So, an episode of The Flash starts with a superhero dick joke, and it's the one after the episode directed by Kevin Smith with the Jay & Silent Bob cameo. What were the chances?!
Spoilers The Flash - Season 4
- Thread starter dahj
- Start date
I'm disagreeing with Barry's claim that "it's not self-defense if you're already thinking about it." That's not true legally or (in my opinion) morally.
Really? Isn't "already thinking about it" basically the legal definition of premeditated?
^ It's also the regular old non-legal definition. 
Premeditation is useful for determining degrees of homicide. It does not determine whether or not something is self-defense. You can plan out ways to defend yourself or others (using lethal force if necessary) given particular situations. It does not mean you are committing homicide.
Planning ahead of time how you will defend yourself, including killing the person, the next time they attack you, is indeed self-defense. But planning ahead of time to go to their house and killing them is not. I think Ralph was talking about the latter not the former. He was talking about going to the Thinker's hidden lair with the sonic scepter and taking him out once and for all. That's not self-defense. That's preemptive murder.
This conversation was earlier in the episode. Ralph specifically said "even in self-defense?" and Barry responded "it's not self-defense if you're already thinking about it."
I'm with Romulan_spy here. Barry wasn't speaking in generic terms, but in the context of the specific discussion he'd been having with Ralph about going after the Thinker directly. He wasn't saying it could never ever be self-defense, just that Ralph couldn't use a self-defense justification for his plan to seek out and attack the Thinker.
I still think Barry makes a good point. He is basically correcting Ralph that what he was contemplating was not really self-defense. It's one thing to kill someone when they attack you and you are trying to fight them off. That's the textbook definition of self-defense. Also, in self-defense, there is the implication that you never purposely wanted to kill the person, rather it was something that happened because you had no choice. When you are thinking in advance about how to kill them, that gets closer to premeditation. Ralph is actively thinking about killing the Thinker so Barry points out that it is not really self-defense when you do that.
Okay, on this point I agree more with Snaploud, I think. If you're speaking in general terms, rather than just this specific situation, then there's a difference between premeditation and taking precautions. Police officers and soldiers choose to go out carrying deadly weapons, but in principle, they're only intended to be used as a last resort when all else fails, and that's why it doesn't constitute premeditation if you have to use them.
Here's the exchange that I'm discussing:
Barry: Remember, if we find Gause first, we might be able to put an end to Devoe's plans.
Ralph: Speaking of ending Devoe.
Barry: Not what I said.
Ralph: Allen, I'm just saying Devoe's been ahead of us at every turn. His back-up plans have back-up plans. On the off chance that we can't capture him, shouldn't we be willing to do whatever it takes? We know that he is.
Barry: I am willing to do whatever it takes...except kill Devoe.
Ralph: Even in self-defense?
Barry: It's not self-defense if you're already thinking about it. Look. I've been down this road. I know you're scared. I understand the temptation. But you have to hear me when I say there's always another way.
Ralph: I really hope you're right, Rookie.
There was also an earlier exchange that you could add for context:
Barry: Don't even joke like that. We're going to get Devoe, throw him in the pipeline long before he gets to you.
Ralph: Right. If that doesn't work, we'll just take him out the other way.
Barry: What other way?
Ralph: We'll put him down with a shovel...give him his harp and wings...send him to visit Grandma Thinker in the sky.
...
At the point in the episode Barry makes his comment (about it "not being self-defense if you're already thinking about it"), Ralph is specifically talking about killing the Thinker as a back-up plan if Team Flash can't otherwise stop the Thinker from getting at Ralph.
No, I was not talking about just taking precautions. Rather, I was talking about someone preemptively deciding to find a person and taking them out as a analogy to what I think Ralph was suggesting Team Flash should do against DeVoe.
@Snaploud Thanks for posting the specific dialogue. It really helps. Here is how I understand it.
So Barry mentions ending DeVoe's plans, but Ralph hints at ending DeVoe. Barry corrects him that he was referring to ending DeVoe's plans not ending DeVoe himself.
Ralph makes his case that he feels killing DeVoe should be on the table as an option.
Barry clearly disagrees. He feels that killing DeVoe is not an option no matter what.
Snaploud, I think this might be what you were thinking of. Ralph asks about self-defense. It would appear based on the dialogue that Ralph could be asking about a legit self-defense scenario where Team Flash tries to capture DeVoe and naturally DeVoe fights back and Team Flash has to kill him to protect themselves. That would indeed be self-defense.
Barry's argument seems to be that it would not be self-defense if you are already going into the situation with the intent to kill.
You are correct that Ralph is definitely talking about killing DeVoe as a plan B if capturing him fails. Barry's point is that if your plan is to capture someone but kill them if capturing him does not work, that's not really self-defense. You might end up killing them in self-defense depending on the specific circumstances of the attack (did they attack first and you responded?) but your intent is certainly not self-defense.
Also, more importantly, I think Barry does not feel like Ralph is exhibing a "superhero" way of thinking. Superheroes are not supposed to go into a situation thinking "I'll try to capture the villain but if it does not work, I'll happily give them a one way ticket to hell". Rather, superheroes are supposed to take a non lethal approach and do everything in their power not to kill and only kill as an absolute last resort.
So Barry mentions ending DeVoe's plans, but Ralph hints at ending DeVoe. Barry corrects him that he was referring to ending DeVoe's plans not ending DeVoe himself.
Ralph makes his case that he feels killing DeVoe should be on the table as an option.
Barry clearly disagrees. He feels that killing DeVoe is not an option no matter what.
Snaploud, I think this might be what you were thinking of. Ralph asks about self-defense. It would appear based on the dialogue that Ralph could be asking about a legit self-defense scenario where Team Flash tries to capture DeVoe and naturally DeVoe fights back and Team Flash has to kill him to protect themselves. That would indeed be self-defense.
Barry's argument seems to be that it would not be self-defense if you are already going into the situation with the intent to kill.
You are correct that Ralph is definitely talking about killing DeVoe as a plan B if capturing him fails. Barry's point is that if your plan is to capture someone but kill them if capturing him does not work, that's not really self-defense. You might end up killing them in self-defense depending on the specific circumstances of the attack (did they attack first and you responded?) but your intent is certainly not self-defense.
Also, more importantly, I think Barry does not feel like Ralph is exhibing a "superhero" way of thinking. Superheroes are not supposed to go into a situation thinking "I'll try to capture the villain but if it does not work, I'll happily give them a one way ticket to hell". Rather, superheroes are supposed to take a non lethal approach and do everything in their power not to kill and only kill as an absolute last resort.
I like to think of superheroes more as rescue workers than fighters. They may need to fight bad guys to protect people, but their primary goal is to save lives, period. It's like how a doctor has a moral obligation to try to save the life of every patient, even an enemy soldier or a mob assassin or a genocidal dictator. Because what they do to other people is on them, but what you do to them is on you. So if your sworn duty is to save every life entrusted to you, then that's what you do. There are cases where a doctor has to make the choice to sacrifice one life to save another -- e.g. aborting a fetus to save its mother, or choosing which of two terminal patients has a more desperate need for a single donor organ -- but the goal is to try every possible means to save every life.
Not to mention, wasn't the whole execution thing originally because that Earth was so incredibly against breaching in general, period, for anything? how could an off worlder get the job? how did it turn into them being dimensional cops of sorts? lol.
I'd heard that Katie Cassidy was in this one, and I wondered why Black Siren would get involved. Turns out it was "Siren-X" from Nazi world instead. I guess that makes sense, seeing as how Quentin Lance was a Nazi officer there. He probably raised his daughter (the one he didn't execute for being bisexual) to be a loyal servant of the regime.
And now Siren-X is the last surviving member of that regime now that it's been overthrown. Good to hear that the rebels won, even if it's kind of an afterthought. And it sounds like they've wasted no time legalizing gay marriage.
By the way, I wonder what happened to Siren-X. I would've expected Leo to take her back with him to be tried for her war crimes. Did he send her back and then stay behind? Or is she imprisoned on Earth-1 now, like Black Siren was after season 2 (along with a whole bunch of Zoom's other metahumans who've been completely forgotten about)?
Meanwhile, I'm a bit annoyed that the show is falling into the cliched pattern of assuming really intelligent people lose the ability to understand emotion, or even to recognize its existence. Intellect and emotion aren't mutually exclusive; every thought process has an emotional element underlying it. Even entirely abstract decision-making like solving math problems has been shown to stimulate the emotion centers in the brain, because the right answer feels better than the wrong one. Emotion is what motivates us to want to choose one option over another. True, there are a lot of intellectual people on the autistic spectrum who have trouble reading the emotions of others, but that doesn't mean they don't have emotions, contrary to stereotypes. And even someone who didn't value emotion in himself would still be aware of its existence and functioning and be able to model it in others. It makes no sense that the Thinker could somehow extrapolate in detail how events on Earth-X had unfolded and yet be unable to predict that a man who'd lost a friend would be suffering from grief.
Besides, the Thinker's mind has been enhanced all along, and he used to show genuine love for Marlize. It's only since he started absorbing other metas and jumping bodies that he's become more cold and ruthless. I figured it was that the stress of jumping bodies or absorbing powers was affecting his mind, or that he was going crazy from the baggage he picked up from so many minds, some of them evil. Instead, they've fallen back on the oldest, most unfair cliche in the book for writing superintelligent characters.
And now Siren-X is the last surviving member of that regime now that it's been overthrown. Good to hear that the rebels won, even if it's kind of an afterthought. And it sounds like they've wasted no time legalizing gay marriage.
By the way, I wonder what happened to Siren-X. I would've expected Leo to take her back with him to be tried for her war crimes. Did he send her back and then stay behind? Or is she imprisoned on Earth-1 now, like Black Siren was after season 2 (along with a whole bunch of Zoom's other metahumans who've been completely forgotten about)?
Meanwhile, I'm a bit annoyed that the show is falling into the cliched pattern of assuming really intelligent people lose the ability to understand emotion, or even to recognize its existence. Intellect and emotion aren't mutually exclusive; every thought process has an emotional element underlying it. Even entirely abstract decision-making like solving math problems has been shown to stimulate the emotion centers in the brain, because the right answer feels better than the wrong one. Emotion is what motivates us to want to choose one option over another. True, there are a lot of intellectual people on the autistic spectrum who have trouble reading the emotions of others, but that doesn't mean they don't have emotions, contrary to stereotypes. And even someone who didn't value emotion in himself would still be aware of its existence and functioning and be able to model it in others. It makes no sense that the Thinker could somehow extrapolate in detail how events on Earth-X had unfolded and yet be unable to predict that a man who'd lost a friend would be suffering from grief.
Besides, the Thinker's mind has been enhanced all along, and he used to show genuine love for Marlize. It's only since he started absorbing other metas and jumping bodies that he's become more cold and ruthless. I figured it was that the stress of jumping bodies or absorbing powers was affecting his mind, or that he was going crazy from the baggage he picked up from so many minds, some of them evil. Instead, they've fallen back on the oldest, most unfair cliche in the book for writing superintelligent characters.
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#EvilGeniusesHaveFeelingsToo
My guess is Ralph mind still exists buried deep down in his body's subconscious. That Devoe never foreseeing that Ralph's psyche is as resilient as his body is what leads to his defeat.
I'm still kinda hoping for an "Everybody lives!" ending where it's somehow possible to restore all the bus metas to life. Although that's unlikely with the criminal ones who learned the Flash's identity, unless they get amnesia along the way.
Speaking of which, why was Barry so casual about showing his face to Fallout? I forget, did he reveal his identity to him the last time? I know we've seen him revealing his identity to other bus metas to win their trust, notably Izzy, but he doesn't even seem to be bothering with a secret identity these past couple of weeks.
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