Arrow / The Flash / Supergirl by Informant (Page 16 of 18)

The Thawne stuff is crazy because it completely diminishes Eddie's sacrifice at the end of season one.  It was fun to have him as a villain in Legends because having a speedster villain against non-speedster characters is fun (because speedster/speedster fights are always more like a race with an occasional punch).

But seriously, Eddied *killed himself* to protect the team and destroy Thawne once and for all.  Now, through various vague explanations, he's back.  So they would've been better off doing anything else and keeping Eddie alive.

Listen, I get it that Flash Season 3 wasn't well received, but I don't think an Evil Barry would've been that outlandish.  Maybe Grant Gustin wasn't available to play two characters, but I think it *has* to be a result of Savitar backlash.  So they go with Thawne, which is fine, but they're doing a parallel Earth episode.....use Earth X Thawne.  Or say it's a Wells clone who got super speed.  Make it an evil Wally.  Or an Evil Jessie.  Evil Jay.  Convoluting Thawne's character (again, destroying Eddie's sacrifice) was just a bizarre choice.

And I get the reasons to kill Stein off.  It does allow for Stein's character to really leave an impact, and his funeral really puts weight on the whole thing.  But if they'd just dropped him off at home and promised to leave him alone, I think that would've worked.  Unlike, say, The Avengers, I don't think the situation demanded a sacrifice, but I do understand why they felt it was needed and killed off a character who was leaving anyway...as opposed to killing off, say, Wild Dog or Caitlin that would have an even bigger impact on the principal shows.

All that being said, though.....the way they did it was awful.  Random Nazi goon did it?  By shooting him as he wandered off?  Make evil Kara do it.  Make Fuhrer Ollie do it, rationalizing why Oliver felt the need to kill him instead of incapacitating him.  Or at least give the Legends a chance to get their revenge.  The guy that shot Stein is vaporized by the actions of Stein himself, right?  He died before Stein did.

I wouldn't have killed him, but the way they did it was very lame.  Even when it was happening, and Stein said they were going to split up I wondered why.  Yes, they needed two tasks done some ways apart, but it looked like Jax could've hotwired and flown across the room in the time it took Stein to get there.  At least drop the old man off where he can get to cover faster instead of making the old guy run across a room.

I'm eager to watch Part 4 again (I kept it on my DVR) because I thought the action sequences were very fun.  There was some uncanny valley stuff with some of the CGI with Barry and Supergirl, but I thought, overall, the CGI was fantastic for TV.

I hope they're able to do another one of these next year.  I understand why they might not be able to....but I'd be okay dropping 2-3 episodes per show and getting a crossover.  A lot of the Arrowverse random episodes are just filler, and this event moved so many stories forward.  It's a great trade.

EDIT - It probably wouldn't have worked to have Evil Wally as Evil Flash since he doesn't really fit in with the Nazi hiring principles.  Whoops.

It does bring up an interesting thought, though.  With the full suit and total mask Earth X used (not to mention the blur trick), no one would necessarily know the guy in the suit was black.  With Wally X revealed after damage in a fight, the Nazis would turn on him; and there’s a lot of different angles to take from that point on. What is Wally X’s story and why did he want to be part of the Nazi super team?

Wherever that story went, it would have likely been much more interesting than the convoluted Thawne thing we got.

Incidentally, Thawne taunted Flash at the end by gleefully wondering what face he’ll use the next time he and Flash meet.  What if Thawne comes back with Wally’s face?

Just finished the crossover.

I think that if they want to keep doing these (and while they can be fun, I'm not sure that they actually should keep doing these 4-way crossovers, as opposed to smaller crossovers spread across the season) they should just film them either during the summer, or as the first episodes of each series for the season, and then air them during the winter break. Supernatural usually does this when Jensen Ackles directs, so he has time to prep his episode before the season starts.

I agree with a lot of what all of you were saying, so I won't go into everything. The Thawne stuff makes absolutely no sense at all. I don't get why they felt a need to bring him back, and I don't get how they did it without remembering how they did it. These writers get very lazy, and it shows. He also made a reference to having fought Superman in the future. So, does Superman end up on Earth 1 at some point?

The Caitlin thing is similar. In one scene, she looked like Caitlin Frost from the end of last season (white hair, brown eyes, and Caitlin's overall posture), but they never said anything about it. It's like they just let Danielle film a scene without the contact lenses for some reason. The Snow/Frost story continues to confuse, but whatever.

There was a real opportunity for them to do interesting things with Kara's double. She would have been from more or less the same Krypton as "our" Kara, only to be found by Nazis when she crashed here. She wasn't a baby when that happened. So how did this Kara, who would have been a good person when she landed, become this monster? And why didn't normal Kara throw out a line like "Do you think this is what our parents had in mind when they sent you here?"
I also thought that Melissa's acting as evil Kara was pretty weak. Overall, the villains were pretty one-dimensional (and that is a problem, even when writing Nazis), but she didn't do the mustache twirling very well.

Sara... If I say what I want to say, I will be criticized for being sexist. So I will just say this... Dean Winchester is a slut. He sleeps around too much, has too little respect for the women that he sleeps with, and he's getting a little old for that act. They started to have him grow up around season 6, but then they stepped back and he returned to his old ways. I didn't like that decision.
Sara Lance makes Dean Winchester look like a saint. The woman can't be in the same room with another female without jumping her bones. And I get it. They want to make her Indiana Jones, and Han Solo, and all of those other Harrison Ford characters who fight bad guys and sleep with all the girls, but they took it too far. Sara used to be an interesting character (and kind of a serial monogamist, if you ask me, since it was always Oliver or Nyssa). Now she has the same problem as Kara, where they're forgetting how to make her an actual character. Her bedding all of these women throughout history is a joke, but that's all she is anymore.
When evil Lance asked her why she would side with the people that she did, she replied by saying "Because I like men, and I like women"... and that answer made no sense in that context. It's like someone asking her if she wants butter on her popcorn and her response being "I'm bisexual". She allied herself with those people because they're the good guys!
And the response she gave robbed the scene of all of the drama that could have come from her father's double threatening to kill her. (and this reminded me once again that she should be facing Laurel this year, not Dinah)

Sara and Alex actually worked together in the scenes where they weren't doing the awkward sex stuff. Why did they even have to go there? The audience would have been shipping them much harder if they didn't start off by having them in bed together!

Felicity... I remember why I hate her now. She literally interrupted someone else's wedding, so that she could get married herself!?!?! Because it couldn't wait five f___ing seconds?! The Oliver/Felicity stuff in this crossover felt really awkward and forced, like the writers needed some relationship drama, but didn't have any good ideas. I hate this pairing so much, because Felicity is so often a b___h to Oliver, and he just stands there and takes it. If the genders were reversed, would anyone be cheering for this couple? At some point, it's just a form of emotional abuse. Oliver can do better. Hell, he HAS done better, and two of his ex girlfriends, and his ex wife, are assassins!

I'm sure there's more to discuss (like why wasn't Ray at the wedding when he knew the couple more than Sara did?) but it's late. So I will just say... the politics. Maybe it's not as big a deal to the rest of you, but I'm just tired of it. In an episode where literal Nazis with the genocide and the camps, and the doomsday weapons are attacking the plant, the writers feel a need to put in Trump references. It's offensive on so many levels, not the least of which is the fact that they are reducing the severity of what the Nazis did to an insult along the lines of "poopy head". I'm tired of not being able to enjoy a stupid comic book series without having them take jabs like this, which are meant as a jab toward at least half of their audience.

Does any sane, rational, mature human being actually believe that Donald Trump is a literal Nazi? Of course not. He is a lot of things that pretty much all of us would agree on, but a Nazi is not one of them. And yet, this trend of calling anyone you disagree with a Nazi continues, along with the "punch a Nazi" (also referenced in the crossover) line, which has resulted in people who are not remotely Nazis actually being assaulted in the real world. I don't find that funny.

And before everyone says that I'm overreacting to these innocent little jabs, I'd like to remind you that these shows have established other presidents for both Earth 1 and whatever Earth Kara comes from. The Trump references have no place on these shows, and having them in there isn't just petty, it's unprofessional.

Overall, the crossover was fun, but shallow. The writing could have used a few more passes with the red pen, but that doesn't seem to happen much with these shows, and a lot of really basic mistakes are made because of it. The plot didn't always make sense (as mentioned by someone else, they never explained why they attacked Earth 1 if they had been targeting Kara all this time). The dialogue was unpolished, to the point where some conversations made no sense, as writers tried to force their way into a punchline. I agree that it was better than last year, but I'm not sure that these crossovers are worth the effort. They are sloppy and rushed, and pretty much always feel like something that exists outside of the real Arrowverse anyway. These episodes will have a lasting impact, with weddings and deaths, but I don't see how they will be anything but awkward, both when we get back to the normal shows, and when/if we rewatch these on DVD. How do they even handle these episodes on DVD? I haven't checked to see about that.

I'm being super negative, I know. The episodes were fun to watch.

The first crossover with Vandal Savage was surprisingly done right - the Flash episode was included in the Arrow set and vice versa.  If you only bought Flash season 2 on DVD, you still got the full story; you didn’t even have to swap discs as they were already there in order.

For the Invasion crossover, it was initially advertised that the entire crossover would be in the Flash season three set, but that turned out to not be true.   If you want to see every part of Invasion on DVD, then you have to buy all four DVD sets and swap out the discs for each part.  I think it does tell you which part you have on your set, but it doesn’t tell you on what sets to find the other parts.  I guess they think that’s what Google is for.

So I expect Crisis on Earth X to get the Invasion treatment on DVD.  Maybe they’ll surprise me and do it right like they did the Vandal Savage crossover.

As for the insertion of social and political issues into these shows, I regret that people in film have lost their subtlety.  It’s similar to what almost happened with Back to the Future. If the film makers had an unlimited budget and no restrictions, the time machine was going to be a refrigerator and Marty would have gotten back to the future by riding inside of it at the heart of an atom bomb test in the desert.  When it was decided that would cost too much money to be done “right”, they went back to the drawing board and came up with a Delorean that could be powered by a lightning bolt.  An iconic idea was created because of limitations - because of restraint.  With CGI today, we would have gotten the refrigerator.

In our say anything, do anything world today; it seems there’s no reason to put more thought into ideas.  But messages can be delivered by more than just a hammer; and everyone’s product would be better if they placed limits on themselves (even using a simple question like “how do I get someone who hates these ideas to buy them?”).  If the productions thought that way, maybe we could get something like Classic Trek’s “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” which I still hold to be one of the best spotlights on racism that has ever been put out there (honestly - who even noticed or cared which side of their face was colored until it was pointed out?  For most who saw it - especially kids - it was eye opening to the issue).

Sorry, but I was talking directly about these episodes and these writers, not political beliefs. The belief that Donald Trump is literally a Nazi is not a political belief, because it is a belief that requires a lack of understanding politics. Saying that Donald Trump is not a Nazi is not a political belief, it is a fact. Donald Trump is not a Nazi. Barack Obama is not a Nazi. Hillary Clinton is not a Nazi. Bernie Sanders is not a Nazi... I believe all of these people to be many other things, but to say that they are Nazis is blatantly wrong. If someone out there would like to explain to me how I'm wrong about that, or how it is intimidating for me to state the obvious, feel free.
If these shows are going to continuously voice their views on the subject, I can't be blamed for discussing them. If you're not comfortable with that in a discussion about silly comic book shows, welcome to my world. You didn't have a problem when the actual writers of the show did it, probably because you thought it was funny.

I wasn't commenting on their politics. I was commenting on their maturity and professionalism.

And on another note, how come nobody thought of using evil Oliver's dead body to get normal Oliver cleared of those charges that he is facing? Showing that there are two identical Oliver's running around would make the "beyond a reasonable doubt" thing pretty hard. Though I kinda think they might go ahead and send Oliver to prison next year.

Such as Alex's  "punch a Nazi" comment, which has led to people being physically assaulted in the real world, despite the fact that they have nothing to do with Nazis? I agree. I find it disappointing that you're willing to take a bold stance against my condemnation of that call to violence, but you're silent on the call itself.

This would annoy me, if I were buying the DVDs. Some people today don't even watch the shows as they air (some don't even have the option), so now those people will have to deal with the fact that major series-altering events took place on completely different shows. Barry and Iris, and Oliver and Felicity got married on Legends. That's going to be a mess when it comes to syndication, DVD sales, as well as streaming. Even if they keep these episodes out of the normal DVD sets and just release Crisis on Earth-X as its own thing, it will mess with casual viewers, and people who only watch one or two of the show.

Because then you wouldn't have to buy all of the sets.

This is why it became impossible for me to keep up with comic books.

I actually think Legends answered the whole "why kill off Stein when he could be happy?" question pretty well in the fall finale.  Yeah, death sucks and Stein didn't want to die, but he lived a full life and was ready to accept that it was his time to go.

Since Jax is leaving the show too, seemingly, it might've been better (read: more tragic) to have Jax be the one who dies (hopefully, more heroically), allowing Stein a bittersweet homecoming.  Maybe Stein leaves the Waverider, Jax tries to be a hero on his own, and he dies.  So Stein will always have to wonder whether or not he made the selfish move or not.

Either way, I feel a little better about the decision.  And I started wondering....is Legends actually handling character growth the best of the four series?

You were convincing, but it's the show's responsibility to sell it.  You were more eloquent, but they did a good job.

And the only reason I say that Legends is better at characterization is that...there's forward momentum.  Arrow is probably the real answer (as they've evolved the "team" to a point where they had a whole stretch of episodes, not devoid of action, where Oliver didn't even fight).

But whereas Flash moved to a place where they've given powers to a Cisco and Caitlin and added versions of Wells, that show is still mainly Cisco/Caitlin/Wells assisting Barry as the Flash.  I'm not even sure Barry, honestly, has really grown as a character.  They added Wally with no impact.  They added a romance subplot and let everyone in on the secret, but the show really hasn't grown.

(Of all the shows, I think Flash could benefit from sending a character or two to another show.  Their team needs a shakeup)

Supergirl, while fun and adding new elements all the time, also is pretty status quo-ey (which, I know, isn't a word).

Legends, on the other hand, at least tries certain stuff.  It delves into the Legends' childhood to explain why Mick is such an asshole or why Ray is so upbeat and positive.  It's used Damian Darhk too much, but it's a character that the star of the show (Sara) has a deep, emotional connection to.  Even bringing Earth X Snart to deal with Mick was better character building than we've got out of Caitlin (especially on a night where they tried to do a Caitlin character episode).

Legends is probably the worst show of the four, but the Firestorm exit was about as good as anything that the Arrowverse has done.  Of course, with so few actual deaths across any of the shows, I guess it's not that hard.

Reminds me of the old “wheel format” where four different shows were shown on a rotating basis.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_NBC_Mystery_Movie

This was actually the plan for Sliders season four if it stayed on Fox.  They were going to produce fewer episodes and place it in a wheel with The Visitor, a time travel type show that wasn’t picked up and one of Fox’s reality shows like “When (blank) Attacks!”.  Under that plan, Sliders would have aired only one time every four weeks with no reruns.

I almost wonder if this is a kind of test run for CW.  Imagine one or two slots per week dedicated to DC programming, and it rotates.  One week it’s Arrow; next week it’s Flash.  And if they crossover more, it’s really like one big DC anthology show broadcast 52 weeks a year.  Doing it in that staggered schedule would make production breaks overlap another show’s filming and that could make crossover production easier as an actor could pop in for a week during their months off.

Now that'd be interesting.

I do think that something like this should be an option for streaming services.  Where if you decided to binge watch "The Arrowverse", you'd get Arrow at first....then you'd start getting some Flash.  Then you'd get Legends and Supergirl until you're eventually watching every episode by air date.  You'd watch it all the way we all did....as it happened.  I'm sure you'd have to work out some sort of system where cliffhanger episodes are arranged next to each other (because, otherwise, people would do it anyway).  So when Zoom nearly kills Barry, you don't have to check in with the Legends before you find out what happens.

*****

Regarding Arrow.

I think the Olicity stuff needs to just be let go.  Maybe she wasn't designed as the female lead, but she's there.  It's over.  She and Oliver are married, and that's it.  I'm much happier for it to just be over, with no more "will they, won't they?"  They did.  Now let's move on.

I think the beginning was a lot, but since the wedding technically took place on an episode of Legends of Tomorrow, I think they wanted to have an appropriate "wedding" on the show itself.  And while I think a lot of fans treat her like Seven of Nine, Felicity was actually there from the beginning so it's not like she showed up and kicked someone off the show - she "battled" Laurel for the spot, and she "won"

With Laurel back and a complete badass, I think that's what they're giving the Olicity haters.  Although, while there was a *very little* movement on the "can evil Laurel be saved* front, that story is moving at a glacial speed.

***

Regarding Vigilante, I wonder if he's some sort of mole.

Question about The Flash:

Maybe I've been in Texas too long, but the cliffhanger didn't strike me as that dire. The man who Barry claimed was a murderous criminal turned around and accused Barry of stalking him and got a restraining order (if I remember correctly).

So I assume that a crime was reported at Barry's apartment. He has a security alert on his phone telling him that someone was there. And Devoe turns up dead on Barry's floor.

How does this look like Barry is in the wrong? If a guy enters my house without permission, I can kill the crap out of him and I'd probably get a high five from the cops that showed up.

I assume that Devoe's wife made some sort of panicked phone call or whatever, but that wasn't shown. Was Barry being framed for kidnapping and murder, or just killing the guy who was in his home uninvited? Not everyone who is found standing over a dead body is going to be treated like a murderer.

I feel like the show wanted us to base our reaction off of what we've seen on other shows/movies and not what we were shown here.

I did enjoy Iris making a passive aggressive comment about Felicity and Oliver highjacking their wedding.

I wonder how much the 4-part crossover really screwed with everything.  But I sorta agree with the idea of limiting the number of superhero shows that run at any certain time.  I like TF's idea of cycling them throughout the year - you could even drop each show down to 13 episodes and run them one at a time with no breaks on one specific night/time.

I mean, heck, what if they got really crazy and did one show that ran 52 episodes a year called "Arrowverse" - sign each actor to a 20-something episode commitment and do it Justice League Unlimited style.  One episode, it's Barry and Cisco and Diggle.  One episode it's Black Canary and Killer Frost and Supergirl.  One episode it's Green Arrow and White Canary and Martian Manhunter.  Could be cool.

It would take some planning, but a wheel of four shows is doable.  However, I think it could actually give the actors *more* time off than they have now. Four shows filming 13 episodes each is your 52 weeks a year.  That would be an episode cut for Flash, Supergirl and Arrow with the actors only making up part of it in guest appearances on other shows - so they could be looking at a pay cut too.

But, 13 straight weeks of filming for an actor on their series and coming back for another month later in the year to film the big crossover; that’s less work than most of them are doing now and still potentially clocking in 17 episodes on their pay check.

It makes sense to us, but I think it would be a production nightmare. The actors would probably all arrange other work when they weren't filming here, and when they happened to be available, the producers would probably be working on other stories without them. You'd have to match schedules up perfectly, which rarely happens in Hollywood. We would end up with a situation like Wentworth Miller signing a contract across all of the shows, but barely ever appearing on any of the shows.

Also....why can't Barry reveal his secret?  Literally every one of his big bads has known his secret before Team Flash knew the bad's secret.  It wouldn't affect Cisco/Caitlin because they already openly work with the Flash, right?  If not, they can defend themselves.  Joe is a cop and fights metas anyway.

The only person it'd affect would be Iris, and she's in danger all the time anyway.  Plus, most of Flash's villains don't have any particular problem with Flash until he interferes with their plan.  Iris would just need some sort of way to signal Barry or anyone on Team Flash, and he could literally be there in a....flash.

Telling the city Barry's secret might actually cause some...good storytelling.  It might be a little too similar to how Arrow's season is playing out, but I think it'd be a bigger deal for Barry.

I just don't think that many villains would go after Iris.  If someone wanted revenge on Flash....maybe.  But most villains have a specific plan and want to *avoid* dealing with Barry.  Bringing Iris in would guarantee that the Flash would get involved.  If I were a villain, I wouldn't go anywhere near her.

Well that's the thing.  In a city where a guy can have a meta power that turns him into a nuclear bomb, is Iris really *ever* safe?

Yeah, I don't get why the writers aren't leaning on Cisco more this year. Ralph was introduced to take over for Barry for a while, but if I were in a dangerous situation, I'd much rather have Cisco using his powers to help me. His powers are way more impressive than Ralph's, and I think that Ralph is just annoying in general.

Plus, it would create a situation where Cisco might realize his full potential while Barry is away, and he might not want to go back to being the guy in the chair once Barry gets home (did I really just reference a stupid Marvel movie?).

The question that I have is, are they wasting this prison story on Barry? Arrow set things up for Oliver to potentially go to prison (which is taking forever, compared to Barry's speedy conviction), but then The Flash went there. So Oliver probably won't go to prison... but should he have? Should they have spent a season with Oliver in a high-security prison? This was going to be the plot of a movie at one point, but it never happened.

It's weird how I didn't even realize how Cisco never takes the lead as a hero. I always thought of him as the lab technician and now Slider_Quinn21 quite correctly notes that Cisco has outgrown being just that.

**

I'm enjoying the Barry-in-jail plot. I really like how Grant Gustin gives Barry this lightweight optimism in such a dark situation. I'm sorry you guys don't like the joking, humourous tone of this season. I'm really appreciating it and the levity warms my heart.

The easiest path through a “Green Arrow prison” story would be some story time in prison followed by a draft into the Suicide Squad.  Activities in the squad then lead to redemption and/or methods of getting Oliver back in the hero life (time travel being an obvious one).

Of course, I think DC has barred the use of the squad outside of the feature film version.

Well, another way they could do it would be for Oliver to get thrown in prison for vigilantism (not able to connect him to any murders as the Green Arrow, since "The Arrow" did more murdering than GA), and then for the city to vote to legalize vigilantism.  Or for James to threaten the city to the point where the city/government has to officially pardon Oliver to save them.

It wouldn't really work if both of them were unmasked, but maybe he gets thrown in a secret prison so the general public doesn't know his identity? (He probably couldn't be mayor in this case)

I had to look up the Jeremy Jordan thing. Are you referring to the "only friends" thing? Or did he say something else.

If that's it... Maybe I'm missing something. What was homophobic?