‘Creature Commandos’ Episode Five Recap: “The Iron Pot”

Warning: The following article contains spoilers for episode five of Creature Commandos. 

After spending the past week exploring further corners of the Marvel multiverse with What If…? – Season 3, I’m now back on my Creature Commandos (and Star Wars: Skeleton Crew) beat for the remaining few episodes. In this week’s episode, “The Iron Pot,” writer James Gunn pulls back the curtain once again on the Frankensteins, this time revealing a bit more information regarding The Bride’s (Indira Varma) lover, Eric Frankenstein (David Harbour).

Unfortunately, these sections bog the episode’s pacing down, which should theoretically focus on the A and B stories involving Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo) and Eric gaining more information to counter Amanda Waller’s (Viola Davis) orders to kill Princess Ilana Rostovic (Maria Bakalova), after a vision of a potential future from Circe (Anya Chalotra) horrified her so much. The second storyline involves the Commandos in Pokolistan attempting to kill the Princess, but with Flag reaching out to her, Rostovic’s team can foil their assassination plans and unleashes a battle against them. 

The action sequence is exciting enough and contains several gruesome moments that fully exploit the TV-MA rating. It’s also the most kinetic setpiece we’ve seen out of Creature Commandos so far, with Rostovic’s Amethyst Knights trying very hard to topple Task Force M but failing miserably in underestimating The Bride and Doctor Phosphorous’ (Alan Tudyk) powers. Director Matt Peters visualizes moments of thrilling intensity with a deft hand. He makes some of the most guts-ripping parts of the action as epic and grandiose as the most significant explosions. 

Of course, with 2D animation, one is allowed greater malleability to represent action sequences that feel more in line with the vibrancy of a comic book, and Peters more than certainly does this in the show’s fifth episode. Unfortunately, most of the C-storyline involving Eric’s flashback is nowhere near as interesting as the present-day stories, either the central Pokolistan battle or Flag and Frankenstein gaining more information on Dr. Aisla MacPherson (Stephanie Beatriz), who they suspect fed false information to Waller. 

It turns out they were right. The real MacPherson is found dead in her home, with her throat slit. Flag and Eric observe a car parking in her driveway, and the double of MacPherson arrives, sitting down, playing Mortal Kombat on Xbox, and…transforming into their true self: Clayface (voiced here by Alan Tudyk). There couldn’t have been a greater introduction to the character in the DCU than a bravura action setpiece where Flag experiences firsthand the extent of his powers, suffocating him so violently that he passes out once Eric saves him by electrocuting the creature. 

It remains to be seen if Tudyk will be playing the character in James Gunn’s Superman or in the upcoming Clayface movie, which was greenlit after Mike Flanagan turned in what is probably an incredible screenplay (Gunn admitted that such a movie was not in his plans until reading Flanaga’s script). Still, his introduction to the fold was note-perfect and could very well give Marvel a run for its money now that it’s smartly acclimating audiences to what the potential of the DCU could be once Superman flies off into theatres next year. 

Before passing out, however, Flag tells Eric that he must confess to The Bride how he really feels about her. We then cut once more to a flashback of the character being nursed back to health by Bogdana (Irina Maleeva), an old, blind woman who tells him that his quest to find The Bride is futile because she does not love him. As a result, Eric brutally bludgeons her to death so that her fears of living alone won’t be realized. Flag tries to help him, and Eric truly believes he can make The Bride love him. I can already predict this won’t end well for him, but I guess there’s only one way to find out! Good luck with that…

The fifth episode of Creature Commandos is now available to stream on Max.