Previously on the Over/Under on Lucha Underground: Jack Evans went away forever, and we shed a tear. Plus, Pentagon Dark is the new number one contender to the Lucha Underground Championship, and Jake Strong is still a thing!
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And now, the Over/Under on Lucha Underground season 4, episode 17, originally aired on October 3, 2018.
Over: Wibbly Wobbly Timey-Wimey Stuff
and it involves a Jack Swagger title run
Up first this week is the next edition of Melissa Santos’ acting seminar, as she and Aerostar clarify what’s been going on with Dark Fenix. As we assumed, Fenix’s soul got infected by Catrina’s when she, you know, absorbed it and used it for herself, so when Aerostar put it back in Fenix’s body, the new soul mixture turned him into Something Evil.
Melissa says that she can still save him, but Aerostar’s like, “sorry, you won’t, because I’ve seen the end.” When pressed, he explains that he’s seen the end of everything. And/or he’s watched this season on DVR and isn’t super confident it’s going to get picked up for another one. Public plea: if Lucha Underground doesn’t get picked up for season 5, I will write the Lucha Underground series finale movie for a hoodie and a pat on the back. Yes, the first 20 minutes are a big budget retelling of Jack Swagger of Mars.
Also, I really hope the season ends with a young CM Punk and a young Kofi Kingston showing up, and the reveal that this has always been a prequel to WWE’s version of ECW. Why do you think Matt Striker’s there?
Over: A Gritty Re-Imagining Of Mr. Socko
The opening match for this week’s show is a trios follow-up from last week, pitting the Extremely Unlikely Trio of Ivelisse, Joey Ryan, and XO Lishus against the New Rabbit Tribe, featuring “El Bunny,” a Marvel Netflix villain version of the White Rabbit, and Paul London as an evil mime.
I was into it already, but now that I’ve seen the White Rabbit’s finisher — a Mandible Claw prefaced by him pulling a white garment out of his pants, which he has sadly not drawn an angry face on beforehand — I’m very into it. Brother has a Mandible Claw that makes you BLEED FROM THE MOUTH like so much Ken Shamrock, and he wears a white glove so he can see your gum blood, or whatever.
That’s straight out of an alternate timeline where Ox Baker got as popular as Hulk Hogan. The only way it could be better is if the White Rabbit slapped you in the face with the glove before fingering you to death. The White Rabbit DEMANDS SATISFACTION.
Over (With A Little Under): Mask Vs. Mask
This week was thankfully heavy on the wrestling, which is something I never had to say about Lucha before. Usually I wanted there to be less wrestling and more backstage stuff, because I could usually count on the wrestling parts being engaging and fun. But yeah, match two was Son of Havoc vs. Kill Shot in a fun sprint to set up a mask vs. mask match between the two at Ultima Lucha Quatro.
I guess the only downside to the angle is that they’re doing a great job with it, but I can’t get that into what they’re doing, because they decided to build a mask vs. mask match with the two most openly known identities for masked characters on the show. It’s not like Drago and Aerostar are fighting over their masks; it’s Son of Havoc and Kill Shot, who are so known in their civilian identities you can buy 8 x 10s of them as their masked characters when they’re unmasked at shows. And yeah, that doesn’t really matter on a show that’s meant to very much be a TV show full of actors and not an actual “wrestling promotion” per se, but there’s not a lot of indignity to be suffered if either of them lose. Especially since one’s a disgraced army guy and the other’s a biker who already ejected himself from the biker club that makes him dress like that in the first place. Not a lot of lucha libre history and lore going into that, you know?
Still, Kill Shot and Son of Havoc are two of the most reliable performers on the show, and have at least been around longer than three episodes ago, so I appreciate them pushing forward with it anyway. I wonder if Son of Havoc loses his weird voice modulator if he loses his mask?
Over: Moth-er Would Be So Disappointed
A few surprises here:
- Marty the Moth’s medallion cape is the greatest, especially since it looks like he attached to ancient piece of Aztec gold to a dirty brown bed sheet
- Spider-themed Chelsea Green’s Lucha Underground name is “Reklusa” — like a recluse spider, get it — which I keep typing as “Scapula.” Dyslexia is fun! We also get (thankful) confirmation that yes, she was the one sending spiders to Sexy Star all last season, and that she has I guess murdered Sexy Star off-screen. Sexy Star won’t be coming back, as we, uh, already know, and technically that’s another “death” we can add to the toll. Pretty crummy that the “I will not be abused and will fight against all odds for the benefit of everyone who has been abused” character got written off with a home invasion that scared her into ever fighting again, but that one’s on her.
- Marty gives his sister, Mariposa, a shot at the Lucha Underground Championship so they can fight like when they “were kids.” The most surprising thing of all is that MARIPOSA is one half of one of the best matches of this season, as the no disqualification match goes everywhere in the arena, keeps up a hot pace, gets the crowd involved, and actually plays on the pre-existing relationships between characters we’ve known for a long time. Crazy!
It was an incredibly necessary match for Marty, both because he needed to make the transition from a comedy character anyone could beat to a legitimate threat as Lucha Underground Champion (especially after winning it on a very WWE technicality), and because to do that, he needed to tie his previous history (Mariposa) into his current story (Reklusa). This did a fantastic job of both of those things, and even added a post-match segment to set up the next piece of the story.
Marty takes “let the past die/kill it if you have to” literally by challenging Pentagon Dark to a Cero Miedo match at Ultima Lucha Quatro — “ciero” miedo if you’re Marty — and breaking his sister’s arm. This probably would’ve meant more if the Pentagon arm break hadn’t become like a hip toss in the hierarchy of damaging Lucha Underground moves, but it’s great anyway. Pentagon sorta runs out as a de facto tecnico and promises to break Marty’s bones at Ultima Lucha, and Marty just kinda stands there biting at the air because he’s a crazy person.
Really good episode this week. I know the show’s still got it in there somewhere, it just needs to put together more than one of these kinds of episodes at a time, and notice that it’s always better when they stray away from the lumbering WWE types. Swags, I’m looking in your direction.
