Previously on the Over/Under on Lucha Underground: Immortality medallions were bartered, booties were grabbed, and Jeremiah Crane got thrown through a door and Frenched to death.
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 31, originally aired on August 16, 2017.
Over: All I Wanna Do Is Take Glove From You
We open this week’s show with a continuation of last week’s challenge: if a half-dead, half-alive lady trapped between worlds can use her undead luchador charge to retrieve the magical electric gauntlet a mechanical bodybuilder received by impressing an order of Aztec God-worshipping businessmen by winning a best of 7 series with a cowboy and give it to her immortal police captain mother, said mother will sacrifice her immortality and give the half-dead lady full life. This is a pro wrestling storyline.
But yeah, this week opens with Catrina just walking up to Cage and being like, “hey man, can I have your glove? I need it for something.” I love that. I love that she at least tried this, instead of going straight for an unholy violence war or whatever. Exhaust the possibilities before going to extremes, you know? Cage’s response is to try to backfist her to death, which she avoids by teleporting away:
Maybe I’m wrong, as I have not consulted the previously 2 3/4 seasons before thinking this, but is this the first time we’ve physically SEEN Catrina teleport? There’s a flash of darkness, yeah, but usually there’s a full-on “lights out” motif and then she disappears or changes positions. Or there’s like, a hard cut. Makes you wonder why she doesn’t use that when people are bashing her in the head with rocks or whatever near the wrestling ring, right?
Over/Under: The Same Cueto Cup Problem As Always
The first Cueto Cup semi-finals match of the week is Prince Puma Dark vs. Fenix Regular, which Rey Mysterio be damned should be considered the best possible match-up under the Temple roof. Pentagon’s popular, sure, but nobody’s done more and meant more to the show for the first 2.75 seasons than these guys. And it’s really good, too, until … until … Marty the Moth runs out, harasses Melissa Santos to remind us of bad romance angles, indirectly influences the finish of the match and robs us of a Fenix vs. Prince Puma match conclusion that really could’ve meant something.
That’s been the problem with the entire tournament, which I’m chalking up to Lucha taping the entire third season forever ago and not being able to read the audience response to episodes and adapt on the fly. That’s always been one of the strengths of the show … the fact that it seemed to actually be influenced by the people who watched it, and changed and grew with and because of them. When you tape everything in advance, you’re stuck hoping it’s good. And yeah, the wrestling is still good, and the backstage mythos stuff still pops me, but shit like the constant interference in Cueto Cup matches for the sake of storyline continuation is a bummer.
But as I’ve taken to typing a lot lately, it is what it is. At least we got most of Fenix vs. Prince Puma before the sports-entertainment took over. Puma moves on to the finals, because of course he does.
Over: Other Backstage Stuff
- Joey Ryan narcing on Officer Reyes yet again, informing Dario Cueto that “Veneno” is actually Reyes/Cortez Castro. Cueto decides to remember things that have happened in the past, brings up Sexy Star’s brief, weird run-ins with rubber spiders, and signs Veneno vs. Sexy Star, mask vs. mask, for next week. Cueto wins no matter how that shakes out, and if this was a cop drama, Joey Ryan would be like three episodes away from being murdered in a hail of bullets.
- Mil Muertes punches things so hard it makes the entire Temple shake (!!) but gets knocked out from behind by Cage. Cage also drops a weight on him, because he’s a mechanical dick.
Over/Under Again, Sadly: Breaking Bad
The upside to the Cage backstage attack vignette is that it sets up Mil Muertes to be more vulnerable than normal, which allows Pentagon Dark to shock him — I think it’s a shock, even if Pentagon is Stone Cold Steve Austin if Austin literally had a skull for a face — and pin him to move on to the Cueto Cup finals. There’s also a bit where Pentagon just straight-up kicks Catrina in the face, which continues last week’s concerning treatment of women on the show, but also makes a hell of a lot of sense. If you need to beat Mil Muertes, you need to take out the ghost lady with the magical rock that powers him. Sorta like punching out Paul Bearer to get to the Undertaker. So I’m good with it.
The only downside, I guess, is that the pre-match attack actually robbed us of a full-power Mil Muertes vs. a full-power Pentagon Dark, which is what the Cueto Cup tournament should be delivering at this point. Lucha Underground has a finite end point, you know? Even if the show gets a season 4, it’s going to be very different from seasons 1-3, and a lot of familiar faces aren’t gonna be there. I wish the Cueto Cup had been a celebration of everything they’d accomplished up until now.
One other quick complaint, which is probably minor and because I watch the show so religiously: in season 4 they’ve gotta take it easy with the whip crack that plays every time anyone hits someone. Every move Pentagon throws has a loud SLAP, and I know he’s smacking his leg and all, but it’s the same sound effect every time. And the sound of the crowd going “ooh!” has gotten to where it sounds canned, too, so it’s just CLAP, oooh, CLAP, oooh, CLAP, oooh, and then Matt Striker yells a proverb. Maybe I’m staring to see The Matrix?
Over: TUNE IN THIS SUNDAY FOR THE ROYAL RUMBLE
In more straight-forward happy news, the ending of this week’s episode rules, dog.
Johnny Mundo has a face-to-face confrontation with Rey Mysterio Jr., as the Cueto Cup finals are next week, and that show will also finally feature their championship match. It quickly devolves into Mundo talking shit about Dominick’s parentage, which he’d know all about if he’d watched SummerSlam 2005. Mysterio attacks him, which turns into Worldwide Underground beating Mysterio down.
But then a bunch of tecnicos run out to stick up for Mysterio, which I love. You’d think ALL wrestlers would at least have some random semblance of friends backstage who wouldn’t want to see them get beaten up by a gang, or in the case of someone like Mysterio, people backstage who respect them and want to stick their neck out for a legend. That brings out people who might have rivalries with those tecnicos, and the whole thing branches out until the entire roster of the show is out there beating the shit out of one another while Dario Cueto stands around cheering. It’s perfect. It’s exactly the kind of “tie all the stories together” bit Lucha does so well, and why stuff like the constant non-finishes and interference in the cup has been so bothersome. They know how to do it, you know?
Oh, and the Rabbit Tribe skips the fight to sit on top of Dario Cueto’s office and do commentary into carrots:
The fight in the ring ends up being Mundo, Mysterio, Puma and Pentagon — next week’s championship match and the Cueto Cup finals — and they all end up throwing hands at each other because of long existing, previously established rivalries. And THAT ends up with Mysterio and Mundo facing off, Mysterio finally getting the man one-on-one, and kicking his ass. The show goes off the air with Mysterio holding the belt over his head, which … probably means that’s not going to happen. But still, what a hell of a way to end an episode.
Next week is gonna be dope, and Ultima Lucha Tres can’t be far behind that.
