I've been a faithful follower of The Flash for many years now. I probably did not know much about the Flash going into this series, but I was excited when it launched. Now, as it has ended by airing its series finale last week, I think it kinda/sorta limped to the finish line. It's been a weird journey on so many levels, but just to be clear, it isn't as weird as Riverdale, which in its final season defies my even explaining what this show is about. Here are my random thoughts that I have about The Flash.
1) Grant Gustin is a great actor, and he did a great job as the Flash. He could have said any lines, but the ones that he was handed, he delivered with the emotional impact that I wanted. Any issues I had was that the writing was bad in places. I know this, so he did the best with what he was handed. And he looked good in the suit.
2) The CW decided to double and triple down on time travel. Like...literally...it happened all the time. I know that time travel is a central power that the Flash has. But there was so much time travel that I got a bit confused on what timeline was worth saving and what wasn't worth saving. It really made me realize that the Flash seems to be a much better character when he has other heroes to team up with, and that leads me to my next observation.
3) The crossovers worked really well. I liked it when Supergirl crossed over with Arrow and it crossed over with The Flash and that crossed over with Batgirl, and then we got a crossover with Legends of Tomorrow (which by far was the greatest of the CW comic series) and we even got a Black Lightning cross over, etc. Those were a lot of fun, and it's rare when a single channel can do that with all of its properties. But the era of superhero shows has pretty much ended with The Flash, unless you bother to count Gotham Knights which I'm enjoying.
4) I think that The Flash picked up too many secondary characters. I wanted something that was more about Barry and Iris with maybe some crossover to uncovering a new Green Lantern (which was always hinted at but I never got). Instead, we ended up with Cecile and Allegra and Chester and then they offed Caitlyn to bring in Killer Frost and then changed her to the goddess Khione. We also picked up several versions of the Speed Force and then a Negative Speed Force. But the best secondary character throughout the entire show were the various versions of Thawn and Captain Cold (which we got very early in the series). Everytime he appeared in the series, he stole the show before it got reduced to Barry just "outrunning" his problems in various ways. I get it...Barry runs a lot. But maybe my lack of reading the comics made me expect that he wouldn't always outrun his issues and might have to go about solving them in a different way. Or maybe I just got jaded with the running and it no longer impacted me in a meaningful way, and I just became a bit bored with it.
5) Barry and Iris's marriage is still weird to me. This is a personal thing. But I just try to imagine a woman marrying her adopted brother and those two making kids together. The fact that they got to know each other when they were like six and maybe seven years of age doesn't make it better. It makes it worse for me. It's just...I dunno...too odd for me to not find pure cringe. I would never say anything to a couple that was like this...I'd just wish them well and probably not talk to them all that much because it was too weird. Would it be better if it was gay? I try to imagine a man saying, "I'm marrying my nephew because we are in love and near the same age, but he is not my nephew by blood." And I think..."good lord that sounds just awful...not gonna touch that." Feel free to judge me. I guess I'm just not as open-minded as I'd like to be, and maybe I have some work to do on that.
Anyway, those are my five thoughts I have on this series. Overall, it kept me invested for what? Nine seasons? That's a lot of time I spent watching this thing. It was fun though to see a network actually take a stab at doing what Disney/Marvel has accomplished with the creation of a superhero cinematic universe. It makes me think that this kind of thing is an incredibly difficult feat to pull off well. I give the CW props for trying.
It seems like just a couple of years ago they had that big Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover that seemed to set the stage for a JLA-type thing but now it's all done. I guess the pandemic combined with the costs for these shows made it too impractical.
ReplyDeleteI stopped watching in the third season; I'm not sure if I missed much. I haven't read a lot of Flash solo comics either. Like you I'm not sure what the Flash really does besides run. I guess he can phase through matter and generate lightning or something but it's just never interested me that much. I think he is one of those who's better as a support character than a main character.
Yeah, this last season was kinda meh. I loved Black Lightning, but the rest of the Arrowverse was something I just kind of liked. And I'm really enjoying Superman and Lois, but they said this is part of a different universe, so it kind of doesn't count. And now there's a movie coming out with a whole different cast, and I don't think I care all that much.
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