Vixen: Episode 6

We’ve reached the final episode, and I feel that my appetite has only just been whetted on all things Vixen. Altogether these webisodes have clocked in at just under half an hour, and as I suspected, more than a few shortcuts have been taken when it comes to wrapping up Mari's story. Or at least this particular story.

Having been abandoned in the desert by her sister, it's a deus ex machina that awakens Mari from her poison-induced slumber, coming in the form of some wild animals, four human spirits, and at least two disembodied voices. Yeah, I've no idea what's going on here.

Having been restored to full health, Mari learns that her sister is a bad apple whose mother fled from her when she was just a child (leading me to wonder what on earth she did as a little girl to warrant such a reaction) and returns to the destroyed village to claim what's rightfully hers.

After a pretty cool fight scene with Kuasa, (my favourite touch is that the necklace's magic is yellow instead of purple when it's used by the wrong bearer) Mari gets the upper hand after she she injures her sister's shoulder and slaps the spider onto it. With Kuasa succumbing to the poison, Mari retrieves the totem and ... presumably leaves her there and hitchhikes to the nearest airport?

It doesn't matter, because the next we see of her Mari is in a crime-fighting costume and beating up bad guys in Detroit with her newfound powers. This has been a search for identity, and now that she's found it she can embrace her new destiny as a superhero as well as a fashion designer.

Okay, so for someone searching for answers, she suddenly became very incurious about her sister's motives and her family's heritage, but perhaps the whole point of this journey was that her search took her right back to where she started. That she calls Chuck "dad" for what seems to be the first time (at least to our ears) would indicate as such.

But there's still time for a final reminder that all this is part of the Arrow universe, with Oliver and Barry turning up again to – just chat, I guess? Oliver backs down awfully quickly from his "you've had no training" objection, and after some rather forced Felicity-related banter, the miniseries ends with a reminder that this is Vixen's story and a pretty classic Hero Shot.

Miscellaneous Observations:

Like I said, all this was wrapped up in a hurry, with plenty of plot-holes left in its wake. How did Mari get back to America? How did she overcome the spider bite? Did the animal spirits revive her? What was the deal with her sister? Where did these weird zombie followers come from?

And who is the elderly woman in the middle of the picture below? I'm guessing the couple are her biological parents and the red-head on the left looks like Pam, her foster mother, so is the third woman meant to be her grandmother?

And I had to laugh a little when Mari solemnly tells Kuasa "the totem is ours; our family's" – only to take it for herself and return it to America.

I loved the appearance of the panther shadow in the alleyway. If Vixen is eventually moved into live-action, I wonder if this is how they'll visualize the manifestation of her powers. Perhaps part of the reason why she was initially animated is because it's an easier format to capture this sort of thing, but it wouldn't be too hard to capture these shadows in a live-action television show.

Does the necklace warn her of Arrow and the Flash's presence? Handy.

Interesting how she doesn't wear a mask. I guess it's part and parcel of the whole identity theme.

Now that Vixen has come to a finish, it'll hopefully attract some more viewers who were waiting to watch it all in one sitting. It serves as a solid Origin Story and a potential gateway to Mari's appearance on Arrow or her own spin-off, and if/when that happens it'll be interesting to see whether the showrunners assume the audience has seen these webisodes.

I'll have my fingers crossed.