Racing against the clock.
Note: Now that the entire series has been made available to press, this is a spoiler-free review of all six episodes of Vixen. New episodes will continue to debut on CW Seed through Tuesday, September 29.
The CW’s DC Universe is expanding faster and faster these days, with Legends of Tomorrow set to become the third pillar alongside The Flash and Arrow next year and Arrow’s fourth season creating a link (official or unofficial) to NBC’s short-lived Constantine series. But before that craziness gets underway, The CW has debuted a new heroine in a very different format. The new Vixen series is notable not just because it’s distributed digitally, but because it gives The CW’s universe a stylized, animated makeover. Despite these changes, the new series finds its niche in the Flash/Arrow-verse, even if the short run time limits its scope and potential.
That’s the one limitation Vixen continuously wrestles with. This season may be six episodes long, but those six episodes amount to a scant 30 minutes of material. That’s not a great deal of room to work with when it comes to introducing a new character, establishing their powers and motivations and fleshing out their past. All three of those elements are crucial to any good superhero origin story, and Vixen can merely do the best it can with the limited room it has.
The good news is that the writers are briskly efficient when it comes to moving through Vixen’s character arc. For one thing, the first episode opens with a flash forward to a major fight scene, showcasing Mari McCabe’s wide range of abilities and offering a strong hook before slowing down for a time. The early episodes offer a clear sense of her troubled childhood and how that feeds into her angry persona as an adult. It’s not long before Mari comes across the mystical amulet that fuels her powers and encounters both new allies and enemies in her journey from bitter loner to selfless hero.
The series does what it needs to do as far as ushering Mari through this pretty standard but still engaging character arc and establishing her place in the expanding DCU. It’s a fairly rushed process, but that’s hardly surprising given the format. The biggest gripe is that Mari’s evolution from bewildered newbie to competent wielder of the amulet is almost instantaneous. There’s no time for her to learn the ropes and make mistakes like rookie heroes usually do. The resolution to the conflict in the final episode is also abrupt, with little indication of what becomes of the villains Mari has spent half the series squaring off against. But in the end, these six episodes complete her initial journey while also establishing Vixen as a unique hero alongside the likes of Flash, the Arrow, the Atom and the various others that have emerged over the past three years.
Speaking of which, the series includes a number of familiar faces from both The Flash and Arrow, including the two heroes themselves. It’s fun to see Mari butt heads with these two established heroes during the course of her journey. That said, it is questionable how necessary their presence truly is. Sure, having Oliver Queen and Barry Allen plastered across all the promotional material for the series is great as far as drawing in fans of those other shows, but at times it seems like Barry and Ollie’s presence gets in the way of Mari’s own story. That problem is compounded by the fact that a key action sequence featuring the three characters is revisited midway through the series, burning up precious minutes in the process.
Vixen isn’t DC’s first attempt at tying into a live-action project with an animated spinoff story. The good news is that this show feels of a piece with Arrow and Flash in a way that, for example, the Gotham Knight DVD didn’t for Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. This is despite the fact that Vixen delves more heavily into the supernatural than we’ve seen from the other CW shows. Vixen’s rise simply furthers the evolution from gritty, grounded superhero stories to a universe where pretty much anything is on the table. The presence of so many familiar faces from Arrow and Flash certainly helps, but more important is that the writing team (Wendy Mericle, Keto Shimizu, Brian Ford Sullivan and Lauren Certo) is pulled from those shows. This series shows similar sensibilities when it comes to the humor and contrasting the mundane world with the larger-than-life.
In terms of its presentation, Vixen is more or less on par with DC’s recent direct-to-DVD animated projects. Which, by the standards of most free, web-based animation, is pretty darned great. Occasionally the character movement seems a little stiff in the quiet, dialogue-driven scenes, but the action scenes really pop with energy and a sense of fluidity. Right away, it becomes clear that the decision to debut Vixen in animated form rather than live-action has real advantages. The series visualizes Mari’s abilities and fighting style in a way that would be difficult to replicate with flesh-and-blood actors and a network TV budget.
The voice-over work is a little more sporadic in quality. Megalyn Echikunwoke (The 4400) doesn’t particularly stand out in the lead role, but she still does a fine job of portraying Mari as a troubled woman caught up in extraordinary circumstances. It wouldn’t be surprising if Warner Bros, CW and DC cast the part with an eye toward having Echikunwoke reprise the role in live-action down the road. Neil Flynn (Scrubs) and Anika Noni Rose (The Princess and the Frog) are easily the standouts as Mari’s father and nemesis, respectively. Oddly, it’s the established Arrow and Flash actors that fare the worst. There’s a certain stiffness and even slowness to Stephen Amell’s Ollie, Grant Gustin’s Barry and Carlos Valdes’ Cisco that isn’t present in live-action. This is especially apparent whenever the characters launch into witty banter with each other. Suffice it to say, it doesn’t sound like the actors recorded their lines together in the studio.
Vixen has little trouble finding its place in the Flash/Arrow universe despite the animated format and the fact that it dabbles in the realm of mysticism and the supernatural. It establishes Mari McCabe as an engaging heroine worthy of more adventures. Unfortunately, the meager 30-minute run time limits what can be accomplished in these six episodes and forces Mari to undergo a compressed origin story. Vixen is an enjoyable experience, but it could have been better with a little more room in which to work.
