Last week we said goodbye to Supergirl. To make up for that, this week they give us back The Flash, kicking off its five-episode “Armageddon” “event”.
If you missed the opening meanwhile-in-the-future teaser, you could go most of this episode without thinking anything terribly eventerrific was being set up. Until Despero appears at the tech convention, it appears to be a very run-of-the-mill day for Team Flash, and a rather sedate season premiere for the show (this is the first time a Flash season hasn’t had to resolve a cliffhanger from the previous season).
Your only clue that something special is going on is that Team Flash is joined by everyone’s favorite cheery-tune-in-human-form, Dr. Raymond Palmer! And even this crossover isn’t that big a disruption, because, let’s face it, Ray has always been a Team Flash character. A wholesome, optimistic, big-hearted science dork? He slides into this crew like he’s always been here. That he’s so obviously suited for The Flash‘s brand of storytelling is why he was such a hilarious ray of sunshine on the gritty Arrow and the irreverent Legends of Tomorrow, always fighting against the genre he’d been put in.
Speaking of Legends, they didn’t do much fighting this week, as we had what could only be called “the Legends take a mental health day.” It was nice to see each of them dealing with their own issues in their own way (Sara’s is a quick scene of her getting to kill something), and it did great work getting me attached to Dr. Gwynn Davies.
Highlight was definitely Mean Gideon stepping up as the season’s Big Bad. I’ve been comparing her to Skynet (what with the Hoovenator and all), but having her riff on HAL 9000 was a pleasant surprise. Her ejecting Time Mistress Ava (aw, I’m gonna mess her!) and turning Bishop into her prisoner-captain was some wonderfully creepy stuff.
Given what’s been set up, there’s no way this season doesn’t end with Mean Gideon creating some evil robot Legends to crew the ship and fight the real thing, right?
As for Batwoman this week: unnecessary secret keeping! Where, oh, where would the Arrowverse be without you?
Ryan keeping her messed up family stuff to herself, no matter how much drama it causes with Sophie, and actually threatens their whole Bat operation … like, if this was Season 2, where Ryan still disliked and mistrusted Sophie, I’d buy that. But so far this season, they’ve given no reason why this is something Ryan can’t possibly share.
It’s especially galling since this same ep has Mary (who’s the best) immediately go to the rest of the Bat Team when she thinks something might be wrong. Heck, she’d been trying to tell them something might be wrong earlier, but like Fry in Futurama: “No one believed her or cared what she had to say.”
Looking forward to what shenanigans Poison Mary and Alice get up to (and love how Alice casually brings up the “I killed your mom” thing).
Question of the Week: Which newspaper would you rather work for: CatCo under Andrea, or the Central City Citizen under Iris?