DC Superheroes on TV & Streaming (1966 - 2024) (Page 10 of 28)

So do I just skip this week's Arrow? We all know that it will be a preachy mess, written by people who probably think that guns are super scary. I highly doubt that the end of the episode will see Curtis coming around to Rene's point of view on guns, so if there is an arc to the story it will probably be Rene realizing that he doesn't need guns to feel like a big man.

The producers seem to think that preachy current event episodes went out in the 90's. I would argue that they don't watch enough TV. A lot of us are really tired of being preached at by TV writers who have no real grasp of the other side.

I realize that I write stuff that is pretty biased myself. But I don't package it as a deep and meaningful exploration and debate of the subjects at hand. It is a pretty extreme "what if" scenario in my books.

I don't think I will have any sort of emotional response. I just think that these episodes are always boring, preachy and half-assed because the writers always think that they're changing the world or something. They're usually not worth watching. For example, Smallville's illegal immigration episode. ZzzZzZzZzZz

What a bizarre episode.  It felt a little like the semi-canon episode of West Wing "Isaac and Ishmael" - it just didn't feel organic.  I don't think shows like this are the right place for discussions like this.  It's probably a good idea for someone as violent as Oliver to think twice about what violence brings, but this isn't exactly something that's going to bring about any changes on the show.  It's preaching for the sake of preaching, and it just feels weird on a show with people shooting arrows at each other.

I also thought the flashback was weird.  Rene seemed like a really good guy who didn't really even make a mistake.  To lose his daughter seemed....bizarre.  And it's weird that he lost his family due to gun violence but he's also the one arguing that it shouldn't be restricted.  And while its cool that the Darhk stuff is what inspired him....wouldn't it have made more sense for him to have been a *part* of the citizen uprising?  And maybe deciding that he needs to stay out there on the streets?

Weird side note....where was Thea?  I don't even remember.

If they were even going to do this episode, they should've done it while they were recruiting Rene.  How many times has Rene presumably saved Curtis' life with his guns?  Have they never had these discussions before?

On Dinah Drake:

I thought it was really mean spirited to bring Katie Cassidy back and then reveal it was a fakeout. That said, I have no issue with Dinah Drake as the new Black Canary. When ARROW first started, I never really thought Laurel would become Black Canary. She wasn't the Dinah character from the comics. Admittedly, Oliver isn't the character from the comics either, but Laurel was clearly designed to be a TV version of Katie Holmes' Rachel Dawes from BATMAN BEGINS; the lawyer who doesn't realize her playboy childhood friend is the hero of the series.

I couldn't what this Laurel Lance character, this reserved, thoughtful legislator with addiction issues, had to do with the peppy, vivacious, hyperactive Dinah Lance of the comics. In the comics themselves, Black Canary was originally Dinah Drake, but due to the passage of time and DC's desire to keep Black Canary's World War II history intact, they decided to say that the Golden Age Black Canary was Dinah Drake and the current Black Canary was her daughter, Dinah Laurel Lance. The Sara Lance character was close to Dinah from the comics, but even when Laurel became the Black Canary, she was still Rachel Dawes from the Nolan BATMAN movies.

So, I have no issue with Dinah Drake becoming the Black Canary. That was never Laurel's role; even when she put on the costume, it was more about Sara's legacy than Laurel. It's fine. Still wish they hadn't done the fakeout, though.

Maybe they realized how much this was going to piss people off, so they spoiled it in the hopes of letting people get over it before the episode aired.

I said the same thing. The gorilla story seems big enough for a crossover and would be a natural fit.

Maybe they needed Cisco to open the breach because they also needed to travel to Canafrica (y'know... Africa, but filmed in Canada)? Given how small Kara's breach opening device was, I don't even get why Jessie and Wally can't hop between worlds to date. It is a faster trip than driving across town. But my guess is that Wally will end up on Earth 2. We probably don't need even more regular speedsters on the show (though I prefer Jessie to Wally)

My question is, why not send Iris to Earth 2 for a while? Speedsters can't travel between worlds, right? So Savitar probably couldn't get to her.

Is there some weird scheduling issue with some of these shows?  Supergirl's Valentine's Day episode aired a week after Valentine's Day (instead of the day before) and a Legends of Tomorrow Christmas episode aired in February.

I've also noticed that there's been a lot less intra-show referencing and any reference to what's happening on the other shows so we know what the timeline is.  And very little of main characters crossing over (Felicity on Flash, Sara on Arrow, etc).  I thought there'd be more of that considering the contracts they were signing.  I wonder if that's all in reaction to what happened with the Arrow flash forward / Zoom / Barry's powers mess.

I don't know, but it sorta sucks.  I was hoping this was going to start a new trend.  I think Cisco and Felicity should be on similar contracts, able to flow in and out of any show that requires them.  Same with Winn if they ever get on the same Earth.  Cisco plays with anyone, and I think Winn could be the same way.  And Felicity works so well with Barry that she should be on there as much as she can.  I also think the Legends could work well flowing in and out of shows, and if the team was more fluid, they wouldn't have to constantly leave people on the ship for no reason.

And I still maintain that if they wanted to go James as Guardian on Supergirl, they should've sent him to train with Oliver's team.  He's even more useless on Supergirl in Season 2 than he was in Season 1.

I don't think speedsters and the Legends metas should be showing up on Arrow because that show needs to be as grounded as it can be, but outside of that, they should be having more fun with their roster.  Instead, they seem to be moving away from that.

They all sorta have their roles.  Felicity is sorta the internet/hacking person.  Cisco is the tech guy.  Caitlin *should* be the doctor (but you're right, no one is using her that way, not even Arrow, really).  Stein should be the physicist.   

Cisco should primarily be on Flash, but he's a fun character and has made a ton of tech for Team Arrow.  Caitlin has never really had much to do so her floating around being the medic when things go bad wouldn't be the worst idea.  Diggle should also stay on Arrow most of the time, but he could've been really valuable on Flash when there weren't a half-dozen speedsters he could've left in charge of defending Central City.

Heck, Wally could be a guy who could come in and save the day when Oliver or the Legends get in over their heads.  He gives the four shows a speedster who could be on loan to save the day in a pinch so that they don't have to always use Barry (Wally could've been the one to cameo on Arrow a couple weeks ago).

But it's not just appearances that are down....even casual mentions seem to be down this year, outside of a handful of fun stuff that I've already mentioned (the Cisco/Gypsy fight and the aforementioned Arrow/Central City stuff).  Those don't require special contracts, but they still seem to be happening less.  I wonder if they were told to focus on their own shows and worry less about fun "ARROWVERSE" moments.

Two Arrow/Oliver references and one ARGUS/Lyla reference in this week's Flash.

I guess we can be happy.

I assume that Gypsy was just speaking their language.

One of the problems that I had with Supergirl before I gave it up was the alien situation. The idea of Supergirl was that she was an alien and had these great abilities, and it was her duty to do something with them. She and Superman were unique. So, okay, Martian Manhunter exists, but he too is using his powers to help people. Then Mon-El shows up and he's just slacking around, and Supergirl gives him crap about not using his abilities to help people.

This is fine, assuming that these are all of the alien in town. The crashed prison is another story, since those are bad guys. But then we see this alien bar, and it becomes clear that Earth has hundreds or thousands (millions?) or aliens living on it. Many of them have abilities. Most of them are doing nothing to help people, yet Kara doesn't give them crap about it as they're serving her cocktails at the bar.

Just like when Angel introduced a demon bar an had green, horned demons singing karaoke in a crowded room, with absolutely no human being shocked or put off by this, the reality of that world destabilized. Why was Kara such a big deal growing up? Why did she have to hide her identity? What makes her special? (actually, nothing, since she was just copied and pasted from a Clark Kent script). They were trying to play both sides, having Mon-El locked up and everyone wondering what this strange alien was all about, while having thousands of alien roaming around that nobody cared about.

They should have limited the number of aliens on the show. And they really shouldn't use aliens on Arrow, The Flash, LoT or Black Lightning.

A similar problem is with superheroes on Earth One. Legends of Tomorrow presents a story where superheroes have been around decades, but that doesn't really seem to fit the narrative of Arrow and The Flash.

Was it just me, or did the CGI on Legends of Tomorrow (primarily Jax/Firestorm) look really...really bad this week?

What's funny is that I thought they were being sorta creative with their use of CGI towards the beginning of the episode (just using sounds to reference a T-Rex but then not showing it).  But the whole Firestorm thing looked really low quality - even his flying looked really bizarre.  And then they ended up showing the T-Rex anyway (which looked fine, I guess).

And I'm sure you noticed, once again, that Sara just can't control herself around any attractive female.  She's not just gone from bisexual to lesbian, but she's gone from bisexual to lesbian to lesbian fratguy.

Well, that's the thing with Firestorm.  He's typically too powerful for any single mission, so the writers (and by extension, the crew) are always separating Stein from Jax.  It makes sense sometimes (because Stein is the oldest and worst in combat), but Stein should at least be nearby.  Firestorm could've easily flown out to get the part, and Ray could've accompanied him.  Then they could've sent Sara and Nate into Rip's mind.

There's such little thought put into each plan, though.

And in that same vein, I don't know if I would've felt it if TF hadn't brought it up but something is off about HR.  He's always pushing people in certain directions....it comes off as just being a good mentor, but it's calculated.  And a lot of time, it puts people in direct danger.  HR training Wally led directly to Savitar getting out.  At the same time, HR possibly manipulated Jesse into fighting Savitar and led to discovering that he can be hurt.

There's something there, and he's obviously not as dumb as he wants people to think.  He is still Harrison Wells, after all.

Well, I don't think we knew enough about Earth One Wells to judge him at all.  Based on HR and Harry, he was probably still a smug a-hole

As far as Eobard goes, I still don't really get it.  If Eobard never existed, then Earth One Wells should still be alive.  No one was there to manipulate Barry into being the Flash early.  Basically nothing from season one should've happened.  But they all did.  Y'all have tried to explain it, but I still don't get it.

Helmets....they're a problem.  It's why Spider-Man is always taking off his mask.  It's why the Power Rangers movie seems to be full of shots of the Rangers with the face-part of their masks removed.  People think that if we can't see the actor's faces, we won't understand what emotions they're showing.

I'm just accepting that Reverse Flash exists in a form exactly where he was at the end of the season one finale.  Nothing we saw was ever erased.  And just moving on

It's all set-up for DC's greatest idea.

Well as far as the Legends goes, I'm guessing Rory's always had a statue in DC.  So in Arrow/Flash, we're seeing the "Final version" of whatever the Legends end up doing?

I don't know.  I still think Legends should've been a one-season show, and it should've moved to an anthology series after that (TF's idea, I believe).  That would've been better.

And I'm surprised TF hasn't patted himself on the back for his Abra Kadabra prediction yet

According to Matt Letscher on Twitter, the Thawne on LEGENDS OF TOMORROW is from just after the Season 1 finale of THE FLASH. He's a a time remnant. I think that makes sense -- but some of the dialogue in "Legion of Doom" is oddly sequenced.

The sequence of events, according to Letscher, is this: Eobard travels back in time to kill Nora Allen. Barry prevents this, but after imprisoning Thawne for months, Barry releases him to let him murder Nora after all. Then, this Thawne resumes the Season 1 course of events: after killing Nora and speeding off, he discovers that he has lost his connection to the Speed Force and everything unfolds as we saw in Season 1, but with the addition that after Eddie shoots himself, Eobard attempted to escape his erasure by hiding in the Speed Force.

The problem with this is that in "Legion of Doom," Eobard's dialogue is specifically: "My ancestor killed himself in an effort to erase my very existence. The Flash pulled me from the timeline. He held me captive for months and when I finally got loose, I found myself pursued by something."

This dialogue seems to suggest that the time wraiths started coming after Thawne immediately after "Flashpoint" in 2000 as opposed to coming after him in 15 years later after Eddie commited suicide -- but given that Thawne refers to both "Flashpoint" and "Fast Enough," we have to take that to mean that after "Flashpoint," he resumed his Season 1 role.

However, it would all make a lot more sense if Eobard's dialogue in "Legion of Doom" hadn't referred to "Flashpoint" at all and simply said, "My ancestor killed himself in an effort to erase my very existence. I tried to escape into the Speed Force, but I found myself pursued by something."

I think the writers wanted to find some way to refer to connect this Thawne to when we'd last seen him in "Flashpoint," hence the awkward reference, but this Thawne is clearly meant to be the post-2015 Thawne of "Fast Enough," not the 2000 Thawne of "Flashpoint." Maybe the dialogue is strange because as a time traveller, Thawne has a weird sense of cause and effect?

Don't worry, Barry will go back in time and undo it (and everything else) at the end of the season.  As he is prone to doing...

Eh, it was dumb, but I thought they did it in an interesting way.  I enjoyed the "Amazo-ness" of Music Meister's "plan" (the fact that I have to put quotation marks around two words probably isn't great, but you know what I mean), and I thought both shows meshed really well together.  I wish they'd have Winn meet Cisco (he did reference that they'd be best friends), but Cisco was definitely more Vibe than tech guy this episode.

I thought the actors playing Winn and Cisco actually performed way better than I thought they would, and I'm also glad they brought back Stein and Merlyn since their actors have musical backgrounds.

The music was meh.  I'm not huge on musicals, and it's weird that Kara and Barry are both apparently huge on musicals since neither has mentioned it before this week as far as I can tell.  And while I think Kara and Barry have great chemistry together, it's also a bit weird that they're always talking about how great friends they are when they've spent about a day and a half together?

It's also a bit weird that Supergirl had a huge moment with Mon-El on the Flash.  The crossovers are fun, but having key information about one character on another show is just weird to me.  I'm sure they'll include it in the "previously on..." in next week's Supergirl, but it's still odd.

Apparently Rachel Bloom wrote the SuperFriends song.  So take with that what you will.

Temporal Flux said awhile back and well before this week's LEGENDS:

Temporal Flux proves to be mostly right! I love Temporal Flux. :-)

Y'all are holding the Flash to a strong sense of continuity when it comes to a fantasy inside of a CW show

I think this episode should've been non-canonical.  I think it'd have been better if they just said "hey, we have a lot of musically-talented people, and let's have some fun."  I'd have preferred they did it on Legends of Tomorrow so they could waste one of their episodes, but it made the most sense on Flash.  If it was non-canonical, there'd be no reason to judge it.

But since it is canon and is supposed to exist inside the story, let me do my best.  Most of it can be explained away with "it's a fantasy."  Kara is a human in the fantasy, and Mon-El is a human in the fantasy.  So why are Joe and Stein together when they're both heterosexual in real life?  Because the "musical" wanted two talented singers in the same scene.

Why is Merlyn there?  I think the better question is why Mon-El is Merlyn's son, when Iris is also Joe's daughter.  Everyone seems to have the same familial connections except for that one.  But the answer is that John Barrowman can sing and Kevin Sorbo can't.

Has Merlyn met Barry?  I can't think of a specific scene that they've had together, but Merlyn was basically the arch-nemesis of Team Arrow for years.  Oliver never met Zoom, but he still mentioned him at Laurel's grave.  And even if Barry didn't know Merlyn personally, he'd still be aware of him.  He was still a prominent figure in Starling City and a known Criminal.  And since he's playing a gangster, him showing up in Barry's fantasy would've made as much sense as anyone else.  Barry doesn't run into a lot of gangsters

I think I know what you're referring to. We'll see how that goes. ☺

It would be cool to have a crossover with bad versions of people up against their good counterparts. I think that Harry Wells could have a double on Kara's Earth, so that would be an easy crossover. And Kara could exist on Earth 1 or Earth 2. It would be fun to play with alternate versions of these characters.

Arrow was interesting this week. His "secret" was predictable, but it adds a weird, disturbing wrinkle to the character. I still don't think they really thought through Evelyn's arc, because her character makes zero sense. You could say the same about Adrian, but we can chalk that up to "crazy".
Is Felicity's hacker group providing Adrian with information? He seems to know things that no amount of research could tell him, and Felicity may have given them a backdoor into her system without realizing it. Her pain/anger could have resulted in a major slip on her part.

Overall, season 3 is turning out okay. I think that Curtis is still struggling to find his place as a character. He may be more useful on Legends or the new Black Lightning show (not because he is black!).

Talia should have her ass kicked by Nyssa.

Exactly, but I might take it a step further and do something like Enterprise's "In a Mirror, Darkly" episodes.  In LoT, the Legion gets the spear, and they change reality to their desires.

Then, the next week of shows takes place entirely in the "Doomworld" where each hero is essentially muscle for one of the Legion.  Barry works for Thawne as a thug/errand boy, whatever.  And either Team Flash is entirely evil, or Barry is tracking down "hero" versions of Caitlin / Cisco / Firestorm etc.  Oliver is working for Darhk or Merlyn (either of them as Ra's).

And instead of having to fight "our" versions of the characters, we just see an adventure from these dark versions of the characters we know. 

They could either do this with crossovers (where Barry and Oliver have to team up to take down the remaining heroes), or it could be done entirely separately.  The finale would be on Legends, where the team shows up to fix things (they were in the Vanishing Point so they were protected), and they have to fight the Legion (and dark versions of Barry/Oliver) to get the spear back.

I think it'd be more fun than fighting a bunch of random gray aliens

(Supergirl could appear to either show that her universe is also affected - so an episode her her basically running National City as a goddess - or not be included)

It'd be fun to re-write the opening bits of each show.

My name is Oliver Queen.  After five years in Hell, I returned home with one goal: Revenge.  By day, I am CEO of Queen Weapons Technologies, but at night, I am someone else.  I am something else.