SciFi Weekend: Music On Supergirl, The Flash, And Legends of Tomorrow; Legion; The Magicians; 12 Monkeys; Doctor Who; Agents of HYDRA; The Matrix Reboot; Westworld

The musical cross over of Supergirl and The Flash (and the Glee Reunion) entitled Duet will begin on Supergirl, with most of the story taking place on The Flash. The two are placed in a dream-like state by the Music Meister (Darren Criss). ScreenerTV reports that, “Kara and Barry wake up without their powers in an alternate reality where life is like a musical and the only way to escape is by following the script, complete with singing and dancing, to the end.”

Variety adds this information from Candice Patton (Iris West):

“You’ll see two versions of Iris in the episode,” she said. “The Iris that we know and love, and a person they [Barry and Kara (Melissa Benoist)] think is Iris but is actually a completely different character named Millie. She’s the sassy daughter of two gangsters — played Victor Garber and Jessie Martin — and she’s madly in love with Mon-El’s character (‘Supergirl’s’ Chris Wood), whose name is Tommy. They’re fighting for their love, because both of their families do not want them to be together.”

Writers of the music for the episode include Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who also wrote for La La Land.

Supergirl isn’t the only show in the Berlantiverse to feature music this month. On Legends of Tomorrow, Dr. Stein (Victor Garber) along with Heat Wave (Dominic Purcell) had infiltrated NASA during the flight of Apollo 13 and had to distract those there from seeing superheroes on the moon. They do it by singing Day-O in the video above.

Time travel shows typically have rules as to what can be done, and then frequently break the rules. Legends of Tomorrow has been fairly lax with their rules, but they will break the little that has been established for the season finale. Here is the official synopsis:

Aruba” — (8:00-9:00 p.m. ET) (Content Rating TBD) (HDTV) SEASON FINALE — As the Legends are about to take off for their next destination, a massive timequake rocks the ship. In order to try and fix what has happened, they are forced to break the one cardinal rule of time travel. But if they are able to destroy the spear, they will face the ultimate consequence. Victor Garber, Brandon Routh, Arthur Darvill, Caity Lotz, Dominic Purcell, Franz Drameh, Nick Zano and Maisie Richardson-Sellers. Rob Seidenglanz directed the episode written by Phil Klemmer & Marc Guggenheim (#217). Original airdate 4/4/2017.

Next season The Flash will break with its usual tradition of having the Flash’s life be dominated by others with super speed. The big bad next season will not be a speedster.

Legion, which has now been renewed for a second season, has been very strange recently, with Aubrey Plaza doing a fantastic job as “Dr. Lenny” last week. It makes a little more sense to those who know about the X-Men comic universe. I0-9 discusses the identity of the bad bad which has been inhabiting David’s mind:

A new promo for the show’s next episode, “Chapter 7,” sees the brainy half of the Loudermilk duo, Cary, confirm that Amahl Farouk—better known as the Shadow King—is the villain that’s been plaguing David as the yellow-eyed demon throughout the show.

It’s not exactly a huge surprise that Yellow-Eyed Demon, or Y.E.D., is actually the Shadow King. This has been hinted at for weeks. Over the course of the first season, Y.E.D. has been lurking in David’s mind, changing David’s memories and making him forget about every encounter they’ve had to keep his identity secret. Lately, Y.E.D. has taken on the form of Lenny (Aubrey Plaza), David’s friend from the mental hospital who was killed in the first episode—but when David was a child he pretended to be his dog, not-so-subtly named King. The Shadow King has actually been inside David for decades. David’s father (Professor X?) sent him away when he was a baby to protect him, but Farouk couldn’t be stopped.

 So, who is Farouk in the comics? First introduced in Uncanny X-Men #117 by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, Farouk is the latest human host of the pure psychic energy being known as the Shadow King. The Shadow King has existed for centuries, feeding on the enslaved bodies of telepathic hosts from the dawn of humanity. Farouk has spent his life working in the shadows, first as a Nazi ally and later a crime boss in Egypt, before encountering Charles Xavier in ‘70s Cairo…

There is a large but finite number of ideas in science fiction and fantasy, and on Wednesdays we are seeing that with two excellent genre shows having a similar situation. While David on Legion appears to have a second consciousness in him since childhood, Quenton has Niffin Alice in him at present on The Magicians. While there is a similarity in the idea of two consciousnesses in one person, this is a more recent development on The Magicians, and perhaps Penny discovering this last week is a step towards resolving this problem. If not, who knows how much damage Alice can do with control of Quenton’s body for even a brief period every day.

Syfy plans to air all ten episodes of season three of 12 Monkeys over three days in May, between May 19 and 21. This sounds like the sort of thing a network might to do to quickly get rid of the episodes of a series it plans to cancel, but they have also renewed the series for a final fourth season. Perhaps this is their response to the trend towards binging shows, such as on Netflix.

While Syfy has renewed 12 Monkeys and The Expanse, there is no word yet on The Magicians. The Magicians is also impacted by streaming in a different manner. The episodes seem to be prepared for streaming, with an uncensored version of season one with limited commercial cuts made available after the first season aired. Besides all the f-bombs, the show is made without fading to commercials like a typical show, and instead have the commercials appear abruptly, making the episodes work better when repeated with reduced commercial breaks (or none when on Netflix). I would love to see The Magicians return for a third season on Netflix instead of Syfy so that we can see it this way from the start.

There is also news on the third time travel series to be discussed this week. Digital Spy reports that Doctor Who will have a three part episode involving The Monks, with Missy also appearing:

It’s been a while, but Doctor Who is resurrecting the three-parter for Peter Capaldi’s final series aboard the TARDIS.

New monsters The Monks were previously confirmed to be appearing in several episodes across series 10 – now Digital Spy can confirm that a trio of adventures (episodes 6-8) in the new series are linked.

Toby Whithouse, who’s written the concluding chapter, revealed: “Mine is the third part of a three-parter – Steven [Moffat]’s done the first one, Peter Harness did the second and I’ve done the third.

“It’s set modern-day… and I think anything more than that and Steven will come round and kick me in the shin!”

Sacha Dhawan, who played Jimmy Dillon on Mr. Selfridge, and has also appeared in Sherlock, Iron Fist, and An Adventure in Space and Time is among the names being discusses as a possible replacement for Peter Capaldi. Radio Times reports he is very interested in the role:

“Oh my God, I’d absolutely love to,” Dhawan told RadioTimes.com when asked if he was interested in the part. “I SO would love to.

“I’ve worked with [frequent Doctor Who writer Mark Gatiss] quite a lot, and I think I’d bring something really exciting to it. It’d be incredibly nerve-wracking to do to be honest. It’s quite a lot of pressure.

“When the list came out, I was so honoured really that I was even considered,” he went on. “And that alone was kind of good enough. But who wouldn’t want to do it? It’s Doctor Who.”

The posters advertising the return of Agents of SHIELD reminds us that they are now in The Framework with a different reality. For those not watching, it is sort of like being in The Matrix.

There is also talk about rebooting The Matrix. The remake will apparently tell other stories in the same universe. If they go ahead, I hope they do a better job than they did in the two attempts to make a sequel to the original movie.

Den of Geek summarizes what is known so far about season 2 of Westworld.

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