The Tick, Season 1, Episode 12: The End Of The Beginning (Or The Start Of The Dawn Of The Age Of The Superhero)
(Can I just say how much I love the title? Because I do.)
The season finale of Tick's first season is pretty neat! Of course, it's already a given that the moth-trigger rigged by Karamazov would work, because there's no way Arthur's going to die at the end of this first season. It's one hell of a tense scene getting there, though. As Arthur waits for Karamazov's trigger to load or whatever, Superion himself shows up, still sort of hungover (or maybe that's how Superion normally is, I dunno), intent on rescuing Arthur from the VLM. Of course, despite the big explosion, everyone survives. Even Overkill, who apparently went into for-reals cardiac arrest but manages to grit through an entire conversation with SHEER BADASSERY which I think is low-key the funniest scene in this episode.
Of course, everyone is happy except for the Terror, who proceeds to take things into his own hands, as a supervillain is wont to. The god damned giant T from his Cola company building is apparently a fucking supervillain ship, because of course it is. That's pretty damn awesome. His plan to announce his return with Superion's death foiled, he decides to get personal and kill Arthur's family. He also is apparently aware of Lint's attempts to try and get together with Overkill, and activates power-nullifying bracelets that grounds Lint. I do like the tension between Terror and Lint. The two are shown to really care for each other in a teacher-student way, with a not-insignificant amount of hero worship from Lint and Terror clearly valuing Lint's opinions... but at the same time, Terror did leave Lint dry for decades, causing Lint to move on somewhat and mature free from the Terror's influence. And this culminates in Lint going into a two-man escape pod and escaping without Terror when things get rough for the villains. And Terror even admits that "she got me good".
(The fact that the escape pod is a lower-case letter 't' is the second funniest thing in the episode.)
Speaking of things getting rough for the villains, how awesome is it for the Tick to just jump straight from the building and quite literally rip the goddamn T-ship apart? That's just badass. Equally badass is Arthur charging in against the masked, voiceless, faceless goons and start zapping them with his brand-new taser hands, but most surprisingly is the fact that Walter, who's been treated mostly as a source of 'awkward family member' jokes, shows off that he apparently knows some kung-fu, taking out an entire squad of supervillain mooks in the same time that Arthur used his taser-hands to take down an equal amount of people.
And when Arthur finally gets to confront the Terror, he ends up with a gun pointed to his head. The Terror gives this whole rant about how he doesn't really care about some master plan and just goes with the rhythm (actually giving those drum scenes earlier this season some context, I guess), sort of like a less "fuck everyone up" version of the Joker, but more of a "eh, I don't give a fuck" version of an anarchist. Arthur and Terror has a bit of a stand-down... but Superion finally swoops in and saves the day, freezing the Terror with his freeze breath and, naturally, getting all the credit because he's the one visibly shown to take down the Terror. Arthur and Tick just disappear back into the crowd, with Superion basking in all the adulation.
I really do like Superion. He's been portrayed as this aloof jerk (or an inadvertent jerk, anyway) all season long, but his moments of lucidity these past few episodes where he notes that he just got really careless and ended up basking in the adulation of the public regarding his ultimate takedown of the Terror that he just ends up lapping it up... but he's still ultimately an altruistic good guy. It's interesting and honestly makes him feel quite human.
We get a reunion scene between Arthur, Dot and their parents, and Walter gives a neat little speech about how everyone's been treating Arthur as a neurotic little shit and that's what he became until he met the Tick, who believed he could be something better. We get some acknowledgement from Overkill that he's okay with all this happening. Midnight the cute doggo shows up to 'shake' Arthur, apologize, and warn them that they're now being watched. The final scene of the episode are a bunch of Aegis drones tracking Arthur and Tick, which is pretty cool. Overall, it's hardly a perfect ending to the season, but god damn if this season of Tick is perhaps one of the most funny and entertaining season of superhero TV that I've seen.
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