Matches
XO Lishus beat Jack Evans (5:53, super split legged faceslam, good)
Mil Muertes won a Three to Grave Match (20:24, great)
– Jeremiah Crane out (12:42)
– Fenix out (20:24)
Status Check
Champion: Pentagon Dark
Gift of the Gods: vacant
Aztec Medallions: Dragon Azteca + 6 TBD
Trios Champions: Killshot, the Mack, Son of Havoc
Died This Season: Jeremiah Crane (casket), Fenix (casket)
Happenings
Jeremiah Crane & Fenix have joined Dario Cueto in the great beyond, as people who get stuffed in caskets in Lucha Underground are dead. At least for now. At least for one of them. Fenix is now the man of about 999 lives, so he should be back if he’s lucky. Jeremiah Crane does not appear to have a 1000 lives. He leaves us with a lot of questions – how did he know Catrina when they were kids? How did he leave something in the old Temple that long ago? – but also answer how quickly LU was going to move on from people who didn’t want to be with the series any longer.
Crane’s death did give one important revelation: never ever make Ivelisse angry because she will keep coming after you until you are literally dead. Ivelisse made her season debut attacking Crane with the same sort of hammer that Crane attacked her with at Ultima Lucha 3, hitting Crane enough times to actually break the hammer. Ivelisse closed the casket on Crane, apparently closing the door on his Lucha Underground career.
Fenix’s elimination had a bit less outside interference to it. Melissa watched from ringside, not a fan of the idea and heartbroken when her man lost, but never actually crazy enough to get involved. Mil, in an angry mood for most of the match took some cues from their previous Grave Consequences match to destroy Fenix again and send him packing. If Catrina’s correct, Fenix losing his life should restore her. She’ll be a human, no longer a ghost. Being a ghost has kept her out of some trouble, so this a win today and maybe an L to come.
We know what is in Pentagon’s future: a challenge from Cage. Penta felt pretty big time, having kept the title thru an Aztec Warfare and a match with Matanza, and challenged anyone. He got cage laying him out from behind, and pointing out he wasn’t in either of those matches. Penta had threatened to break everyone. The Machine doesn’t believe he can be broken.
In a Put Up or Shut Up Challenge, Jack Evans lost to the debuting XO Lishus. Lishus seems to be taking over the exotico role with Pimpinela not around, but we didn’t find out much about him (pronoun used by Striker) as a person. We did find out Lishus has a lot of cool offense.
We did learn a bit about Ricky Mundo’s doll. He realized the photos Dario Cueto handed him back in Season 3 of an Island of Dolls was a real place, decided to go there, and met Rosa. Rosa is the doll. Rosa the doll has a string that causes it to speak when pulled. Rosa is a little bit too on point with her words to be a normal doll. The rest of the Worldwide Underground is understandably weird out but don’t want to know too much about it. Also, it’s definitely left implied that Ricky & Rosa are why Angelico is nowhere to be found. The Worldwide Underground has more immediate matters than the doll at the moment – Johnny Mundo fills the rest in on starting a war with the Reptile Tribe and asks for backup. Jack Evans, no fan of snakes, decides to find something else to do for the moment.
About three seasons after everyone stopped wondering about, Lucha Underground did give a resolution on the giant key the Cuetos have been carrying around. It seemed explained at one point that it was the simply the key that held Matanza in his cage. It also appears to be the figurative and spiritual lock on the god that’s possessed Matanza’s body. Antonio Cueto monologues that he asked the Order, as a father, to preserve a sliver of Matanza when the transformation took place. They placed Matanza’s soul in the Key. It appeared last week, and in previous matches, that the Key made Matanza strong but Antonio felt that soul has kept Matanza from reaching his full strength. Antonio demands Matanza break the Key himself. Matanza does, and become strong enough to break thru his bonds. This was a very clear scene of powering Matanza up after he was beaten shockingly easy last week. It’s also one person losing a soul in the same episode where Catrina may be regaining hers.
Thoughts
I thought the opener was alright. XO/Jack was mostly about getting XO over a lot in a debut. XO (referred to as he, but it is Matt Striker so who knows) has a lot of unique offense and was best in that part of the match. The timing on some of the selling wasn’t great, but there was enough there to make a positive impression. The editing was strange – it was very abrupt for the announcers to have said Jack made a challenge without having seen it.
Three Way To The Grave was the best match this season has had so far, by a fair margin. I wouldn’t put it above the other big casket matches on the show, but it’s no discredit to the idea. The strength of the match was Fenix/Mil Muertes sequences, especially as they played off their match from Season 1 in interesting ways. Fenix has grown greatly since then and is even better at getting the emotion from the crowd. They also gave more (TV) time to the final two sequence, an improvement over the similar three-way gauntlet match at the end of Season 3. Crane was the weak link of the match, not doing a great job on catching dives and not having as strong an overall performance as his best Season 3 stuff. Allowing Ivelisse to get involved was a tidy way of finishing up that plot, assuming people still remember it.
