Superman on Television

Legion of Super Heroes: Episode Reviews

Season 1 - Episode 5: "Champions"

This episode felt mostly like a jumble. Until the Fatal Five showed up it had no real lasting bearing on anything, and I surmise the only reason the Fatal Five is going to prison is so that they can meet up with Alexis Luthor.

The entirety of the Intergalactic Games seemed a bit contrived and there was no real reason for them other than as a venue to put the President in danger. Hopefully they'll pick up on the Mekt/Lightning Lad rivalry again in a future episode, thus making this episode more relevant.

Sadly, though, we get another deus ex machina ending. The Fatal Five is about to defeat Superman and Phantom Girl and Lightning Lad... when the guy who will become Ultra Boy comes out of nowhere to save the day. The only other place I saw him was the starting line to the final dodecathalon event... he didn't even appear anywhere in the race itself that I could see, never had a single line until he showed up to save the day and certainly never displayed any sort of power.

He was just dropped in to help them win the battle with no thought or planning. Where were the rest of the Legion members? Sure, Phantom Girl said tickets to the event were hard to get, but the Fatal Five show up and they don't even mention or consider calling in the rest of the Legion to help when the FF wiped the floor with twice as many Legion members the last time they met?

And Mekt really needs to make up his mind. He apparently cheated because he "wanted to win for once", but also says that Lightning Lad "should be used to second place". It's not often you hear the same character directly contradict themselves in the same episode.

On the whole, the writing here was the weakest of the season, just barely above the second episode only because it somewhat advanced the story with the Fatal Five.

The action scenes are still the highlight of the show, however. I've never found super-powered battles so much fun to watch on any show before.

But really guys, try a little harder with the writing unless you only want the very youngest of your audience to stick around for the whole season.

Back to the main TELEVISION page.