Welcome to episode three of season two of the Over/Under of Lucha Underground, our gently reworded Best and Worst report about every episode of the best wrestling show on television. Maybe the best show on television. If you’d like to read about season one, you can find all of our previous episode reports — we’ve been down with this show since season one episode one — on our Lucha Underground tag page. For season two, click here. If you’re new to the show and are jumping on with season two (or just want to know what the hell’s going on), we put together a season 1 primer that answers all your pertinent questions and fills in all the gaps. It also tells you where you can watch the show, so if you want to know, go read.
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And now, the Over/Under of Lucha Underground season 2, episode 3.
Under, With a Little Over: She Is The One Called Kobra Moon
You’ve got to look at this week’s opener from two points of view.
From the first, you’ve got a snake lady battling a tiger man and making him pass out by wrapping around him and squeeing him like a boa constrictor. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy that, or that it didn’t fit perfectly in the Lucha Underground universe. Bengala actually standing up and trying to make it to the ropes only to get drained and collapse again was pretty good.
From the second, it … wasn’t the best match. Kobra Moon is very new to not only LU but the sport in general, and that shows sometimes. It’s all about getting the snake gestures over instead of the wrestling. If you remember the season one recaps, I’m already not much of a fan of Bengala, which continues to be sad for me. How do I not like a chubby snow tiger luchador? I’m a huge mark for cat-themed wrestlers. One of my good friends is a cat-themed wrestler. I thought the Mumbai Cats from Ring Ka King were the greatest thing I’d ever seen. Bengala should’ve been an instant top 5 favorite on the show, but nope.
The truth is somewhere in the middle. I think Kobra Moon’s got some potential as a character (and I love that we’re getting more luchadoras on the show so Sexy Star doesn’t have to get that over by herself), but this wasn’t great. The good news is that even most of the “not great” on Lucha has an upside.
OVER: Aero Star
I feel like I missed something here, so please make sure to drop down into the comments and help me figure it out.
Up until now, we’ve assumed that Aero Star is either an alien or an astronaut with rocket boots. We’ve seen him jump off really high stuff and form a competitive bond with a reincarnated dragon. Other than that, he’s been pretty under the radar. This week we find out that while he might still be an alien or whatever, there’s a bigger truth about Aero Star: HE IS A TIME TRAVELER.
I had to put that in bold because the motherf*cker travels time. We jump back “millennia” to a kid by a fire, and we jump ahead (I think?) to him as an adult. We hear about the 7 Aztec tribes being at war, and how the Gods won’t return to unite them for a thousand years. Is that right? Am I getting those facts straight? I honestly can’t remember, because the next scene is fully decked-out spaceman Aero Star stepping in, announcing that he’s traveling forward in time a thousand years and ROCKETING OFF THROUGH TIME AND SPACE.
So is Aero Star an alien? Is he like, a steampunk Aztec dude who learned how to jump forward in time? Can he only jump forward in time, or can he go back? Are we gonna get like, a season two video package that changes the events of season one and use Aero Star to explain the differences? Did he befriend Drago because he knew him when he was a dragon? I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS, GUYS.
Over: The Dragon Slayer
Speaking of Drago, he loses to Jack Evans this week via a bridging backslide with a foot on the ropes. Yes, that screencap makes it look like Evans is unleashing an acrobatic fart attack.
The hook here is that by defeating Drago, Jack Evans has christened himself “The Dragon Slayer.” That’s outstanding. I love the reaction Jack gets from the crowds at the Temple because people want to like him, but he just absolutely will not let it happen. He might be the truest heel on the show, which is saying something considering the show also features the living embodiment of death, a hunter who hunts people and an entitled WWE guy who thinks doing parkour makes him a luchador.
I’m excited to see where this goes, especially since the season two trailer had Evans and the Daring Werewolf having bathroom nunchuck fights with Drago. Although now that I think about it, between bathroom nunchuck fights and battling masked bikers in a motel parking lot, PJ Black’s got a weirdly suggestive arc going on.
Over: People Who Get Put Into Caskets In Lucha Underground Casket Matches Actually Die
And hey, speaking of bathrooms, this episode has Catrina sneaking up behind Prince Puma in one, cementing her as the for-real evil boss of the Temple. You haven’t filled Dario Cueto’s shoes until you’ve crept up on someone in the sh*tter and gotten all clandestine with their lives.
It’d been implied previously, but this week’s episode comes right out and announces that Konnan is dead, and that Catrina heard him praying for forgiveness as he suffocated in a coffin. Keep that in mind the next time you think someone’s a great heel for refusing a tag or whatever. I love that caskets and casket matches are the ultimate consequence in Lucha Underground, though. Those things are HIGH STAKES. Fenix put Mil in a casket and he actually died, and Catrina had to revive him in a more powerful form. It took death itself to make the man change pants. Now Konnan’s been put in a casket, and his dying words are being used to push Puma over the edge. Remember when Kane and The Undertaker got kidnapped by the Wyatt Family and Bray said he “harvested their souls” to steal their powers, but it turned out they were totally fine and Bray’d just figured out how to order lightning pyro for a week? Supernatural stories in pro wrestling only really work if there are concrete consequences, and you respect the rules and history of the bullsh*t ridiculousness you’ve put out there. Sad we didn’t get more Puma growling, though.
Side note: Anybody know where I can get one of those Prince Puma hoodies?
There’s another great backstage moment furthering the relationship between Catrina and King Cuerno, and it makes perfect sense. Fenix is the only guy who has forced Mil Muertes to show vulnerability, so in the mind of Mil’s ghost familiar (or whatever she is), Fenix is the only legitimate threat to Mil’s reign. Fenix is good, but he’s never as good as when he’s in the ring with Mil, meaning guys like King Cuerno can just straight-up beat him in matches. Cuerno’s been hunting Fenix (because he’s a bird, I guess) and Pentagon broke Mil’s arm, so Catrina struck a deal: Cuerno will get the Gift of the Gods title off Fenix to keep him from cashing in on the wounded champion only he can beat, and in exchange, Cuerno gets to … sniff a ghost lady?
Anyway, Catrina’s pressuring Cuerno into these situations to make him “destroy” Fenix, which we already know is impossible, so it’s just gonna build up and build up until Cuerno’s sick of it and reneges on the deal.
My only real complaint is that we’re a few episode into season two and Catrina still can’t pronounce “Muertes.” Mill Mortence! Still!
Over/Under: More “World Of Luchadors” Stuff
From last week’s column:
The best part is that when the bikers [who were fighting PJ Black] take off their helmets, they’re wearing luchador masks. At first I just though they were confrontational free-range lucha bikers, but in the debut vignette for Kobra Moon — a lady who is a snake, except she’s blue and also a cat burglar? — she fights randos who are ALSO luchadors. Did season 2 of Lucha Underground decide that everyone within a hundred mile radius of the Temple is a luchador now? Are we living in a world of luchadors? Is Dario Cueto feeding dudes to Matanza in Temple 2 to weed out the muggles?
That weird trend continues this week, when a couple of guys in luchador masks in a bar piss off Texano and he beats them up. It is SUPER AWESOME that Texano is petting horses and then gets drunk and assaults rowdy bar patrons with a length of rope, don’t get me wrong, but the more they do it, the more I don’t like the World of Luchadors stuff. Maybe it’s just me. My average white dude brain likes to think of luchadors as special heroes and villains, not as NPCs. Every man or woman in a mask has a history and a legacy, right? What was the legacy of these guys, that they hate people who are nice to horses? That’s a weird tribe.
That’s just me thinking too much, though, and again, Texano having Captain America super strength to rip logs in half with his bare hands and turning his rope into a Castlevania whip is great. Really great. I do still think they should take a second to explain why the guy who is super proud of being Mexican and representing Mexico is named “The Texan.”
Over: Last Luchador Standing
Our main event is Fenix vs. King Cuerno in a “last luchador standing” match — again, Catrina manipulating people into unnecessarily dangerous situations to keep Fenix away from Mil Muertes. It’s non-title too, which is honestly kind of insulting to Cuerno, but smart from an Evil GM perspective. Like, why give Fenix an opportunity to right the wrong? She wants Cuerno to end him for good, but makes sure there’s no way for it to bite her in the ass if he can’t. A+.
The match itself is great, too, because it keeps a lot of the ridiculousness of a Last Man Standing match to a minimum, and doesn’t sell out the concept by having them do insane stuff to each other the whole match. It builds to the big spot at the end, and the first big spot is the ending. A lot of the early 10-counts are off big dives or moves, or smaller things like Cuerno whipping Fenix into the chairs. The 10 counts are also really fast, which I liked, which doesn’t leave us with a lot of downtime. Sometimes Last Man Standing matches get super boring because every 10 count takes a full minute. So the match will be 30 minutes long, but 16 of those minutes are watching a guy lie on the ground.
Another great touch is that King Cuerno gets frustrated early on that Fenix won’t stay down for 10-counts, so later in the match (when Fenix might actually be down), he gets hot-headed about it and won’t let the referee count. At one point he runs the length of the outside with a ladder and blasts Fenix in the face with it, but continues to escalate the situation and stops the ref’s count because he’s tricked himself into believing he needs a big finish. Self-doubt creeping in and screwing up your plans. That’s real. But yeah, Cuerno decides he’s gonna go up a ladder and put Fenix through a table. It backfires, Fenix goes up the ladder first, and Cuerno gives chase. When they get to the top, Fenix kicks Cuerno back and sends him AND the ladder backwards. It’s a little Looney Tunes, but it’s also violent as hell, and Cuerno hitting the ground like an egg in a f*cking science fair project is an absolutely believable, not-insisting-upon-itself 10-count finish.
To make things even better, Fenix ends the match on top of the office, meaning we get an incredible shot of him (bathed in light) staring down Mil Muertes (bathed in darkness) above the Believers. Give them an Emmy, people.
OH, AND THEN:
Over: WHAT
This week’s bonus scene recontextualizes the entirety of season 1. No, I’m not kidding.
We see Cortez Castro in a police captain’s office — a female Latina police captain, because Lucha Underground and El Rey Network are awesome — and we find out that he’s an UNDERCOVER POLICE OFFICER who has been working since the beginning of the series to gather information on Dario Cueto and bring him down. I’ve seen Rey Mysterio, I’ve seen Alberto Del Rio, I’ve seen a cage monster eat a dude’s face, I’ve seen dragons and time travel and Dark Master reveals, but I’ve never, ever seen a moment that made my jaw drop like this.
There’s so much to revisit. The Crew has been connected to the inner workings of The Temple since the beginning, coming in to do the dirty work of the show’s biggest heels. Somehow they always managed to screw it up, though, from the Trios Tournament to the Black Lotus/El Dragon Azteca fiasco and beyond, and now we know why … because their leader was doing it on purpose. Now we get this scene where we write off Blue Demon, explain a lot of the Chavo Guerrero stuff AND tie back in the Dario Cueto Second Temple story, all while openly and shockingly addressing the history we know and thought was true. Unbelievable. I can’t wait to learn more about this, and use it to explain so much of the stuff we’ve already seen. Five f*cking stars.
Oh, and then JOEY RYAN shows up as a fellow officer, and we get Cortez The Killer (sorry, “Officer Reyes”) and sleazy-ass wonderful Joey Ryan with his magical dick powers heading into the Temple as enemies who are actually secret cop friends who have to work for a ghost lady in her Temple of Evil to find a disgraced Spanish businessman, his monster brother and an Asian lady assassin.
…
…
I just
Oh man.
While I burn through season one all crazy looking for Pepe Silvia, here’s Ariana Vives with a quick note about Captain Vasquez:
Last night’s episode of Lucha Underground revealed that The Crew member Cortez Castro is an undercover cop named Reyes assigned to investigate The Temple and bring down Dario Cueto. “It also introduced us to his superior officer, Captain Vasquez, who couldn’t care less about Bael’s death and possibly has a daughter (check out the framed picture on her desk).
I’ve written about what the show means to me as a Latina wrestling fan. I put up with stories like Eddie Guerrero getting his G.E.D. so I can get to fireworks factories like his win at No Way Out 2004. For every luchador winning the U.S. Championship, we get Kerwin White or the Mexicools or MexAmerica. But yesterday’s reveal brought to mind what Jane the Virgin’s Gina Rodriguez said after winning a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a TV Comedy/Musical: “This award is so much more than myself—it represents a culture that wants to see themselves as heroes.”
Despite being the largest minority group in the U.S., Latinos rarely get to be heroes, or even interesting characters, on the few English-language shows we see ourselves in. This is true as well in wrestling, where Latino wrestlers are rarely afforded the meaty, complex storylines freely written for their non-Latino counterparts. But on Lucha Underground, they are heroes, or villains, or somewhere in the middle. They are dragons, phoenixes, snakewomen, and spacemen. They are regular humans with histories, motivations, layers, flaws, and families. They are people trying to do their best when faced with adversity, people who f*ck up, and people who learn from their mistakes. They are wrestlers who are taken seriously as competitors. And they are Latino.
Lucha Underground is a f*cking gift.
