Yeah, the Flash writers clearly have no idea how to do a finale. They stumbled into season 6's finale being pretty good on accident, then ruined those storylines in season 7. Both of season 7's finales were bad. Now, Armageddon is over, and it ended in the lamest way possible. A big cgi fight with some obviously plasticky cgi that no longer has the excuse of being "alright for the time" like season 1 did, a lame continuation to Mia Smoak's story that she could've and probably *should've* been able to handle on her own, a retcon of Reverse Flash's origin story, and Damien Darhk's fourth Arrowverse death. You'd think that some of this was interesting, or even rage inducing, but the writers somehow managed to make this episode as boring as humanly possible.
Also, no bingo this week. I would've had it if I could've crossed off "Forgiving Known Murderers", but Damien Darhk's already been redeemed on Legends of Tomorrow, so I decided not to count it here.
Oh, and one more thing before I give my review of this episode, but I had to add a quick addendum to my review of "Armageddon, Part 4". I have a confession internet. I have judged an episode of The Flash too harshly. Despite the nonsense time travel logic and stupid filler, I actually did enjoy the episode. It's incredibly, incredibly stupid, and relies on the audience forgetting how time travel works, but in the context of the episode... Yeah, okay, sure. I can rock with the idea of Reverse Flashpoint. I *might* adjust my rating of the episode, but my thoughts on the nonsensical time travel logic and the overall laziness of the storytelling in my review will stay. The episode was lazily thought out and didn't really feel like a "dystopian future", but Thawne's determination to actually ruin Barry's life was very much still in character for him. So yeah, perhaps I judged "Armageddon, Part 4" too harshly. I apologize. Now onto my review of this week's episode.
The crux of the episode (supposedly) revolves around whether or not Barry should save Thawne's life. It's an interesting concept, but it results in, quite frankly, the lamest possible ending to Thawne's character we could've gotten. And even worse, it's all based around a retcon to Thawne's origin story, and another change to the way that time travel works on this show.
For starters, Eobard Thawne is not an anachronism or aberration in the timeline. He is not something that it's supposed to be present. This is because during season 7's "Heart of the Matter, Part 2", Barry and Iris's love was strong enough for the Speed Force to reassemble Thawne's body. And yes, this is a real thing that canonically happens on this show. The episode tries to say that Thawne is being erased from existence because he created Reverse Flashpoint during the last episode, but that. Is. Not. How. Time. Travel. Works. Thawne created the Reverse Flashpoint timeline, but he was originally from the prime timeline, which means he would not be erased from existence.
Secondly, his origin story was either added to or retconned depending on how you choose to interpret Thawne's speech from the season 1 finale "Fast Enough". At the top of that episode, Barry asks Thawne why he killed Barry's mom, and Thawne's response is "Because I hate you. Not you now; you years from now." Barry then asks why they're enemies, and Thawne says "It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter anymore. All that matters is that neither of us were strong enough to defeat the other... Until I learned your secret. I learned your name. Barry Allen." So in this episode when Barry asks the same question, why Thawne hates him, and we actually get an answer... The answer we get is kinda underwhelming. Turns out that two centuries from now (which just proves that the writers have no idea that a century is 100 years and that Barry would be well over the age of 200 at that point), Thawne was about to present himself to the world as the new Flash, and Barry showed up and impressed the crowd more than Thawne. But Thawne had set up a trap to endanger the crowd (supposedly, knowing the character's comic origins definitely gives this scene a different subtext), and Barry saved the crowd in Thawne's place. Thawne saw this as Barry "stealing his life", and... It's just kinda underwhelming. I mean, I credit the writers for trying to iron out Thawne's origin story, but it just comes off as Thawne not really being a real character. Maybe there was a bunch of stuff in Thawne's life that happened before that moment, and that was just his breaking point, but the episode frames it as the *only* reason that Thawne hates Barry. And the result is that it works in terms of Thawne's patented pettiness, but doesn't really work as a villain origin story. It comes off like wallpaper at best, and a blatant retcon at worst.
Also, Tom Cavanagh seemed like he was asleep this episode, and considering this was the "sendoff" for Reverse Flash, I'm so sorry Tom, but I wish we'd gotten a little more nuance in your performance.
Retcons and tv logic aside, the writers did manage to fall into an interesting premise for this episode. Barry has to choose whether or not to save Thawne's life despite everything that Thawne's done to him and will continue to do to him. On a better written show, this could work. But what happens instead is that we get a last minute reveal that Despero lied about his origin story, and suddenly he's willing to destroy all of Central City just to make sure that Team Flash doesn't save Thawne, since I guess Thawne created a *new* Armageddon in the future that Despero returned to? What? It seems like we skipped a step here, and I honestly don't know where. Despero doesn't want to kill Barry anymore, but wants to kill Thawne instead, even though Earth isn't really his home anymore? Am I supposed to not feel bad for Despero anymore? I gotta say, he was a more interesting character when he was still a guy that made the wrong choice and didn't kill the guy that tried to destroy his planet.
Also on the board of confusing stuff, why is the "Flame of Pytar", Despero's eye beam, suddenly an actual flame? I guess this might just be me misinterpreting the alien stuff, but I thought that the "Flame of Pytar" was an energy source that Despero could harness and use as an energy beam. Just wish that was made a bit more clear from early on.
Let's focus on one of the positives of the episode. Despite Barry vs Despero being a pretty awful CGI fight that would've only looked good during season 1 (and maybe 2 since they did have that CGI bout with two Barry's in the episode "Flash Back"), we did get one genuinely cool moment from Barry this week, and that was when we finally got to see him don the gold boots that people have been asking for for YEARS! And you know what? Yeah. They look good. I like the look of the suit with or without them, but it was cool to see that some of the fans finally got what they wished for.
And a small aside with the gold boots, I actually had a thought before I sat down and watched the episode of "I think to help ease the audience into accepting Chester as the new Cisco, he should've made a small addition to the Flash suit to really make it his own. That would've been a cool way to introduce the gold boots." And low and behold, that's pretty much what ends up happening in this episode. Just funny that I kinda predicted it.
So Mia Smoak/Queen is here for the final part of this crossover, and you could cut her out of the episode and absolutely nothing else would change. Actually, scratch that. Cutting Mia out of the episode would mean that Iris gets less screentime, and we could've budgeted five more minutes of the episode for an intriguing discussion between Barry and Thawne or Barry and Despero. For context, I don't hate Mia as a character. I thought she was overblown during Arrow's final two seasons, but I was convinced she could carry her own show with Laurel and Dinah by her side, and was less than thrilled when it was announced that her spinoff wasn't happening. And the thing is, this episode doesn't really do anything to further her story. And I guess that it turns out that a mark on the hozen that's been passed down in her family since her dad found it on Lian Yu could yield some results about William's disappearance? The thing's over sixty years old! That does not make sense!
Also, Damien Darhk has his fourth Arrowverse death here, and his daughter Nora randomly shows up and switches places with him after he dies because the timeline gets reset. It's cool to see Nora here, and we knew she was in Vancouver since the actress that plays her, Courtney Ford, is married to Brandon Routh who plays Ray Palmer. It did feel out of place in the episode to randomly get another tearful goodbye from Darhk after he already got a great sendoff in Legends of Tomorrow's "Mister Parker's Cul-de-sac" though.
Looking at the episode overall, this might just be one of the most boring box-standard episodes of the whole show, and that is weird considering that this was supposed to act at the finale for this Armageddon storyline. We've got origin stories twisted or retconned, characters getting permanently depowered, new time travel rules, plenty of known murderers being forgiven, and Allegra straight up saying that she doesn't care who Thawne is. And as for that last one, I get why she doesn't care, since she's only been around long enough for him to do... Well... What he does from the season 7 finale until now, which is basically nothing from her perspective. Believe it or not, that's one of the more *sane* things that happens in this episode. I just hope that the rest of the season isn't like this. This show's due for a truly great episode any day now.
5 / 10.
20 out of 25 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
