It's been announced Jesse L Martin has returned from his medicial leave. Joe will next be seen in the 15th episode of this season. Which should air next month.
that's great news! I was wondering looking at the trailer that he was still out (with Captain Singh taking over some of Joe's scenes)... Cant wait to see him...kudos to the FLash show for trying to accomodate!
I wonder what the "story" reason would be for his absense. I got to say the actress who plays Cecile has done a great job filling in and I've loved her scenes with Nora.
In-story, Joe is still around. He hasn't gone anywhere; it's just that he's not around when we happen to be watching, because he's off on an errand or he's taking a walk with the baby or he went to visit relatives for Thanksgiving.
That is what it has appeared like so far. According to the show runner they going to work his absences into show with a more detailed explanation https://www.comingsoon.net/tv/news/1026817-jesse-martin-returns-to-cw There are 5 episodes still to air before his return. I wonder if they are going to be more direct the closer we get to that. I will be curious if we learn how much notice the writers had for his leave and when his return episode was. Clearly some episodes were originally written with Joe scenes that had to be rewritten for Cecile
It appears as if he sustained a back injury of some sort. Hopefully it is not more serious and he will have a good recovery.
To this day, I still don't get how Eobard Thawne is still alive when he should have been erased from the timeline - and why he assumes the form of Harrison Wells.
The Thawne stuff was silly and didn't make sense from S1, mainly because I think the writers were over their heads. Thawne alters the past by killing Barry's mom, and then Thawne realizes he needs to alter the past again and make Barry into the Flash early, in order to get back to 'his future'... But Thawne just altered the past.... his future doesn't exist anymore. He's now in an alternate timeline. The fact that he didn't even realize this in S1 made his motives confusing and weak. Even interacting (and kidnapping) Eddie Thawne basically guarantees than Eobard will not be born in this new timeline... what are the odds that the exact sperm and egg will create Eddie's same child from the previous timeline...that will eventually lead to Eobard... very, very nearly impossible. But meh, it's a YA show for CW tweens. Just amusing to think about.
Thanks for trying to explain it to me. I guess there isn't much logic, if any, in the show's temporal mechanics. I also found it ludicrous that Barry in this episode was trying to chase down a Lamborghini, which for a speedster like him, should be running in slow motion. Then Cisco, of all people, suddenly came up with the brilliant idea of developing a "meta-cure" when Caitlyn healed his wound.
Ok, so, there is definitely a 100% chance that either Barry or Nora are going to get "cured", right? I mean, come on. Also, I'd say there is a better then 50% chance that Caitlyn gets unwillingly "cured". Cisco is basically the villain of X-Men 3. You don't invent a "cure" like that in a story without someone getting their life basically destroyed by some else using the cure to take their powers. Its going to be really annoying, and I hope we don't lost Killer Frost over it, her new relationship with Caitlyn is great. Also, it makes no sense for Cisco to want to remove his powers. The bullshit about "not being able to have a family like the Flash" is just that, bullshit. He's instantly became the second least sympathetic character on the show, and my second most disliked recurring character outside of Fake Ralph Dibny. Luckily the rest of the show is decent to really good, with Wells trying to figure out Nora being probably my favorite sub plot right now.
Movie 3 was partially adapted from the first volume of Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon, which was made into a motion comic you can find on Youtube. But you probably know all this.
You know there should be a rule if they want to do mid-season finales. They need their next episode to be as big and grand as said finale, or else the finale is a waste of time. I didn't hate this episode, but I rewatched "What's Past is Prologue" last night because I was excited for the show to return and this was a slight let down. I guess I wanted more with Eobard Thawne and Nora, yet all we got was a scene in the beginning and end, and nothing really was developed. I get there are 12 episodes left, but that goes back to the whole if you're going to do a cliffhanger, made the episode you come back to resolve said cliffhanger more meaningful then "Just another episode". As for the weather witch part, it was ok. Cisco and Caitlin developing a meta-cure feels pretty out of character for Cisco's part. Maybe it's the PTSD talking, but this whole story felt like it came out of the blue.
Past is Prologue was also the 100th episode, which is why it was so big. Nothing developed? Thawne has less than an hour to live. I assume that that means that he is going to be executed in 52 minutes, rather than that he is dying of natural causes that has a very specific timeline down to the second. Either: 1. Thawn is on the level, and wants to have a final legacy of goodness to counterbalance all the bad he has done, just like he told us. 2. He's using Nora to escape.
1) Archvillain plot armor; 2) actor availability. Really, Eddie's sacrifice at the end of season 1 should've erased the entire season and Barry's entire backstory from history, not just made Thawne disappear. So as soon as that happened the way it happened, it proved that temporal logic was out the window and things could happen for arbitrary plot reasons. And that hasn't changed since. You can't be at climax all the time; there's no way to maintain that pace, and it would desensitize the audience. The norm is that after a midseason climax, you slow down and let the audience and the characters catch their breaths, and then you gradually start building toward the climax at the end of the season. If you mean that the cliffhanger revelation about Nora and Thawne should've set up a bigger, more dramatic payoff than we got, I can see that; but this is just the beginning of what's clearly going to be an ongoing arc, as we learn more of how Thawne has helped and guided Nora and why. I could see it. He may put on an insouciant front, but he's been through some real pain and loss over the past few years, and I can see how his semi-retirement as Vibe would feel like a relief from his burdens. Besides, this is the guy who invented the power-damping cells and handcuffs, so it makes sense that he'd see permanent power removal as an extension of his past work. By the way, it was weird that it was Nora (IIRC) who said to Barry "I can't believe you're reading Mick's book" (Uncaged Desire, established in Legends of Tomorrow as a romance novel pseudonymously written by Mick Rory). Does Nora even know who Mick is? Was there some off-camera Legends crossover we missed?
I am sure there is a small section in the Flash Museum dealing with the Legends so thats how Nora knows Mick.
This was what I was saying for the most part. I'm not talking about the entire season keeping up with that pace, as that is a difficult task. It's more of a finale/premiere kind of thing. If you leave on a cliffhanger like that, the next episode should more or less focus on that cliffhanger and set up where the series will go moving forward for the rest of the season. What we got last night was just your typical flash episode, and after the midseason finale, I'm not sure a typical flash episode is good enough.
I own that TPB, and Whedon's X-Men run is probably my second favorite modern X-Men run after matt fraction's, so I definitely know where those elements of X-Men 3 came from.