With
the new season of the Arrowverse iminent, it's about time I did my
round-up on the last runs of the superhero TV metaverse. I still
don't bother with Arrow,
excepting crossover events, but here's the round-up of The
Flash, Legends of Tomorrow and
Supergirl
as they lead up to the multiverse-shattering events of Crisis
on Infinite Earths.
The
Flash Season
Five
After four years revolving around
Barry, his dead parent issues and his slightly incestuous wooing of
Iris, season five gets to see him settle down with his new wife and
deal with parenthood issues instead. It's a bit of an odd one,
though, given that their child is a grown woman. Jessica Parker
Kennedy's character, having made a series of cameos during season
four, revealed her identity in the season finale as their daughter
Nora, having travelled back from the year 2049. Understandably, Barry
and Iris weren't exactly expecting this development, even if 99% of
the audience had guessed it was her (there was a slim chance it would
turn out to be Cecille's kid, of course, which would also have been
fun).
The bulk of this season's
effectiveness is down to JPK's performance as Nora. Given that the
character deforms the narrative of the season completely, had she not
been likeable and engaging it would have fallen flat. Fortunately,
JPK is absolutely adorable, and Nora remains sympathetic throughout
the season, even if she is a brat sometimes. That's forgiveable,
though, since she's basically written as a kid; although her actual
age is a bit foggy, she can't be any older than 25 and probably more
like nineteen. Amusingly, JPK is older than either Grant Gustin or
Candic Patton.
(As an aside, it's a bit strange
that both The Flash and
Legends
involve time-twisting narratives concerning women called Nora who
happen to be the daughters of major characters. Although as a nice
touch, it's made clear early on this season that Nora's name is after
Barry's mother, something that has only happened because Eobard
Thawne killed her and changed history. She was supposed to be called
Dawn, like in the comics.)
The ongoing mystery of Nora's
character stops being her identity – which would have worn thin if
they'd kept it going another year – and becomes her allegiances. It
turns out that she's in league with Thawne, aka
the Reverse-Flash,
returning to become the major villain of the series at last.
Thankfully, if somewhat inexplicably, he's once again played by Tom
Cavanaugh, having reverted to stolen form of Harrison Wells. This
doesn't make any sense that I can make out, but Cavanaugh is so much
better in the role than Matt Letscher I don't care. In any case,
Thawne is now imprisoned in Iron Heights in 2049 – the past, from
his perspective – awaiting execution. Given how impossible to kill
this character has turned out to be, this would seem to be wishful
thinking on the part of the authorities.
Of course, Nora's actions come
from good intentions, and for all his manipulations of her, Thawne
genuinely seems to care about Nora. To be fair, he doesn't seem to be
much worse a parental figure than either Barry or Iris, neither of
whom will be winning Parent of the Year awards anytime between now
and 2049. Barry in particular is an absolute arse this season. It's
an interesting arc for his character to take, given how likeable he
was at the beginning, but as the series has gone on and the pressure
has mounted on him, he's become more and more unlikeable, arrogant
and hypocritical. His treatment of Nora, in particular, is appalling,
once he discovers she working with Thawne. OK, Thawne is his
arch-nemesis and the murderer of his mother, and it's pretty clear
he's going to be manipulating her, but rather than try to help her he
kicks her out of his family and forcibly dumps her back in the
future. Guy's a prick.
Before we set it out with Thawne,
though, Team Flash have to face down Cicada, a terribly dull villain
who drags the season down. The odd naff baddie isn't a big deal, but
when it's ostensibly the Big Bad of the season and hangs around for
the bulk of the episodes, this is a problem. All good for making the
bad guy something other than another speedster, but last year's
Thinker was only a qualified success and Cicada has far less going
for them. I say them because we did have a fun twist in the second
half of the season when the first Cicada was replaced by his own
vengeance-driven niece, but Sarah Carter sneering her way through
scenes isn't much more entertaining than Chris Klien growling through
them.
This is all tied in with a
metahuman cure storyline which runs like a watered-down X-Men
storyline, only
without the punch since, rather than being natural traits, the
metahuman abilities were all granted by catastrophic disasters.
Moreover, Team Flash really do have a responsibility to provide a
cure for those who want one, since all of them events were their
fault (OK, Thawne engineered the first one, but still). This includes
the climactic events of the previous season, which ties into Thawne's
captivity in the future in a pretty clever way, albeit one that
doesn't actually make sense. Still, I've long stopped hoping for the
time travel in this series to make sense.
All the characters get their own
running storyline; if there's one thing this series excels at, it's
juggling a large ensemble cast. My personal favourites this season
are Frank Dibny (Hartley Sawyer) and Sherloque Wells (one of four
roles for Cavanaugh this year, along with “Harry” Wells, Wolfgang
Wells and Thawne). Having a new main Harrison Wells character each
year is one of the sillier but most fun aspects of this series. I
certainly can't think of another series that does something like
this. Making this year's version a French-speaking, Sherlock
Holmes-esque detective is just brilliant, and Cavanaugh is absolutely
brilliant in the role. His buddy-rival relationship with “Baby
Giraffe” Dibny is one of the highlights of the season.
On the other hand, Cisco gets a
fairly dreary storyline this year, which necessitates him behaving
far stupider than his character should ever be allowed to. And the
less we hear from boring Caitlyn and her boring family and their
boring icy escapades, the better. Her storyline is the single most
pointless aspect of the season and far too much time was spent on it.
On the whole, The
Flash is still a lot
of fun when at its best, and a real heartache when it ramps up the
emotions. Still, it's hard to argue that the series is matching the
heights of its first couple of years. There's more filler than
before, I fear, and I wonder if the best future for this series would
be shorter seasons and tighter story arcs.
Best
episode of the season: “Godspeed”
- the story of Nora and Thawne
Best
secondary villain: Weather
Witch – Reina Hardesty is the cutest.
Best
episode title: “The
Flash and the Furious,” although “King Shark vs. Gorilla Grodd”
takes some beating.
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