Critical Hits & Misses #327

You, Mr. Yates, are a ridiculous rape culture-y muggle that needs to STFU

• This is why Hollywood is getting wrecked by all these sexual harassment scandals: because assholes like Fantastic Beasts 2 director David Yates still say dumb shit like this in defense of wife beaters like Johnny Depp and think it's perfectly okay to say dumb shit like this. *cough* Alleged wife beater, I guess. 


• The Arrowverse is a little less skivvy these days, now that the WB has fired Executive Producer Andrew Kreisberg for gross behavior towards women, in order go foster a safer and happier work environment for cast and crew. Good call, WB. 

For today's musical hit, we have Pitbull and "Por Favor"

Today's critical rolls: Did you watch the Arrowverse Crossover this week? If so, what did you think? If not, are you planning on watching it?

Critical Writ has a super-duper strict comment policy that specifies a single rule above all others: we reserve the right to ban you for being a terribad citizen of the internet.

Critical Hits & Misses #245

• The Mecca of pop culture is up this weekend: it's San Diego Comic Con, and we're getting a closer look at the Berlantiverse's new offering this year! Cress Williams talks to THR about his starring role in Black Lightning!


• One of the most infuriating things about wearing women's clothing is the lack of pockets, or even worse, the fake pockets that trick you into momentary excitement until you realize they don't even fit a finger. Have you ever wondered why women's clothing doesn't have pockets? Well prepared to be pissed off, because the answer is largely centered on sexism, capitalism, and politics.  

For today's musical hit, we remember Chester Bennington, lead singer of Linkin Park, who committed suicide this week. May you find the peace you did not find in this world, Chester.

Here's "Talking To Myself"

Today's critical rolls: It's Friday! What's on the agenda for the weekend?


Critical Writ has a super-duper strict comment policy that specifies a single rule above all others: we reserve the right to ban you for being a terribad citizen of the internet.

A Final Trip to 'Lian Yu' - Arrow S5 Finale

Yikes! "Lian Yu" was intense!

And no fooling, this was one of the best episodes Arrow has ever done, let alone one of the top for season five.

In fact, season five is one of this show's top seasons, harkening back to its strong foundations in season one. And speaking of season one, "Lian Yu" features the cameo returns of Malcolm Merlyn, Slade Wilson, and Moira Queen to Arrow.

Spoilers beyond the fold.

I actually missed a couple of reviews over the past few weeks, due to being involved in a car accident, so I apologize (I actually had people ask me on Facebook about the missing reviews). At this point, I'm not going to backtrack. Suffice to say that Adrian Chase has continued being the super genius bastard that he's always been, and that Team Arrow has never been able to keep up with him. In the previous episode before this one, Chase has, one by one, abducted the members of Team Arrow, as well as William, Oliver's son (and his mother, as we discover in this episode).

Thus, Oliver is in a bit of a pickle. Malcolm Merlyn also showed up in the Arrowcave last episode to offer help in getting Thea back. And Oliver ended up calling in another ally: Nyssa, his "wife." The sparks flew immediately between Nyssa and Malcolm as they growled at each other, and their verbal sparring continues in "Lian Yu" and it is great. Once on the island, Oliver picks up a couple more unlikely allies.

Awww YISSSS!

Happy to report that Slade Wilson was absolutely amazing (and that despite weeks of trolling fans about how he wasn't involved in this episode at all, Manu Bennett was indeed back and in awesome form). With the mirakuru cleared out of his system, Slade is sane again, and remembers everything he did under the influence. He wonders why Oliver didn't kill him for the execution of Moira Queen, and he's especially surprised when Oliver not only lets him out of ARGUS prison AND provides him with his gear, but also hands over a flash drive with information containing the whereabouts of Slade's missing son. You can almost see Slade softening, especially with the last.

Not gonna lie, Slade and Oliver fighting together again was a thrill I hadn't realized I was missing so very much.

This is a scene I didn't know I needed...

The other baddie Oliver picks up is Captain Boomerang, which he needn't have bothered, since the jackass turns on them almost instantly. Apparently Chase and his goons got to Boomerang first, but we don't learn that until Oliver rushes into an ambush and Boomerang pulls a gun on him. Slade appears to betray Oliver in that moment as well, but actually, he just proceeds to kick Boomerang's ass. Thankfully, Evelyn also gets her ass kicked in this scene, and put into a cage. And because Oliver is a much better person than I am, he promises to come back for Evelyn when Chase has been dealt with. Personally, I'd just leave the wench to rot on Lian Yu.

In other news, Ollicity is back on again!

Oliver sends Felicity, Curtis, Thea, and Samantha back towards the plane along with Malcolm as the pilot. The idea is that he wants to get the weaker members--Felicity and Samantha--safely off the island, and of course he wants his sister out of the line of fire. Despite Malcolm being Malcolm, he's certainly proven time and again that he will do whatever it takes to keep Thea safe, so I suppose he's trustworthy enough for this mission. Of course, the reunion between father and daughter is less than warm. Once again, John Barrowman and Willa Holland have fabulous chemistry together. They argue back and forth up until the moment there's a click and Thea freezes in place.

Yeah, how did everyone forget that Lian Yu is riddled with those stupid mines?

In a strangely heartbreaking scene, Malcolm shoves Thea off the mine and takes her place, and then tells them all to run away because Boomerang and some thugs are approaching.

Yeah, Malcolm freaking Merlyn sacrificed his life for Team Arrow (well, really for his daughter, of course). We see the explosion in the distance from Thea's point of view.

It's worth noting that while this is the comics genre and no one ever really stays dead, John Barrowman has thanked his fans for a wonderful five years. It sounds pretty final to me.

Oliver takes Slade and Nyssa to an old Chinese temple thing that's never been shown before in previous flashbacks of the island. Apparently that's where the rest of Team Arrow is being held. The three of them split up, with Nyssa going off on her own, and instantly Slade betrays Oliver and gives him up to Black Siren. But don't despair! It was all planned! Oliver wanted to get captured, because it gave him access to Dinah, and he gives her the collar that Curtis made for her that lets her focus her canary cry. It also allows her to break their chains.

Love me some lady assassins, NGL

What follows is a pretty awesome fight. We get treated to some beautiful fight choreography, starting first with an all-too-short fight sequence between Nyssa and her sister Thalia. Truly, if I have any complaint at all about this episode, or even this season, it's that we didn't get more of an explanation on why Thalia turns on her old student Oliver (yeah yeah, he killed my estranged father yadda yadda), and why Nyssa and Thalia seem to hate each other. I truly wish we'd had more development of the relationship between the sisters. There's some decent dialogue to that effect here, but still... I was left wanting so much more. These are two genuinely badass assassin ladies, and I am ALL about the assassin ladies of the world getting more screen time.

There's also a much larger fighter scene where everyone is fighting everyone: Dinah and Laurel have a canary face-off, Diggle gets to punch stuff, Slade and Nyssa fight more thugs, and ultimately, Oliver and Adrian face-off in their own apparent final battle. Once again, the fight choreography was phenomenal. Bonus points for Quentin getting the opportunity to knock Black Siren in the back of the head. And triple bonus points for Quentin insisting that Dinah be called the Black Canary.

It's worth noting that this giant fight scene in particular beautifully juxtaposes scenes with a flashback of the fight on Lian Yu between Oliver and Dolph Lundgren's Russian thug, just before Oliver's boat back to Star City is supposed to arrive. We keep switching back and forth between the flashback fight and the current fight, and instead of being jarring, this actually really works for the episode.

This is bad, right?

Ultimately, where in the flashback Oliver ends up breaking Kovar's neck and rushing off to catch his boat, Oliver has the chance to end Adrian's life once and for all, and he chooses not to. Which is a good thing because that's about when Felicity calls him and lets him know that the island is covered in c4 that is set to explode on a dead man's switch. If Adrian dies, the island gets blown up.

Nothing is ever easy for Oliver Queen. Nothing. Adrian won't tell him where William is, and he even suggests that he killed the boy, just to try to get Oliver to kill him (and thus everyone) too.

Ultimately, Adrian ends up escaping (because of course he does), and Oliver sends everyone to rejoin the rest of the team while he runs after Adrian. The team finds out pretty quickly that they are hosed, though, because Adrian sabotaged the plane, so it isn't going anywhere.

That freaking smirk! Josh Segarra, you are so good at making us hate you!

William is on the boat of course, and Adrian has one final card to play. Kill Chase, OR Chase will kill Oliver's son. Of course this was Adrian's plan all along: make Oliver make the impossible choice between his entire team or Oliver's son.

Jerk.

Okay, time for this jerk to die. Srsly. 

Oliver almost had his cake and eat it too. He manages a trick shot of an arrow that hits Adrian's foot and makes him let go of William, so Oliver grabs the boy. But our hero is not always the sharpest knife in the drawer, not to mention the fact he was in the process of freaking out about his son. So he fails to shove William behind him and then smack Adrian upside the head and knock him out, which would have been the obvious solution. Instead, he stands there shouting at Chase, while Chase plays his final final ace.

It's like the 4th of July up in here...

OMG the cliffhanger to end all cliffhangers! Who will live? Who will die? Is Oliver a single dad now?

Unfortunately, some of the suspense was killed by the recent announcement that Dinah and Rene are still series regulars in season six. Thanks, CW! Also, the showrunners have explicitly stated that Thea Queen will not be killed off, ever. So there's three right there that you know survived!

Still, in my opinion, the combination of excellent writing, amazing acting (Stephen Amell has come so far since season one, he was brilliant here), and gorgeous fight choreography, really made this the CW's best superhero finale this year, hands down. And really, looking back on the whole season, despite a few duds here and there, Arrow had the overall best season period this year.

We won't know until October how anyone on Team Arrow survives (if you want my opinion, Slade saves all or most of them by taking them underground to the ARGUS bunker). I have my doubts that Samantha, William's mother, survives. But even if she does, William now knows that his dad is the freaking Green Arrow, so there's that to look forward to next season.

I'm also loving the return of gruff, cool Slade Wilson as an ally of Oliver's. I kind of really hated him in season two when he was basically the villain out of Days of Our Lives (like literally, in a suit with an eyepatch), and Manu Bennett is on record as saying he didn't care for the way Slade was written in season two either. I expect that Slade will disappear to find his own son, but that we can expect him back for cameos. I like the idea of a somewhat enigmatic antihero Slade Wilson at large.

Besides Nyssa and Thalia not having enough screentime together, my only complaint is that Moira Queen didn't have as much screentime either as I would have liked. But Susanna Thompson was still heartbreaking and fabulous as Oliver's mother when she receives that phone call from him as he is leaving the island. I love her so much.

I almost quit watching Arrow after the trainwreck that was season four, but I'm glad I stuck with it. The showrunners and writers really stepped it up a notch, and it was worth it.

What did you think of the finale? Let us know in the comments!

See you in the fall, everyone!


Ivonne Martin is a writer, gamer, and avid consumer of all things geek—and is probably entirely too verbose for her own good.

Staggering across the "Finish Line," - The Flash Season Three Finale

Whew! I don't know about you guys, but after this season of The Flash, I am exhausted! I feel like I ran a marathon and I'm just now staggering across the "Finish Line," which not incidentally, is the name of the season three finale.

So let's wrap up The Flash, and now that you've seen the finale (or read about it here), also be sure to head on over to check me out as I step up on my soapbox about superheroes never getting a happy ending, and how that trope kills the marginalized.

But first... the finale.

Spoilers beyond the fold.

"Finish Line" doesn't leave us guessing on the fate of Iris West for long. I'll be honest: while I didn't really think they would kill her off, there was a part of me that had my doubts. Call it the cynic in me, because as I noted in my soapbox piece, the trope about superheroes never getting a happy ending usually results in women and people of color being killed off. Iris is both of these, so she was in danger of falling into the trap of this trope.

Thankfully, the Berlantiverse may have learned from the fan rage after Arrow killed off Katie Cassidy's Canary last season. As we learn immediately, HR used his Earth-19 face magic thingie to turn himself into Iris. We actually see a flashback of him using the piece of Savitar's armor to find the secret lair, turn himself into Iris and Iris into himself, and then Savitar recapturing "Iris." So when Savitar gets stabby, he's actually stabbing HR.

No, HR. You are not a coward.

HR has not, by any means, been my favorite Wells. But I admit to feeling sadness at his fate, if only because he proved that he loved this team and that he had a hero's heart all along, even though he scanned as a coward for a good part of the season. However, I am perfectly ready for Tom Cavanagh to come back next season as an all new Wells. Or maybe just return to Harry from Earth-2, since it appears Harry will be sticking around for a bit after this episode. Also, I'd like to point out that this sort of falls into that whole annoying "no happy endings allowed!" trope I'm going on about today. HR and Tracy had just fallen in love, so it seems kind of crappy to rip them apart.

But anyway, Savitar prevents Killer Frost from killing Cisco, because he needs Cisco to go all sciencey and modify the speedforce cannon. Back at base, Barry remembers that Leonard Snart told him that the key to defeating Savitar once and for all is for Barry to not stoop to Savitar's level and to always remain the hero. Thus, Barry calls for Savitar to meet up with him, and offers him the chance to be saved from the impending time anomaly that will result in Savitar's being erased from existence, since HR effectively managed to change the course of time by saving Iris.

Yeah baby, caress my burns...

Despite apparently being touched by Iris' kindness, Savitar/Evil!Barry doesn't really buy into it. This scene is notable only for the fact that Devoe, aka The Thinker, is name dropped for the second time this season. So, definitely the big bad for season 4. Thank Dog it's not another speedster!

Also of note here, Julian appears after being absent for a while, and reveals that he and Caitlin's mom developed a gene therapy cure to bring Caitlin back for good as the non-meta she's always wanted to be. This was actually the moment that I knew we wouldn't be getting human Caitlin back and that we were most likely looking at Frost (aka, the metahuman that isn't evil like Killer Frost). I'm actually quite happy about this, because I never accepted the narrative that Caitlin was incapable of both being a hero and a metahuman. The idea that cold powers make you cold inside is silly.

Guys! I made a thing!

Anyway, Savitar knows that time is catching up with him, so he makes Cisco modify the speedforce canon to do some major pseudo-science technobabble-laced nonsense. Something about splitting Savitar into an infinite number of himself, so that he can exist in every moment in time and truly be a god, and truly be above time anomalies and other such banal concerns. Whatever. I can't believe Evil!Barry fell for the idea that Cisco might actually help him do something like that.  When Savitar uses the speedforce canon, it instead somehow pops Jay Garrick out of the speedforce prison, along with more technobabble nonsense about how that happened. Reversing polarities on something or other is a Star Trek thing, guys! Get your own technobabble!

Also of note: Gypsy showed up to save Cisco's life, because he somehow vibed his distressed across the multiverse. They make a cute couple, not gonna lie.

After Garrick pops out of the prison, what follows is a pretty awesome CGI sequence that suggests the CW has been investing money in this show. Savitar getting chased by Barry, Wally, and Jay is a really cool sequence, and one of the most enjoyable parts of the episode. It was over way too quickly.

No foolin', one of the coolest fight scenes I've seen on this show, ever

When this chase is over, Barry and Savitar face off, and Barry has had it! He, much like the audience, is sick of it all. He does a really cool move where he races and phases into the Savitar armor, shoving Evil!Barry right out of it. The armor actually changes color, and if you want my opinion, it looks a lot more menacing when Good!Barry is in it. Also, cooler.

I'm not actually sure how the hell this happened, but it was super cool. 

Barry ultimately shatters the armor and lets his evil remnant live, because the time anomaly is about to finally catch up and erase him anyway. Evil!Barry knows his time is up, so he makes one last push to get his vengeance: his bumrushes Barry, who like an idiot had his back turned.

Then the show's real hero shows up.

That's right, bitches. The real badass has been hidden in plain sight the whoooole time

Iris, honey, if you could do this all along, why the hell haven't you been your own hero?

Not gonna lie, it was really satisfying for Iris to be the one to save Barry, for once. Interestingly, they don't bother with any emotional fallout for Iris, considering she just shot a version of him in the back. Back at the apartment after he's just delivered their save-the-date notices, Barry asks her if she's okay with what she just did. Iris says she's sure it will hit her later. But for the moment, she's totally fine. She has zero angst about killing, despite the fact that Barry has wrestled with this moral question time and again for all three seasons.

For just a glimmering moment in time, we had a version of Iris that wasn't a helpless victim. It was nice, and I really want to see more of it. I have always lamented that the really badass version of her is the cop Iris on Earth-2, and she seemed to embody that doppelganger here. Can we keep her? Please?

Happily, not only did a black woman not get fridged for a white man's journey through mainpain (a rare occurrence, to be sure), but she was also given the opportunity to be a hero.

Caitlin has become someone else... something else (#sorrynotsorry)

Caitlin has decided not to use Julian's gene therapy to become non-meta. She gives it back to him, and says that she needs time to figure out who she is now. For the moment, she has exited off of Team Flash, but I doubt she will be gone for long. Like I said earlier, I'm pretty giddy about having Frost now, so I'm looking forward to her return.

So, all's well that ends well, right?

Oh, sweet summer child.

Of course not! This here is a superhero story, and remember... superheroes can never be happy! There are no happy endings! Thus, when Iris and Barry are trying to settle down and think about wedding stuff, the speedforce erupts into Central City, because the forced expelling of Jay Garrick out of the speedforce prison means there's an imbalance in the Force, or something. No one took Jay's place, so the gaping hole means the speedforce is going to wreck Central City in return.

Barry accepts his fate: he created this problem when he created Flashpoint, so now he must pay the price. Of course, that means Iris pays the price as well.

I'm not cryin', you're... oh hell, fine, I'm cryin'

The romantic in me cried, but the rest of me was pretty angry. Once again, trumped-up drama is used to deny a happy ending. Never mind Barry, none of this is fair to Iris, who apparently must also pay the price for Barry's boneheaded decisions.

I mean, I know, and you know, and everyone knows, that Grant Gustin is way too popular to be exited off this show. So look for Barry to come back in episode one of season four, or episode two TOPS. I would be really surprised if they dragged this on any further than that.

But until then, Kid Flash, Harry Wells, Cisco, Joe, Iris, and possibly Tracy will have to be the Team Flash that keeps Central City in one piece.

A Mark Twain quote seems particularly appropriate for HR

Thanks for sticking with Critical Writ for your Arrowverse reviews, and tune in tomorrow for Arrow season five's finale. Iris West wasn't fridged, so here's hoping Felicity Smoak won't be either.

See you in the fall for The Flash's return.


Ivonne Martin is a writer, gamer, and avid consumer of all things geek—and is probably entirely too verbose for her own good.

"Infantino Street" - The Flash S3 Penultimate Episode

ALL the feels were trotted out for this episode, which is the penultimate episode of the season and finally gets us to the day Iris is supposed to die. The episode tracks the last 24 hours of her life, and not gonna lie, the format (counting down those last hours) was kind of brutal.

But there was a lot to love about this episode before we get to that faithful moment of time.

Spoilers beyond the fold.

So, as we left off last week, Tracy's trap is ready to go, except for one teensy little detail: it needs a massive power source. Right, so that's the goal in this episode.

"Infantino Street" starts off with a montage (brilliantly set to Aurora's "Murder Song (5, 4, 3, 2, 1)") that shows what Team Flash is up to 24 hours before Iris dies. In terms of cinematography, audio and music usage, and overall atmosphere, this episode is easily one of the best of the season.

And I have to admit, it's one of my favorites overall simply because the main part of it brings back one of the best characters in the Arrowverse: Leonard Snart, aka Captain Cold.

So Cisco discovers that ARGUS has the power source they need, but when they ask Lyla for help, she refuses, saying that the Dominator technology could be used as a mega weapon in the wrong hands, and that because of Flashpoint, she can't trust Barry with it. Man, is Barry ever going to live that down?

Look, Lyla, dude... I know we look goofy, but please, can we have the macguffin? Pretty please?

Of course Team Flash isn't going to take no for an answer. They need a master thief, which is how Barry ends up in Siberia in 1892, which is a callback to one of Legends of Tomorrow's better episodes in season one, to talk to Leonard Snart. Why go all the way back to 1892 (and by the way, how the hell did Barry know to go to this moment in time)? Well, because in 2017 Snart is dead of course, since he sacrificed his life for the Legends. So Barry needs a Snart that has been influenced by the Legends enough to be helpful, but that isn't yet dead.

Snart can't pass up the challenge of stealing from ARGUS, so he agrees, as long as Barry agrees to do things his way. Already this episode is awesome, but watching this moment, I was waiting for it to become seriously epic.

And spoiler alert, it was everything I could have wanted from a Captain Cold episode. I can't begin to tell you how much I desperately miss Wentworth Miller's snarky thief.

I think I cried more in this episode over this guy's inevitable death than over Iris'...

The ARGUS break-in was boss. Grant Gustin and Wentworth Miller have great chemistry together, and this whole break-in sequence was fabulous. When they get to the cell where the Dominator thing is located, they find a final obstacle: King Shark is in the cell as well, as a sort of guard dog. Barry is willing to kill King Shark and asks for Cold's gun, and that's when Snart realizes that part of the reason he was recruited was that Barry wanted someone there who wouldn't judge him for doing whatever needed doing. Even if that means killing.

But this isn't just any Snart. This is the Legends version, and by this point in season one of Legends, Snart has softened significantly from his badass self and is well on the road to becoming a hero. He suggests that instead of killing King Shark, they use his gun's cold thingie to put the shark to sleep. Not gonna lie, my heart swelled at how amazingly awesome Snart was here. And it made me remember how much I cried at the penultimate season one finale of Legends of Tomorrow. 

Anyway, nothing is going to be easy about this heist, so as soon as they grab the thing, the door starts to close. Barry manages to slide under, but Snart gets trapped in the cell with a waking King Shark. Snart tells Barry to just go and leave him behind, but Barry refuses. He sticks around long enough for Cisco to hack the door, but by the time Snart is out, Lyla and a bunch of ARGUS agents have shown up. But Lyla saw the whole heist, and she also saw Barry selflessly risk everything to make sure Snart lived. So she decides that Barry is responsible enough to have the macguffin, and lets him keep it.

Back in Siberia 1892, Snart and Barry share a final moment. Snart gives Barry some advice: being the hero is the only way to save Iris and defeat Savitar, not getting down to Savitar's level. And then as they part ways, Leonard says the line: "There are no strings on me."

In case you don't remember or don't watch Legends, that was Leonard Snart's final line when he dies. ALL the feels were happening in this moment, when I was watching "Infantino Street." I was definitely misty-eyed.

Thanks, bro. You da man...

Sidenote: back during the Dominator Arrowverse crossover, one of the Legends said that Snart had died because Barry had inspired him to be a hero. At the time I was like lolwut? because it seemed to me that Snart had made the heroic journey on his own during season one of Legends, and that his sacrifice had been more about his best bud Heatwave than anything else. The Arrowverse crossover seems like it happened a long time ago, but it was really nice to see them actually tie all of this together. It appears that this moment, with King Shark and Barry choosing to nearly sacrifice everything just to save him, really did inspire Snart towards heroism.

Anyway, so now the team has the thing. During the course of the episode, a few other things had transpired: HR had asked Tracy to join Team Flash and she accepted, and Wally and Joe took Iris to Earth-2 without Barry knowing, so that Savitar couldn't find her. There was also a brief scene where it seemed like Killer Frost was having second thoughts about everything, but Savitar tells her to play her role.

So right before Barry returns, Savitar tricks Team Flash (and specifically HR) into revealing where Iris is, and ends up nabbing her on Earth-2 and bringing her back to Infantino Street, where everything is going to go down.

Aww jeez... not this shit again...

So anyway, HR is horrified that it's his fault that Savitar has Iris. And during the final fight, when Barry uses the gun, it doesn't work. Tracy is watching from afar and thinks that the trap failed, that she failed, but really the only reason it didn't work was because Savitar had the Philosopher's Stone in his hand. The stone is how he got out of the speedforce trap in the first place. Killer Frost and Vibe are having their final battle as well.

And we are once again treated to the scene of Iris dying as Savitar gets stabby with her.

Yeah, I don't even know how this is going to be undone or dealt with next week.

I've harped time and again this season about how the entire overreaching arc has been the death of Iris, and yet Iris herself has been remarkable absent from a good chunk of this. She has been treated as much like a macguffin as the Dominator thingie was in this episode.

That said, the few scenes Iris had in this episode were fabulous, once again reaffirming my belief that Candice Patton is a desperately under-utilized resource for this show. I think one of my favorite Iris scenes ever will be when she and Joe, sitting in Earth-2, confess things to each other about the past. Iris confessing that she and Barry switched rooms as teenagers so she could be out past her super strict curfew is the cutest thing ever. And the video Iris leaves on Barry's phone in case she does die, is worth a few misty-eyed moments.

This show is based on comic books, where no one dies permanently except Uncle Ben. I stand by my belief that Iris isn't going to die, although she seems pretty dead by the end of this episode. I don't know how it will be undone, but I still think it will be. We'll see if I'm wrong next week, I suppose. But honestly, this killing of every person Barry loves, in the penultimate episode of every season? It's old and tired and it's a trope that needs to die in a fire. Here's hoping this is where it dies for good.

What do you think will happen next week? The trailers for the final episode are cryptic and don't give anything anyway (as it should be), so here's to endless speculation!

The Flash airs on Tuesdays at 8/7c on the CW.

Ivonne Martin is a writer, gamer, and avid consumer of all things geek—and is probably entirely too verbose for her own good.

Cause & Effect - The Flash Recap & Review

Almost as if The Flash crew reads my reviews, "Cause and Effect" immediately answers the gripe I had in my review of last week's trainwreck reveal of future Flash being Savitar.

I'm getting serious whiplash from the constant good/bad quality change of these episodes. I kind of really hated last week's episode, mostly because of the reveal, but then "Cause and Effect" ended up strangely satisfying for an episode that seemed to be mostly intended as filler before we hit the final two.

Spoilers beyond the fold

As I noted above, my gripe with the Savitar reveal is almost instantly dealt with as this episode opens right where we left off last week: Barry is confronting his future self. But as it turns out, Savitar explains exactly who he is, and he's not our Barry. Turns out he's the only surviving time remnant of a group of remnants future Barry pulls together to stop Savitar. All but the one dies, but because it's a time remnant, supposedly Iris and Joe and Cisco and everyone rejects it because it's not the real Barry. Left alone and angry and in pain, the time remnant would eventually become Savitar, as it realizes that gods don't feel pain, so clearly the answer is to become a god.

There's a lot of Back to the Future style explanations by Cisco and Barry to try to explain to the other characters--and the audience--how a future time remnant becomes Savitar and then goes back in time to make himself a Hindu god, etc etc. Whatever, the point is that, as with "The Once and Future Flash" episode a couple of weeks ago, "Cause and Effect" is just making the point that Barry becomes dark and angry if he doesn't have the loving support of his friends and family. The Flash is nothing without his team, and without their love to sustain him, he becomes not just emo and broody, but eventually outright evil.

So I don't have to be upset anymore, I guess, because my Barry, the one I have loved for the past three seasons, doesn't murder Iris. Can Nazi Cap be a time remnant too?

Anyway, in this episode, Cisco comes with a truly hair-brained idea to try to keep Savitar from knowing all their moves. See, Savitar knows everything they do now, because he has all of Barry's memories, so anytime they do anything, Savitar knows it. Cisco conceives of an idea to temporarily block Barry's ability to remember things going forward, just so they stop feeding Savitar information.

Raise your hand if you think this sounds like a terrible idea.

This is a terrible plan: The Team Flash Story. #TheFlash

— Kayti Burt (@kaytiburt) May 10, 2017

It's a terrible idea. Cisco isn't the brain specialist of Team Flash, Caitlin is. With her gone, of course this plan goes completely awry. Barry loses all of his memories. He doesn't even know his own name, let alone that he's engaged to Iris or that he's even The Flash. Inexplicably, the team doesn't even tell him he has superpowers.

What have we done?

This is actually a pretty adorable episode. Grant Gustin gets to stretch his Barry personification a bit here, as he plays an innocent and sweet and super happy Barry who doesn't even remember that his parents were murdered. He is childlike in his joy, but of course his lack of memory also poses some hilarious problems for the team. (and that moment when Wally tells Barry that they are brothers, and Barry looks down at his own hand to check his skin color).

One of the other effects of Barry losing his memories is that Savitar also loses his memories completely, so Killer Frost shows up at STAR Labs because she knows what these idiots have done, and she tells them they shouldn't have messed with Barry's brain without Caitlin around. Truth.

Anyway, Killer Frost ends up helping them get Barry's memories back in working order. During the time she's at STAR Labs, Cisco attempts to bring Caitlin back with some pleasant memories, but it doesn't seem to work. As she's leaving, though, it appears that there is an internal fight going on inside Killer Frost between her and Caitlin, judging by the changing eye colors.

I am still making this decent episode look good. 

While it was nice to see Iris had, you know, actual lines in this episode, and she was in more scenes, as usual, The Flash is completely under-using her. And as usual again, she ultimately serves to be emotional support for Barry. In this episode, she spends her time with Innocent Barry, and later on suggests that maybe it wouldn't be a bad thing for him to remain this way, because he's so happy and unburdened. Later, when he gets his memories back, she still has to support him emotionally. Meh. That would be fine, if she was allowed to do other stuff too.

There's a subplot with Tracy trying to figure out the Savitar trap, and ultimately she finishes building it with HR's "help." There's a budding romance here, too, which I don't mind terribly, because it's made HR much more endearing than he has been for most of this season.

NGL, kinda loving her Ghostbusters look here. 

 I'm sure we won't have Tracy around after this season, which is a shame, because she's actually quite delightful and quirky, and of course she is a super intelligent scientist that Team Flash could really use more of. I'm not sure if HR is going to stick around for next season, but if he does, I hope that means we see more of Tracy as a recurring character as well.

The episode ends with Tracy stating that her Savitar trap needs a major power source, and the last scene of the episode shows a thing that for some reason, King Shark is guarding. So I guess we know what's going on next week!

Overall, a cute and enjoyable episode that while being mostly filler in the larger story, did serve to move along character development and open up the possibility of bringing Caitlin to her senses.

There are just two episodes to go before the season ends. Tell us what you think of this and of the coming finale!

The Flash airs on Tuesdays at 8/7c on the CW.

Ivonne Martin is a writer, gamer, and avid consumer of all things geek—and is probably entirely too verbose for her own good.

Prometheus sends Arrow "Underneath"

Honestly, is Prometheus the best villain this show has ever had?

I mean people talk a lot about Deathstroke, but Prometheus has been nothing short of terrifying. This guy didn't even show up in last night's "Underneath" until the last five seconds of the episode, and he was still terrorizing Team Arrow while being totally off camera the entire time.

Spoilers beyond the fold.

So last week Helix had given Felicity one more little bump in her quest to find Prometheus, just as they cut her loose. It was supposed to be some kind of high tech tracker thingie, but just as the episode ended, there was an explosion that sent Oliver and Felicity flying back. Oops.

"Underneath" picks up right where that one left off. The explosion wasn't that bad, but the power is totally out and Felicity knows right away what happened: an EMP was set off. How does she know? Because the high-tech chip in her spine that allows her to walk is no longer functioning and she can't feel her legs.

Well, crap.

This is apparently the episode that was promised to us by the whirlwind interview spree Wendy Mericle went on right before Arrow came back from spring break. Mericle did promise that Ollicity would work itself out, and that there was a reason why we never saw Oliver and Felicity discuss their relationship and break-up in any meaningful way. Well "Underneath" is the episode where that finally happens, and you Ollicity haters may be groaning right now, but the episode was surprising well-written and phenomenally well-acted. Considering there was very little action beyond Oliver being an idiot and falling for booby traps Prometheus had left behind, the episode really kept me engaged. Nor was the romance stuff overly heavy-handed or mushy. There was also a sense of urgency overall, because the Arrowcave is airtight and pretty much a nuclear bunker, so without power, Ollie and Felicity would run out of air within a few hours.

As it turns out, after the end of season four and apparently before the beginning of season five, Curtis slyly arranged for Oliver and Felicity to have a one night stand, and it was kind of sweet and adorable. But afterwards, Felicity tells him that she's not ready to discuss what happened yet. So I guess here we are, ready to discuss!

Ohhhh, mmmmyyy!

I don't talk very often about the actual craft of filming with the CW shows, but I feel like Arrow deserves special mention in this episode. Considering the entirety of the show, save for a few scenes, happens inside the confines of the Arrowcave, the cinematography and clever framing (like the love scene above and the use of the wine bottles in the foreground) was phenomenal here.

The camera only leaves our trapped heroes a few times, to show that Team Arrow has become aware of the plight of Oliver and Felicity, and they are doing whatever they can to get their fearless leaders out. But Prometheus' stupid traps make that difficult, especially after one of Oliver and Felicity's attempts from the inside releases methane gas from a pipe.

Anyway, I am also happy to announce that the marriage problems that John and Lyla started having last week did not drag on until season end! Despite Diggle having a bug up his butt for a lot of this episode, he finally realizes that Lyla is doing what she thinks her job requires, and that he kind of does the same thing for Team Arrow. In case you care, they do end up working it out by the end of the episode. I kind of didn't, because it was trumped-up drama of the kind Diggle is famous for every season, but I also understood that in this case, it was very much running parallel to the story of Felicity accusing Oliver of not trusting her (over Helix). Lyla accuses John of the same thing.

Ultimately, during a scene when Oliver thinks he's going to die, he admits to Felicity what happened in Prometheus' dungeon and that he thinks he is a monster because he "enjoys killing." If you regularly read my reviews, I did mention back during that review that I had no idea what the hell I, as an audience member, was supposed to do with the revelation that the titular hero has a taste for killing. Well thankfully, Felicity lets all of us off the hook here, as she points out that Chase had just tortured Oliver for a week without end, so Oliver would have admitted to damn well anything just to make it stop.

She's not wrong. This is the same argument that people use to point out that the US torturing terrorist subjects doesn't work because when you torture someone, they are liable to say whatever you want to hear, if it means the pain will stop.

Ultimately, Felicity still believes Oliver is a good man, and that there's a reason she's always trusted his plays, even when his decisions seem questionable. She wants the same consideration from him, even as she has gotten just a tiny inkling of the personal toll his sacrifices and decisions have had on him, now that she has made similar choices.

I think this means Ollicity is back on? Maybe? I'm not sure. There was a lot of emotion for sure in this episode, and as usual, Stephen Amell and Emily Bett Rickards have fabulous chemistry together. It is a little sad, though, that the writers seem incapable of having Felicity shine by herself (as in last week's episode where she breaks with Team Arrow over Helix). She seems to do best when she has Stephen Amell on the screen with her (or back in the day when she used to have more crossovers with Grant Gustin from The Flash, another leading man she had fabulous chemistry with). I don't honestly know if that's a shortcoming of the writing (which I suspect) or of Emily Bett Rickards herself.

As I noted earlier, the larger-than-life Josh Segarra does make a short appearance in this episode, in the final scene, and the result is nothing short of chilling. It's not really surprising that Prometheus would make this play in the final episodes of the season... but it's still freaking terrifying.

Why yes, that is Oliver's son William he's talking to.

Arrow airs on Wednesdays at 8/7c on the CW.

Ivonne Martin is a writer, gamer, and avid consumer of all things geek—and is probably entirely too verbose for her own good.

Dangerous Liaisons - Arrow Review

Arrow, you have failed this hacker.

Last night, as Arrow returned from a month-long hiatus, and after much hype, so hype yes, a bunch of lines were crossed and the result was kind of a snoozefest. Not to mention that Felicity finally gets a chance to "shine" as the focal character, and what we get is... kind of really disappointing.

Spoilers beyond the fold

Oh man, in the weeks leading up to the airing of "Dangerous Liaisons," the hype was real. If you don't normally keep track of this sort of thing and just show up to watch the episodes as they air, you might have missed the many interviews that Wendy Mericle and other people involved with Arrow had as they made the rounds discussing the dark path Felicity Smoak would be taking. And of course, how Oliver would have to confront her, and be there for her.

Not gonna lie: I fell for the hype hook line and sinker. I was so excited about Felicity getting a decent and cool story, although considering how little time the show spent exploring her motivations to go on this journey, I should have known better. Don't get me wrong, this season has been a startling about-face after the train wreck that was season four. But all I ever wanted this season was for Felicity to have a solid story that didn't involve her romantic relationship with Oliver. There's been this thing in the back of my mind throughout that has asked why Felicity went and did the things that she's done. I mean sure, Prometheus set up her boy toy to be killed by her former fiance. And Prometheus has done a lot of damage to her teammates. But Felicity didn't seem to spend a great deal of time grieving the dead boyfriend, or the betrayal of Artemis, and she didn't even seem all that broken up by how Prometheus has been playing Oliver like a cheap fiddle this WHOLE time.

Oliver: "Please don't do the thing."
Felicity: "But you would do the thing. That's why I fell in love with you."
Oliver: "Yeah , I know it's hypocritical, but don't plz."
Felicity: "Fite me."
This episode in a nutshell 

In fact, it kind of seems like the real reason Helix was so attractive to her was because a) Alena kind of hero-worshipped her, and b) Helix was providing Felicity with a means to feel useful to Team Arrow with all the information they were getting. Which, frankly, seems like some weaksauce reasoning to "cross lines" like hack the DHS and a myriad of other illegal activities, ultimately leading to Team Arrow getting caught up in making ARGUS look like fools in this episode. I mean, I get the need to feel useful, but it could have been done better than this.

But if lazy motivational and nebulous writing is the eyeroll-worthy part of Felicity's storyline this season, then the most egregious sin is probably the fact that the culmination of this entire thread came down to "Dangerous Liaisons" being nothing short of boring. We were lead to believe she would be going down a super dark path, and that she would "need" Oliver. And perhaps the latter might still play out in the remaining four episodes, because this one literally ends with a bang.

I'm not going to recap "Dangerous Liaisons" in great detail. The important thing to know is that Helix uses Felicity to obtain two security keys from ARGUS, which they need in order to release a super hacker that ARGUS has been keeping locked up. There's a good deal of espionage and shadow play, despite the fact that Alena and Felicity are two of the most goofy black ops agents ever (and they are quite adorable together, no foolin', although I never trusted that Alena girl. Couldn't trust her on The Magicians either).

Don't laugh. We're srz bizness hackz0rz, ok?

Oliver asks Felicity not to go through with the thing, but she does the thing anyway. And the thing is to rescue the inexplicably faceless hacker from ARGUS' shipping crate (sidenote: good lord, Lyla, even STAR Labs has more humane imprisonment-without-due-process facilities. An empty shipping crate that they sit in the dark in, tied to a chair? The hell? What is wrong with you? Even Lian Yu would have been better). Team Arrow tries to stop the thing from going down, but ultimately fail and Helix gets away with the super hacker. Sure, Felicity helped Helix do it, but she didn't do anything worse than fake-threaten Oliver. Nobody but a bunch of Helix-hired thugs died during the operation. And at the end, Helix cuts Felicity loose, because her connection to "Team Arrow is a liability" (IMO now that they have the super hacker, they don't need her anymore. Kind of a dick move). Helix did give Felicity a thing that was supposed to help her track Adrian Chase down, but the episode ends with the thing exploding in her and Oliver's face, so we'll see where this goes next week. Prediction: Helix will be next season's big bad.

If you ask me, the only person crossing inexplicably terrible lines in this story was Lyla, and her and Diggle arguing about it were ten times more compelling than anything Felicity and Oliver were doing. Bonus points for Diggle accusing her of becoming Amanda Waller lite. Although four episodes before the end of the season seems like the wrong time to introduce a new plotline for Diggle (his marriage may be ending over Lyla's ARGUS work). If you're thinking Diggle is a hypocrite, you're right, but he, like Oliver, was willing to admit that and to suggest that he knows the cost of going dark.

All in all, a mediocre return after a long hiatus, and an especially mediocre end for Felicity's Helix plotline. I desperately want her to have epic character development, and this simply wasn't it. If the previews for next week are any indication, we've circled all the way back around to Felicity and Oliver becoming romantically involved again. Don't get me wrong, I am an Ollicity shipper myself, plus I was really really angry by the ridiculous way the writers ended their relationship last season. At the very least Ollicity fans deserved some closure, if not outright making things right again. But I am not satisfied by the path Felicity has taken to get back to Oliver. She's had a whole season to grow as a person, and yet I feel like the opportunity for her story was kind of squandered.

One thing "Dangerous Liaisons" did do right was the side plot involving Quentin and Rene. Okay, when the heck did these two characters become so awesomely entrenched in each other's lives? Rene helped Quentin out earlier in the season, and last night, Lance returns the favor by butting into Wild Dog's business and forcing him to confront his daughter Zoe. All of their scenes together were a spot of genuine beauty in an otherwise mediocre showing.

How did this guy become the glue that holds this show together?

In case you missed the news recently, Arrow has upgraded Rick Gonzalez (Wild Dog) and Juliana Harkavy (Black Canary) to season 6 regulars. This is in addition to the news that Katie Cassidy is also back as Black Siren. I am okay with all of these things, but especially Juliana Harkavy, because Black Canary is fabulous and she's being criminally underused right now!

This is my "FUCK YEAH, BLACK CANARY, BITCHES!" face

Arrow airs on Wednesdays at 8/7c on the CW.

Ivonne Martin is a writer, gamer, and avid consumer of all things geek—and is probably entirely too verbose for her own good.

The Once & Future Flash - Recap & Review

OMG the feels! The emo!

This episode of The Flash has it all! Get ready for an emotional rollercoaster of Flash proportions, with bonus vertigo from the freaks-of-the-week!

Spoilers beyond the fold

After a somewhat mediocre season with only a few highs, The Flash returns from spring hiatus after 4 weeks, and it did so with a bang (a flashbang, even #sorrynotsorry).

We begin with a quiet scene at Iris and Barry's place wherein she extracts a promise out of him that he will be there for her father if she dies. This is pretty central to the rest of the episode, so take note of that. It's also worth noting that this is pretty much just one of two lines that Iris has in this episode, because "The Once & Future Flash" is all about how her death makes all the men in her life feel.

Sigh. More on that later.

So this episode picks up right where the last one left off: Killer Frost is awake thanks to Cisco and Julian. When Barry gets to STAR Labs, she's cornered the crew. It's worth noting that she doesn't actually kill anyone, which may suggest there's still some of Caitlyn in her. She ends up running off.

That's the moment when Barry announces that he's leaving. Who with the what now? But as it turns out, Barry's plan is to travel to the future to ask his future self Savitar's identity, so that he can figure out how to defeat the big bad. As Barry points out, he can travel to the future and be back without any time really passing in the present.

He ends up eight years into the future, in 2024, in what appears to be the darkest timeline. Central City looks rough, covered in litter and possessing the same dreary greyness that seems a permanent fixture over in Star City. When Barry pops into the alleyway, he is almost immediately confronted by Top and Mirror Man, and proceeds to get his ass kicked, until he manages to scurry off. The villains tell him that Central City is theirs now, and they seem pretty surprised that Flash is around again.

Barry ends up at this penthouse apartment that in the present he lives in with Iris, and the place is trashed. That's where 2024 Cisco finds him, having sensed something or other. Anyway, as Barry discovers, his future self is a hot mess of emotastic proportions, complete with an awful greasy hairdo, and a total lack of care.

Barry. Dude. No. Just no. 

Future Barry disbanded Team Flash after Iris died, and sequestered himself inside STAR Labs after kicking everyone out. Cisco lost a fight with Killer Frost in which she freezes his arms and shatters them, so he's lost his powers because he's got cybernetic hands now. Killer Frost was caught, but she's imprisoned and Julian is apparently spending his time studying her and still trying to figure out how to get Caitlyn back. Wally went apeshit after his sister died and tried to take on Savitar by himself, and whatever happened, he had a broken spine and ended up in a vegetative state afterwards.

Y u do this to us, Flash? :(

And Joe West... if none of this other stuff has caused you to cry, the sight of Joe West placing a few sad flowers at Iris' grave will break you. Jesse L. Martin's performance is nothing short of amazing here, especially when 2017 Barry finds him at the grave, and Joe asks him why he's there now, after so long of not being there.

I just can't with this scene, it's heartbreaking...

Despite having to sit through all this sadness, Barry doesn't even get what he's there for. His future self doesn't know Savitar's identity, and he tells him to go back and enjoy the last remaining moments with Iris, because he will fail to save her no matter what. And while Killer Frost admits that she knows Savitar's real identity, she is clearly not going to tell him. So after much sad, Barry decides he needs to get the hell out of there and go back to his own time, because goddamn we need some sunshine. But Cisco, sad lonely desperate Cisco, prevents him from doing so, begging him to fix things in 2024.

Despite the fact that if he does change the future, the darkest timeline won't even happen, 2017 Barry decides he can't abandon these people like 2024 Barry did. He gets the team back together so that they can help him defeat Top and Mirror Man, and ultimately even 2024 Barry is moved enough to help.

Sidenote: I kind of hate HR Wells in this. He's the only one who seems to be thriving in 2024. He owns Jitters now, and he's a bestselling romance novelist. He is busy doing a reading while a bunch of beautiful women throw themselves at him. I'm glad when 2017 Barry cockblocks his threesome by whisking him away to STAR Labs to rejoin Team Flash. Wells initially complains about how Flash just interrupted "every man's greatest desire" aka the threesome, which actually seemed like a pretty gross line to me. Honestly, Wells and Julian do precisely jack shit to help either Flash defeat Top and Mirror Man, so maybe Barry should have left HR to his thing. I guess I'm also just salty that everyone else on the team is super sad and messed up and damaged, but somehow this clown is successful and glowing.

Epic slimeball

Sidenote: there are various fan theories out there that HR is actually Savitar, which I call bullshit on because there's a future vision where Wells is on the rooftop while Savitar stabs Iris. There's a more plausible (to me anyway) theory out there that HR is actually Abra Kadabra, who folks are speculating may be next season's big bad. While Wells-is-secretly-evil has been done before (and probably better, with Eobard Thawne), I'd be ok with HR being a villain, since I am kind of tired of him being around. They need to find a better character for Tom Cavanagh.

Anyway, after Team Double Flash take out Top and Mirror Man pretty easily, 2024 Barry reveals the identity of the physicist who helps him trap Savitar in the speed force four years after Iris dies. He also gives 2017 Barry a thing that apparently contains the physicist's notes and schematics for whatever it is they use to defeat Savitar. So in theory, Barry can track down this scientist in 2017 and maybe defeat Savitar early enough to save Iris.

Back in 2017, Killer Frost and Savitar meet up, and we get the reveal that Savitar's armor is just that: armor. Someone steps out of the armor, and the minute Killer Frost sees who it is (which of course, we don't), she's ready to trust him implicitly. Let the fan theories run wild, because the number of people Caitlyn trusts that easily are very few. The top theories I've seen out there is that Savitar is either Ronnie Raymond (which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me), or some version of Harrison Wells (based on the fact that Savitar calls Killer Frost "my child," which is an awfully paternal thing to say).

Soooo, there you have it. The darkest timeline.

Let's discuss Iris.

I'm pretty sure that The Flash isn't going to kill her off this season, but we had to deal with her being fridged anyway in this episode, in order to explore all the manpain you can possibly handle and truly develop Barry's character. In fact, the existence of this episode suggests that she definitely won't be killed off, because the show desperately wanted to fridge her in some way so we can explore manpain, but they manage to cheat with time travel shenanigans so they don't actually have to kill her. They are getting the mainpain development for Barry & Co. out of the way right now. I suppose I should be grateful that they aren't going to kill her off for realsies.

I don't mean to suggest this episode is terrible. In fact, it's actually phenomenally well-acted, and Jesse L. Martin (Joe West) is particularly poignant, rivaled only by Carlos Valdez's (Cisco) performance. But as a feminist and a woman, it's hard not to roll my eyes at yet another use of the tired fridging trope. Across all fiction, across all genres, male character development very often comes at the expense of a woman's life, and usually gives her a gruesome death on top of that, for maximum manpain. Candice Patton was barely on the screen at all this episode, and neither was Danielle Panabaker, because while Killer Frost is apparently relatively important to the main plot, we still get very little of her.

So overall, a strong episode and one that moves the plot along nicely, and it was definitely fascinating to see this dark future, and heart-warming that 2017 Barry is still infused with enough light in his soul to reignite the hopes of the battered team in 2024.

One of my few complaints, besides the whole Iris thing, was the missed opportunity to make a Terminator reference out of 2024 Cisco's hands. But hey, I guess not even Cisco can laugh about the darkest timeline...

The Flash airs on Tuesdays at 8/7c on the CW.

Ivonne Martin is a writer, gamer, and avid consumer of all things geek—and is probably entirely too verbose for her own good.