DC Superheroes on TV & Streaming (1966 - 2024) (Page 1 of 28)

So, that ARROW finale... kind of boring. I didn't like the whole League of Assassins arc at all. I guess the main problem for me is, I don't understand the League's motives at all. They're a shadowy society of secrets that do malicious and evil things because... they're malicious and evil? I don't understand what they gain, what they want, what they're out for. They kill people because. They want power because. They use that power to get more power for something. I don't get it. With Slade and Merlyn, there was motive and reasoning even if it was extreme and crazy. With the League, they're just extreme and crazy.

Quite different from the sliders episode really! But that said, I don't think they'll start over or reset Flash.

In our timeline we've seen since the show pilot, Barry becomes Flash 5 years earlier than he was "supposed to" because of Reverse Flash interfering and taking over as Wells. In ReversE Flash's original timeline he hadn't originally interfered and there was still Barry Allen as Flash except he became the Flash five years later, with Wells and Tess making the accelerator on the original timetable and his mom living and his dad never having gone to prison. Well we can surmise those events anyway.

So we have a younger Flash that we have followed since the beginning and an older flash that was around before Reverse Flash went back in time. The older flash had a different childhood and adulthood. He may have met the star labs people and he may not have. Or they may have a different friendship as well. He's a slightly different person.

Now that our younger Barry has taken out Reverse Flash, you COULD assume that our Barry's childhood should now revert to the way it was in reverse Flash's time, with no interference, a living mom, a free dad... and that would mean that our younger Barry would then not be the Flash 5 years earlier and everything we watched wouldn't have happened. I don't think they'd throw away the whole season like that.

The way they handled time travel is a bit confusing to figure out and from what I understand they'll be moving into multiple dimension storyline bow with several speedsters coming into the storyline.

There was actually a rumor that Flash was going to crossover with Smallville, which would be another CW/DC Universe dimension.

The whole CW/DC Universe is actually a secondary Earth of some other universe, caused when Reverse Flash went back in time.  I'm guessing it branches off from the DC Cinematic Universe.  Which would be a cool way to tie it in.

Well, only a couple things really bothered me:

- I didn't like that I looked up one day and everyone was an expert ninja.  I was waiting for a scene where criminals attacked Ray, Laurel, Thea, and Felicity, and Felicity ran out of the room (or hid under a table) since all of the heroes were missing....only to find that everyone she thought was like her was actually an expert fighter.  It wouldn't surprise me if Oliver trained Felicity during the S3/S4 break, and now she can handle members of the League of Assassins without any issue.  Thea's was explained a bit better since she had 3/4 months of nonstop training.  Laurel went to a boxing gym after work and then worked with Nyssa....after work.  I was waiting for an episode where Laurel got her ass kicked and was eased into the fold.  But she basically became a member of the team (moreso than Diggle) almost immediately with relatively minor growing pains.

- Oliver's death.  Was one of the coolest moments of midseason for any show.  Then.....he was just okay?  The stab wound and/or the fall off the cliff should've killed him.  I kept waiting for Lazarus to be mentioned, but it was just something superhuman.  Then when Lazarus was actually used, it was this big issue....and then Thea was just fine.  Made me wonder what the point of any of it was.

Okay, my thoughts on the end of last season...

ARROW

Season 3 was a mess. First of all, Malcolm Merlyn should have stayed dead. Whatever good he contributed to the series since coming back could have been done with someone else. And his being there really weakened things a lot. Not only did it invalidate the first season finale and make Oliver and Diggle look stupid, but making him a series regular just meant that he was around way more often than he needed to be. His storyline in season 3 was nonsense (a word that I will probably use a lot in this post). How people interacted with him made no sense. And the very idea that Oliver would hand over the keys to the League--a mostly incompetent group, but still killers--to Malcolm instead of someone like Nyssa who never tried to blow up a city and kill millions of innocent people was just... there are no words for that. There is no excuse for it.
And he is still signed on for season 4. WHY?

Felicity was destroyed as a character in season 3, and nothing in the finale changed that. Not only did she cry during pretty much every scene of the series last season, but they kept forcing her into places where she didn't belong. They pushed the Olicity romance (I hate the name mashup, by the way) way too much. The two of them should have remained close, but never gone there. She should have been the safe zone, not the drama zone. Her side story with Ray was a waste of so much time... Ray's story could have been covered in a handful of episodes spread out over the season, like Firestorm's story was on The Flash, and it would have been much better. But locking two characters up on one set together, forcing a romance while Felicity was already in romance drama with Oliver... it was bad. Ray served no real purpose.
Toward the end of the season, Felicity's downfall became comedic. She was literally overpowering LoA members by wacking them over the head with the side of a spear, while in Nanda Parbat (where she had no business being at all). She throws a childish fit and confronts the f-ing Demon's Head... and he doesn't kill her right then and there. Instead, they have girl talk about boys. I half expected him to pull out some fuzzy slippers and ice cream.
And then we get to the finale, where Felicity wears the ATOM suit to save Oliver. This was so incredibly lame for so many reasons. How did the suit fit her? How did she magically know how to use it? Why does she need to save Oliver from cops who shouldn't have been randomly trying to kill people in the first place?

The Oliver/Felicity story took up so much time this season and it was so poorly handled. I hated everything about it, including the "happy ending". I was a Felicity fan. I even still like her on The Flash. But how they used her in season 3 ruined the show. I wanted the convertable to blow up at the end of the season, taking them both out.

If the writers don't recognize their failure and fix it, season 4 will be even worse. They keep talking about how the tone has changed and all of that... so far, it hasn't been for the better.

And Captain Lance. Again, another good character who was completely ruined. It didn't even make any sense. By the end, they were just having him and the other cops trying to kill people without any good reason... why?

Season 3 messed up so much, I don't know how they can fix it without ignoring it entirely. Oliver's "death" was just swept under the carpet. The whole thing where he joined the League was so obvious and stupid.

Ugh... okay, good things... good things... Tatsu was cool. I hope she comes back (but probably not since they decided to use her in the Suicide Squad movie. stupid people). Seeing Thea suit up was pretty cool too. She pulled it off well. I don't hate Laurel as Black Canary as much as some people. She is still learning.

That was about it.

THE FLASH

I'm trying not to blame this series for the drop in Arrow's quality, because I do like it a lot.

The Flash had a great end to their first season. The story arc with Wells/Reverse Flash came together really well. The Eddie storyline was wrapped up in an interesting way. Iris isn't going to be kept in the dark for so long that it will become annoying to see her on screen. So far, this series is doing things right. Which means that I probably won't ramble as much about it as I did with Arrow.

The end, where Eddie erased Eobard from history was pretty cool. Having him save the day instead of Barry was a cool choice. And then opening the rift at the end was a ice cliffhanger. There was really nothing that I would do differently with that. I just hope that they can sustain that quality, even as they introduce Legends and some of them are working on Supergirl.

With that said... I think it was the episode before the finale, where they teamed up with Captain Cold... That was a stupid episode. Should be forgotten. Especially since they want us to believe that they would bring him into another team with Legends!

That's interesting.

So they're definitely doing Jay Garrick and Wally West this season.  One rumor we had at the end of last year was that Barry was going to end up in the Smallville universe.  And my question is - why the heck not?  Would Tom come back for one episode as Clark where he meets up with Barry?  Could they get Kyle Gallner to play Bart/Impulse?  Or, heck, get Justin Hartley to play a different version of Oliver.  Something like that could be fun and tie one era of CW/DC television to another.

Possible spoilers ahead

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They are placing a lot of other elements into if, but it looks like the core concept of this Zoom is that he is the Jay Garrick Flash villain known as The Rival:

Velocity 9 has it's own further history with the Earth 1 reality, but the main reason I point out The Rival is because his origin has him as a contemporary scientist to Jay Garrick.  If Zoom tracks with this, then I would expect his identity to be a double of someone from the main cast.  Wells is the easy answer; Barry himself is a possibility; but I'm betting it will turn out to be a double of Eddie Thawne who lived up to the genius of his blood line on Earth 2.

On a side note, looks like Sliders once again had its influence on parallel reality TV; we got something very much like our vortex, and I swear that even sounded reminiscent to the noise our vortex made when it opened and closed.

It looks like Wally will be like Informant said: the brother she never knew.

Spoiler if you haven't watched the latest episode yet...

And Zoom is Tom Cavanaugh (Wells) I guess? I'm ok with that as I like the actor very much. Interesting to think that Jay Flash's arch nemesis would be the same as Barry Flash's arch nemesis kind of.

I am very glad that Iris didn't get ticked at Joe and that we weren't treated to a multi episode sub plot where the two avoid each other and give each other the stink eye.

I'll be interested to see what they do with it.  They have an opportunity to play with expectations because we already have an image of Wells in our head, but that was really just Thawne using the face of Wells.  An interesting twist would be seeing that Thawne was actually much nicer and less arrogant than the real Wells.

Wells may not turn out to be Zoom; but he may be a colossal a-hole that's a villain in his own Luthor type way.

Jay did mention something about The War of the Americas (which is likely a modern placeholder for World War II so that Jay can still have roots in his origins); but that's all we have so far.  I imagine Barry will be visiting Earth 2 at some point, so we're likely to get more then.

Beyond Earth 2, I still believe this is a perfect opportunity to visit a version the big guns they don 't seem to be allowed to use.  Earth 3 gives us the Crime Syndicate consisting of Ultraman, Owl Man, Super Woman, Power Ring and of course Johnny Quick.  They are not just doubles of Clark Kent, etc; they are their own unique characters in the comics with different origins from the heroes; it should be just enough to let them be used without stepping on any plans for Superman, etc.

Okay that'd be pretty sweet.  I imagine their Crime Syndicate would just be darker versions of the guys they already have, but that would be a great way to get around the system.  Especially if they never refer to their alter-ego's actual names.

Still think a Welling cameo would be cool and call back to the legacy of the DC heroes on the CW.  Even something like Justin Hartley appearing as Oliver Queen (or, heck, Aquaman) could be funny if done correctly.

I am posting this here, because I doubt that the show will ever deserve its own thread...

Supergirl.

Watched the pilot. It was really bad. The writing was bad. The directing was bad. The actors were miscast, but that could be because of bad writing.

The show wants to be all about girl power. The problem is that unlike Sara, Laurel, Thea, Nyssa or Lyla, the fact that she was just a little girl was highlighted over and over again. They kept making excuses and apologizing for the fact, to the point where I felt like they were begging me not to turn it off.
And it makes no sense, because Kara would have no reason to feel this way. She is the second strongest person on the planet, from a world where women were powerful, now on a world where she is surrounded by powerful women. Why would this be an issue for her?

The issue shouldn't be an issue. They don't have to explain her being strong and heroic, they just need to write her that way.

But that is another issue. They didn't bother to build her world, develop interesting characters or make me care. Arrow, The Flash and Gotham had great pilots, so there is no reason for Supergirl's to suck. I want to know why she feels compelled to be a hero, the way Clark's upbringing informed that decision.

The execution of the fight scenes was weak, with obvious wire work. The shadowy government organization was a boring cliche that just isn't needed.

Superman was turned into a douchebag who dumped his newly (from her POV) orphaned cousin into a strange family and literally never spoke to her again. Why? If they just said that she knows him and he trained her, the show would only be better for it and his absence would be less awkward.

I don't like the way Jimmy is being used. Aside from being the wrong personality, he is just awkwardly playing go-between, despite the fact that there is no reason for Clark to not be there himself. Especially considering the size of this alien threat.

Speaking of which... Did they really try to go with "aliens don't exist" while knowing that Superman exists? Why?
Why did Kara take off her glasses to use x-ray vision? I can see through my glasses and I don't even have superpowers!
Why was her sister standing in Kara's hallway, yelling every super secret detail of Kara's life, loud enough for the entire building to hear?

Everything that made Arrow and The Flash work out of the gate was missing here. It is like they didn't even care about writing the script.

I like Supergirl as a character, but this just didn't work at all.

Outside of the last ten minutes of this last episode, I don't think the Olicity stuff has been bad.  I thought Felicity has been a pretty fun character again, and I thought the chemistry has been pretty good.  I even struggled to remember whether or not Olicity was even together until all the lovey dovey stuff this week.

Yeah I imagine it's Lance too because too many people like Felicity.  My only thought was the fact that it was Barry in the flashforward scene.  I guess he could just be a forced crossover (and a way to tease Zoom on Arrow) and Barry just being a good friend, but when I saw him, I assumed it was Felicity.  Or at least someone Barry has met - so someone on Team Arrow.

I can see what you're saying about a weakened Oliver, but that same flashforward scene makes it seem like Oliver knew that he know he's softer.  And even says that he's going to kill "him" - which he hasn't done since season one.

Agree with all of this!

James Olsen is so the wrong personality. I could care less what ethnicity he is as long as he acts like Jimmy, the dorky lovable, just wants to do a good job and impress his boss, all around nice guy. Instead we get broad shouldered, deep voiced, confident, GQ Jimmy.

And all the references to Superman are distracting and annoying because like you said, why WOULDN'T he show up to help. He can be there in seconds! Their chat on AOL Instant messenger was ridiculous too. Just show him. Or don't reference him at all.

Cat really rose to the top of this profession acting the way she does? Ick, nope. I really do not like the characters at all, Cat, James, Kara, her sister, their mother... I kind of don't mind Winn, but essentially, doesn't he come across as Jimmy-like? And I am a big fan of Dean Cain but haven't had enough wth him yet to say whether I like his character or not.

The biggest problem I see is that all these years, Kara just didn't use her powers because she was taught to hide them away (Oh hello, Elsa from Frozen). But then she sees a plane start to crash and decides NOW is the time? There has never been other great disasters before that she felt compelled to help? Why suddenly does she decide, now I'm gonna hero up?

And oh yeah, if she never used her powers really, why did she have to wear glasses? There is no reason if she isn't fighting crime as Supergirl.

Okay so I finally watched last week's "Heroes Join Forces" - I liked the threat they faced.  Vandal Savage was good, and it used both casts very well.  It's always cool to see Oliver hold his own alongside Barry, and I think the worlds mesh way better than I thought they were going to at first.

But something was off.  I wasn't a huge fan of using time travel again - especially since Barry still hasn't cleaned up the mess from the last time he did it.  I still think it's weird that Oliver discovers he has a child on the Flash (just like we discovered it last year on the Flash) - I know it was mostly done on Arrow, but actual reveal was done on Arrow.  The show seems to assume that people watch both shows (and I know at least two people who only watch one). 

And I felt like Barry was underused.  It's like when Batman and Superman are fighting - they tend to depower Superman so that it isn't ridiculous for Batman to be fighting the same villain(s).  Barry just kinda stood around for a lot of the same fight.  I still think he could've fought Vandal by himself.  He was an exceptional fighter but still just human.

I also feel like the show is doing a lot to set up Legends of Tomorrow instead of focusing on their own stuff.  I like the crossovers that are a little more organic (like when each Oliver/Barry called the other when they needed help with a specific overwhelming task).  Leaving Kendra with Team Arrow seemed a little forced, especially since Barry knows that Oliver has his own problems (although this was also written into the show).

All in all, I'm really enjoying both shows.  I think Arrow Season 4 has been a big improvement.  I just thought the crossover series was a bit underwhelming.

The crossover was good, but it just wasn't a particularly good episode for either series. It's an aside that doesn't really flow with what's going on on either show at the moment. That is odd, especially when you think about how they will release the show on DVD or on Netflix. It won't make much sense.

Overall, I liked the crossover but the big thing for me was Felicity. After the way she reacted to Oliver finding out that he had a kid (before it was erased) made me want her to leave the show. I want her to be the one in the grave now. Or maybe she just walks out. I don't care if they never even explain it, I'm just done with her. She went from being a great character, to being an annoying character, to being a complete b*tch. She is so arrogant and self centered.

This year has been better than last year for Arrow, but I think that Oliver and Felicity have been handled horribly still. Mostly because they're really pushing the relationship that doesn't feel right or natural. On top of that, they're dumbing Oliver down and making him less of a fighter, just so the group scenes play better. They should cut back on the big group outings and focus on one or two people going out at a time. The fights used to be really great on the show, but they're so watered down now. (plus, they always want to include Felicity, which leads to complete stupidity like the gun magnets or hacking construction equipment)

Eventually, Laurel needs to go off and be her own hero. She isn't supposed to be a sidekick for the rest of her life. She is the friggin Black Canary.

I was completely unimpressed with the midseason finale. It was more of the shtick they played last year where they killed Oliver and threw him off of a cliff just for thrills, and then completely ignored the magnitude of that event in the following episodes. If anything, we can now say that Felicity is the most safe character on the show.

The gas chamber killed one guy in a few seconds, but all of the main characters were apparently immune to the gas. They got a scratchy throat and coughed, but they were in there for a while and nothing major happened.

Felicity found the ring and then pretty much forced Oliver to propose. I just find myself hating her more and more. It's a death spiral now. I don't think that I could ever go back to liking her, even if they reverted to the good old days of the Felicity character. She is just so selfish and arrogant and whiny.

The Flash had a pretty good winter finale, but I'm still not sure about bringing Wally in at this point. The bomb magnet idea was silly, but then I remembered Felicity's gun magnets and the bomb magnets suddenly seemed far less stupid.

What they are doing in the Arrowverse is the original origin of the hawks put forth in the 1940's comics.  The main difference is that Hath-set was a separate character and not Vandal Savage.   The alien origins of Hawkman didn't appear until the Silver Age reboot in the 1960's; and that was a different character (in the same way Jay Garrick is not Barry Allen).  In the late 90's comics, Geoff Johns combined the two hawk origins into one with the Hawks being aliens who crashed in ancient Egypt and were worshipped as gods because of their wings.  The DCAU followed the Johns story (those DCAU Hawkman episodes in fact written by Johns also), but they added in all that stuff about John Stewart and Shadow Thief which had never been seen before.

As for Legends of Tomorrow, I liked it.  It had a fun feel like Flash and lots of comics references; and I liked the twist on why the characters were chosen for the mission.  I wouldn't worry too much about longevity, though.  Rumor is that this essentially will be a mini-series.   The rumor puts forth that Legends will follow the American Horror Story model and be a completely different show each year.   The thought makes sense; the title chosen for this series was taken from a DC anthology title called Legends of the DC Universe.

Rumor further has it that next season would be Legends of Magic with John Constantine in the lead.

Okay, that's *exactly* what this needs to be.  They could focus on some characters that really need focusing on.  Although if that's the case, it's a little strange that they're doing it with such a big cast.  It might've been a little more fun to do a Captain Cold/Heat Wave crime miniseries on their own.  Sort of a focus on villains in the Arrowverse, which could be interesting.  Like why metahuman villains seem to stay away from Star City.

I don't think it's that bad, but I see your complaints.  And it worries me that the writers don't know who's in the grave or who Zoom is it.  I have NO idea how you can write like that.  My friend and I wrote a TV pilot with TONS of seeds planted, and we had answers for all of them.  Even stuff that wouldn't even be answered for a while.

When they say they have no idea, you have to think it's just a disagreement in the writer's room, right?  Like they were sitting around in the room and they each have who they think would be best to move the story along, but they couldn't agree (it should be Felicity so we can bring in Barbara Gordon to fill her place!  No, it should be Diggle so the danger is real!  Thea!  Take the last family member Oliver has left!)

It reminds me of when the Simpsons said they were going to kill off a major character, and it was Krusty's dad.  I mean he was a somewhat-emotional character, but it's a side character to a side character.  Hardly newsworthy.

Well I've been thinking about it.  If it's Donna, I think Barry would show up for emotional support.  Remember that going to Star City would be like walking down the block.  He could get in a suit in a second and be there in a few minutes.  And Felicity is his friend, so he'd be there to support her.

And maybe it's Donna and Quentin.  They're together, and it'd be emotional for Laurel and Felicity.  But it'd be minor in the grand scheme of things.  If it's not Felicity, then I guess the next best emotional gambit would be Diggle.  It'd be personal but also raise the stakes since Diggle is such an imposing figure.  But I doubt they'd do that.

I felt like maybe some of the better writers went to Flash, but if they don't know who Zoom is then they aren't much better.  I just think they might've spread themselves a bit too thin with two (now three) shows.

I'm all for leaving open the possibility of changing directions later. However, if you start the season with a flash forward to a grave like that, you'd better know what your plan is. I don't think the Arrow writers had the slightest idea of who it was when they started, and that annoys me. I believe that they know who Zoom is (because I think I know who is playing him, just looking at the eyes). I just don't get how you can start an arc-based series without knowing the plan. It drives me insane.

With some shows, there are a lot of stand-alone episodes. So the big plan doesn't need to be super detailed for those shows. But Arrow has cut out most of the stand-alone episodes with one-off villains. They got more into serializing the story, yet they don't have a map.

Like I said, I'm all for letting inspiration strike. But that isn't the same thing as not having a plan.

I think that is going to be a misdirect. He may become a version of Zoom later, but I think Barry's father is Zoom. Just my own guess, not based on spoilers.

Well I guess the Arrowverse got a directive to keep things from getting confusing with the new Suicide Squad movie, huh?

ringringring ringringring ringring click

"Cisco, it's Overwatch! We need -- "

"Hi! You've reached STAR Labs! We're currently engaged in an extradimensional journey to a parallel world of unknown threat and danger from which we may never return! Please leave a message and we'll get back to you should any of us return from Earth 2 alive."

They said that John Constantine cured Sara from dying if she doesn't indulge the bloodlust, while Thea will die if she doesn't kill.

Interesting.  I guess I wasn't paying enough attention to the Malcolm line.

Regarding the writers, I think this is the problem with spinoffs.  You have a strong group of writers for one show, and you split them up to do two shows.  Both shows suffer because neither show has the strong writer's room the original show had.  Add a third group, and it gets even more diluted.  I don't think Arrow is as bad as you think it is, but it's definitely worse since they spun off Barry's show.

My problem with Legends is that the show isn't streamlined.  I get that these are a bunch of people with wildly different goals, but it's really odd to have three stories in one episode that aren't really connected.  Snart is out trying to fix his own past, Ray and Stein are connecting about their shared past while saving Kendra, and Rip is trying to take down Savage.  They're good stories....but they aren't a team.  There are too many characters in the reality of the show (Rip goes to kill Savage by himself at least once...what's the point of even bringing a team when half the team is off doing their own thing) and on the show (they have to find something for Jackson to do, for example, so he tags along on the Cold/Heat Wave story).

If it was me, I'd leave Heat Wave and Firestorm out.  Let Ray be the brains.  Let Sara be the muscle.  Cold is the wild card.  The hawks are the secret weapons.  The other characters are unnecessary if you ask me.

Now that Flash is going to guest star on Supergirl, I started watching it.  Pretty good.  Although I hope Barry has to travel to a parallel Earth to get to her.  I don't think "Earth 1" meshes with the world on Supergirl.

Oliver's "death" is still the most bizarre storyline I've ever seen on TV.  They killed off their main character and then sorta hoped everyone forgot about it.