The Flash - season 7

[Techwright]

So, episodes 1 to 3 are now in the can and wrap up the major story of what should have been the last half of season 6, if COVID-19 hadn't interrupted filming.  I liked the first two, but felt the wrap in ep 3 majorly dropped the ball.  I noticed normally upbeat YouTube reaction folks felt the same.  Nothing against the actors, the writing was just weak, but I'll forgive this because the pandemic made a hash of everything.

 

Now we can begin with the true season 7 at episode 4.  What'd ya think?  I'm particularly interested in thoughts on the 3 surprises: two that happened in the episode, and one that happened in the tag scene.

 

Spoiler thoughts:

Spoiler

Kind of ticked that they killed Abra Kadabra.  That said, he IS a time traveler, and we've seen in this series that can mean crazy reappearances. 

 

The monster that killed "Phillipe" was a shock, and I kept thinking something about its appearance rang a bell.  However, every comment I read pointed to a character I'd never encountered before.  In time, I found a comment that clicked, and I now have a counter theory.  In case you don't want the reveal spoiled here's a box in a box:

Spoiler

People are saying the monster is Fuerza/Powerhouse affiliated with the Strength Force.  However, viewing many pictures, there's a major flaw in their idea: the colors.  Colors tend to be iconic on comic characters, and Fuerza's are definitely green.  But the monster wore lots of purple and had a yellow-hued skin.  That led to a single comment of another that I had seen in the DC Animated Universe:  Rampage.    I suspect Rampage will be the villain from the Strength Force and Fuerza will be the hero.  After all, green and purple are complimentary colors, opposites on the color wheel.

 

As to that tag scene, I like one comment I read elsewhere:  They're doing the 4 forces: speed, strength, still, and sage.  Still is the polar opposite of speed, able to decrease inertia.  That suggest that maybe Frost's sundering is brought about because she's now the hero of the Still Force.  It would be a natural given that her frost powers more or less are inertia reducing anyway.  Who the villain of the Still Force would be, I don't know, but in this new merged universe, maybe Turtle is still alive.  Sage I don't know about, unless they intend to bring The Thinker back.  But if there is a villain and hero per force.  That practically begs for the return of the Reverse Flash.

 

[Frostbiter]

Caught up on the first 3 episodes so far. Not too much to say other than it's still the same show. It's corny and cheesy and I've watched it all and loved every minute of it. 😁

[DougGraves]

We have these recorded but have not watched them.  We just finished Season 1 of Orphan Black, so now we will catch up on the CW shows.

 

Good to know 1-3 wrap up the last season.  We will probably watch this before Superman and Lois to see how it wraps up.

[Mr. Vee]

Let's go to 1998 and dress like a McDonald's commercial from 1992 to blend in. Maybe we'll meet the guy who was supposed to be the next Patrick Mahomes, the best QB at his pre-school?

[DougGraves]

I finished 1-3 with the wrap up of Mirror Master.  It was a bit hard to watch because of the large gap.  I could tell things were supposed to be dramatic but since I was just jumping in it was hard to remember what was going on and why certain things or people were important.

 

That said, it was generally good and classic Flash tv.  Cisco getting a new supersuit was nice.  They did a lot with all of the characters in general.

 

The episode where they try to take down Flash made no sense.  They did a whole lot of stuff to end up teleporting him back to where they started.  That seemed to be the plan, but it did not seem to even try to accomplish anything.  My wife and I were baffled.

 

The ending with love being the solution and talking the villain down felt like a let down.  In particular, Barry talking her down did not feel earned.  It just felt like a cheap solution.  Nothing built up to it.  Had Iris done it after spending weeks with her in the mirror zone it would have felt earned.

 

Also, Mirror Master just massacred her creations.  All of the DC shows seem to have this anti-killing attitude until they decide that some group is different enough that killing them doesn't matter.  White martians, mirror clones, or whatever.  Mirror Master had just spend weeks planning for helping her children and then she kills them all.  That felt very strange.

 

The solution to the Dibny actor problem was reasonably well done.  I am disappointed that the actor is gone and that the storyline was just abruptly ended, but at least they wrapped it up.

[Techwright]

2 hours ago, DougGraves said:

The episode where they try to take down Flash made no sense.  They did a whole lot of stuff to end up teleporting him back to where they started.  That seemed to be the plan, but it did not seem to even try to accomplish anything.  My wife and I were baffled.

 

The ending with love being the solution and talking the villain down felt like a let down.  In particular, Barry talking her down did not feel earned.  It just felt like a cheap solution.  Nothing built up to it.  Had Iris done it after spending weeks with her in the mirror zone it would have felt earned.

 

Also, Mirror Master just massacred her creations.  All of the DC shows seem to have this anti-killing attitude until they decide that some group is different enough that killing them doesn't matter.  White martians, mirror clones, or whatever.  Mirror Master had just spend weeks planning for helping her children and then she kills them all.  That felt very strange.

 

The solution to the Dibny actor problem was reasonably well done.  I am disappointed that the actor is gone and that the storyline was just abruptly ended, but at least they wrapped it up.

 

1. A lot of the storyline wrap-up felt under-written and cheesy.  I got the impression that they made the same mistake as they did with the Thinker arc:  write this exciting arc only to forget to first craft a powerful resolution.  So the ending feels like the writing staff saying "Okay, we've written ourselves into a corner, how do we fix that now?"

 

2.  I never really saw her creations as anything more than sophisticated constructs.  She may call them "people" but they're more like clever high-level automatons.

 

3.  I'd not heard the story of the behind the scenes mess, and so the Dibney resolution baffled me.  I thought the actor must have accepted a good role elsewhere and was unable to meet the shooting schedule.  I now feel bad for the Sue (future Dibney) actress, for having her role cut short.  At least they tried to give her something before she left.  I would note that they still have the special effects software for stretchy superhero, and Plastic Man is in the DC Universe.  I'd love to see Eel O'Brien brought in as a crook and go through a redemption and origin story.