The Flash: We Are the Flash
May 22, 2018 7:40 PM - Season 4, Episode 23 - Subscribe
In the Season 4 finale, Team Flash gets help from a surpassing ally in their battle against DeVoe.
Well, that was a hell of a thing.
I'm not sure where to start unpacking. I'm glad DeVoe is gone, although I liked Neal Sandilands performance. He was great at portraying a bitter, petty madman as we saw him slide into evil. The Thinker's whole plot didn't gel for me in the end and it felt like he changed motives midway through the season and the show pretended the Enlightenment rebooting brains was his intention all along.
I'm glad Marlize got her happy ending but she should probably be on trial for all of the murders she helped commit, but then again this show doesn't seem to treat murdering metahumans as an actual crime. No wonder the X-Men are so pissed about mutant rights.
Yay for Ralph returning safe and sound. The battle in the center of DeVoe's mind stuff was weird even by this show's standards, but it's clear they saved the CG budget for the big brawl so I'd say it was worth it.
I think we all guessed that the mystery girl was Barry and Iris's daughter from the future (and I'm glad Iris isn't already pregnant; we just had a wacky pregnancy storyline this season) and I'm wondering what her mistake is. Imagine if daughter Nora says "Mom, Dad, I'd like you to meet my boyfriend Eobard." I said that to someone Twitter and the reply was "TAKE THAT BACK". I win again, Flash.
posted by Servo5678 at 5:10 AM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]
I'm not sure where to start unpacking. I'm glad DeVoe is gone, although I liked Neal Sandilands performance. He was great at portraying a bitter, petty madman as we saw him slide into evil. The Thinker's whole plot didn't gel for me in the end and it felt like he changed motives midway through the season and the show pretended the Enlightenment rebooting brains was his intention all along.
I'm glad Marlize got her happy ending but she should probably be on trial for all of the murders she helped commit, but then again this show doesn't seem to treat murdering metahumans as an actual crime. No wonder the X-Men are so pissed about mutant rights.
Yay for Ralph returning safe and sound. The battle in the center of DeVoe's mind stuff was weird even by this show's standards, but it's clear they saved the CG budget for the big brawl so I'd say it was worth it.
I think we all guessed that the mystery girl was Barry and Iris's daughter from the future (and I'm glad Iris isn't already pregnant; we just had a wacky pregnancy storyline this season) and I'm wondering what her mistake is. Imagine if daughter Nora says "Mom, Dad, I'd like you to meet my boyfriend Eobard." I said that to someone Twitter and the reply was "TAKE THAT BACK". I win again, Flash.
posted by Servo5678 at 5:10 AM on May 23, 2018 [3 favorites]
I'm glad Marlize got her happy ending but she should probably be on trial for all of the murders she helped commit, but then again this show doesn't seem to treat murdering metahumans as an actual crime.
I think collateral damage when tech shopping was high enough that he killed more normies than metas.
I actually sorta liked the win by putting Ralph back in charge, though it brings up the rather horrific prospect that DeVoe basically killed every one of those people whose body he snatched twice; the first time with the brain-sucker, then again later in their own minds. I wonder if the special effects team got a discount for re-using the Neo/Agent Smith fights from Matrix Reloaded?
So is Ralph basically a Super Skrull at this point? Presumably he's still got all those other powers too, right? Including the power-snatcher ability. Seems like that can't be allowed to be the case though it would certainly cut down on the number of folks you'd have to keep in your pipeline gulag.
posted by phearlez at 11:53 AM on May 23, 2018
I think collateral damage when tech shopping was high enough that he killed more normies than metas.
I actually sorta liked the win by putting Ralph back in charge, though it brings up the rather horrific prospect that DeVoe basically killed every one of those people whose body he snatched twice; the first time with the brain-sucker, then again later in their own minds. I wonder if the special effects team got a discount for re-using the Neo/Agent Smith fights from Matrix Reloaded?
So is Ralph basically a Super Skrull at this point? Presumably he's still got all those other powers too, right? Including the power-snatcher ability. Seems like that can't be allowed to be the case though it would certainly cut down on the number of folks you'd have to keep in your pipeline gulag.
posted by phearlez at 11:53 AM on May 23, 2018
I'm actually pretty sure that Iris is pregnant, she just doesn't know it yet. There seemed to be a lot of lampshade hanging when Iris was so emphatically like "Oh no not anytime soon. Just someday" as far as having a kid. I think Barry was supposed to die taking out the satellite (hence why we had that line from Marlize saying that it should kill him), and that part where everything reversed was Nora's "big mistake". She altered the timeline to save her dad and it has now caused unexpected and unfortunate repercussions in the future, like her very own flashpoint. So yeah, Iris is pregnant with Nora now. In Nora's original timeline, Barry died and she was raised by her mother.
posted by katyggls at 11:56 AM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by katyggls at 11:56 AM on May 23, 2018 [4 favorites]
So is Ralph basically a Super Skrull at this point? Presumably he's still got all those other powers too, right?
I'm betting not, and I'm betting the technobabble involved is this: minus DeVoe's [super intelligence|high tech maintenance|whatever], the additional dark matter in his body is fading back down to normal Ralph levels.
posted by mordax at 12:32 PM on May 23, 2018
I'm betting not, and I'm betting the technobabble involved is this: minus DeVoe's [super intelligence|high tech maintenance|whatever], the additional dark matter in his body is fading back down to normal Ralph levels.
posted by mordax at 12:32 PM on May 23, 2018
I'm betting the explanation is that he transferred whatever powers he could into the chair, so we saw Kilgore's power in the chair, but he couldn't activate the other powers because... it's a floating chair..., so all that was gone when Marlize took out the power thing (?). Or perhaps Ralph's own mind doesn't have Brainstorm's power to hold the other minds, he also doesn't have their powers. Which, I admit, is weak, because that would mean DeVoe transferring current consciousnesses/minds into a new body shouldn't also bring their powers, which is a physical thing, into the new body.
But that's minor stuff in a very problematic season. I'm just glad it's over and he's done with.
Nora Allen is going to be fun though, I'm actually excited for next season now, no matter how wacky the time-travel logic is going to be.
Also, this would've the one time that I wish Barry would time travel back and prevent DeVoe from ever doing all this. Like, seriously, this is baby Hitler level of time travel necessity.
I wonder if the special effects team got a discount for re-using the Neo/Agent Smith fights from Matrix Reloaded
I had this exact same thought! Like even down to the way the Smiths/DeVoes flies away as Barry and Ralph rushed through them is the same as when Neo flies through them.
posted by numaner at 5:46 PM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
But that's minor stuff in a very problematic season. I'm just glad it's over and he's done with.
Nora Allen is going to be fun though, I'm actually excited for next season now, no matter how wacky the time-travel logic is going to be.
Also, this would've the one time that I wish Barry would time travel back and prevent DeVoe from ever doing all this. Like, seriously, this is baby Hitler level of time travel necessity.
I wonder if the special effects team got a discount for re-using the Neo/Agent Smith fights from Matrix Reloaded
I had this exact same thought! Like even down to the way the Smiths/DeVoes flies away as Barry and Ralph rushed through them is the same as when Neo flies through them.
posted by numaner at 5:46 PM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
Blech. That was terrible. I'm just glad it's over.
We all knew Ralph was coming back and that he'd regain control over his body, so that wasn't even a surprise waiting to happen.
I will admit to being surprised that Team Flash had a discussion about calling in their Arrowverse colleagues. You should have done that ages ago as you were dealing with an extinction-level event. (Yes, I know comics and super hero shows don't work that way, but come on, in this case it should have been everybody coming out to fight DeVoe. I mean this wasn't just some two-bit hoodlum taking over Star City.)
I just want to know that if DeVoe was smart enough to figure that he might have to be digitally preserved and revived in the chair and he was smart enough to assume that Marlize had the potential to betray him, why he didn't have the smarts to figure she might just pull the plug on the chair.
As for the whole power of love quest as mordax described it, I just had no time or patience for that at all.
And absolutely Nora's mistake was rolling back time and helping Barry with the satellite. Remember when Iris had the speed, her light trail was purple, and it was a purple-streaking speedster that aided Barry. So Nora inherited Iris' claim on the speed force (for lack of a better way to phrase that).
I am curious how they've tied (or are going to tie) Wells into the speed force, but I doubt they'll even get around to dealing with that plot thread next season.
I have no idea what they are going to do next year (although I read there will be a big crossover, despite what they said in the past) but I don't have a lot of faith that it will be any good. I don't think the Flash team really gets what we liked about this show and what we didn't.
A recent interview with the executive producer indicates that he thinks he's got it all figured out, but he doesn't realize that this was a terrible season and nothing they did to "humanize" DeVoe helped make it a better one.
"I think up until now, the Reverse-Flash, to me, was probably our best version of a villain, but the reason for that is because we got to know Thawne as a man. He was Harrison Wells all season, he had an easy want. It was just, “I just want to go home,” right? With DeVoe, we got to see this love story and this evolution of a couple and how, at one point, you see where this whole idea originated for the Enlightenment, and how technology and ideas can get corrupted, and that parallels this relationship with Marlize and Clifford. Any time you can humanize your villain, it makes it land a lot more, so it’s not so much about the powers and what a metahuman has — if they’re speedsters or not, or if they’re just this amazing computer mind that the Thinker has — but I think it’s more about telling a human story that’s gonna land with the audience. So that is certainly something that we’ve taken into account for the next season, and we are going to probably be more in that lane."
posted by sardonyx at 7:12 PM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
We all knew Ralph was coming back and that he'd regain control over his body, so that wasn't even a surprise waiting to happen.
I will admit to being surprised that Team Flash had a discussion about calling in their Arrowverse colleagues. You should have done that ages ago as you were dealing with an extinction-level event. (Yes, I know comics and super hero shows don't work that way, but come on, in this case it should have been everybody coming out to fight DeVoe. I mean this wasn't just some two-bit hoodlum taking over Star City.)
I just want to know that if DeVoe was smart enough to figure that he might have to be digitally preserved and revived in the chair and he was smart enough to assume that Marlize had the potential to betray him, why he didn't have the smarts to figure she might just pull the plug on the chair.
As for the whole power of love quest as mordax described it, I just had no time or patience for that at all.
And absolutely Nora's mistake was rolling back time and helping Barry with the satellite. Remember when Iris had the speed, her light trail was purple, and it was a purple-streaking speedster that aided Barry. So Nora inherited Iris' claim on the speed force (for lack of a better way to phrase that).
I am curious how they've tied (or are going to tie) Wells into the speed force, but I doubt they'll even get around to dealing with that plot thread next season.
I have no idea what they are going to do next year (although I read there will be a big crossover, despite what they said in the past) but I don't have a lot of faith that it will be any good. I don't think the Flash team really gets what we liked about this show and what we didn't.
A recent interview with the executive producer indicates that he thinks he's got it all figured out, but he doesn't realize that this was a terrible season and nothing they did to "humanize" DeVoe helped make it a better one.
"I think up until now, the Reverse-Flash, to me, was probably our best version of a villain, but the reason for that is because we got to know Thawne as a man. He was Harrison Wells all season, he had an easy want. It was just, “I just want to go home,” right? With DeVoe, we got to see this love story and this evolution of a couple and how, at one point, you see where this whole idea originated for the Enlightenment, and how technology and ideas can get corrupted, and that parallels this relationship with Marlize and Clifford. Any time you can humanize your villain, it makes it land a lot more, so it’s not so much about the powers and what a metahuman has — if they’re speedsters or not, or if they’re just this amazing computer mind that the Thinker has — but I think it’s more about telling a human story that’s gonna land with the audience. So that is certainly something that we’ve taken into account for the next season, and we are going to probably be more in that lane."
posted by sardonyx at 7:12 PM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
A recent interview with the executive producer indicates that he thinks he's got it all figured out, but he doesn't realize that this was a terrible season and nothing they did to "humanize" DeVoe helped make it a better one.
Ohmygoodness.
*facepalm*
Hearing that they think any of this actually worked is very disheartening, and gives me little hope for S5 being any good. Everything about DeVoe was borderline unwatchable, including the resolution. I have no idea how they think they humanized that abusive murder-happy fuckwit with their nonsense plot.
More than that, I deeply object to the Hollywood 'smarts vs heart' dilemma. In my experience, the two traits are not at odds - I believe that if I were dumber, I'd have considerably less emotional intelligence.
At any rate... guess I'll be tempering expectations about next time.
posted by mordax at 7:39 PM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
Ohmygoodness.
*facepalm*
Hearing that they think any of this actually worked is very disheartening, and gives me little hope for S5 being any good. Everything about DeVoe was borderline unwatchable, including the resolution. I have no idea how they think they humanized that abusive murder-happy fuckwit with their nonsense plot.
More than that, I deeply object to the Hollywood 'smarts vs heart' dilemma. In my experience, the two traits are not at odds - I believe that if I were dumber, I'd have considerably less emotional intelligence.
At any rate... guess I'll be tempering expectations about next time.
posted by mordax at 7:39 PM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
Well, I liked that we finally got a name and confirmation that that girl is a time traveling Flash kid. I look forward to that plot. And that Wally showed.
Really can't say I got much of the rest of it though. I must be dumb like Harry. Or zoning out a lot by now.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:31 PM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
Really can't say I got much of the rest of it though. I must be dumb like Harry. Or zoning out a lot by now.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:31 PM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
Well, speedsters do run in the West line.
posted by Karmakaze at 9:41 PM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Karmakaze at 9:41 PM on May 23, 2018 [1 favorite]
And uhh they never addressed the circles language that Barry wrote when he came out of the speed force and Harry somehow learned when he got dumbed down. I can handwave enough to understand why the former happens, but why would the latter? Dark matter is still involved but a bunch of metas have dark matter in them, at some point one of them would've gotten brain injured enough to start writing that stuff down.
Eh well I'm actually ok if they leave it unresolved because I don't care enough at this point.
posted by numaner at 9:48 PM on May 23, 2018
Eh well I'm actually ok if they leave it unresolved because I don't care enough at this point.
posted by numaner at 9:48 PM on May 23, 2018
Way too much exposition for a finale and the heart vs. head dichotomy is infuriating.
I was sure that mystery daughter from the future was going to defeat DeVoe because there he couldn't predict the appearance of someone from the future. Oh well. So now we've got a daughter potentially repeating her father's mistake by going back in the timeline to prevent a parent from being killed?
Barry swinging Ralph around to club all the DeVoe clones was very inspired.
posted by plastic_animals at 11:41 AM on May 24, 2018 [4 favorites]
I was sure that mystery daughter from the future was going to defeat DeVoe because there he couldn't predict the appearance of someone from the future. Oh well. So now we've got a daughter potentially repeating her father's mistake by going back in the timeline to prevent a parent from being killed?
Barry swinging Ralph around to club all the DeVoe clones was very inspired.
posted by plastic_animals at 11:41 AM on May 24, 2018 [4 favorites]
Ha! I've never seen the Matrix and wasn't aware of that fight scene.
posted by plastic_animals at 12:51 PM on May 24, 2018
posted by plastic_animals at 12:51 PM on May 24, 2018
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I'll admit I am curious to know what Nora did. (I sort of hope her terrible mistake was saving Barry.)
posted by mordax at 11:09 PM on May 22, 2018 [1 favorite]