Previously on the Over/Under on Lucha Underground: Jack Swagger, Sammy Guevara and “Big Bad Steve” teamed up with Famous B to immediately break up and attack each other. Also, Catrina thought she could just teleport into a cowboy taxidermist’s house and steal an enchanted gauntlet from a display unit without incident. Does she even watch these shows?
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And now, the Over/Under on Lucha Underground season 4, episode 3, originally aired on June 27, 2018.
Over: Child’s Play
We failed to mention it during Aztec Warfare (because there was a lot going on, and we’d been gone a while), but Ricky Mundo showed up with a creepy doll. That’s really all you needed to know between episodes 1 and 3, because right at the top of episode 3 we find out that doll is from a haunted island of Mexican dolls, can answer you in real time if you pull its string, and is creepily keeping Ricky’s secrets and/or turning him into a crazy murderer.
If you aren’t familiar, the Island of the Dolls is south of Mexico City, and is a creepy tourist attraction where somebody hung up a bunch of creepy-ass dolls. That’s the entire thing. The legend, via the Isla de las Muñecas website:
It is said that a girl was found drowned in mysterious circumstances many years ago on this island and that the dolls are possessed by her spirit.
Local legend says that the dolls move their heads and arms and even opened their eyes. Some witnesses claim they had heard the dolls whispering to each other, while others who were on a boat near the island said the dolls lured them to come down to the island.
Knowing Ricky, he’s going to try to murder Taya and keep her soul inside the Tool music video that is that doll, but that’s just psychotic conjecture.
Over: X’s And O’s
This week’s biggest surprise, and probably the biggest surprise I’m currently aware of in season 4, is the debut of “XO Lishus.” I remember getting press e-mails about the tapings before they were happening, and Lucha sent out a list of available talent. “XO Lishus” was on the list, and I had no goddamn idea who or what that was. I thought maybe it was a sexy robot? Turns out it’s independent wrestler Sonny Kiss, and he’s the best.
In trying to describe the gimmick to people, I’ve alternately described it as “ACH working an exotico gimmick,” or “Wesley Snipes’ character from Demolition Man had a baby with Wesley Snipes’ character from To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar and is now in a wrestling promotion full of people Wesley Snipes would’ve fought in Blade.” All you really need to know is that he’s athletic as hell, deeply charismatic, and a breath of fresh air for the promotion and the season. Not only is it great to see an exotico character that’s functionally good in the ring (as opposed to Pimpinela Escarlata, who was just there to let Matt Striker riff on his weird boner), but nearly every other debuting star so far has been a big average North American TV wrestling white guy. Your Jack Swaggers and Tommy Dreamers and Misters Pectacular. Give me people I would never see on Raw, you know? Give me the marginalized and the underappreciated, and let them be fucking stars.
And how good of a foil is Jack Evans? He’s the kind of heel you can put against someone like XO and have him be the worst person in the world without having to have it be weirdly homophobic and gendered. He’s just a total shithead about everything, even to his friends, and it works.
Under: Acting!
The low point of the episode is the dramatic romance scene between Fenix and Melissa Santos, which doesn’t even come within a hundred miles of the ballpark of realistic human emotion. It was like watching two mannequins fall over. I would probably complain more if this wasn’t a way to basically write off the romance, as Fenix is now (spoiler alert for the next match) dead at worst, evilly controlled by a ghost lady at best. Gimme some Dark Fenix and give it to me now.
Also, was anybody else weirded out by the editing of their clearly one kiss? It felt like those sex scenes from The Room, where Tommy Wiseau wanted two sex scenes but the actress only did one, so he just used all the cut footage to make a second one? They kissed one bad time and that shit got extended for 45 seconds. Their romance is the Liam Neeson climbing a fence of Lucha Underground.
Over: Philosophically, Every Three-Way Is A Three-Way To The Grave
Our main event this week is a triple threat Grave Consequences match. I guess it makes sense if we’re doing Grave Consequences three episodes in if we did Aztec Warfare in episode one. They’re gonna start Ultima Lucha Quatro next week, watch.
Anyway, it’s a lot of fun, as Grave Consequences matches are, but I sincerely don’t think anything the company produces is going to touch that first Fenix/Mil casket match for its brutality, impact, and pathos. That match was a life-changer if you were there live, like I was. I was live for this one, too, and it just wasn’t the same without the build and the unpredictability. Still though, can’t complain too much about a match where a guy gets belly-to-bellied into propped up, airbrushed casket and bounces off it like a skipping stone.
The central focal point of the match is the Assassination of Jeremiah Crane by the Coward Ivelisse, who beats the Piss Christ out of him with a hammer — so much so that it breaks — and, I guess, “kills” him. In Lucha Underground if you get put into a casket for a casket match, or for any reason, I suppose, you’re really dead. If you want to come back, you need someone with super secret occult powers, like Catrina or Vampiro. So, you know, Jeremiah Crane is toast. See you never, Sol. You live by the hammer attacks, you die by them.
I thought the match got a lot better once Crane was eliminated, because the image of funeral processions and “funerary boxes” and bloody masks in Lucha belongs to Fenix and Mil, and Fenix and Mil alone. It was a good way to integrate and then write out Crane, acknowledging his weird thing with Catrina, but I was happy when we finally shat and/or got off the pot.
I’m not sure if Fenix losing here means he’s temporarily dead, permanently dead (which I super seriously doubt, for a number of obvious reasons), if Catrina’s in control of him, if Catrina inherited his immortality powers and now Fenix is a mortal or what, but I’m sure we’ll find out going forward. Maybe Cuerno can Infinity Gauntlet his ass into the soul realm and pull him back out. Who knows?
Another solid show this week full of all the stuff we love about the show, so I’m happy season 4 recovered from its initial stumble. Now if we can just get Antonio Cueto to stop speaking in a voice that sounds like somebody’s mowing the lawn in his throat, we’d be perfect.
