Let's discuss the final episodes of the first season...
- "A Knight of Shadows" introduces the "dark ages" DC characters, such as Jack Kirby's Etrigan (Michael T. Weiss) and Morgaine Le Fay (Olivia d'Abo)
- DC always took the Arthurian legend mixed with ideas of their own--Le Fay living into the modern age, Merlin cursing Jason Blood with the rhyming demon Etrigan
- In a recurring theme on the series, Martian Manhunter gets whammied when he tries to read the bad guys' mind. I guess if they didn't do this, it would be easy for J'onn J'onzz to win every time.
- There's a great scene at a masquerade party at a faux Playboy mansion (Dave Thomas does his Bob Hope impression as the quasi-Hefner). There's also a number of poor DC hero costumes in the crowd.
- Next is "Metamorphosis", where we meet Metamorpho, the Element Man (Tom Sizemore). Basically, he's a guy who can change himself into any element.
- He's got his own supporting cast--Simon Stagg, the wealthy and deceitful industrialist who creates the aforementioned hero (Earl Boen); Java, Stagg's huge bodyguard (Richard Moll); Sapphire, Stagg's daughter and our hero's love interest (Danica McKellar).
- There's a great train crash scene with GL trying to stop it--very dynamic. GL and Metamorpho are old Marine buddies.
- The local police have rocket launchers in the car? I guess you would need it in the DCU.
- In a nod to another DC character, Stagg accidentally creates a synthetic green monster that looks a lot like Chemo
- "The Savage Time" takes us into alternate history--where the Nazis win WW2. Of course, immortal villain Vandal Savage (Phil Morris) is the cause.
- The "Nazis win WW2" bit is old hat to DC - they even had a separate Earth for it at one time
- I guess they weren't allowed to have swastikas in the episode--they used a lightning bolt instead
- Classic dialogue: Hawkgirl: "Who's hand is that?" Flash: "Sorry"
- In this alternate timeline, Batman runs the resistance
- To fix things, they go back to WW2, where we get a lot of great battle footage, on land and in the air--and cool mega-weapons created by Savage
- In a great shot, we get - Hitler On Ice!
- DC war heroes Sgt. Rock (Fred Dwyer) and Blackhawk (Robert Picardo) have cameos
- We also meet Steve Trevor (Patrick Duffy), whom Wonder Woman saves and then falls in love, of course. After all is set right and they return to the present, she visits an old age home to meet Trevor again.
- Of course, "setting things right" is relative, since Vandal Savage still was Fuehrer in WW2--at least for a while. Wouldn't someone in Germany had studied the fantastical weapons and duplicated them?
JL biography: Green Lantern
- aka John Stewart, the Emerald Warrior
- 1st appearance in the comics: Green Lantern #87 (1971)
- Ex-marine, architect
- Guardians of the Universe choose him as Hal Jordan's backup GL
- Powers: Magic ring lets him create green physical constructs and force fields, communicate with others, get info from a galactic database
- Voice Actor: Phil LaMarr
- Main events in the comics while the series was on the air (2001-04)
- Member of JLA until it's dissolved due to the events in Identity Crisis
- Shares GL duties patrolling Earth's sector with Hal Jordan
If you would like to play along, the DVD box set is available on Amazon.