I Watch TV: The Flash

The Flash

Is the Arrowverse winding down? Arrow finished, Batwoman’s cancelled, Black Lightning's cancelled, Legends Of Tomorrow cancelled and Supergirl finished. Superman And Lois is off doing it’s own thing, so The Flash is the last mainline one standing. And it seems next season is the last one.

Still, that’s okay, as if they know it then they can try a ridiculously over-stuffed, nostalgia-laden ending, rather than just whimpering to an end. For example, the first story arc of this Season’s Flash, Apocalypse, had appearances of various size and importance from all sorts of characters from across the -verse; The Atom, Batwoman, Supergirl’s sister, Black Lightning, Green Arrow’s daughter, The Reverse Flash, Damien Darhk and Nora Darhk. Almost a crossover event, except there aren’t any remaining other shows to crossover!

With those cut out we’re also left to, I think, finally end the story of John Diggle. Former Green Arrow sidekick, destined to be one of a thousand heroes, and in the end deciding to go home and stay with his family. So it looks like they’re probably not launching a new show with him!

But the future is not what I’m here to talk about. (The show itself is very happy to go into the future timeline, seeing what’s going on in 2030 in Apocalypse, and later in the 2040s, mostly with Bart and Nora, the children of The Flash (Barry Allen), and his wife, Nora West-Allen). In Apocalypse, Despero, an alien, tells Barry he’s come from the future to stop him from destroying the world (by running too fast). Barry starts to lose memories and have blackouts, travels in time to discover his place – and wife – have been taken by Eobard Thawne, the Reverse Flash. Luckily this has restored Damien Darhk to life, but caused Darhk daughter Nora to die (the opposite of Darhk’s confused time-travel plot arc in Legends Of Tomorrow), so it’s time for a classic villain/hero team-up to restore the timeline.

Next up Deathstorm – a mysterious black fire, which may be cold fusion. This ends up  [SPOILERS] being the big Caitlin Snow/(Killer) Frost storyline. Team Flash is family, a theme that comes up again and again, in the text and in the framing. So when they find that the fire is powered by Caitlin’s dead husband (half of Firestorm from Season 1) they eventually trust her, only for this to go wrong and it to cause the death of (Killer) Frost. As Frost was born from Snow’s own cold powers and a guardianship psychological compulsion put in her by her father, Snow and Frost’s boyfriend Chillblaine decide to recreate her despite Barry forbidding it, breaking the family. Intense. Anyway, Danielle Panabacker goes from playing two characters (Snow and Frost) for the front half of the season to then only appearing in a few scenes in the second half*. It’s all set up for next season as well.

Then the final storyline. Iris has been suffering from a time sickness that Deon, the avatar of the time-aspected “Still Force” (in brief, to kickstart the Speed Force, destroyed in Crisis On Infinite Earths, they created three other forces, Strength, Still and Sage) has been trying to solve. When a researcher becomes a speedster by tapping the negative speed force, this creates negative versions of the other forces, who destroy various Eobard Thawnes (time shenanigans) until the last one is left to fight Barry.

Barry wins, for once not by running faster but staying still.

So do they have new ideas or are they stuck re-mixing old ones? The arc villains are recurring ones (albeit complicated in Deathstorm’s case). Barry has gone through the not-fast-enough-to-beat-the-bad-guy-so-has-to-run-faster enough times that they know not to do that any more. So there’s less villain of the week, and usually they’re the B-plot. It’s not exhausted, though the most interesting point brought up – Snow refusing to give up on Frost (because she’s family) vs everyone saying she should let her go (as her family they know she needs to grieve and move on) – is for the next, final season.

It's another season of The Flash. With a lot of speedsters they’ve got the speed effects pretty good. They’ve got plenty of backstory – too much backstory – so that they can turn up the emotions by remembering when things went wrong in the past. They give everyone in the cast something to do (for a moment it looks like Joe West has been written out of the show – Jesse Martin the actor has had to take breaks for health reasons before – but later he’s still about giving wise advice and even learning about D&D). There’s a reason it’s the last Arrowverse show standing. Having to give up on the ur-Flash episode template** hasn’t wrecked the show, and with a full length season they can go and explore odd bits and pieces – various futures, pasts, letting a side character have several episodes to develop.

Watch This: You want some undemanding superhero soap opera, and the resolution to some of the stories
Don’t Watch This: Arrow-what? Flash who?

 

* Possibly because she was pregnant. She also directs an episode!

** Barry has to try and catch a bad guy. He’s not fast enough! They figure out a way for him to go faster – at a cost/ he overcomes his doubts to go faster!