The Flash’s Final Season Begins Its Sprint
The Flash has become the Beeboverse’s longest running program & its last one standing. (Superman & Lois is set on another Earth that doesn’t qualify unless it confirms Beebo exists there as well.) It’ll be ending a year earlier than the first season said Barry would vanish fighting Eobard during Crisis On Infinite Earths, which also happened ahead of schedule. Maybe if The Flash film hadn’t been chronically delayed, WB would’ve insisted on axing the TV show earlier under its misconception that there can only be one? (The first trailer debuts this Sunday, yet I already feel like I’ve seen it?)
This will be the season’s shortest run at only thirteen episodes. It’s the end of an era as the real O’Shaugnessy’s bar has been demolished & are going extinct. (Or it’s the end of an error, according to the subset of DC fans that loathe the limitations of network television.) Will you speed-read through this to get to the SPOILERS? Sorry it’s not as exciting as fixating on Power Girl & Lois Lane. Don’t fret; I found a way to make The Flash’s final run all about Legends Of Tomorrow!
Season nine starts a mere week after the eighth’s season finale. The episode insists that’s February 1, but I suspect that doesn’t line up exactly. This date is the pretext for them to finally do a time loop episode. Well that & the tachyon battery the new Captain Boomerang is sent to steal from Kord Industries. Time loops are thematically consistent with boomerangs that miss their targets. The Flash’s take on Hedgehog Day isn’t as fun as Legends Of Tomorrow’s, but it’s much better than Arrow’s dull attempt.
After being sidelined most of last season (& even earlier), “Wednesday Ever After” is a strong Westallen feature. Not only do they spend much of the episode together, their marital unrest is fairly unique. Iris feels stifled by Barry compiling an index of future events gleaned from his encounters with time travel. He thinks these events must happen for them to have a future together whereas she resents having her choices be dictated to her. (She seems to be rejecting her future self’s decisions just on principle of strident anti-fatalism.) Refreshingly, both are kind of wrong. Just because Iris hasn’t made her decisions yet doesn’t mean someone else is choosing for her. The future is mutable enough, however, that these events aren’t necessarily the only ones that could lead to similar outcomes.
This conflict mirrors the meta issue that it’s difficult to get too invested when we know what’s in store for the future. That’s why I wouldn’t have been that upset if the series didn’t get this final season. (I don’t mean to be this salty, but . Did Taylor Swift kill LOT & Batwoman?) When Joe points out that his journal can’t say whether Iris is happy in this future, Barry burns the map book as an overture to his wife. Hopefully they won’t need its info to overcome this season’s threats. Westallen break the time loop by uniting against it. They’re a cute couple when the show remembers to give them scenes together. The CW never promotes the interracial couple at its heart either.
The 100’s Richard Harmon guest stars as Captain Boomerang II. This isn’t the first time Flash fought a Captain Boomerang, but this is the first time one has been on his series. (This is a sore spot for staunch The Flash fans even when you point out CB is a more evenly matched opponent for Green Arrow or that his most memorable appearances were in Suicide Squad.) I guess this is a silver lining to Captain Boomerang being killed off in The Suicide Squad, which was ironic since they killed Digger Harkness off in Arrow so his character could be in the movies. Owen Mercer is a different character than his illegitimate dad, but I’m not sure if that mattered to the counterintuitive embargoes of WB & DC. Sadly neither attempted an Aussie accent in the Beeboverse. Although Owen doesn’t have speedster powers like the comics, this version has teched-out ‘rangs to help justify why Barry doesn’t instantly vanquish him. Mercer’s snarky vibe is underused, but at least it looks like he’s coming back for more episodes.
Rather than go back to Iron Heights, Captain Boomerang Jr. detonates a nuke inside the portable particle accelerator he was thieving. Since he has a teleporter, this distraction is overkill. Barry vibrates the nuclear explosion out of phase with reality so nobody is even irradiated. Now that is a feat for someone with fleet feet!
Iris turns down Cat Grant’s offer to invest in Central City Citizen Media under the CatCo umbrella because she doesn’t want her media empire to piggyback off another’s. Instead Iris is taking an equivalent loan from to assimilate the floundering Coast City Gazette. (Natalie Dreyfuss is pregnant, so will that affect Sue being in the final season? If she doesn’t appear, will that mean they never have to bother recasting Elongated Man?) I wish they would’ve let Iris achieve stuff like this over the last two seasons instead of speedrunning it now. Barry finagles a promotion to head CCPD’s forensics, & I am shocked that it employs any other CSIs.
The ninth season premiere was a great episode, which circles back to an issue with The F-Lash as a whole. The season premieres are always solid. They raise my expectations only for subsequent episodes to sputter along, similar to his suits getting better to offset worse writing. (Season 4 is still my favorite costume though.) Maybe I’d feel more enthusiasm if this was lousy in hopes the remaining episodes would exponentially improve? I want this season to buck the trend by being all killer no filler, but I’ve been burnt too often before. I’m just going to expect Doom Patrol to end better.
The Flash’s shortened final season could easily devote ten episodes to wrapping up Legends Of Tomorrow & three for the Scarlet Speedster’s scant dangling plotlines. It basically just has to give Iris her first Pulitzer, have Iris get pregnant, explain why Caitlin-Frost is discount Illyria, reveal whom hacked Chester, put Allegra in Ultraviolet’s costume, recast Ralph Dibny, finally capture Rainbow Raider I & The Mist, pair up Chester & Allegra, set Kid-Flash up with Linda Park, marry Sue & Ralph, introduce Cobalt Blue, & show Thawne’s origin. That may sound like a lot, but not all of those need separate episodes. Anything else is just a victory lap. LOT’s writers can fill in the remainder with what they’d already planned out.
That is obviously not how season nine is going. The showrunner prioritized the wrong things when the episode order got cut down like Gotham’s last season. (That interview is unclear whether any of the cast will guest star or if they’ll just throw in a line about the team getting out of time jail.) Fans with good reason to hate The Flash’s writing will be relieved. On the other paw, none of the powers that be seem interested in giving LOT the send-off it deserves either.
Don’t give up the fight to restore the Beeboverse just yet though! Beebo need merch! Beebo should be a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade balloon! Every day is Beebo Day if you believe! Gideon/Gary & The Good Place’s Janet/Jason should double date. Even ghosts enjoy LOT! The ghost had already seen the last half of an episode before dying & was instantly sucked into the afterlife after finally watching all the LOT content currently available. If they’re not going to wrap it up in all the years before it actually goes into production (providing David Zaslav doesn’t screw over James Gunn too), Booster Gold’s forthcoming HBO Max series ought to star Donald Faison & resolve Legends Of Tomorrow’s cliffhanger. Follow LOT’s writers on CatChat!
Now here’s some speculation based on some forthcoming guest stars. The episode begins with a nightmare where Team Flash seizures out after thwarting Molten Clayface Tar Pit. Dreamer will help suss out how prophetic this actually is. Will Wally West finally meet Linda Park? I’d like to see them bring back Gorilla Grodd & Captain Cold. They’re running out of time for pre-death Abra Kadabra to turn Barry into a marionette.
feels like it’ll undermine Oliver Queen becoming The Spectre, so I’m thinking this may involve time travel, hallucinations, or the multiverse. (Elvis was The League Of Assassins’ DJ?!) They’re doing a major callback to the seies that had a real finale, & it probably won’t be to rescue his abducted son? So far there’s no hint the final prong of the DC TV Trinity, Supergirl, will also make a curtain call. An oficial WB Brazilian account confirms Supergirl is Lena Luthor’s wife. The red stitching on Supergirl’s first costume was there to reinforce it so it didn’t rip asunder whenever Melissa Benoist flexed.
Everyone assumes Red Death is Batwoman from the Dark Multiverse. It’s going to be hilarious when it’s just regular Ryan Wilder whammied by returning Rainbow Raider. (The stinger reveals Red Death is Captain Boomerang’s boss & tech supplier, so I may be mistaken… unless it already happened.) Although it makes sense for Batwoman to be the Beeboverse’s Red Death, it would’ve been cool if it was Sophie Moore since she was the only member of the Bat-team not to wear a supersuit.
Jessica Parker Kennedy adorably geeks out about XS in Earth-Prime. How are there no Nora West-Allen tribute videos scored to Rina Sawayama’s “XS?” Matt Letscher will probably be back for the belated origin of Reverse-Flash set in the future before he died any times in the past. Will they also reveal Thawne has been whisking away non-speedster rogues so frustrated Bary would need at least a whole episode to capture each?
Cobalt Blue sure is a name I’ve heard. For some reason I’ve been seeing tweets asking for this obscure foe for the past few seasons. (Those this mean The Twitter is likewise shoving my bizarre TV demands down randos’ feeds too?) He’s Barry’s long-lost evil twin with broad powers & no popular storylines to adapt. Didn’t we have enough evil twins in season three? The blue Negative Force crystal in last season finale makes folk think this is really happening. They also suspect Rick Cosnett’s return means he’ll also fulfill fan demand to portray Malcolm Allen Thawne instead of Eddie Thawne. Would retconning Eddie into having been Barry’s brother actually improve anything? Seems like they’d have to revamp him a lot to make him compelling in a limited span. There aren’t a many major foes left unadapted, but I still think developing the ones they’ve already established would be a better use of time. It’d be funny if the final run went all in on Red Death as The Big Bad to make this paragraph moot.
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Will I remember to blog anything else before the Quantumania collaboreview?
