The Flash - Final Season Discussion

So Khione is basically Mother Nature. It wasn't nice of the Negative Speed Force to fool her...

So, um, how is Khione an Earth goddess? Did the goddess just possess Caitlin's body when she died? Did the resurrection machine tap into the Earth's essence instead?

It took me a while to catch the clues that the Malcolm Gilmore scenes were in the future. At first I thought, "Did Officer What's-Her-Name get promoted to detective?" until I saw the "Captain Korber" sign on the desk. Then I started to think it was an alternate Earth, until the next scene where the band posters in the background had "2049" on them. And then we saw Iris's reporter employee with gray in her hair when she confronted Malcolm, and then there was Captain Korber holding that futuristic weapon on Malcolm/Eddie. (Hey, that's an ironic name combination to occur in the future scenes. There was a UPN sitcom called Malcolm & Eddie, which ended in 2000, the year Barry was sent to in the past scenes.)

So if Barry was abducted to the past last week, I bet that next week he'll be in the future seen here, and maybe reunite with XS and Impulse.

 

I didn’t even notice it was the future. That’s interesting

 

Im guessing the Negative Speed Force brought Eddie back to be his avatar.

 

This storyline is getting a bit convoluted but I feel bad for Eddie. He really did get screwed over. His speech to Barry was probably the best part of the episode. Also, Cecile being called Virtue is just a lot of jokes that write themselves. They couldn’t come up with a better name?

It was a mixed bag episode. I thought I was going to come here all pissed off that Barry wasn’t in the second the last episode of his own series but the episode got better when he showed up. Also, F Cecile, Mark, Allegra, Chester, and Khione as well. Khione is walking around with Caitlin’s and Frosts’ face and it’s actually bothering me now. Last week it’s revealed that she’s a goddess and this week there was nothing. With a single episode left of the series I can’t say I care about this character and actually feel bad for Panabaker. Unless this was her idea, the writers screwed her over.

 

They didn’t even bother aging them. Cecile should be her late 70’s/early 80’s by then.

It’s been okay but it doesn’t feel like a finale story to me. Just feels like your typical Flash story.

 

A lot of the decisions made this season, including the amount of time the main character has been absent have been baffling.

I do remember reading that they were expecting more than 13 episodes, so I wonder if their original plans ended up having to be compressed.

 

This was okay, but this final arc feels so limited by what they can afford or pull off logistically. I mean, given all the membership changes Team Flash has undergone over the past 8-9 years, it's hard to believe it's still exactly the same team (plus XS and presumably Impulse) 26 years from now. Not to mention that everyone in 2049 Central City apparently drives quarter-century-old cars.

I'm glad we finally got to see Cecile's supersuit and learn her code name, but I still don't get why they never did it with Allegra. Anyway, Virtue is an existing DC character with empathic powers, among others, and Cecile's costume is based on hers.

It's the future, and they live on a world with superscience. Presumably there have been improvements in human longevity. Heck, there already have been in real life -- look how good Michelle Yeoh looks at 60.

They surely wouldn't have left Barry out so much by choice. I assume there are limits on Grant Gustin's availability for some reason.

 

He had covid I believe. That’s why he wasn’t around much.

 

I saw that too. Couldn’t they have delayed things until Grant was better? Covid sucks but these last few episodes (what should have been the biggest episodes of the season) have felt like I’m watching Cecile and Co, not The Flash. I just think they should have done anything humanly possible to make sure the focus of the final four episodes of the series was on the lead character. Also Grant having Covid shouldn’t have impacted the writing of this arc too much.

 

I wondered that too, but production schedules can be costly to change. If it happened after the shooting and release schedule for the season was already decided, they might've been pretty much stuck with it.

 

"Eddie Thawne died 34 years ago and why hasn't he aged a day?"

Oh I dunno. Why haven't any of YOU aged a day in the last 27 years?

Maybe it's a meta-human thing. Only Iris has any visible signs of being older. When we saw Jay & Joan in the future she had gray/white in her hair and she's non-powered.

 

No, she and Cecile both had subtle gray in their hair.

 

I thought Grant only had six days left in shooting the season when he got Covid. I assumed it only affected filming for the final episode.

 

True. EW has the story. It only affected the last episode and they had to green screen him into some shots.

 

Okay, then COVID doesn't explain why there was so little of Barry this season. Weird.

 

Maybe it was a contractual thing. He only agreed to do so many hours.

 

Or they'd only agree to pay so much. A 9-year veteran cast member is going to have a very high salary, since pay raises are yearly. So yeah, it's conceivable. But then you think they'd want to reduce the size of the supporting cast or bring in new, less expensive players in order to keep a tighter focus on the title character of the show.

 

It feels like they didn't really have a plan for a final season... each episode should.have wrapped up an arc in some way

The only one that really worked for me was Matt Letcher's Eobard... given the t timey wimey history of the two...it was a perfect ending /full circle for that.

And Joe's goodbye... it was really weird way to get him out of the picture (as it was stated he was headlining his own show...which by the way, has it aired somewhere?), but I guess him having a goodbye party was a good way to say goodbye to him.

I think Danielel Pannabaker is great...but having a separate Frost was already much... Adding a non needed Khione was a waste (other than to give Mark something to do... he is a good actor too but unneeded)

 

Was that Robert Picardo narrating the Reverse Flash video in the museum? Sounded like if

 

Yes. He's "appeared" three times before in season 5 as the voice of Dexter Myles, the curator of the Flash Museum in the future (although Bruce Harwood played the present-day Myles when he appeared in season 1).