DC Superheroes on TV & Streaming (1966 - 2024) (Page 21 of 28)

My question would be: if only beneficiaries of J'onn's telepathy remember the other timeline -- then why didn't everyone remember Kate having rescued Beth-2 from the car? Why weren't the DEO staff happily familiar with all the Brainiac 5s as having always been part of the team with some recollection of them having time travelled in?

But then again, I do note that everyone remembers Lex Luthor having been a paragon of virtue except for the ones whose memories J'onn restored.

I like TF's theory of a memory virus (but don't we always like TF's theories?). However, a few years ago, there was an episode of DOCTOR WHO where the Doctor shrieks at a woman to stop sitting on a galaxy destroying weapons cube as it's a galaxy destroying weapons cube and not a chair. The woman replies, "Why can't it be both?"

And fewer years ago, there was an episode where the Doctor's companion, Clara, asks him to take her to see Robin Hood. The Doctor says that Robin Hood is a historical fiction, not a historical figure, but he transports the TARDIS to an approximate year and location but tells her she'll be disappointed. They step out to find Robin Hood in Lincoln green emerging from Sherwood Forest. At the end of the episode, Robin asks the Doctor if it's true that in the future, history will remember Robin as a legend instead of a real person. The Doctor confirms this and says he's still suspicious; Robin Hood is a fictional character. Robin smiles and tells the Doctor, "I'm as real as you are."

Memory virus. Altered timeline. Unaltered timeline with doubles. Why be picky? Let's say it's all of the above.

Hmm. Now I'm uncertain -- because SUPERGIRL's history was definitely altered. The fourth season with Lex Luthor fomenting anti-alien aggression and being exposed and killed now never happened; the post-CRISIS episodes make it clear that as far as the populace is concerned, Lex has always been heroic and on the side of aliens as the head of a benign DEO which employs Supergirl. So I guess that's a point in favour of ARROW's continuity having been altered so that Tommy, Moira, Quentin and Emiko never died.

**

Probably going off topic -- back in 1993, Spider-Man's best friend, Harry Osborn, went insane, became the Green Goblin, tried to kill Peter Parker, had a change of heart, overdosed on the Goblin serum and died in front of Peter (but apologized for his actions and reaffirmed their friendship). However, Peter's next encounter with Harry's legacy was when a post-death plan of Harry's activated where he tricked Peter into thinking Richard and Mary Parker, his parents, had faked their deaths and returned now to be with their son. The parents turned out to be robots programmed by Harry and a pre-recorded video had an insane Harry crowing, "Gotcha," triggering a mental breakdown in Peter that lasted years.

In 2008, Harry Osborn is shown alive and well, saying he's been absent in Europe detoxing from a drug addiction. Harry and Peter have resumed their friendship between issues. A short story in the SPIDER-MAN FAMILY anthology, however, shows Peter finding Harry on his doorstep, alive and well and claiming to have no memory of their last meeting, that his father spirited him away to detox and he is now sober but confused and in need of his friend. Peter slams the door in Harry's face, haunted by the memory of Harry in the Goblin mask sneering, "Gotcha," but Harry persists in reaching out to Peter and Peter realizes he doesn't see the Green Goblin in Harry any more, only his friend.

**

The creator-owned ASTRO CITY by Kurt Busiek has a one-issue story where a man is haunted by dreams of a woman he is hopelessly in love with but never met in real life. A ghostly figure visits the man and explains to him that in one of those reality warping crossover CRISIS situations, his wife was erased from existence. The ghost offers to remove the memories, but the man chooses to retain them and find peace in knowing that he was loved.

**

An issue of HULK by Peter David has the Howling Commandos informed that Nick Fury has died. After a stunned silence, they respond with laughter, joking that everyone at the table has been reported dead at one point or another only to turn up alive and they imagine Nick will be back within the customary six to 18 months (and he was).

**

One of my favourite Marvel characters, Echo (a deaf woman who dated Matt Murdock and is a ninja warrior), was killed off in the 2011 MOON KNIGHT series. Echo reappears in the 2016 DAREDEVIL ANNUAL #1 (v4), running into Daredevil who didn't seem surprised that she was alive. It gave me the impression that they'd met earlier after her resurrection -- or that people come back to life so often in a superhero universe that Daredevil just shrugged it off -- or that the writer had forgotten that Echo had died five years ago.

Oh and I also noticed post-Crisis, both Legends and Flash have fancy new intro sequences.  I don't love either of them, but I did notice them.

Mick (and his high school girlfriend) both died and both were indeed resurrected when history was altered. I am absolutely sure about this, as certain as I was that ARROW's continuity remains intact and all the resurrected characters are in fact doubles from alternate timelines where they survived their Earth Prime deaths. (Which is to say I'm a bit unsteady on it).

I like the title sequences a lot for FLASH and LEGENDS, but I also don't feel they really matter -- they have no bearing on the story, really. I'm relieved that LEGENDS has a new sequence because the original was, for me, entirely too reminiscent of the AVENGERS titles.

**

Of all the shows to address the post-CRISIS fallout, FLASH has been the most fun with Cisco aghast that he doesn't remember ever owning a Superman T-shirt and very worried that all the villains Team Flash has stopped could be back in new and disturbing forms. It's a very enjoyable, pleasant show -- and wasn't it weird how Joe's office was so full of what looked like multiple coffee brewers? Joe seemed to have two drip machines and a massive grinder which makes me wonder if, at a loss of set dressing, the crew grabbed some unused items from the Jitters set and put them behind Joe's desk.

I actually don't remember SUPERGIRL and BATWOMAN having new sequences, or the changes were minor in the way SUPERNATURAL alters the foreground elements of its titles each year but the composition and direction remains basically the same.

Wait....did Batwoman break the Arrowverse?

I understand the point of it all.  Why Beth survived the Crisis and showed up.  And why they couldn't have Beth and Alice on the show.  I get it.  But are we now definitively saying that two people can't exist on Earth Prime at the same time without dying?  And that the time has already elapsed on which people would die if that were the case?

So if the Brainiacs that survived Crisis hadn't sacrificed themselves, all of them would've died?  Both the bar owners on Supergirl are dead now (or one is dead and the other lived, I guess)?  If they're planning on saving Harry on Flash, as has maybe been referenced, are we saying both he and Nash are dead now?

If they were going to just have Mouse's dad kill one of them....why not write the same thing without the multiversal twist?  Because it doesn't really make sense.  Barry went to Earth-2 (with another Barry) and was fine.  There's a whole multiversal bounty hunter system where people jump from Earth to Earth.  They had a Superman jumping from Earth to Earth trying to collect other Supermen.  If Brandon Routh had stayed during the Crisis for longer, would he and Tyler Hoechlin Superman have both died?

And they can say all they want that the  Multiverse doesn't exist but it does.  The rules pre- and post-Crisis shouldn't be different.  And by saying "there can only be one" - that's a huge rule that I'm not sure the other shows can (or are going to want to) write around.

And Luke was right.  They were absolutely insane not to call Flash or Supergirl or *someone*  to help with it.  I know every week can't be a crossover, but no one has crossed over to Batwoman.  Having Brainiac show up would've been easy and effective.  Or Cisco (he's already left Central City so he could be in Gotham anyway). 

Then Luke was dumb.  They could've kept Beth in the Batcave for a year and no one could've tracked them.  You knew exactly when the timer was going to go off.  Wait until that is over.  Then deal with the Crows.

I'm sorry.  Parts were emotional and well written.  But I think they also made critically dumb mistakes that kill this episode for me.

Maybe they'll address it later, but they couldn't wait a few more minutes until they were sure Alice was dead and everyone was safe?  I realize there's a good chance that Beth still could've been killed by Mouse's dad....but that wouldn't have been on Luke and Kate.  This bungle was.

And I'm much more upset about possibly having them wreck doubles than anything else.  Just because it was very unnecessary, especially on a show that was the least affected by Crisis.

Hmmm, it's possible that different reasons would create different consequences.  Beth didn't even know she was on a different Earth so I figured it was identical to how the people in the bar go there on Supergirl.  I guess we'll see.

I liked the Winn two-parter on Supergirl.  I'd sorta forgotten about him (even to the point where I didn't recognize him a couple of episodes ago when this plot point was teased).  I remember liking him, but I also thought the transition from Winn to Brainy was seamless enough that it didn't really matter.  But I think the actor and the character were actually a ton of fun.  I know he left on his own and doesn't seem terribly interested in doing these TV shows anymore, but I think he'd be a great addition to Legends.  Or heck, if they wanted to do a Legion show that he'd co-star on, I'd be interested in that as well.

Probably most relevant here given the comics creators and modern ideas that have been involved in these shows, but Co-Publisher Dan Didio was just fired by DC Comics.  Didio has been the guiding voice behind DC’s direction over the past 10 to 15 years (including what he’ll most be remembered for - the New 52, which rebooted all of DC Comics).

Didio was about to reboot all of DC Comics again with his Generation Five initiative (aging up Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, etc into their 80’s with their children and other characters taking over the monthly titles).  The problem?  Didio was reportedly doing this with big ideas but without a real plan; he was just going to improvise it as it went along and let his employees carry the burden (much as he did with many during New 52).   But this time, his editors started quitting en masse, and that got Warner’s attention.

So with Didio gone, where will DC go now?  Lots of rumors, but I think it’s safe to say we won’t see a line-wide reboot with Generation Five.  That’s likely to now go down as an interesting footnote in history.

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2020/02/21 … dc-comics/

And now this:

https://cosmicbook.news/att-closing-dc- … van-sciver

If they were smart (and AT&T is not smart), they would license the publishing out to other companies. Even Marvel has already done this by letting IDW print its kid’s line using Spider-man, Avengers, etc

If IDW didn’t jump at the chance for DC, I imagine there are other companies like Boom Studios that would love a shot. Don’t see Image doing it, though - they have a unique business model where Image basically licenses out their logo to put on a book (the company itself doesn’t fund much).

I actually haven't gotten to the Tom King run yet. I'm perpetually 2 - 4 years behind comics, buying them in bulk during a Comixology sale and reading through them then. I often wait for a run to be complete -- except I never got around to reading the Brian Michael Bendis run on X-MEN or the recent run of THE FLASH. With superheroes in TV and film, superhero comics aren't a terribly rewarding medium for me these days. But I shall defer to your judgement on it as you know your stuff.

**

Ethan Van Sciver and Cosmic Book News are... not the most reliable source of 'news,' to be frank. Van Sciver is a brilliant artist, but he hasn't worked for DC since 2017 after multiple writers (with the sales figures for Didio to leave them alone) refused to work with him again for reasons not specified but easily inferred. It was the same year that Van Sciver (a brilliant artist) told a fan to kill themselves and everyone from colorists to writers condemned him.

Van Sciver (a brilliant artist) apologized and made a donation to a suicide prevention charity, but that struck me as the end of brilliant artist Ethan Van Sciver's career in mainstream comics and DC hasn't been willing to hiring him since. When Mark Brooks, Chris Sotomayor, Paul Jenkins, Marc Andreyko, Mark Waid, Cully Hammer, Fabian Nicieza and B. Clay Moore and just about anyone in comics holds him in contempt, who employed at DC or Marvel would even talk to Van Sciver (a brilliant artist) at this point to give him the inside scoop? Would Van Sciver (a brilliant artist) know anyone even peripherally involved with DC who'd be anyone but a fellow disgruntled former employee?

Van Sciver is a brilliant artist, but his story doesn't even make any sense. Why would AT&T fire Dan Didio from DC and then declare that they will be letting the company live or die based on the publishing initiative spearheaded by... the guy they just fired? Don't corporations generally prevent the previous executive's projects from coming to fruition?

What gain would there be in letting Generation 5 go forward? If it's successful, the previous executive takes the credit and one wonders why he was let go. If it's a failure, one wonders why the company allowed a project produced by someone they deemed incompetent to continue existing. There is absolutely no advantage to carrying G5 out especially if the plans were a few Post-Its at best, and there is absolutely no rationality in firing Didio over his management of G5 and then declaring DC publishing to be dependent upon G5's success or failure when firing Didio makes it clear that the project was failing AT&T's standards of competence.

Except there's a grain of truth in the story from the brilliant Van Sciver: DC (and Marvel) haven't made much money from publishing in years. The comics division is largely research and development for feature films and TV shows. And DC's owners could very reasonably decide at some point that they can do R&D without publishing monthly comic books. The brilliant Van Sciver's seemingly revelatory 'news' about DC Comics' fate is something that could have happened at any time in the last 20 years; he's just taken a guess at to what the flashpoint could be and I don't think it's a good guess.

If I keep guessing that at some point, Slider_Quinn21's child will start talking, I'm going to be right eventually. It doesn't mean I've installed spy cameras into his home.

**

I am still in the process of re-reading VAMPIRELLA comics written by Grant Morrison and Mark Millar from 1997. I'm pretty behind the times in my reading; Grant Morrison and Mark Millar don't even talk to each other anymore. :-)

It is absolutely possible that AT&T could shut down DC Comics publishing, stick to TV and film and animation for that line of characters going forward. It's also possible that NBCUniversal will announce a revival of SLIDERS. Just because something is possible does not mean that it is impending or even likely; as you said, Marvel contemplated buying DC in the 80s and has extended offers to license Superman. They even offered to license SMALLVILLE to publish a tie-in comic (and were of course ignored).

However, Marvel today isn't really about publishing comic books. Comics are simply an R&D lab for producing copyrights that could conceivably be made into films and TV shows. I'm not sure Marvel, a film and TV studio, would want AT&T's leftovers unless they had the DC film and TV departments as well. Marvel outsourced young adult comics to IDW as Marvel's comics department is really about catering to diehard superhero fans and generating raw material for other departments.

To see Dan Didio's firing as the flashpoint for all these potentialities becoming realities is the domain of self-important clickbait, the kind Cosmic Book News specializes in, and I have a lot of distate for Cosmic Book News and Bounding Into Comics for posting idle speculation from disgruntled former employees no longer in the loop with DC or Marvel as breaking news regarding those companies.

The reality is that DC has fired a manager for constantly demanding last minute changes that would then be reversed and then re-reversed leading to his employees leaving. This was tolerated when suffered by freelancers because freelancers are, on a corporate level, viewed as interchangeable. If Jim Shooter protests having to rewrite an issue of LEGION for the 305th time unpaid, DC will hire Temporal Flux to do it and AT&T isn't going to be concerned with constant turnover in what are essentially short-term, part-time contracts. However, when that's happening with staff members on payroll, it presents the manager's incompetence in a way that became impossible to ignore -- much as Eddie Berganza assaulting women could be ignored when reported on Bleeding Cool and Comics Beat but could not be ignored when it made Buzzfeed.

But hysterics like Cosmic Book News are using Didio's dismissal to declare that the apocalypse has come when the truth is, the apocalypse is always coming for comics whether it's printing costs, sales decreases, the rise of digital, the crash of the speculator market and it won't be one inept manager's firing that sparks the death of the company. Change is coming regardless -- ideally, I'd like that change to be DC shifting into the graphic novel market and leaving the monthly pamphlets behind.

Kara watching her own show on Netflix is the most joyfully ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen. I love it.

Also... if Lex was a hero in this new timeline (as far as the public is concerned), wouldn't the events of Season 4 be extremely different from what Kara was watching on Myxflix?

Like I said -- people who write altered timelines without Slider_Quinn21's guidance do so at their peril.

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2020/03/05 … ff-for-5g/

DC's current/remaining publisher, Jim Lee, says that 5G will go forward with Jon Kent as Superman, Lucius Fox as Batman and so forth -- but 5G will not have Clark, Bruce, Diana and others taken out of their titles and replaced by their descendants, so presumably, the new Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman will co-exist the same way Marvel published SPIDER-MAN 2099 but didn't cancel AMAZING SPIDER-MAN.

However, originally, the plan was most definitely to take Clark, Bruce, Diana, Hal, Barry, Arthur, Oliver and the rest out of the comics. It's unlikely that DC could have permanently kept them out; numerous editorial teams have sought to irreversibly replace Barry Allen with Wally West, Hal Jordan with Kyle Rayner, and Oliver Queen with Connor Hawke only for a later team to restore them. But the originals with 5G were planned to be out of circulation indefinitely under Didio -- which will no longer happen now that Didio is out.

Superman has already been picked up for a full first season:

https://www.scifinow.co.uk/news/superma … by-the-cw/

Green Arrow & The Canaries won’t be decided on until May:

https://screenrant.com/green-arrow-cana … uggenheim/

This wasn't the tipping point - I don't think the show should've ever been set in Gotham.  Let her get all the goodies from Bruce and then go somewhere else.

What bothers me about Duela is the fact that the show around her is disingenuous.  If they're going to do Joker's Daughter with no ability to say "Joker" or mention her father, then why do it at all?  Why not just invent a new character?  When Magpie is running around being Catwoman, shouldn't *everyone* be calling her a Catwoman ripoff?  If we're to presume that Batman had his career with his rogues' gallery, then we have to assume that his villains were well known and would be referenced in casual conversation.

Moving her is such a simple solution.  The show doesn't have to worry about pre-established villains, it doesn't have to worry about Arkham, it doesn't have to worry about ripoffs, and it doesn't have to create this weird private police department (separate from the GCPD?) so that we don't have to talk about the GCPD.  We don't have to worry about Gordon or Riddler or anything - she can just do her own thing.

The show just insists on doing things with an arm tied behind its back because, what, Gotham is cool?  Gotham is cool - and we just had a better show set in it :-/ Do your own thing now.

The essay I wrote on Routh is here: http://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?pid=7938#p7938

I'm still offline -- my home internet is down (and I have two technicians coming today and tomorrow), but that's why I haven't been that active and why I haven't been able to stream the Arrowverse shows. I have dial up speed internet through my phone.

I don't have a problem with Ray Palmer being written out. LEGENDS has always been a show where people come and go. Hawkman and Hawkgirl left; Nate came in. Jax and the Professor left; Snart left, Amaya left -- the Wave Rider was a journey for these characters, not their final stop. I don't think Brandon Routh and Courtney Ford would take issue with it -- except that, reading between Routh's extremely unspecific statements, it looks like Phil Klemmer didn't tell Routh and Ford that they were only going to be in eight episodes out of 15 until their contract options were picked up but only for half of their availability, meaning Routh and Ford had to find out from their paperwork when reviewing it with their agents. They did not receive a formal meeting with their showrunner informing them that they were being fired.

Fired is a strong word. Actors are very much freelancers with options for contractual renewal. John Rhys-Davies was fired from SLIDERS. In contrast, Meghan Markle (Amy Jessup) was not fired from FRINGE for having done something wrong; she was intended to be a regular but the season's storyline shifted away from supernatural threats to technological forces and Jessup's faith-oriented character no longer made sense without supernatural elements. Markle didn't do anything wrong and she wasn't thrown off the show, but it amounts to the same result of an actor no longer being employed on the series. Meghan Markle seems to have done okay since then, but if you don't communicate with an actor that their role is being written out and given a happy ending and a fond farewell, it feels like a firing.

And I think that was an issue for Routh and Ford because they had a home in Vancouver and their son was enrolled in school in Vancouver and they had expected to be working in Vancouver for the entire season of LEGENDS. When informed that they were only doing eight episodes, they suddenly had to plan for a move back to Los Angeles to find new work, take their son out of school, confuse their child with abruptly different surroundings, say good-bye to their friends and colleagues in British Columbia -- and the LEGENDS showrunners could have let them know much before they'd planned another year of their lives in Canada.

They may also have not been given enough notice to make sure they had projects lined up to make up for the loss of income after their LEGENDS exits.

I don't know why this happened, but we should never ascribe malevolence to what might be incompetence. Routh is worth $12 million on paper, so I assume he shall make it through the year, but he is of course upset. He says he won't be returning to LEGENDS but will guest-star on FLASH, SUPERGIRL, BLACK LIGHTNING, SUPERMAN AND LOIS and (if picked up) GREEN ARROW AND THE CANARIES.

I agree that Routh redefined himself during LEGENDS. He elaborated further on his post-Superman depression during his Inside Of You podcast with Michael Rosenbaum -- he said that before auditions, he resented having to audition at all and wouldn't read scripts properly and he auditioned poorly. Instead of preparing, he would sink into WORLD OF WARCRAFT at the expense of rehearsing and working out -- until his wife gave birth and he realized his video game addiction was a problem.

He wanted to be the charismatic leading man, couldn't get the work -- and on LEGENDS, he came into his own as the dysfunctional manchild who suffers from imposter syndrome who makes error upon error until his persistence leads to success. In Season 1, Reddit set up a "Fuck Up Counter" each week to count how many times Ray screwed up. It was hilarious. It made me -- and Routh, I guess -- realize that it was okay to fail, to lose, to be defeated -- so long as you kept trying to move forward even if your original goal (playing Superman again) might no longer be possible. And in the end, Routh did get to play Superman again. We saw Superman having lost his wife, his best friend, his parents, his father figure -- and he mourned, but he carried on and then at the end, they were restored. LEGENDS gave Routh clarity and closure. It wasn't the feature film release Routh had hoped for, but it was an acceptable facsimile of his hopes much in the way SLIDERS REBORN was an adequate substitute for a revival (for me, at least).

Anyway. I would like to see Routh and Ford in a reboot of REMINGTON STEELE, an 80s TV show about a talented lady private investigator named Laura Holt (Stephanie Zimbalist) whom no one takes seriously because she's a woman, so she starts telling her potential clients that she's a mere employee working for a non-existent detective named "Remington Steele" -- except a con man (PIERCE BROSNAN) sweeps into her life and assumes the name Remington Steele, forcing Laura to play along, continue her cases while trying to uncover who Steele is, why he's come into her life, and how and why he seems to have all the skills and talents that the imaginary Remington Steele would have.

I think Routh should play Loren Holt whom no one takes seriously as a private detective because he's a superstar gamer who was banned after an embarrassing event involving bungee jumping and a bar fight and a Slushie and a woman named Ambrosia. Routh's character decides to present himself as the tech support for the brilliant, deadly and glamourous lady detective named Remington Steele, a fictional creation whose identity is adopted by a con woman played by Courtney Ford, a woman whom Routh is hopelessly crushing on, except -- is this woman he's falling for in any way real? Or is she simply performing in the role of the dream woman Routh imagined for himself as the public face of his detective agency?

Brandon Routh! Courtney Ford! Together, they are REMINGTON STEELE! It could happen. I had to use dial-up speed to post this.

I have believed a lot of ridonkulous things over the years and still often do. I believe that rock star vampires, super-intelligent snakes, animal human hybrids and Dream Masters fit into SLIDERS. I believe that Maggie Beckett is a very interesting character with a lot to offer. I believe that the sliders could somehow rotate between different outfits and that Arturo could have a tailored suit every week despite nobody ever carrying luggage. I even believe that David Peckinpah was talented.

But I do not believe that the Wave Rider only has one washroom under any circumstances. That's nonsense. It's a spaceship with multiple suites and extensive living quarters.

I agree.  I thought his exit was done nicely.  Not only did Ray not have to die (like Stein), but he gets a genuinely happy ending.  I think he genuinely loved the Waverider, genuinely loved the adventure of traveling through time, and genuinely loved his fellow legends.  But he also genuinely loves Nora, and he wants to try something else.  It didn't take much to convince Ray to leave because I think, on some level, he knew it was time to leave.

Besides, Legends is equipped (kinda like Sliders) to go through massive cast changes without a beat.  Watch an episode from season 1 and the current season and see how hard it is to remember that it's the same show.  There's a quality to the show that makes it watchable above the cast.  And even though I'm still wishing the show had been an anthology series (especially now, as there are so many different playgrounds they could've played in by now), this show is probably the most consistently entertaining show now.

Best of luck to Ray and Nora, and best of luck to Brandon Routh.

************

Looks like we'll get a full season of Legends, but we'll get shortened seasons of Flash, Supergirl, and Batwoman.

Yeah, I suppose the only way to get back to filming for something like The Flash or Supergirl or Batwoman (just to finish their seasons) is if:

1. The summer heat significantly slows the spread of coronavirus to allow lessening of social distancing measures and allow for a few weeks of filming.

2. Testing improves in both quality and quantity so that *every* person on set can be tested efficiently every day to see if they have the virus.

Otherwise, I agree.  I'd suspect that we won't see newly show TV until sometime in 2021 after the vaccine comes out.

Truly...that sounds like some awful television.  But it would be a new level of irony to see Flash using Zoom.

I can only think of one way their social distancing plan might work in the Arrowverse; and even it wouldn’t work well over a long term.

They could have each show rewind with characters having to re-live a past season; and then they could deep fake the hell out of it to make it new.  It would be a kind of “meet me half way” between live action and animation; but faster and less expensive than animation.

For instance, the only person in the room filming this Forest Gump scene was Tom Hanks; but it looks like a fully populated scene

Well, I am a big fan of DOCTOR WHO audio plays. Maybe the next season of the Arrowverse has no visuals, is audioplay only, while commercial ads display throughout the entire one hour timeslot.

But I like TF’s idea of Barry mastering Zoom.

Flash should have been the hardest hit by the Crisis changes because it was so dependent on parallel worlds.  But the one thing that seems to be important here is that the post-Crisis Team Flash never had a Harrison Wells.  Ever.  Until now.

All of the Harrison Wells in the series were parallel universe doppelgängers that now no longer ever existed.  Cisco and Caitlyn would have been left to figure everything out alone.  This also brings up an interesting question about the Savitar saga (if it still happened) - who died in Iris’s place?  It wasn’t a Harrison Wells.

Another big change post Crisis - Barry never had Jay Garrick.  All of the season two Zoom story is out the window; but the valuable thing lost is that later discussion Jay had with Barry about time travel.  Without Jay to explain it to him, Barry would have likely damaged time more severely before he stopped; and as a result, Barry would feel even more guilty about it.  Barry may have been so consumed that he couldn’t face past mistakes.

But I believe that’s the issue - post-Crisis Barry was missing some important support structures that taught him lessons and helped him grow.  I don’t know how much they’ll delve into it, but I think our Barry is a lot more mature than the post-Crisis version he replaced.

https://ew.com/tv/the-blacklist-season- … -shutdown/

THE BLACKLIST is going to complete its Season 7 finale with animation.

Will Bruce Timm be handling the Arrowverse shows next year?

This isn't actually a crazy thought.  Well, the Timm stuff could be.  But I think with comic books, you could essentially do whatever you want.  We've seen reality-altering things before.  Maybe someone changes Earth Prime from 3 dimensions to 2.  Everyone is affected (and maybe no one notices).

But this would actually both work and could be pulled off on Legends.  I don't think they'd miss a beat.