Season 8’s opening five-episode arc ofThe Flashis officially over and it appears that Central City is saved once again. Now it’s time to get to work saving a writer’s room that seems exceedingly bored with the subject matter they’re given. The five-episode mini-series that was technically a standalone adventure called Armageddon kicked off this year’s version ofThe Flashand it seems as if the entire thing was planned as a way to getas many Arrowverse crossovers as possiblewithout actually putting any of Team Flash in real danger. Now viewers are going to have to wait until 2022 to see if the show that has been so good for so long, can finally hit its stride.
Despite the start ofThe FlashSeason 8 being five episodes, it always felt rushed. That’s likely because there were just so many different storylines the show seemed to want to hit on and so many characters it tried to work into those stories. This time it was Mia Queen, who is now the Green Arrow, but in the future. Then there was Damian Darhk who was an incredibly cool supervillain when he was causing havoc inLegends of Tomorrow. Neal McDonough seems to have a lot of fun playing bad guys and Darhk allowed him to go over the top in ways only he could. But this version of that character was a sad dad who apparently gave up decades of villainy to mope into and out of a couple of scenes in this year’s version ofThe Flash. It was a weird, unneeded addition to the show that basically just betrayed one of the cooler characters in the Arrowverse.
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The Flash Is Ruining All Sorts Of Villains This Season
Damian Darhk wasn’t the only villain who was totally misused in this five-episodeopening to the season ofThe Flash. There was a time when Tom Cavanaugh’s Eobard Thawne was a legitimately imposing figure. That’s because the man from the future was also cold, calculating and willing to hide in plain sight. The first season of The Flash saw the man acting as a father figure to Barry Allen for so long, it was an actual gut-punch both to the show’s hero and the audience when it turned out that things went so bad, so quickly. The Reverse Flash was someone the team really had to fear. Now, in Season 8, the character is a parody of that long-ago version, even when the show sets him up to be a guy that actually beat Barry at his own game.
One of the truly frustrating things about the Armageddon storyline only being five episodes, is that it could have been really interesting and compelling if it had been stretched over an entire season, or even a real half-season. Make the baddies like Thawne and Darhkand Desperoget more fleshed out. Make it take more than 20 minutes for Barry to figure out a way to return his timeline to normal. Instead, Thawne announced that the reason he hates The Flash so much boils down to grade school-level jealousy. And when he’s given the chance to try and save himself, he brazenly makes it clear that he should not, in fact, be allowed to live.
Is There Anyone In The Flash Who Can’t Time Travel?
Speaking of things that people and things that used to have some real heft to them that were watered down by the opening to thisseason ofThe Flash, it wasn’t all that long ago that time travel was something that was severely frowned upon. Now it appears as if it’s the quick fix to any number of different problems. It also seems as if there are people who have the ability to time travel that absolutely shouldn’t.
to add Mia Queen to the mix forthis episode ofThe Flash, the team very specifically pointed out that she had traveled back in time to the year 2021. However, while they pointed out that the new Green Arrow was from the future, they never bothered to say exactly how she’d managed to make the trip. No one even batted an eye. Certainly, that might be a byproduct of the number of enemies the team has fought from the future, but it seems like someone who doesn’t have the kind of speed needed to travel through time showing up from the future would have had a bit more of an impact. There’s also the fact that the entire point of Flashpoint was that time travel has very serious consequences. It seems as if no one either remembers or cares anymore about those consequences.
Joe To The Rescue
While thefinale toThe Flash: Armageddonleft quite a bit to be desired, there was at least part of the episode that really worked. Jesse L. Martin’s Joe West has always been one of the low-key best characters inThe Flash. Perhaps that’s not a coincidence when you consider that Martin is the most veteran actor of the entire cast. Even Tom Cavanaugh, who has been in television for decades, doesn’t have the kind of resume Martin does. The actor has always seemed to have had quite a bit of fun playing Joe who is a father to Barry and Iris but has also been the moral compass for the entire gang of heroes, who sometimes still act as though they’re teenagers.
During a period of thelatest episode ofThe Flash, the gang was busy weighing what was supposed to be a momentous choice that would make them killers, even if they could explain away why they had to do it. His anger and his speech to Barry and Iris about why what they were thinking was wrong, but also that they had to come to that themselves was one of his best of the entire series. And he’s given plenty of those speeches. The only problem is that it says something about the first five episodes of the season that the best part so far was a 30-second speech from a character who has been on the show less and less.
The Flashis now on hiatus until May 26, 2025
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