Static Shock – 52poweroutage

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

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
 

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.

Story: ****
Animation: ****
Average: ****