By Dawn’s Early Light
Episode 1 of Jupiter’s Legacy Season 1 begins with a brief prologue to set the scene for our superhero tale. A girl called Chloe starts to lose control of her powers until her Father, Sheldon, arrives. He touches down and reminds her that bad guys are people too. As a hero, they live by a simple code of service, compassion and mercy. We then jump forward to the present, with Brandon living up to his Father’s legacy and working as a superhero. He too possesses the same super hearing his Father has, and he heads across town to stop a group of thugs wearing monkey masks. They suddenly take off though when a blonde woman wearing a pink mask shows and decides to rob the place herself. After Brandon is knocked down, Sheldon shows and saves the day from this supervillain, whose name is Paragon. There’s constant references to a villain called Blackstar here too, who’s currently awaiting trial. Anyway, Sheldon heads home and speaks to his wife Grace. They’ve been married for 60 years and clearly there’s a big rift in the family. Sheldon also worries about Brandon’s emotional state, believing he’s not ready to take on this responsibility. Speaking of which, tearaway Chloe comes rushing back into the house. She’s in her rebellious phase and is clearly intoxicated too. She has a very different outlook on life and bemoans Sheldon being her Father. Things are strained and she eventually takes off with their bottle of wine. Brandon hurries after her though and reminds his sister that they need to become the next Utopian. Chloe rejects the family, as it becomes clear that these two have had a pretty turbulent and rocky relationship through the years. Some of this angst and bitterness can be attributed to our flashback sequences in 1929. Sheldon lived a carefree life back then, but all of this changed when he witnessed his Father jumping off the top of the roof to his doom. It’s been 90 years and both Sheldon and his brother Walt reflect back on what’s happened in that time and the difficulties they’re facing. Both have very different ideologies though, with Walt thinking they should do more and get involved in human affairs. Sheldon is dead-set against this though, although his superhero Code seems to be visibly waning. When the group catch wind of Blackstar breaking out of maximum security, Walt and Sheldon hurry up to fight him off. Blackstar is difficult to beat and it takes Walt mind-controlling the beast, trapping him in a psychic painting, while everyone else beats him down to gain the upper-hang. Blackstar is too strong though and as he goes nuclear, he holds Sheldon down. All hope looks lost until Brandon suddenly jumps in and smashes Blackstar’s face to bits, killing the creature. This obviously completely goes against their superhero code. Everyone reconvenes at the Union Of Justice, where a big secret is revealed. The creature they just killed isn’t actually Blackstar. The real Blackstar is still behind bars. So what happened? And who caused this?
The Episode Review
Jupiter’s Legacy gets off to a pretty good start with this opening episode, showcasing some great action and a good introduction to our characters. The social commentary is a little heavy-handed at times, but it’s clear this is where the big conflict is going to stem from this season. There’s a vast array of characters here too and it’ll be interesting to see how the show juggles all that going forward. The big finish with Brandon smashing Blackstar’s clone in the face is certainly a nice twist and there’s a poetic irony to Brandon being the one to break the code. This certainly promises to be quite the intriguing development going forward, setting things up nicely for the rest of the season.
