Previously on the Over/Under of Lucha Underground: Robert Rodriguez handed the show over to Michael Bay for a week, so suddenly Fenix and Melissa Santos were falling in love near muscle cars and lens flares and their relationship was suddenly threatened by a crazy guy who wants to kill her. Also, Vinnie Massaro was murdered by an electric Power Glove from Hell.
If you need to catch up on the rest of the episodes — if you aren’t caught up, you should need to catch up — you can read about season 1 here, and season 2 here. Season 3 episode recaps can be found here.
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And now, the Over/Under on Lucha Underground season 3, episode 24, originally aired on June 28, 2017.
Under: Kiss Of The Spider Woman
The six month gap between the first and second halves of season three have wrecked a few of the undercard stories for me, none so egregiously as the “Cortez Castro gets found out, goes back undercover as a masked spider guy” story. To be honest, I’d completely forgotten about it until “Veneno” showed up to face Mil Muertes in round one of the Cueto Cup. Remember when Sexy Star was getting rubber spiders hidden in her locker? We gonna bring that back any time soon? I feel like season 3 should’ve started with a 20-minute “previously on” recap.
Anyway, Mil vs. Veneno is what it should be, which is a straight-up murder squash for Mil and a face-licking for Veneno. It’d be nice if there was more to it, but “it happened and didn’t really do anything for me” is usually as bad as Lucha Underground ever gets. Being willing to take a shit-kicking to get soul-licked by Catrina is as close as I ever come to agreeing with Vampiro’s boners-first commentary, though.
Over/Under: Worldwide Undercover
One thing I disliked about this episode is how almost all of the stories and matches revolved around relationship drama, or some sort of forced sexuality. The Mil Muertes and Jeremiah Crane matches (and the backstage segments) are built around the fact that Crane wants to fuck Catrina, and she’s ghost-bound or whatever to Pasqual Mendoza. Last week, Marty the Moth started stalking Melissa Santos, who is suddenly dating Fenix. Taya gets paired up with Joey Ryan, so most of that’s about how he wants to grab her butt. The best thing Lucha ever did as a show was move beyond the bullshit romantic triangle of the Unlikely Trio and treating Ivelisse as a “prize”to be one and started focusing on how cool they could be as a trios team. Lucha’s not doing anything egregious here, but I tune into this show to watch dragons fight spacemen, not to watch dudes argue with their girlfriends.
Joey’s a weird case, especially in Lucha, because the sleaziness of his actions are built into his character. They’re always done with an enormous, obvious wink, and — here’s the most important part — Joey’s rarely ever seen as a superior to any of the women he bothers. He’s in the ring pouring oil over himself and doing boob-plexes, but he usually ends up getting his ass kicked. The only time he regularly wins is when he gets thrown into action in Japan, and he’s like a hypermasculine, hypersexual Jushin Thunder Liger, defending Japan against its most troublesome weirdos and perverts.
For example, here, Taya throws Joey around by his chest hair, Northern Lights suplexes him and double-stomps him to win and advance in the tournament. Joey’s a creep, sure, but he’s mostly a loser creep. The Lucha version of the character makes it even weirder/funnier for me because he’s an undercover cop who’s just using pro wrestling as an excuse to act like a fictitious asshole.
Over: Rabbit Season
As usual, my favorite part of the episode involved my homies The Rabbit Tribe, particularly weird-ass Paul London and his Freddie Mercury jumpsuit taking on “Vibora,” aka Baron Cobran, aka the Undersnaker. If you can’t tell from the picture, that’s Paul holding Kobra Moon hostage with what I’m assuming is an extra sharp carrot. A Super Shredder snake monster being too stupid to know what to do when a crazy person is holding his master hostage with vegetables is why I’m watching this show. Less relationship drama, more raw foods assassination attempts.
This match makes me ESPECIALLY happy because it seems like it’s going to be another “important guy vs. can” contest like most of the rest of the first round, but the Rabbit Tribe bands together using top secret trippery to get Vibora counted out and give London the win. God bless us, we’ve got a Rabbit Tribe representative in the second round. Imagine if WWE held a company-wide tournament and Bo Dallas somehow knocked Braun Strowman out of round one.
The only downside to the match is Paul London being shoot crazy enough to trust a very tall but not especially good pro wrestler wearing a complex mask to catch him on a trust fall dive. Please enjoy London powerbombing himself into the first row of chairs:
Stop letting awkward tall guys endanger your life, Paul.
Over: The Best TV Match In The History Of Jeremiah Crane
It’s not exactly like trying to rank Ric Flair broadways, but I can say with relative certainty that Jeremiah Crane vs. Kill Shot from this week’s episode is the best match Crane/Solomon Crowe/Sami Callihan has ever had on television. He’s had plenty this good at shows, but usually when he’s on TV he’s either trying to tell a specific story (his Lucha matches so far) or doing wacky slingshot splashes against CJ Parker (on NXT). This is one of the first times we’ve ever seen him get a chance to really let loose, and spoiler alert, he rules when he can do that. It’s a shame Solomon Crowe was such a turd on arrival.
The only downside is that Lucha is recently obsessed with distraction finishes, and the tournament is making it even worse. Here, Kill Shot loses because Dante Fox distracts him. After the match, Catrina shows up to taunt Crane. If the match had gone on like two minutes longer, she probably would’ve shown up to distract him. I don’t love that, but when the wrestling is this good (and the distractions are at least happening for a reason, and not just repeatedly like they do in WWE) I’ll allow it.
OVER: From The Mouth Of Madness
In the episode’s final scene — Lucha Underground episodes are only truly notable if they have a cold open or a stinger — Dario Cueto explains that there’s one more spot open in the Cueto Cup, and gives it to a guy who sounds like and looks like (from behind) Son Of Havoc. As it turns out, he is THIS guy:
Son Of Madness.
We don’t know yet if he’s a member of the “Son Of” biker crew or if he’s like, Son of Havoc’s dad, but I hope it’s the latter. That would confirm that Son of Havoc’s mom’s name is Havoc, and male members of his Biker Tribe (or whatever) are all named after their moms. Otherwise wouldn’t Son of Havoc be Son of Son of Madness?
I also hope he doesn’t drive a motorcycle and drives a monster truck instead, and got his name because his parents had Monster Truck Madness.
