the year books then must be destroyed given that photo in Abyss).
Which ties in perfectly that Chloe and Jimmy are going together to the future as a team; just not the team the show wants people to think they are right now.
Anyway, yeah it setups should they go Chlois, that is always their future. Always.
And that's fantastic.
There is no Place like Home
Throughout S8 there has been a lot of Odyssey and Home refrences, mostly because I do think in the long run the Fever Letter is getting paid off and they are working on setting that whole arc up. So some notes/thoughts on all of that. Odyssey is about a home coming and I think we've gone over in the past whom each of the guys are in relation to Chloe's Penelope.
What I see is them setitng up Clark's own small romantic gestures, that keep building as he works his way back to her; it's an interesting form of lowkey wooing, which I actually like and reminds me quite a bit of s1/s2 Clark in his thoughtfulness. He's still a BDA, I don't think he fully realizes what he's doing (but I think he's getting there) or what he wants, but there you go. Anyway it's quite clear that's he's now working to keep her in his orbit, and a lot of that is built upon their past:
-- He wanted to be reuinted with her working at the Daily Planet, together, in Plastique (it's not that easy thanks to Brainiac & the nature of this arc)
-- He's upset when she just didn't confide him right away with how her life changes in Plastique
-- He considers them to be more than friends.
-- He decides her happiness is more important than her worrying about how he feels about marrying another man!! in Plastique
-- He takes her as his plus one to Ollie's charity event in Toxic
-- He's upset about Brainiac in her head, her not wanting his help, and so on in Toxic
-- He comes to her for help in Instinct, and is still upset when she says he can't help her
-- He regrets not realizing Chloe loved him when she loved him; his eyes weren't open, and the advice was basically "open them" in Instinct
-- He makes the concious choice to reject hooking up due to loneliness in Instinct (IE he's not looking for a Lana rebound here)
-- He tries to salvage her engagement party, and supports the engagment because it makes her happy in Committed
-- He invites her to dinner/movie nights (which apparently are more like Saving the World Nights) in Prey
-- He reschedules their date nights, basically when the world doesn't need saving in Prey
-- He's upset about her trusting someone other than himself, and he wants to protect her in Prey; he's flat out jealous
-- He's still having her as his go-to girl (and is apparently willing to put her in danger, but not let Ollie put her in danger) in Identity
-- There are more hugs when she rescues him from the Phantom Zone.
-- He's the one who finds photos first so she won't forget their connection in Abyss (the year book)
-- He's the one who finds her favorite book when she first comes to town (new info from Abyss)
-- He's the one who restores the Fortress to try to save her knowing last time it opened up the Phantom Zone
-- He's the one who takes her memories to try and grant her a happy life with the man she loves (and of course he thinks it's not him) thus fully giving her up
-- He's the one who bridal carries her to his Kryptonian Fortress (paralleled by dooms later)
-- He even has her wedding in his human Fortress
-- He promises it will be perfect (Tempest throw back, you know it's doomed)
-- He is the one who saved their flower from the Spring Formal, and only lets her borrow it (renamed homecoming to link Chloe to Penelope, and borrowed for the wedding to Jimmy, meaning he's going to get it/her back)
-- He is the one that rescues her from Brainiac, and makes sure she lives; he won't let her die
-- He's the one carrying her to his human Fortress bridal style again
-- He's the one targeted to be hurt by Brainiac infecting Chloe, specifically, because she's special; he could NEVER hurt her
-- From spoilers, we know he's the one who finds her favorite book yet again, and has a birthday party for her (yet again, and paralleling to Oracle now - only two characters to get TWO birthdays on the show)
-- He's the one who WANTS her to bother him with her issues in Turbulence, and for her to know he's always got time for her
There are more things coming up, I'm sure, but there is the repeated theme of Clark making moves towards her and owning up towards how loosing her is making him feeling. And this isn't getting into the glaring hints that Chloe still loves him (Prey, Abyss).
It's also not getting into the meta parallels. Chloe to Kara -> she's his home, she makes him feel like he belongs, she's his family (included paralleled cut line from Plastique). Chloe to Alicia -> another name lost to history, the first wife, the other blonde, the one who makes him feel special and normal at the same time.
It makes me think that the baseball of a home run of course was "found" (I think that's code for the Legion now finding out about Chlois in a way) or realized. Home run is literally finally clearing all the bases and running home; Odyssey is about Odysseus clearing all his trials (bases) and getting home to Penelope; the change of the Spring Formal to Homecoming (which was Lana's dance, Chloe got the Prom's which was orignally a sequental thing Lana, then Chloe) means that Clark came Home with Chloe literally.
But we literally saw Clark running home in the episode - he was running to his Fortress, the piece of his Kryptonian home -- then later he took Chloe and ran her to his Earth home. They point out that he shouldn't be running - he should be flying; and once again connect Chloe in danger to Clark's advancement as superman.
So perhaps next time instead of running home, he'll fly back some where. :)
And then maybe Chlark can finally get that home run too. ;)
Stalls
And the Chimmy wedding at the end of Legion not only was meant to press Davis over the edge, but clearly to stall out Chlark/Chlois some more (IE no hook ups or confessions happen of what Brainiac said or anything because *she's married now, and Chloe's not a cheater*). Clana is our next set of stalls until about episode 14 when she leaves. Then 15-17, enter Chimmy as smore more stalls and clearly broken/breaking for good. So what do we add in as a potiental new stall in 17? The assumption of Cnois on Chloe's part (though I think clearly it's not true Cnois given wack-a-doo Clark).
I think Chloe at Isis as Isis is done - I do think they'll roll that right back over to Lana. The sides for Hex imply that maybe Chloe will go back to journalism (hopefully she will in the re-write) but if they are hoping for an s9, they may think of another 'on track, but not there yet' type stall. Whatever the orignal one was (rather than journalism) it can't be a major one because Legion didn't support it, but I suspect Hex in a lot of ways was a slow down for more hurdles -- now it reads like a QL episode set up and it really playing up that EDLois is getting everywhere cause men find her hawt, not because of any actual talent or skills or innate goodness.
Given that I think they are setting up Ollie and Tess co-running the DP (which is not really better, Ollie needs to kick her out completely) and it's not really saved yet, I think they have the ability to fire off the DP staff coming up again. Or better yet blow up the building (hey what can I say, I like explosions). Ao I think the whole "Nois has contacts too! and is well liked too!" is something fairly easilly dealt with -- especially if you have people go underground for a bit. Doesn't make me happy but it does seem to underscore that she's not earned ANYTHING she has.
In fact given the upcoming Doomsday battle, it makes it easy to wreck the DP, kill a bunch of people, and slide in that way now doesn't it? Hmmm.
More thoughts later, I suppose. Feel free to comment, I'm still trying to digest Legion.