Starman makes plans to confront Icicle, but there's a much darker plan beneath the surface.
Tropes:
- Ambiguous Situation: Exactly how long the Ultra-Humanite was "running around in the woods" before becoming Starman is unclear. At first it seems he was only in the area since the start of the season, since he makes no mention of Eclipso and it's implied that he's only been using Dragon King's abandoned lab for a short time (since Cindy started looking for him, at least). But since both Dragon King's death and Sylvester's reappearance happened in the season 1 finale, for the brain transplants to happen it would seem he's been in Blue Valley since well before that...
- Answer Cut: Once Mike, Jakeem, and Cindy find Dragon King's body under the sheet, Mike asks who has the Ultra-Humanite's brain. Cut to the Mahkent residence, where we see a scar on the back of Sylvester's head.
- Anti-Advice: Turns out that all the "helpful" tips that Sylvester had been giving everyone throughout the season: encouraging Yolanda not to trust Cindy, mentioning the hourglass's limiter to Rick, and advising Beth to protect her family by cutting ties with them, were part of a Divide and Conquer plan.
- Apologetic Attacker: While burying Pat alive, Ultra-Humanite tells him he's sorry it has to end like this and that he'll miss having him as a friend and brother.
- Bait-and-Switch: The episode title. Between how much Sylvester is insistent on keeping everyone else out of the coming fight so he can face Icicle alone; how the latter is repeatedly referred to as far stronger than he was when he killed Sylvester the first time; how he has seemed to have something of a death wish for some time thanks to his trauma and no longer finding meaning in his life; how he and Courtney can't share the Cosmic Staff forever; and how he even has a moment with Beth and Rick where he insists that they find others to carry on the legacies of those dead JSA members who had no families left, it all seems set up for Sylvester dying by episode's end. Instead, he's been Dead All Along.
- Borrowed Biometric Bypass: The Ultra-Humanite took Sylvester's body so he could wield the Cosmic Staff, along with the fringe benefits of being able to go out in public.
- Buried Alive: Ultra-Humanite ties up Pat and buries him in a shallow grave in the woods.
- Calling the Old Man Out: While Sylvester wasn't actually her father (or even Sylvester, it turned out), Courtney does get to give him a rather awesome Tranquil Fury version of this after overhearing him cut Pat down to size, crossed with Broken Pedestal.
- Dead All Along: Sylvester is truly dead (his brain is, anyway), and his body has been taken over by the Ultra-Humanite.
- Desperately Craves Affection: After years living alone in the woods in a gorilla body, the Ultra-Humanite wants a return to the kind of adulation he received as Delores Winters, so he became the beloved hero Starman. In fact, he tells Pat that for him this was what it was all about and Jordan and Ito's Evil Plan is incidental as far as he's concerned.
- Didn't Think This Through: Jakeem wishes for Thunderbolt to take himself, Mike, and Cindy to the place where they'll find what they're looking for, that being a cure to Cindy's condition, and ignores Mike's warning to write the wish out first. Not only are they teleported to a location a fair distance from the actual location where they're meant to go (for suspense, basically, according to Thunderbolt), the wish is specifically what Jakeem needs because he made it, and what he needs is to impress Cindy. While the cure to her condition may in fact be at that location, if not in a physical sense, what's also there is leagues worse.
- Divide and Conquer: While the full endpoint of the villains' plans has not been revealed, the Ultra-Humanite does explain to Pat that this was his method throughout the season—whether by engineering such things himself to break up the JSA (Yolanda and Rick vs. Cindy, his attacks on the Shade and the Crocks, his conflicts with Courtney and Pat, setting up the Mahkents to look like the spies) or taking advantage of outside events (the situation with Cameron, the Shade's problems with Jennie, or Mr. Bones and the Helix Institute).
- Evil All Along: Sylvester, or at least the person we thought was him — who is actually the Ultra-Humanite, and has been ever since his supposed "return".
- Flashback: This episode opens with a scene showing how the Ultra-Humanite, in Delores Winters' body, accepted "her" Oscar, killed a persistent admirer who claimed he had seen in her eyes who she really "was," and then met up with a still-human Dragon King to see about putting his brain in a new, albino gorilla body. Not only does this provide foreshadowing of the Ultra-Humanite's ability to act "even when you're not acting" (thus explaining how he could convince everyone, even Cosmo, that he was Sylvester) and why he'd specifically want to be put in the body of a superhero that would let him both go among normal humans again and receive the adulation he desired, it also sets up for Ito ending up in the gorilla body in the present since he claimed to be "jealous" of the Ultra-Humanite's choice.
- Foreshadowing: The amount of things which add up now that didn't before regarding Sylvester is frankly rather stunning, but aside from everything mentioned below under Once More, with Clarity there's the fact he was the one who began all the distrust that has plagued the heroes this season (with the Gambler and the Shade), was the one to actually tell them about the Ultra-Humanite's MO (complete with explaining the backstory with Delores Winters), and had had several Out-of-Character Alert moments to make the viewer wonder if he were simply suffering from PTSD, Came Back Wrong, or something else.
- He Knows Too Much: A variation as Standish recognizes Delores is "always acting even when the cameras aren't rolling" and wants to know the true her. Even though he's just infatuated with her and doesn't suspect anything nefarious, the Ultra-Humanite kills Standish out of concern the man will figure out his secret.
- Hope Spot: Pat gives Sylvester a stirring speech which seems to reach some remnant of Sylvester, deep inside... but then the Ultra-Humanite takes back control.
- Just Between You and Me: Subverted. Ultra-Humanite offers to share the final details of Jordan's plan with Pat, only to look down and realize that he's actually completely covered Pat while monologuing about the details leading up to it.
- Not Himself: Turns out all the moments with Sylvester this season which seemed to be either PTSD, genuine personality conflict with a flawed hero, or Came Back Wrong were instead this—he was actually the Ultra-Humanite all along.
- Once More, with Clarity: Once it's been revealed that Sylvester is actually the Ultra-Humanite, he walks the grave-bound Pat through exactly how everything he's done up to this point has been part of his Divide and Conquer plan, complete with flashbacks—encouraging Yolanda not to forgive Cindy, Beth to cut herself off from her parents to protect them, Rick to take the limiter out of the hourglass, Mike and Jakeem to go try and prove themselves valuable JSA members, and Courtney to train with the Cosmic Staff so that he too could forge a bond with it. The audience even gets to learn that the attack at the Gambler's trailer was a Wounded Gazelle Gambit to make the JSA trust him, and that among the people he spoke to from Pat's life in order to learn everything he needed to convincingly portray Sylvester was a certain waitress—Mike's mom.
- The Power of Acting: The Ultra-Humanite has succeeded in impersonating Sylvester without detection all season by being scarily good at disappearing into his acting roles, even when all by himself with only the TV audience watching, which explains some scenes in previous episodes that would otherwise make less sense in light of him being an imposter. He admits to Pat that he even forgets he's acting sometimes. (It was he and not the real Delores Winters who won the Oscar, after all).
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
- After Pat pushes him one too many times to not go off and face Icicle alone, Sylvester explodes in a seething rage at him, not only calling him a pathetic and useless sidekick who never amounted to a real hero and never would, but even blames him for his death (for calling in the middle of the fight with the ISA, thereby distracting him at a crucial moment). Subverted when, after the damage to S.T.R.I.P.E. makes Zeek think Sylvester is doing to Pat what he did to Mike last season (i.e. engineering a means to keep him out of a coming fight), Pat confronts Sylvester in the Mahkent house, saying he understands he only said all those awful things to make Pat go into a 10-Minute Retirement so he'd be protected. Double Subverted when it turns out Sylvester is actually the Ultra-Humanite and had different reasons.
- Courtney gives one to Sylvester as well after overhearing him tear Pat down with his nasty speech, telling him that the man's always been her hero and not Sylvester after tonight. This doesn't faze Sylvester, and he takes the Staff away and heads out the door.
- The Reveal: Sylvester is actually the Ultra-Humanite, who exhumed Sylvester's body and put his brain in it. Meanwhile, the one inside the albino gorilla that previously housed the Ultra-Humanite is Dragon King. The former explains even more than what the audience already knew about the Ultra-Humanite why Thunderbolt said the killer had "many names."
- Special Edition Title: Once again, but this time because the opening flashback takes place in the past and includes footage of Delores Winters accepting her Oscar, the opening credits are in black-and-white.
- Spotting the Thread: The JSA starts to realize something is wrong with Sylvester when Rick says he was the one who encouraged him to remove the safety limiter on his hourglass. As Beth says, Sylvester had helped Rex Tyler overcome his addiction to the hourglass power before, so he would know full well the dangers of it... unless he wanted Rick to be overcome by rage.
- Summon to Hand: Sylvester does this when Courtney refuses to give him the Cosmic Staff, and Courtney can't will Cosmo back to her. The Ultra-Humanite later boasts that, thanks to Courtney letting him wield the staff, he's now forged a permanent bond with it.
- Sure, Let's Go with That: Sylvester does a brutal speech on how Pat was nothing but a joke to the rest of the JSA. He's surprised when Pat finds him later, Pat believing Sylvester was saying all that because he didn't want Pat following him into danger. Sylvester, or rather, the Ultra-Humanite, just nods, even trying to offer an "apology," but Pat says to forget about it, unaware the Ultra-Humanite had been trying to push him away as part of his plan.
- Tempting Fate: Standish tells "Delores" to show him what's really inside her. Probably not the best idea...
- Wham Episode: Boy, is it ever! Sylvester has been the Ultra-Humanite ever since he resurfaced at the end of Season 1. Everything we've seen him do since then was part of a plan to ingratiate himself with the new JSA, Divide and Conquer them, and steal the Cosmic Staff. The Ultra-Humanite gorilla body actually contains Dragon King, who did indeed survive Cindy's attempt to kill him.
- Wham Shot:
- Cindy, Mike, and Jakeem uncover Dragon King's body in his secret lab. Cindy removes her father's hood... and finds that his head has been sliced open. Enter Dragon King in his new body, that of the Ultra-Humanite.
- With the revelation that Dragon King's brain is in the gorilla's body, Mike ponders the question, "Where's the Ultra-Humanite's brain?" In the very next scene, we get our answer: it's in Sylvester's head!
- You're Insane!: After discovering that the Ultra-Humanite's sense of identity is so screwed up that even he forgets he's not Sylvester sometimes (which almost allows Pat to convince him to let him out of the grave), Pat calls him insane, which he gladly accepts.
