The JSA hatches a plan to neutralize the cameras monitoring them, but things are complicated when Shade shows up without warning to get Courtney's help.
Tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Yolanda's mother kicks her out when she refuses to give her phone up.
- Acting Unnatural: Pat and Mike's acting is incredibly wooden as they eat family dinner knowing they are being observed by a hidden camera while Beth engineers a blackout. Sylvester criticizes them on this and says Barbara and Courtney are doing much better.
- Ambiguously Evil: Mr Bones and Nurse Love act very sketchy, and previously lied to Jennie about her brother's whereabouts, but the painful-looking treatment they're giving Todd is apparently being done with his own consent in order to prevent him from destroying the world.
- Anti-Hero: The Shade. He needs help getting his powers untangled from Jennie's, so he proceeds to kidnap Courtney and Pat to achieve this. He also expresses no interest in helping the others deal with their latest problems and only agrees to help save Todd after Courtney tells him it's the only way to save himself.
- Big Blackout: Beth causes a city-wide blackout so the JSA can covertly disable the hidden cameras. She and Rick are caught disabling one at the school when power is restored, so the murderer now knows they're on to them.
- Call-Back: The bit of darkness Jennie absorbed last season turns out to be responsible for the Shade being tainted by Green Lantern energy.
- Corrupt Cop: Two of the police officers arresting Todd in the flashback take a bribe from Nurse Love to deliver him to the Helix Institute.
- Crossing the Burnt Bridge: Yolanda shows up to crash at Courtney's house despite their recent conflict, because she has nowhere else to go.
- Distinction Without a Difference: When Pat demands to know where Shade has taken him and Courtney, Shade insists that he only took Courtney and Pat just tagged along, ignoring the actual question.
- Flashback: The episode opens on Jennie leaving the group home on her eighteenth birthday as shown last season. At the same time in Civic City, her twin brother Todd and his boyfriend Danny have broken into a restaurant for a romantic birthday dinner. When the Green Lantern power activates for Jennie, it also synchronizes with Todd, only for shadows to suddenly pour out of Todd's eyes. This draws the attention of the police, who know Todd by name and have been hired to bring him to the Helix Institute, where Nurse Love and Mr. Bones are aware of his connection to Alan Scott.
- Flipping the Table: The person watching the surveillance feeds knocks over the table with the jigsaw puzzle after the blackout interrupts the signal.
- Forced from Their Home: In addition to the flashback of Jennie leaving her group home due to her aging out, Yolanda is forced to leave home when she refuses to give in to her mother's demand to see her phone.
- Foreshadowing:
- Jakeem's wish for the killer's cameras produces a lot of old-school cameras. The sheer volume of cameras from a specific era suggest more than a passing familiarity with camera work, which doesn't seem to jive with Mr. Bones or any present suspects.
- Nurse Love is shown to be hesitant to subject Todd to a higher intensity of the light machine, despite Mr. Bones insisting that they'll lose control otherwise. This hints that their motives are more benevolent than they appear at a glance, as demonstrated when Todd reveals he is there willingly.
- Sylvester appraises the Whitmore-Dugan family's acting skills.
- I Have No Daughter!: Confirmed when Yolanda is removed from her home and thus her family, complete with luggage, considering that her mother does not even reply that she loves her daughter during the confrontation.
- Internal Reveal: Rick tells Beth that he removed the limiter on the hourglass.
- Laser-Guided Karma: The Shade, along with Pat, is sent to the Shadowlands, a fate his machinations inflicted upon Courtney in the previous season.
- Liar Revealed: Yolanda's mother figures out she's been lying about taking late shifts, having called Maria to get her to stop scheduling them.
- Literal Genie: Jakeem wishes for every camera the Gambler's killer ever touched. He fails to consider that "camera" is a rather broad category beyond digital surveillance cameras. For that matter, it also doesn't produce the cameras he intended to collect, presumably because the killer didn't personally install them. This trope is also discussed, wherein Zeek suggests to Jakeem that he not only phrase his wording on wishes precisely and unambiguously, but to actually put passion, heart, and drive into his actions when making them so that they're more likely to be successful, though we don't yet see the results of this pep talk.
- Mundane Utility: Beth questions why Rick would waste his daily use of the hourglass in removing the spy cameras when he could pry them loose by hand equally well. Rick then reveals that he removed the limiter and is enjoying having the freedom to use his powers at will.
- My Significance Sense Is Tingling: The Shade is able to sense the shadows within Todd while the group searches the Helix Institute, even though he's not sure how.
- Mythology Gag: The name of Beth's plan "Blackout Bomb", comes from one of Dr. Mid-Nite's signature gadgets.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Jennie, desperate to save Todd, ignores his pleas to leave him and uses her fire on his bindings. Cue Todd's powers lashing out, and Pat and Swift getting blasted to the Shadowlands.
- Operation: [Blank]: Beth refers to the mission to find and destroy the cameras after causing a Big Blackout as "Operation Blackout Bomb". Sylvester states he likes the name.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Jakeem does not understand Zeek's references to Professor Plum and Colonel Mustard.
- Power High: Rick is concerningly happy about the hourglass working 24/7, using his strength to smash and shove things in the high school just because he can.
- Put on a Bus: It seems to have already happened to Cindy following the climax of the previous episode, who has left town to seek out Dragon King's other hidden laboratories to uncover more about her transformation.
- The Reveal:
- Todd was taken by the Helix Institute at the same time Jennie gained the power of the Green Lantern.
- When the fragment of the Black Diamond was absorbed by the Green Lantern ring, it linked her with the Shadowlands and caused her powers to bleed into the Shade and vice versa.
- Shadow Archetype: With her actions of kicking Yolanda out for standing up to her, her mother is what Yolanda may end up becoming if she continues to hold a grudge against Courtney.
- Skull for a Head: Mr. Bones makes his formal introduction here, his head being a skull with translucent skin covering it and no eyes to speak of.
- Spanner in the Works: Shade suddenly shows up to get Courtney's help while they're in the middle of searching for the cameras, and is desperate enough to not bother waiting for her consent.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Yolanda's strained relationship with her parents reaches its logical conclusion when she decides to stand up for herself, with her being thrown out of the house.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Jennie is not happy to be dealing with the Shade, who helped kill her dad, and their partnership is a matter of necessity. Half the reason Shade grabs Courtney is that he likewise finds working with Jennie intolerable, and the sooner their mutually debilitating connection is severed, the better.
- Two Lines, No Waiting: While the initial plot involves getting to the bottom of the Sinister Surveillance over the town and removing the cameras (which the team also suspect ties into the Gambler's murder) while the power is off, a second plot involves the Shade and Jennie coming to Courtney and Pat for help in rescuing Jennie's brother Todd from the Helix Institute and Mr. Bones. It's strongly implied the two plots are connected, but it hasn't actually yet been seen.
- Voice with an Internet Connection: Joel McHale doesn't appear in person as Sylvester/Starman in this episode, though his voice is heard acting as Mission Control and there's a distant shot of him flying around.
- We Need a Distraction: The JSA all engage in normal activities knowing they're under surveillance, while Beth and Sylvester hatch a plan to disable the cameras.
- Wham Shot: The final scene is monochrome, showing Pat and the Shade were teleported into the Shadowlands by Todd.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: This is implied to be happening with Rick, demonstrating exactly why his father made the one-hour inhibitor to begin with.
- Yin-Yang Bomb: When Jennie touches Todd, her light and his shadows interact, creating an explosion which turns him into a shadow creature.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are:
- The Shade invokes this by kidnapping Courtney to get her to talk to Jennie, even though she isn't presently wielding the staff, because it's her strength of will he requires.
- Before that, Pat tells Courtney that her friends are still her friends, and that she is still the leader of the JSA.
