Episode title: Episode 1
Original Airdate: 8-25-15
Welcome to a spin-off of what I’ve been doing lately here on Wednesdays where I feature an episode of a webseries that you can watch right now along with a conversation with the creator. This time around I’m featuring an episode of a brand new studio-driven webseries that ties in with the CW’s Flash and Arrow called Vixen that’s being promoted on their CW Seed site and app. The promising thing about this series is that the protagonist of this series is a Black woman, something that is sorely lacking these days in superhero television or cinema. I don’t know anything about this character’s background so I’m coming at this from a completely clean slate. Also, the CW Seed doesn’t appear to allow embedding so you will have to follow a link to watch the episode as I will not be embedding any pirated versions of this show that may have found their way to YouTube or some other hosting site.
The episode clocks in at a pretty brief 4 minutes and it goes by pretty quickly. It starts off with a rooftop fight between Vixen, Flash and Arrow. There’s no explanation as to why they are trying to subdue her, but we do get a nice sampling of her powers. She isn’t quicker than the Flash, but she does have supernatural reflexes that allow her to avoid him as well as catch Arrow’s… arrows in midflight. She can also run up the building, turn herself invisible, and at one point we see what appears to be some type of spirit animal come from her necklace. For most of the fight, even though she’s outnumbered and on the run, she appears to have the upper hand for the most part until she misjudges and falls off the building. Cut to a “3 Days Ago” flashback.
During the flashback, we get to find out that Vixen has spent some time in jail, and it hasn’t been her first time there. She’s adopted, the necklace has been handed down to her presumably by her biological family, but the episode ends before we find out if she actually knows about these powers that she has gained control over just three days later. On one hand, it does end on one of those cliffhanger notes that makes you want to come back next week to find out what’s going on next. But on the other hand, it doesn’t really give you much to go on in these first four minutes. For myself, while I would have liked a little bit more information to go on, my curiosity is piqued and I will be back next week to find out what happens next.
Channel: Superhero 