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Recap / Justice League S 2 E 13 And 14 Eclipsed

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While searching for a war criminal in an unnamed foreign country, an American military team stumbles into a forbidding ancient temple-like building housing a conspicuously placed purple gem. One soldier, Burns, tries to take the gem only to be attacked by an impressively agile old man with a sword. After they defeat him, Burns grabs at the gem again, when snakelike phantoms come out of it and possess him. Burns shoots his team and escapes, and the old man follows.

The possessed Burns breaks into a military base that is testing a device called the AFD, a defensive weapon that can stop the fusion inside an atomic bomb. Burns is caught, but the spirits of the gem move to another host, General McCormick. McCormick hears about the Justice League from a TV show and decides to get their attention by dressing up as a supervillain (Eclipso from the comics) and attacking the city's power plant.

This is all a ploy to move to a more powerful host, however: during the fight, Wonder Woman seizes the gem and becomes possessed. She's only stopped by the old man, Mophir, who has a counter-magical gem. Captured, Mophir explains to Flash that he's the last survivor of an ancient tribe who defeated a snake-like species called the Ophidians, who created the gem, the Heart of Darkness, to house their spirits so they can eventually avenge their race.

Flash returns to the Watchtower and informs the rest of the League, leading Hawkgirl to smash the Heart of Darkness to smithereens. Unfortunately, the smithereens lodge themselves in all the League members except Flash, and they're all possessed. The Ophidians launch the AFD into the sun to stop its fusion and wipe out the earth. Flash drives out the spirits by exposing them to the light of the Watchtower's power core, and together he and Green Lantern use a wormhole device to extract the AFD from the sun.


Tropes:

  • Adaptational Wimp: G. Gordon Godfrey in the comics was in fact an agent of Darkseid, whose real name was "Glorious Godfrey", and who took on a human guise to help turn the public against superheroes to help his master. Here, he appears to be unconnected to Darkseid and is simply a normal human who is ranting against the League for ratings.
  • Air Vent Escape: Flash leaves an open door to make it look like he's run for it, but is actually crawling slowly through the (large) vents. Superman of course assumes Flash would use his Super-Speed rather than crawling slowly through the ducts.
  • Ascended Extra: Mophir had just a brief appearance as a witch doctor in an Eclipso comic, but here he becomes a secondary hero.
  • Body Surf: The Ophidians possess whoever is currently in contact with the crystal. As is revealed after Hawkgirl shatters it, even touching shards of the crystal will result in a person/persons being possessed.
  • Brick Joke: Mophir ends up doing the advertisement that Flash turned down.
  • Cassandra Truth: Mophir is thrown into a straitjacket, but when he repeats a line said by the possessed general, Flash realises he's not just a nutter.
  • Corporate-Sponsored Superhero: As mentioned above - Flash tries to become this, but between his sleazy agent and Godfrey's constant haranguing it doesn't really work out. At the end of the episode, he lets the now-purposeless Mophir take over.
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: For all the embarrassment he causes with his sponsorship antics Flash ends up saving the world, even when it means fighting a possessed Justice League.
  • Cutting the Knot:
    • Mophir knows two ways to undo possession: use his Power Crystal to drive out the evil or cut the possessed person's head off.
    • Subverted when Hawkgirl tries to just smash the diamond, which just sends shards flying into everyone except Flash, the only person quick enough to dodge.
  • Dark Reprise: When Flash is confronted by a possessed Superman, we hear a dark echo of the theme from Superman: The Animated Series.
  • Elevator Escape: Flash finds himself stuck on the Watchtower when the Justice League is possessed. He uses his Super-Speed to race for the elevator...then has to wait for it to arrive with Superman charging up behind him.
  • Elevator Snare: The Flash has a Too Dumb to Live moment when, after the rest of the League is possessed by an ancient evil, he tries to take the elevator instead of running.
  • Fake-Out Opening: The story begins with Flash seemingly engaged in a Batman Cold Open, but then it turns out that he's actually filming a commercial for an energy bar.
  • Four-Star Badass: Though he's unsurprisingly taken down (and wasn't supposed to win anyway), the fight at the end of part one shows that General McCormick has moves.
  • Hero with Bad Publicity: The League (especially Flash) falling victim to a TV pundit's rants.
  • How the Mighty Have Fallen: Godfrey has his own corporate sponsors as it turns out — they dump him when the Justice League becomes popular again, and his talk show is moved to after the Farm Report.
  • I Want My Mommy!: When Godfrey sees the sun is being destroyed he can only whimper, "Mommy..."
  • Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Wonder Woman briefly goes one of these phases after she takes the crystal amulet from General McCormick, even so going far as to drop him after being corrupted by the amulet, only for Flash to catch him.
  • Karma Houdini: Despite selling out the people whose interests he's supposed to be representing, Flash's agent ends up earning loads with little consequence beyond being roughed up by Wonder Woman, which he doesn't seem to mind.
  • Lizard Folk: The Ophidians are Snake People but they actually look more like this trope, since they're bipedal.
  • Manipulative Editing: Flash complains that Godfrey edited footage of him throwing a tantrum while filming a commercial, so that he looks like a complete jerk. While this is true, GL clearly believes that not much editing was required.
  • Muggle Power: The show's B-plot concerns a TV talk-show personality, G. Gordon Godfrey, who criticizes the Justice League for supposedly being arrogant and unaccountable and corrupting the nation's youth.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • Flash asks GL to take a road trip together, just like Hal Jordan and Oliver Queen did in the 1970's.
    • To face the Justice League, the possessed General McCormick dresses up in a gaudy costume that makes him look like the Bruce Gordon version of Eclipso.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: An almost literal example: Hawkgirl tries to cut the problem off at the source by smashing the crystal. Unfortunately, the fragments infect the entire League bar the Flash.
  • Not Himself: Flash suspects something's up with Wonder Woman when she drops the now-depossessed McCormick from a lethal height.
  • Nothing Personal: For all of his on-air invective against the League, Godfrey is rather polite to Flash off-camera. He just sees this as his paycheck.
  • Out-of-Character Alert: The audience is shown the diamond is possessing someone when they whistle the same tune (used for the chanting when the diamond was first created).
  • Pimped-Out Car: Flash uses the money from his commercial to buy a customized van with flashy paint job, cushy interior, etc. GL asks why a van, then quickly adds that he doesn't want to know on realising the answer. On seeing the Feng Schwing interior, he turns down the offer of a road trip.
  • Really 700 Years Old: Mophir is somehow still around from the "time before writing" when the Ophidian war took place.
  • Revenge Before Reason: The Ophidians seem to be using their quasi-immortality to do nothing but destroy humanity — even if it means wiping out the whole solar system. Though their own race was apparently destroyed in a genocidal war with humanity, so it's not like they don't have a genuine grievance.
  • Reverse Psychology: When possessing McCormick, the Ophidians speak of the crystal as if it's a highly dangerous artifact that could destroy the world if not kept safe. Though an ironically true statement, they word it in such a way as to convince Diana to take it from them, resulting in them being able to possess a much more powerful host.
  • Sarcasm-Blind: The general asks how he might contact the "Just Us League". His captain snipes that dressing up in a funny costume and threatening innocent people usually works. The general does just that (and it does work).
  • Shoot the Television: GL zaps the TV off with his ring, then later Wonder Woman is so enraged at Godfrey's comments about her outfit that she smashes the TV with her fist.
  • Show Within a Show: The opening scene is actually a show within a show within a show — Flash's commercial is being shown on Gordon Godfrey's TV show to support his claim that the superheroes are only in it for themselves.
  • Star Killing: The AFD starts doing this to the sun.
  • Stripperiffic: Godfrey gets on about WW's outfit.
  • Take That!: The book Godfrey refers to as proof of superheroes instilling bad morals into children is called Innocent Seduction, a play on Seduction of the Innocent, the book that took advantage of the moral panic surrounding comic books and ultimately created The Comics Code.
  • Third-Person Person: Mophir talks a lot like Solomon Grundy.
  • Weakened by the Light: Flash uses a high-intensity sunlamp to cure the possessed Justice League members, driving the Ancient Evil back into the shards of diamond.

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