Sunday, January 24, 2016

Lost Girl, Season 5, Episode 11: Sweet Valkyrie High



This week we’re catching up on Tamsin’s many issues. Last season she tried very hard to be Bo’s one and only true love only Bo didn’t like her that way and it was all kind of awkward and messy and we got to see a Valkyrie be a sad lovesick puppy

Which is kind of sad how the Valkyries have been generally treated as kind of pathetic and annoyingly awful on this show.

Anyway, Tamsin springs one of the many annoying elements of terrible Valkyrie-ness, Stacey (currently working in fast food). See, Tamsin was once recruited by Hades to deliver Bo in one of the many mangled plot lines on this show (I’m not even going to try and use coherence on Lost Girl’s canon as it just hurts my brain) and he has tried to recruit her. She’s now decided to bring him down, preferably back to Tartarus. It’s revealed that back in the days of yore, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades all split up the world and Hades got the short straw hence he ended up in the underworld.

Apparently Hades was tricked into this by Freyja seducing him with a magical necklace. Which means they need to go to Valhalla to find her. Which means going to Valkyrie school and connecting with Tamsin’s mentor Acacia

Yes, Valkyrie school, complete with prep rallies and school uniforms and pig tails. Because this show actually manages to make its portrayal of the Valkyries, choosers of the slain, warrior women, even worse than it has before. I’m not even going to dwell on these flashbacks because they’re that awful. Instead we see Tamsin choose Acacia who sticks to the old ways with the Valkyries using all their super power of Doubt to influence wars and battles and generally being the kick arse warrior women they are rather than Freyja who has reduced and sanitised and generally fluffified the Valkyries into becoming a cleaning crew with added nursing.

The end result of which is Tamsin showing she’s more Valkryie than them all, Doubting Acacia (which is that spooky black eyed ting the Valkyries do) to reveal who she’s hiding – Freyja. It seems they’re not the only ones who know about Hades and Freyja and all kinds of unpleasant people have been hunting her so she’s taken to hiding in a cupboard


Yeah this is a new low even for the presentation of Valkyries on this show and, with a three on one Doubting (since she IS still Freyja), Acacia, Tamsin and Stacey make Frejya back down and admit the truth: she never actually seduced, manipulated or otherwise tricked Hades and she’s a fraud. Hades wanted Tartarus because he figures that’s the best place for him to build and army.

Thoroughly shamed, Freyja is spared and sent to rule Tartarus (why… so she can build an army?) while Acacia becomes the new head of Valhalla where, I desperately hope, we can get away from the pigtails, silly boarding school setting and every other terribly mangled awfulness that has been Freyja and the Valkyries on this show. Horned helmets for everyone!

Acacia and Tamsin also have a heart to heart about Tamsin’s broken heat, pining after Bo and Hades wanting her to be his general

Now back on Team Bo or solidly on Team Bo, Tamsin decides she’s going to pretend to be Hades general to be a spy and… nah she sucks at lying, Hades rumbles her almost instantly so, instead, Tamsin dramatically tells him how she will fight him before going to Bo and deciding to be friends and make up.


Meanwhile, Lauren is still all fae-y and has another dilemma – Evony the former Morrigan who was turned human and now wants to be fae again. Unfortunately, now Lauren finally has a cure for her (sort of) Evony is so terribly ill that taking it would kill her (it seems she pissed off someone who cursed her terribly which meant nothing to the Morrigan who was a super powerful fae but now she’s human that curse means something). After a brief stop by Hades to see if he can help (he can’t), she gets a super inspiring speech to fight back and be the awesome kick arse woman she is

She’s still sick but she has a new renewed will to fight back – with her friend and doctor, Lauren. Yes their friends. This may have been established before but that would involve torturing your brain with Lost Girl canon.


Oh and to absolutely no-one’s shock, it turns out you can’t imprison Hades, Lord of the Underworld, with a sheet of glass. Funny that.