Stargirl season 3, episode 12 review: The Last Will and Testament of Sylvester Pemberton

Stargirl ends its penultimate episode with a fantastic twist that really up stakes for next week’s upcoming series finale.

Stargirl and the JSA are left on the sidelines as Starman begins his one-person war against Jordan Mahkent. Meanwhile, Mike and Jakeem continue to help Cindy search for a cure.

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

Stargirl season 3 episode 12 review

Killings

After coming to terms with her parents’ deaths, well at least accepting them, Artemis is hellbent on getting revenge for her parents’ murder, but Sylvester is there to talk her out of it, and to set her on the path she should be on because he’s gonna kill Jordan himself.

Before he goes off to face Jordan though, Sylvester basically begs Yolanda and Beth to find more like them to carry on the legacies of the JSA, simply because he doesn’t want his friends to be forgotten, it’s actually heartbreaking. Sylvester knows he’s going to die and Joel McHale plays it perfectly. This is a man who, despite his shortcomings which become very apparent over the course of the episode, seemingly doesn’t want his friends forgotten.

But then Sylvester goes to Pat and we really get to see the man who he’s been all along. A selfish jerk who cares more about fights than he ever did about those around him if they couldn’t help him seem more heroic. How he treats Pat, and then how he treats Courtney, who delivers a fantastic monologue as to why Pat is her hero, displays that Sylvester never was a hero. He was just a dude with a costume, a staff, and a slight moral compass, but never a good person. Or, at least, that’s how it seems.

Sure, Pat realizes that Sylvester wanted them to hate him, so that they wouldn’t die with him, which goes a long way to show that he actually cares about Courtney and Pat, but everything he said showed that the legacies that he so desperately wants are going to be better than his generation ever was.

At the end of the day though, Pat stands by his friend, whether he wants him to or not, which is exactly who Pat is and who he always will be. Starman and Stripesy, back together again. But not really, as it turns out, Sylvester has never been here, but rather the Ultra-Humanite has put its brain into Sylvester’s body and has been playing the JSA for the entire season. Everything that he’s said and done this entire season and episode has been a lie and it really puts every single sketchy thing that Sylvester has done this season into perspective. It’s simply because he never was Sylvester.

This twist, once it becomes apparent, works so well and makes so much sense with everything that he’s done. Every single bit of information and flashbacks that we’ve seen regarding Sylvester made it seem like this was always the real thing, but with him actually being the Ultra-Humanite, everything this season just clicks into place.

On the mend

While this is all happening, Rick finally takes the hourglass off and begins to immediately deal with the withdrawal of doing so, before he puts it back on. This scene is honestly haunting and kind of horrifying for the type of show that Stargirl is and the show does a phenomenal job of making us feel Rick’s pain once he takes the hourglass off.

While everything else is going on, Mike and Jakeem help Cindy try and find something to help her with her mysterious illness. And well, they find it, but not the way that they want to. They find the Dragon King’s body who, it turns out, has placed his brain inside of the Ultra-Humanite’s ape body since, as stated above, Ultra-Humanite is no longer using it. This just raises the stakes so much as instead of one villain for this season like we thought that there was, there are actually three.

Stargirl ends its penultimate episode with a fantastic twist that really up the stakes for the series finale.