The Flash - Final Season Discussion

I'm rewatching Sliders.

I just saw season three's “dragonslide" so I can categorically insist that the Flash writers are not the worst.

 

Did not see you.

Weird.

 

I don't watch Batwoman so the reveal didn't do anything to make me excited. The episode was ok, but I'm so tired of the slow down shots when characters are walking or fighting. They did it a few times in this episode and it was kind of annoying. I'm actually glad Mark is still pissed off even though I have a feeling he's a goner and we still won't get Frost/Caitlin back. I am glad he's not part of Team Flash though. I think my favorite scene was actually prior to the mission when they were all talking and realized that Barry was the Flash. The reactions were funny, but then it went back to the same tired troupiness that plagues this show each week. I also think this show would be better off without Allegra and Chester there.

Hopefully the more I see of Red Death the more excited I will get, but as someone who hasn't read the comics and is only familiar with all this stuff through the TV shows and movies, I kinda just sighed when the episode was over.

 

Batwoman got lost in a time storm, and came out the other side an evil Speedster, 2 decades older, who wants to kill a few people in the past.

If season one Barry can Time travel, then she does not need a cosmic treadmill to time travel?

Besides this may explain why Ryan was at Iris and Eobard's wedding in the future.

 

The character interplay here was fun, and Goldface is always entertaining (though I'm disappointed by how casually the writers tossed aside his love story with Amunet). Hot Stuff is pretty fun too, and I liked the way his battle with Fiddler II turned into a flirtation instead. And though I gathered this was going to be a Rogue-centric season, the idea of having rival good and evil teams of Rogues is an interesting and unexpected twist.

But I'm not sold on the logic of "We have to recruit our own Rogues' Gallery and commit a heist because we're afraid of General Eiling being mad at us if we ask for his help." Couldn't they have called in a favor from Lyla or Diggle at ARGUS, or from Supergirl, who's pretty friendly with the military? (Also, did Clancy Brown get paid for the use of his photograph here?)

I'm also tired of having the Flash just stand there and face off against the bad guys as they get ready. I mean, when Mark put down the case with the MacGuffin in it, Flash could've yoinked it away before anyone even had time to react.

 

If they're going to blow the final season tying up loose ends from another show, I'd rather it be "Legends".

 

While I agree with that, I don't think that what they're doing with Batwoman is about loose ends from that show. Rather, they're plugging Ryan Wilder into a role that was an alternate version of Bruce Wayne in the comics. Since Batwoman is over, they're free to use the character that way without running afoul of any ongoing storylines from her show.

Batwoman didn't really have any loose ends anyway. Aside from a tag scene introducing a new villain (probably Dr. Phosphorus), the season 3 finale pretty much gave satisfactory closure to the character arcs.

 

I really wish I could ask the writers "Why", in regards to the stuff with Caitlyn/Khione. Why recast Panabaker as a new character that literally no one can give a shit about in the final season of the show? If they needed that one guy to betray the team, they could easily have thought of a different reason. Its actually made the show unwatchable for me. The Flash already didn't have Cisco or a Wells for the last few seasons, now it doesn't even have Caitlyn or Frost.

I'm just dropping it. I'll tune in for the final episode, which can hopefully manage a few cameos from the real Flash supporting characters (Cisco, Caitlyn/Frost, Wells), but I'm not doing another 10 episodes of this horrible subplot with all of these terrible supporting characters (meaning Khione, Allegra and Chester). To be fair Red Death/the villain plot in general isn't very interesting to me either, but killing off and replacing Caitlyn/Frost and the story around it is just the final straw. The Arrowverse truly is going out with a whimper.

 

I'm keeping a close eye out for whenever the episode with Nia Nal/Dreamer airs, because I'll definitely be tuning in for that one. Also have my ear to the ground for any other Supergirl returning characters (would be amazing if they could get Benoist to give Kara one last bow).

 

Yes. I'd like some followup to her outing herself, and how that's affected her life. One of the reasons I regret Superman & Lois being on a separate Earth is that we don't get to see that.

 

That universe has its own kara, who maybe never left Krypton, never got out of the phantom zone, never made it to Earth, never got lost in time, never became a super hero, never became a public superhero, or is exactly the same.

 

Omg it’s Joe and Cecil’s kid.

Who we haven’t seen in what, 3 seasons?

They kept some of Red Death’s backstory. But in the comics his powers were organic from merging with the flash.

 

I'm not entirely sold by Javicia Leslie as a supervillain. She really overdoes the scenery-chewing at the end. The script also relied too heavily on Batman quotes -- "A superstitious and cowardly lot," "I am vengeance, I am the night," "You wanna get nuts," etc.

Also, the chronology of alt-Ryan's account doesn't make sense. Ryan was born in 1995. Batman was already active in 2003 when Kate Kane lost her mother, and if Bruce is around the same age as Warren Christie, who played him (or Hush disguised as him, at least), he would've been born around 1975. Well, I guess maybe Ryan's from an alternate Earth where the Waynes were younger, like how Earth-1's Barry Allen was a generation younger than Earth-90's Barry Allen.

They're not crediting the Red Death's voice, but I agree with tomalak301 that it sounds very much like Tony Todd. The way Red Death said "mouse" sounded just like how Todd says it as the dragon in Netflix's DOTA: Dragon's Blood series.

Speaking of casting, I only just figured out that Magda Apanowicz is playing the Fiddler. With the curly hair and goth-y makeup, I didn't recognize her. (And when are we going to see the Fiddler on a roof?)

 

I had no idea that was a quote. I guess I have to rewatch the movie.

 

I could tell it was probably a quote because it was so incongruous to the scene, but I had to look up where it was from. It's the only one of the Batman quotes from the episode that came from the '89 movie, thankfully. "Superstitious and cowardly lot" is from Batman's origin story in the comics, and "I am vengeance" is from "Nothing to Fear," the first Scarecrow episode of Batman: The Animated Series. They also paraphrased a line from Detective Comics #663, part of the Knightfall storyline that introduced Bane: "All men have limits. I ignore mine."

 

Bruce says that to The Joker when he confronts him in Vicki Vale's apartment.
I've always found it to be one of the most cringe worthy lines of dialogue in that movie. (There were more than a few)
Probably one of the worst choices to use for a quote from a Batman related story.

I really hope they stop with that. I find it trite and quite annoying. They already overdid it in this episode alone.

 

Keaton seemed to channel Beetlejuice there more than Bruce Wayne.

 

I always found the "dance with the Devil" line clumsy. It wasn't a quotation, as far as I can tell, and it didn't even mean anything; it was just an idiosyncratic thing Jack Napier liked to say that would conveniently tip off Batman that the Joker killed his parents. Very contrived writing.

 

I really liked Leslie's performance during the scene with Iris, but the scene at the end was a little cringeworthy. Other than the ending, this was one of the better episodes of the season and I guess next week is the conclusion of this storyline. Hopefully they stick the landing.

 

So is the Red Death story done? I was really hoping there would be more to it. It didn't quite click for me. I wonder if Iris is pregnant with twins?