Episode #52 (257-383) - Power Outage Original Airdate - May 22nd, 2004 - Fourth Season Finale; Series
Finale
All of the Metahumans are turning normal, including Static and Gear,
when an antidote to the Bang Baby gas is sprayed throughout Dakota.
Media by Bird Boy and James Harvey
Review by Matt Zimmer
Credits:
Supervising Producer Alan Burnett
Producer Denys Cowan, Swinton O. Scott III
Associate Producer J.C. Cheng
Written by John Semper Jr.
Story by Alan Burnett and John Semper Jr.
Directed by Chuck Drost
Music by Gousse and Big Tank
Animation by Dongwoo Animation Co., LTD.
Voices:
Phil LaMarr as Virgil Hawkins/Static
Jason Marsden as Richie Foley/Gear
Michele Morgan as Sharon Hawkins
Gary Sturgis as Ebon
Crystal Scales as Daisy
Kevin Michael Richardson as Robert Hawkins
Danny Cooksey as Hotstreak
Chick Vennera as Ferrett
Danica McKellar as Frieda
Ed Begley, Jr. as Dr. Todd
Tia Texada as Talon
Brian Tochi as Shiv
Video Clip
Screen Grabs
Pans
Review
The Big Bang is reversed for most of Dakota in this well-done but
controversial series finale.
While fighting Kangor Static and Gear are amazed to see his feet shrink
back to normal size. They go to Dr. Todd (Wet and Wild) to find out
what's happening and he reveals that he's been seeping the Bang Baby
Cure into the city's air for a month. Soon all of the Bang Babies will
return to normal including Static and Gear. Ebon is determined to never
go back to normal so he kidnaps Dr. Todd and forces him to give him a
canister of Bang Baby gas which he used to make the anti-dote. Todd
relents.
Talon (who has reverted back to normal) informs Static and Gear that
Ebon plans on setting off another Big Bang. Static and Gear go down to
the docks to stop him. Ebon tells the Bang Babies assembled that he let
them have a whiff of the gas if they agree he's in charge. Static and
Gear arrive and although are severely depowered try to stop him.
Hotstreak steals the canister. He and Ebon fight and it goes off dousing
them so severely that they fuse together into a giant two-headed
monster. Static and Gear inhale the gas as well and defeat the monster.
At the end Gear tells Static that now that he's a genius again he'll
work on creating a cure for the cure when Dr. Todd next releases it to
Dakota.
I am going to be diplomatic when reviewing this episode. Although I am
severely disappointed that Dwayne McDuffie's original storyline of
Static confronting his mother's killer never went down I think I will
just review the episode as it is and not what it could have been. As it
is? Good, but definitely a mixed bag on some things.
For one thing, Robert finding out Static's identity last episode really
amounted to nothing here. If all that was going to happen was him asking
Virgil to fix his electric razor then wrecking any future possibility of
Mr. McDuffie's story ever happening is surely a high price to pay. How
will he be able to retcon this? Do you think maybe Batman Beyond/Justice
League Unlimited will let him borrow Starro to erase his memory? I am
not pleased.
Second, what the heck was the point of giving Hotstreak so much
characterization this season if the writers planned to just turn him
into a giant monster in the last episode? From the comments he was
making in this episode and his previous statements in No Man's an Island
and Wet and Wild it was puzzling to me why he wanted to steal the Bang
Baby gas from Ebon in the first place. When forced to fight Static here
he seems almost disinterested and him not following Ebon's orders seemed
to me to be a nod that maybe he really didn't care what happened and
that the cure was a good thing. Then he steals the gas to take over the
Meta-Breed? Is it wrong for me to wish that characters that have been
expanded on earlier in the season be written consistently in the last
episode? As it stands, Hotstreak's baffling behavior here had me leaving
the episode feeling very unsatisfied.
I liked the rest of the episode a lot though. I though it was great that
we had cameos from Slipstream, Boom, and the monster from The Usual
Suspect. I also really like Ebon's human look and thought Talon's
assertion that he wanted his powers back so much because he was nothing
before the Big Bang was VERY interesting but then, BAM, he's a monster.
Oh well. I also liked the idea of the Bang Babies being cured in the
final episode of the series but that enough gas escaped that you weren't
sure who was affected and who wasn't. I'm pulling for Talon to remain
human. She deserves better.
I liked a LOT about this episode and am grading it accordingly. But make
no mistake that this was NOT a perfect ending and that I wish a lot of
things had gone down differently.