DC Superheroes on TV & Streaming (1966 - 2024) (Page 12 of 28)

After the showstopper of Savitar's reveal, this light diversion felt oddly misplaced with Savitar dumping some exposition before disappearing for an episode. The explanation for Savitar is... adequate? But it's a shame he's not a time remnant previously created on the show or a result of Flashpoint or in any way tied to the present Barry and Barry's character.

It would have worked better if this remnant had been the one who seemingly sacrificed himself to stop Zoom, alive but scarred, insane and furious at Barry having abandoned him and not even considering him real.

As for this episode -- it's an episode of THE FLASH in which Barry isn't the Flash, and I wish they would not make such episodes.

Can't really quibble with SQ21 noting all the problems in the time travel logic.

Never has TF felt more on point to say there are too many shows and too few showrunners.

I was obviously distracted during this week's Flash... Did they say that the time remnants are exact copies, or would he have become a sort of mirror image?

Yeah, I think it would have had more weight to it if this were the consequence of something that our Barry did, but they might have wanted to keep him from having that guilt. The thing is, if they kill Savitar, or stop him in some other way, does their whole world change? If they stop Savitar, does Wally stop being Kid Flash? Does Julian go back to not working with Team Flash?

SPOILERS / FINALE SPECULATION ON THE FLASH

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So I think we can agree that HR is the one that died to prove that he had a purpose?  Could that possibly mean that Tom Cavanaugh is not coming back next year?  His "scientist" role replaced with Tracy?  Or would we get a 4th (5th?) Wells?

Re: Arrow (with some Flash and Supergirl spoilers too)

In "how these people could be smarter by understanding that they live in a shared universe" part 271, Flash hid Iris in Earth 2 when he realized she was in danger.  Shouldn't that have been the first place that Oliver (or anyone on Team Arrow) thought to hide?  Especially since Savitar could easily go to Earth 2, and as far as we know, Chase has zero ability to get them there.

One thing, though.  In all three shows, I was impressed by the deep rosters they were able to work with.  Supergirl brought back Cat Grant and Superman, while also having the Luthors working with the full DEO team.  Team Flash was at about 100% to deal with Savitar, adding Harry and Tracy.  And now Oliver is fighting a team of villains and former heroes against a team full of heroes and former villains.  These shows might not be the strongest, but they've built up a pretty cool history that they can work with.

The switch would've happened on-site.  Savitar is holding (the real) Iris in the middle of that square.  Flash gets the cannon and shoots it at him, and Savitar leaves Iris where she was and runs around before Flash finally hits him with it.  It's not a ton of time, but it'd be enough time on this show.  Maybe HR took some of the Velocity drug that Jay created, or maybe they were able to heal Wally enough to swap them out.  Or maybe that's where Jessie or Julian was...helping HR sacrifice himself.

It'd be a bit of a stretch, but that's my guess.  There was too much setup for an HR sacrifice, IMO.

Someone should've told the CW about how hard Bennett was trying to cover up the idea of him not returning because his return was in the sizzle reel released a few weeks ago.

Tom Cavanagh will probably be with the show forever, but any number of his characters could still die. HR could die and be replaced next year, in keeping with the pattern. Harry could come back more regularly. It's a weird situation, because we always know the behind the scenes reasons for why characters aren't really in any danger, so we never really feel that tension when watching a show. But with the Wells characters, we really don't know!

I think the writers have shown impressive restraint with the Harry character. We know that Tom is a regular on the show, so Harry could be in every episode, if they waned. However, keeping him away and only using him a few times this season has made him feel like a legitimate guest star. When he shows up, you feel like you are seeing an actor return to the show.

The same thing happened with Sara in season 2. I'd go weeks, wondering when she would reappear... then I'd realize that she was still in the flashbacks, so Caity Lotz hadn't actually gone anywhere.

I agree.  I think these writers are better at story, and I think they have a decent understanding on who Oliver is and what makes him tick.  I think they have a respect for the material, and I think tying it all back to the island (where the flashbacks and the main story can finally converge) is pretty cool.

But, yeah, they make some bizarre decisions regarding character motivation.  Oliver's kill/no-kill policy has always been all over the place, and drudging that moral quandry up doesn't work for me.  Evelyn's whole thing doesn't make much sense.   I don't think Chase's motivations are all that logical.  Wild Dog's whole past is bizarre.

They've shown me enough to trust them to work with season 6.

Well, The Flash finale has aired...

You called it with HR dying, which is sad.

I am outraged that they got rid of Barry! This was obviously done because the studio didn't want two Barry Allen's at one time, so they got rid of him, just like Amanda Waller. We should start a petition! Wally is a bland character who can't carry the show!

I'm kidding, of course. We all know that Barry will be back... Right? The real question is, how does Wally have powers? If Savitar is wiped from the timeline, shouldn't his deeds be undone?

How do we think Barry will return? And do you think they will move on from Star Labs, or just fix it up? Will Caitlin ever come back to the group? With she take the cure and get her hair back to normal?

The past year has been pretty bad for me, and I've missed practically all of the 2016/2017 tv season.   I did the best with Flash, but still missed a good half dozen of those too.

I've only really watched two episodes of Supergirl this year - the premiere and the finale.  In the premiere I saw the potential; and in the finale they delivered. Very well done.   I'm most interested in where they left Mon-el.

Similar to the comics, Mon-el will die of lead poisoning on earth but ends up in the Phantom Zone. In the comics, this was done because the Zone essentially kept a person in stasis - Mon-el's condition would not get worse while they worked on a cure, but it also had the effect of freezing his aging process.  Mon-el spent 1000 years in there until the Legion of Super-heroes stumbled across him, and Brainiac 5 whipped up a cure for the poison.

What I see being set up in the tv series is a potential love triangle situation.  If Supergirl meets up with the Legion next season, then she may follow the comics and get into a relationship with Brainiac 5.  After they've been together awhile, he stumbles on Mon-el in the Phantom Zone.  He can save Mon-el; but what will that mean for his relationship with Supergirl?  Is Brainiac 5 the hero or will he be the villain everyone mistakes him for?

But with the "cliffhanger" tag on the end of the episode, I'm not sure that's in their immediate plans.  That entire sequence screamed Doomsday to me (the skull in the shield?  really?); and I'm excited to think they may actually do something I suggested before season two ever aired.  Could next season tell the comics version of The Death of Superman?

Supergirl would be a great way to explore that story as she becomes the vehicle for taking us to all of these things that are happening.  Supergirl initially finds Doomsday, and he swats her like a fly.  Doomsday marches on until Superman sacrifices himself to stop Doomsday.  Kara feels guilty, and takes Clark's place in Metro; but not for long after a news report hits that a teenage kid has shown up in National City claiming he's Superman.  She goes to check out this Superboy in her city; but while there the Eradicator posing as a Superman shows up because that's where his scans showed the Krptonians on the planet at that time.  Jeremiah Danvers reappears now with more obvious cybernetic enhancements as Cadmus rolls him out as the new Superman (giving us our Dean Cain return in a Superman suit).  While all of this is going on, John Henry Irons is setting himself up as Metropolis's new protector since no one else is there to do it.

It has great, great potential.  I could see it being epic.  But in most cases, I'm usually disappointed by what these production teams end up giving us; so my hopes are not up.

With the Flash finale - we'll, we could have had a lot more fun if HR was Abra Kadabra.    Again, kind of a let down in some ways, but it ultimately was an entertaining episode.  With the ending, I'm just not sure what they're going for.  I guess they're treating this like Barry's death in Crisis where Wally takes over in the red suit?  Then we'll have Barry return after Wally has established himself as the one and only Flash.  If that's their plan, it just seems like an anti-climatic way to set up that story.  Oh well; we'll see.

I know that Julian was there, because Barry shook his hand. I think Tracy might have been, but I can't really remember.

The thing to remember is the newspaper. The headline still mentions the Flash disappearing after a crisis, and it's clearly a picture of Barry. So, I don't think that this is that. Unless Barry goes into the future for this crisis, and his "disappearing" is just him going back home to the present. Still, it would mean that his going into the speed force wasn't a take on the comic book storyline where Wally becomes the Flash.

I have not been following Supergirl. Since there are so few other shows to watch, I was considering trying to catch up when it hits Netflix next week, but everything I read about it sounds so bad. I just don't think that I can. I might try to force my way through Agents of SHIELD, but we'll see how that goes.

Did they explain why they wouldn't just send Mon-El to one of the other Earths that Kara is now familiar with? It seems more logical than him flying away in a space ship, if they ever want to see each other.

Well, that was a heck of a cliffhanger on Arrow.

It was also quite the spectacle.  A ton of characters returning, one big death (off screen but confirmed by the actor), potentially a ton of big deaths (but certainly not), some pretty good action, and the culmination of five years of storytelling.

But I left it sorta "meh" for whatever reason.  I thought it was well acted and well executed, but something about it felt really off to me.  What could've felt like a triumph of Arrow just sorta happened.  I don't know what it really was about it that didn't work for me...was it like that for anyone else?

Don't get me started on the lack of communication between Team Flash and Team Arrow.  Couldn't Barry have fixed 99% of the problems this season?  Barry could've found William before Chase even knew what was happening without putting anyone in danger.

What's funny is that a couple lines of dialogue would fix stuff like this.  "Can't we just get Barry to super-canvass the island?"  "He's not picking up.  Not even Cisco.  Must be something with Savitar."  They do little things like that at times (when it was mentioned that Felicity was looking for something to power the cannon on Flash), but there's not enough of it to avoid question marks.  I know that there needs to be some separation (otherwise Oliver has no reason to do anything but investigate and point Barry in a direction), but for big events like this, they need to acknowledge that they're on their own.

Black Siren has a really bizarre sense of loyalty.  Evelyn was just evil for no reason.  I got nothing on either of their random decisions to be evil.  I also thought Boomerang immediately switching teams was strange.

I actually didn't like Chase as a villain.  I don't know why....it never worked for me.

I might've missed the dialogue, but did he do it because Chase was evil and he's evil?  Was Chase paying him?  I figure he's more of a soldier for hire...working with whoever is going to pay him.

It's also why I didn't understand why Black Siren was helping Chase.  She didn't have anything to gain by helping him....she was already free.

I thought ARROW's Season 5 finale was a good ending to a good season.

**

THE FLASH has been really off this season and there was the overwhelming sense that each individual episode was written without a clear plan for the entire season as a whole. FLASHPOINT made no sense in why Barry's mother being alive meant he never knew Iris or why Joe was a drunk; Barry undid Flashpoint for no particular reason and this led to other irrational changes (Cisco losing his brother, Caitlin having the metahuman gene).

Then there's Caitlin developing a split personality, again, for no reason. There's Savitar seeming to have read a few pages ahead in each script, but at no point was there any real sense that Savitar actually knew the Flash and his friends, so the reveal that Savitar is a future version of Barry didn't really hold any weight, and any impact was diluted by Savitar having nothing to do with Barry's actions, nothing to do with Flashpoint and being the result of something the Flash would do in some future situation we never saw.

We have a series finale where Barry reaches out to Savitar as a friend and the plotline is abruptly dropped for no reason. And then the ending of Season 3 -- for no reason, the Speed Force is suddenly threatening our world and Barry's sacrifice is needed. There was no build to this development, it isn't the result of Barry's actions. There were a lot of strong episodes in Season 3, but, like SUPERNATURAL, nothing cohered at the endpoint.

There were all these great ideas, but the finesse and care and detail was not sustained sufficiently over numerous episodes to make them work over the course of a year and to bring them to a climax at the end.

I get the sense that showrunners Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg are just really divided across too many shows. ARROW has Marc Guggenheim and Wendy Mericle as the lead producers and their focus on ARROW really helped this year. SUPERGIRL has always had Ali Adler.

LEGENDS and FLASH seem to have received less attention and effort this year with Berlanti working on ARROW and LEGENDS and SUPERGIRL and BLACK LIGHTNING and RIVERDALE and at this rate, Berlanti will be responsible for 95 per cent of all network TV by 2022 and all of it will be crashingly average at best.

Well, they need to address where Clark is on Earth-1.  They've made implications that Superman exists in the universe (the biggest example is Rip Hunter's comment about "Men of Steel" in the Legends pilot).  So where is he?  Is he younger than everyone so he hasn't shown up?  Did his pod get knocked off course?  Or is he doing some sort of Red-Blue Blur thing in Metropolis and trying to stay off the radar.

But that's a pretty cool way to bring Kara in.

Ha, yeah.  Both also used "nevertheless, she persisted."

I want to take a moment to grieve for Informant whose genetic inability to have fun has clearly taken a clear turn for the worse to the point where standard superhero speeches about standing up to tyranny and intimidation have become an obnoxious gauntlet of irritation.

It must be tough for him to get through the day believing that anyone who writes words rejecting "alternative facts" and urging "resistance" must be ignorant and stupid as opposed to having a different point of view. Let us all take a few minutes of silence to reflect upon Informant's torment.

http://www.superherohype.com/news/39837 … he-thinker

What do we think?

That is weird. That is so, so weird. How do you replace someone who played such a huge role on the show in the first season, with such a distracting replacement, when you don't even need to bring the character back in the first place? Both Kara's mother and her evil twin are dead.

I like Erica. I've been watching her on Saving Hope, so she's still been on my TV. I just think that this is yet another in a long line of poor decisions made by the producers of this show.

The problem that I'm having with this news is that the audience today is a lot more advanced than they were 40 years ago. On the one hand, this means that people will generally understand that these are TV shows and they'll roll with some punches (Superman appearing on TV and in films, played by two different actors, in stories that are completely unrelated to each other). On the other hand, it means that you really can't pull off a recasting without it being a brutal and jarring transition.

Casting Erica Durance on Supergirl at all is a nice way to show respect to what came before, but it will also have people thinking about Smallville and her Lois Lane nonstop. It would be hard for her to disappear into any role on that show, but it could probably happen over time. In theory. Personally, I think she's still a little too close to the Superman world right now, but that's just me.

Now, using Erica Durance for such a major recast is like a four car pileup of distractions that can't possibly help sell the story. It's like the producers created a diagram of just how rough they could make the transition for this character, and made sure to hit each point.

The thing is, they don't need Alura or Astra. I know that it was probably their ideal situation, but it couldn't work out, and no matter what they were planning, they could have gone another way. Focus on Kara's father this year. Or bring in Lara instead of Astra. Or have Clark convey the story. Or... whatever. This isn't a train that had already left the station and couldn't be rerouted. It was a train that they knew was heading for incomplete tracks, but they decided to go with it anyway. And this is a symptom of a much larger problem with the series, which is why I can't watch it anymore. They don't care about building a world or telling a story. They're not taking any of it seriously. They're delivering some half-assed garbage week after week, which has more in common with a bad Saturday morning superhero series from the late 80's than it does with a primetime superhero series today.

They have access to great, iconic characters that most writers would kill to work with, and they don't even give a damn. It's irritating.

But I'm already done with the show. There's an alternate version in my head, which I hear is going to cross over with The Flash for a musical. It's going to be epic... but still in my head.

As much as I hate the writing on the show, part of me would love to see Erica's Lois Lane sparring with Calista Flockhart's Cat Grant.

Semi-related note:

Remember how I mentioned that I was playing around with a Supergirl pilot script because there were times when I was sitting around and I was bored? It started on my phone, but moved to my computer as I was working on other stuff. I dropped it for a while, because I had other life stuff going on, but I picked it back up within the past week or two because I had some free time.

My little dinky pilot project that was just for fun is now at 86 pages (and counting). I think I've taken this too far.

Don't know how many episodes they've got planned for Legends season three, but a regular season order could see Professor Stein absent from the last half:

http://deadline.com/2017/09/bernadette- … 202162008/

I guess they could potentially get around it by having Firestorm stuck in hero mode and Garber phoning in voice overs.

Legends usually does less than a full order, but they could also have someone "kidnap" Stein and force Jackson to be a "hero without his powers" for an extended period.

Or, like they did with Robbie Amell, they could simply transfer the other half of Firestorm to a new character and kill Stein off.

Well, that's just great. We've lost our Professor Arturo, our Dr. Wells, our Temporal Flux. We've lost Dad.

... good thing LEGENDS is a very silly ensemble show that doesn't really depend on dramatics to be entertaining?

**

One thing that made no sense to me in THE FLASH's third season -- why in God's name did they replace Harry with the fairly useless HR? I understand that there was no narrative reason to justify Harry staying on Earth 1, but it would have been better to shift Tom Cavanagh over to LEGENDS or ARROW for a season rather than keep him on THE FLASH but give him no meaningful role to play.

Recently, I was listening to Tom Cavanagh's podcast, MIKE AND TOM EAT SNACKS -- and Tom's podcast persona, his real life personality -- it's basically the HR character: a ridiculously gregarious exaggerator of absurd passion for the most mundane and minute elements of life (in the podcast, it's junk food) to the point of spending 30 - 40 minutes discussing a single potato chip product in needless detail and applying human characteristics to a snack.

So, I guess Season 3 was the show letting Tom Cavanagh play himself for a year.

I'm not sure what to do with Legends, with or without Stein. Somehow, they've manged to take several solid characters from the different shows, and completely destroy them on this mess of a series. Sara is no longer Sara. Firestorm has zero cool factor anymore. I can see why Victor Garbor would want out.

I hope that they don't kill him. They set up an out for him, and they should take it. I still think it was a mistake to kill off Ronnie so soon. It'd be nice if Stein could appear on The Flash from time to time. I'm not sure there is a point in trying to figure out what they will do about Jax. He is barely used as Firestorm anyway.

Legends should be such a fun comic book show. Instead, it's like a production that a fourth grader would put on in their basement.

On the topic of HR, I kinda liked him. I like that he got to be a different kind of smart, and one that Harrison couldn't relate to at all. I thought it was interesting, because TV shows usually make their "smart" characters smart in every way. If they're good hackers, that means that they're good at building gadgets, etc. It makes no sense. It's nice to see a different type of use for a brain that is still naturally brilliant.

I agree with Slider_Quinn21 that "The Flash Reborn" (hmm) didn't make much sense, but it was effective as a means of stepping away from some of Season 3's excesses (hmm). I didn't feel Caitlin was well-served by Season 3 which gave her an evil alternate personality for no real reason and this episode has made it a more interesting conflict while restoring Caitlin to our helpful, lively scientist. It was also a relief to see Barry more lighthearted after his angsty misery of Season 3 that seemed better suited to Oliver Queen than Barry Allen. It was a fun episode.

**

LEGENDS was also a lot of fun for me. On one level, I think it's strange to criticize LEGENDS time travel adventures with the view that you're bored with time travel. On another, it's fair to note that LEGENDS has an extremely repetitive formula for time travel: they enter an unfamiliar time period, get attacked by the locals and so it goes. The character arcs have been extremely shallow and when characters actually change, it's abrupt and jarring. Rip Hunter went from respecting the Legends to dismissing them between the Season 2 finale and the Season 3 premiere, for example.

I don't expect a lot from LEGENDS. It's a dumping ground for characters from ARROW and FLASH who have nowhere else to go; it's much more humour oriented. Sara working at Bed, Bath and Beyond was hilarious; Ray being a glorified intern because Felicity destroyed PalmerTech was very funny. It's a low bar. I really enjoy the running joke of Sara's absurd sex life.

I wasn't a huge fan of where we left off with Caitlin this week. Last year was about the struggle between these two extreme versions of her. Normal Caitlin is so buttoned up and good, and Killer Frost is everything opposite of that. So when we left her in the finale and she seemed to be finding a way to bring those two extremes into one balanced person, I was pretty intrigued. Good Caitlin, but with an edge and probably with her powers. Seeing how she was dressed, I thought that this is what we were getting.

But now if looks like we are back to where we were last season, with the two halves competing. Why repeat that?

As for Legends... Yeah, you can't think about it too much. Ray should still be super rich and able to do whatever he wants. Sara should have probably just gone back to Team Arrow. Maybe this season could have been about Ray keeping the team together as an international super spy company, with Rip coming in and out of the picture to recruit them as needed.