“Armageddon” is a lonely crossover event for The Flash
Barry Allen is a man without a headquarters, a team, and a crucial memory
TV Reviews Flash
The above image is a bit misleading, although the CW press site is partly to blame for playing up the return of Cress Williams as Black Lightning in this second installment of the so-called crossover “Armageddon.” I decided to stick with it as the main image even though Williams doesn’t appear until the 59th minute of the episode, because it really sums up what an anti-event this is turning out to be. “Armageddon” may end up being a decent story arc of The Flash, but why pretend it’s something more than that?
Yes, we’ve had cameos from other corners of the CW-verse. (It seems weird to keep calling it the Arrowverse more than a year after the end of Arrow.) We get one early in the episode by Chyler Leigh as Alex Danvers a.k.a. Sentinel, representing the recently departed Supergirl. She reappears later in the episode to let us know Supergirl and the Martian Manhunter are both off-world. The big guns won’t be helping Barry this time, as he learns when he shows up at the Hall of Justice to find what looks like an abandoned museum of some long-ago Age of Heroes. Only Black Lightning is around to answer the call.
As a crossover event, it feels empty. But this story is really all about Team Flash anyway. We’ve already done “evil Barry of the future,” but we’re doing it again with a different spin. Despero has given Barry seven days to prove he’s not the destroyer of Earth (a promise that goes out the window pretty quickly). He claims that Barry will start to go mad the following day, so Team Flash decides that all he has to do is not go mad and that will be the end of the threat. Frost commissions an anti-Despero weapon from Chester, who complies despite being a pacifist. (Just as an aside, Chester’s tale of how he became a pacifist sure feels like it should be a much bigger trauma in his life than the throwaway treatment it’s given here. He burned down his friend’s family’s house and almost killed them? And this is the first we’re hearing about it?)
The source of Barry’s impending madness appears to be new meta Zotar, a telepathic thief who uses her powers to drive a security guard insane. She zaps the Flash, causing him to go nuts on the West-Allen loft, nearly frying Chester in the process. Even before that, things have begun to go badly for Barry. He’s stripped of his badge due to an investigation that appears to point to him as the inside man at CCPD for Black Hole mastermind Joseph Carver. STAR Labs is shut down due to a radiation leak that the internal sensors failed to detect. The team has to take their valuables and seal off the rest of Flash HQ, dumping all computer files, including (sob) Gideon.
But the biggest revelation is yet to come, even though hints have been dropping since last week’s premiere. Cecile and Jenna have been having a hard time lately…why? Kramer, in the course of suspending Barry, muses about what Joe would do if he was here now. But it’s not until the Flash has subdued the Zotar threat (by creating lightning in his body through vibrating individual cells, another new “leveled up” ability) that we learn what’s really going on. Joe West is dead and Barry won’t accept it.
If that’s not bad enough, TV news footage of the Flash attacking City Hall with his lightning is the proof Despero needs that Barry has gone mad. His attack is thwarted by Chester, allowing Barry to escape to the Hall of Justice. But questions remain: I almost can’t believe I’m writing this, but what if Barry is right and everyone else is wrong? I know this goes against everything we’ve learned about Team Flash over the years, but perhaps he really has leveled up. After all, Jesse L. Martin is still in the opening credits. It’s not too much of a leap to suspect someone has been messing with the timeline, especially with the Reverse-Flash due to reappear soon. On the one hand, it’s a shame that Barry hasn’t been able to get much help from the other super-folk this time around. On the other hand, that may be because his true emergence as a leader is at hand. We can only hope.
Stray observations
- The POV “madness” shots, with the rest of Team Flash looking haggard in unflattering lighting, were an effective touch.
- The one-off meta villains keep getting less interesting. Zotar might have been the least-developed one yet.
- I’m sure STAR Labs will be restored eventually, but having the team operate out of garage with jerry-rigged equipment is a fun change of pace.
66 Comments
I highly doubt that Joe is dead (Jesse Martin deserves a proper send-off), and it would be remarkable if they kept it. I suspect Reverse Flash is behind all of this; it’s too perfect not to be him. Despero is a bit annoying in his insistence, and his self-righteousness, which isn’t how I want the character to be portrayed. But this is still an effective crossover, even if they won’t call it that.
Agreed; all the mess going on is too specific to Barry for it not to be another Thawne-in-the-side ploy, possibly also duping Despero.
For me the real OOF moment this week was the last line: “Injustice.” Just say it’s been a crappy week like a regular person, Barry.
Maybe “Injustice” is the Justice League code word for “I think I’m in danger of turning evil and the rest of you guys might need to take me down,” because they all know about the Injustice video games.
I seem to recall that when they first announced this crossover, they said Reverse-Flash and Damian Darkh would be in it. Not sure why they would bring back Damian when Legends of Tomorrow gave him a perfectly good ending where he had turned over a new leaf and willingly returned to Hell for the sake of his daughter, but if RF is messing with the timeline, I guess anything’s possible.
If last week’s over-used term was “leveled up,” this week’s used-too-much word was “insane.” Nevermind the baggage that can come with overusing that word… is there somebody in the writer’s room using some sort of anti-thesaurus? Hopefully they can do more updating to STAR Labs when they return. If the Arrowcave could get a new design every season, the STAR Labs can spring for a coat of paint or some new paneling once in a while.
“Barry it looks like there’s an alien who can drive people insane”
“I think the best course of action is to find the alien, go in with no backup, and stop for a conversation before running directly at her”Never change, Barry Allen.
And do it twice.
Shades of the Damien Darkh season of Arrow, where Oliver had something like 3 or 4 pointless skirmishes with his invulnerable opponent in a dozen episodes, got his ass handed to him every time, and never came up with a plan other than “We have to find him, and stop him!” until somebody finally suggests taking away the thing that makes him unbeatable. (Man, that was a long season.)You’ve got meta-cuffs that disable basically any superpower. Why hasn’t anyone (like the tech genius/pacifist Chester P. Runk, for example) made a meta-blocker that can be launched from a drone, or a meta-netgun so metas can be incapacitated without having to get so close?
(I know, I know: because then there’s no show. But still!)
But at least that season had Neal McDonough. Which is more than Season 6 had, lol.
– Just to note, the closed captioning spelled it “Xotar.”- I had to laugh when the officer guy talked about sealing away STAR Labs in concrete and demolishing it as if that would take two or three days. Shit, if that happened in real life, you know full well it would take a decade minimum to fully demolish the building.
– It blows me away that STAR Labs, STAR FUCKING LABS, doesn’t have an encrypted cloud server they can use as a backup to everything, including Gideon. Also, wasn’t Gideon shown to be portable in an emergency in a previous season?- What exactly is Kara doing offworld? Is this supposed to take place before Supergirl’s finale? Did the Flash writers not get told that Kara would become EiC of CatCo?
– Deep cut: Chester name drops Granville Woods, the first African-American inventor and engineer after the Civil War and held over 50 patents, including a new telegraph system between train railway systems.
– Given that Jesse Martin is signed onto Season 8 and that he’s still in the opening credits, it’s fairly safe to say that Joe is going to be revived at some point, likely at the end of the event.
– Wasn’t there a BTS photo showing Alex in full Sentinel gear? As much as Alex annoys me, I hope that’s not the extent of her crossover.
– So, they explain why Kara and J’onn can’t help, but not why Clark is MIA (besides the obvious)? Or why Alex doesn’t send over Dreamer and Brainy, who would actually be more equipped to deal with Flash’s “madness.”- BTW, something to keep in mind with this event, Despero wasn’t supposed to be the guy hunting Flash originally. The showrunner stated he had someone else in mind, but COVID turning this from a proper crossover to a Flash-centric event meant scaling things down. He hasn’t said who the villain was supposed to be in case they can use him sometime down the line.
And Xotar is a classic Justice League of America villain:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons_Master
What exactly is Kara doing offworld? Is this supposed to take place before Supergirl’s finale? Did the Flash writers not get told that Kara would become EiC of CatCo?I mean, there’s no reason Kara can’t be off world as long as she manages her time with her job? More likely her becoming EiC and revealing her identity is just such a big bombshell to drop as a throwaway line in the middle of a small cameo, they decided to write around it until Melissa Benoist can properly guest.
Kara is on Argo City enjoying a much needed vacation with her parents before starting up her job as the new CatCo EiC.Alex is in the promotional images as Sentinel. I wouldn’t be surprised if she shows up in the last episode for the big throw down against Thawne (because of course Thawne is responsible for all of this).
Oh, sweet summer child, believing Kara gives a moment’s thought to her parents once they’re out of her sight. She found out her mom was alive back in Season 3, and by all appearances, has had zero contact with her since then.
At bare minimum kara facilitated Clark and Lois’s trip to Argo in season 4, and she did call right before it blew up in Crisis.
and when crisis was over kara did make sure argo was ok but honestly since then we haven’t gotten a mention of argo from kara not until her dad showed back up. raven does make a good point. as far as we know kara hasn’t seen her mother since season three. for all intents and purposes kara probably just flew to see argo but didn’t land on it when crisis was over
“but not why Clark is MIA”He and Lois are too busy successfully pretending the rest of the Arrowverse doesn’t exist.
I figured Joe was dead last week. For Cecile to be having a hard time meant it was either Joe or the baby and even at its darkest I don’t think the Flash is a dark enough show to bust out “the baby died off camera between seasons”.Anyway I feel like this is all gonna undo itself but I almost hope it doesn’t, since as mentioned those shots where Barry is losing it are really good. And a running plot about him having to cope with Joe’s death and having a mental break could be good.
Yeah, it feels like that thing that US network shows love to do: use the early few episodes (and the finales) to show us how interesting the show could be if they messed with the formula, while they think they have people’s attention, then immediately revert to the fixed formula for plot-of-the-week episodes for the rest of the year.House was the worst for this. Every year they’d tease fans with ‘I know it’s stale, but wouldn’t it be interesting if we did THIS!?’… and then a few episodes in they’d go ‘but we’re not going to do that, we’re going to reset everything now’…
It’s got to be a bad sign that last week’s comments contained more than one along the lines of “Is Joe dead? Did that happen? I don’t think that happened, but I don’t remember for sure.”
Honestly it made me Google to see if Jesse L. Martin had died and I missed the news somehow
Well, they’re sticking with Barry’s perspective including “lost time” and all, which helps build paranoia. It’s effective so far. Yeah, the “crossover” event aspect of this is really just this season’s frontloading of cameos. It’s building. If Barry is going to assemble a team in, say, episode 4, then it follows that they’ll be fighting a team of bad-guys. It feels similar to a Legends plot – someone is time traveling and fucking with Barry hardcore. The real juice for a crossover next year or beyond would be to get Doom Patrol and some of the Titans over here. Have ’em curse like always & just bleep it out. Then replay it on HBO Max with the language back in … Barry would be offended by the f-bombs, but I bet Iris and Frost could throw down some burn-your-ears-off obscenities.
I think Crisis on Infinite Earths laid down that even in the new multiverse, Doom Patrol and Titans (and Stargirl) are on different Earths.Doesn’t necessarily rule them out, especially since Barry himself, solo, was the first person to breach the old multiverse. But it does mean they can’t just walk in.
Cliff Steele is not suitable for network televison. His dialogue would be bleeped so much people would think the Emergency Broadcasting Network is cutting in.
It’s The Beeboverse, Grodd damn it!
After showing off that he can think faster than a telepath last week, Barry lets himself be whammied by another.
Not really that big of a deal to me to lose Star Labs. Feel kind of like the knights deciding it was okay not to go to Camelot in Monty Python & the Holy Grail. “It’s a silly place.” Surprised it would mean that much to Caitlin—didn’t Ronnie die there & Cisco at least once? Am upset to lose Gideon, though not as much as if Legends lost their version of Gideon. (I wonder if they couldn’t get Morena Baccarin to do the voice any more?)
Considering how many supervillains just waltzed into S.T.A.R. despite it being a super-secret meta-team base, it was probably only a matter of time anyway. But it doesn’t really add up that Chester, who’s still nursing an inferiority complex about his place on the team, just says “Oh hey, looks like our radiation detection has been busted for months, wonder whose job it was to physically inspect that?” (Or, for that matter, that Barry believes Joe has been alive for six months but can’t remember a single thing they did together that would prove it.)
There is a lot in this episode that really does not make sense, which I take it is probably part of the mystery, but is perhaps not ideal storytelling since it is very difficult to get any bearings right now
It seems weird to keep calling it the Arrowverse more than a year after the end of Arrow.Why? It’s still the show that “birthed” their universe. And, I feel like people have said this multiple times by now, it’s more apt now to call it Arrowverse because Oliver literally created the current version of the universe at the end of Crisis.
Reviewers trying very hard to push that CW-Verse nonsense never fails to irritate me. Like you said, it’s even more so the Arrowverse now. I wish they would stop trying to erase Ollie.
-HI ALEX DANVERS!-you’re going to construct a concrete sarcophagus for the radioactivity at STAR Labs and demolish it a week later? I know there’s a suspension of disbelief for all these shows, but it would be a lot easier if Chernobyl wasn’t in pop culture so much for the past few years. you! can’t! demolish! the! sarcophagus!-Despero is really trying to make sure Barry goes mad by psychic-stalking him.-there’s a Gideon that isn’t voiced by ALP?!?!-I hope Joe stays about as dead as Sara Lance. hey, at least Legends accidentally(?) gave us an in-story reason for why they can’t turn up and help.-HI JEFFERSON PIERCE!-starting to feel like they overhyped the crossover aspects to reel sad Black Lightning/Supergirl fans back in.
Flash’s Gideon has always been voiced by Morena Baccarin.
!! that’s very cool and I’m mad at myself for not realizing.
Would have been great to see Flash Gideon take human form like on Legends. Just for Armageddon. Having Monica on for five nights. Seeing Chester get all tongue tied.
Seriously? I always thought they were the same voice.
Flash’s Gideon was first! And has never been British!
I know. I have been watching from the beginning. I just never paid much attention to the voice.
‘”hey, at least Legends accidentally(?) gave us an in-story reason for why they can’t turn up and help.”’Actually if the Legends do turn up? As of the latest episode its been established that there is an evil gideon creating her version of LMDs which are also clones… Some of which are the Legends themselves. So they won’t necessarily be there to help if theyre the bad ones.
Despero’s monologue was just so over the top. With all of the turn arounds combined with camera cuts. Drama much?
“That’ll never happen.” *cough*Savitar*cough*
Seriously, it’s way too late to hook up Caitlin or Frost with someone.
Cecil is having a rough time. Are they trying to fake us out with Joe being dead.
So Kramer actually has a good grasp on the rules, UNLIKE EVERY OTHER COP IN THE ARROWVERSE.
Why didn’t Barry go to the guy as the Flash? That way no one would question him being there if they saw him.
Were we not supposed to understand that guy? Because all I heard him saying was a bunch of mumbling.
The reactor is leaking and the detection system is corroded? Seems like a long con set-up by Thawne.
Awwhttp://www…I was hoping for Psy. But it is nice to see Kandyse McClure. Pretty sure that’s her. Doesn’t show up on IMDB.
Barry doesn’t seem to learn from his mistakes. Take her out BEFORE she knows you’re there.
So Joe is dead.
“Injustice?” Stargirl cocks an ear.
I don’t know what the writers were going for with the “Injustice” line. I guess what’s happening to Barry and his friends qualifies as an injustice, but there was surely something that made more sense ie. “I think I’m going crazy.” It’s also not, as far as I can tell, a reference to either the Injustice video game or the Injustice Society.
Didn’t realize that was Kandyse McClure! At least she seemed to be having fun with the role, thinly written though it was.
‘”Why didn’t Barry go to the guy as the Flash? That way no one would question him being there if they saw him.”’Except you’re forgetting that Kramer had grown really close to team flash and most likely knows Barry is also the Flash and she can copy and use any meta’s power including Barry’s speedforce speed. Its what she did to save Joe West from Godspeed’s clones last season…* Which is why I still find it hard to believe that all this isn’t just some bizarre simulation that Barry’s trapped in.*She would match his speed and stop him in much the same way.
Kramer DOESN’T know that Barry is the Flash. When she saves Joe from the Godspeed clones, she’s using their powers.
On the one hand kind of annoyed that Frost and Caitlin kept alternating scenes, but on the other hand glad for Danielle P if that made her shooting schedule less ridiculous
To be fair, Eric Wallace has tried to manage expectations in multiple interviews saying this should not be considered a “crossover,” but more of a Flash event story with guests. I know that’s not how the CW marketed it with their big flashy poster of all the heroes, but once you get past that this was a decent part two.I’m predicting this is going to be some kind of illusion/dream/manipulation brought on by Despero, what with everything coming together so perfectly to form Flash’s worst day. STAR Labs isn’t going anywhere, and Joe’s obviously not dead, though the show did a good job of executing the swerve. Honestly the show’s acting and production is so all over the place, sometimes it’s hard to read what what’s supposed to be a “clue” vs what is just bad editing/bad acting. Cecile’s “Why can’t you move on” speech to Barry feels so over the top it should be a hint this isn’t reality, but who knows?
Barry thought Joe was alive just after the psychic hold on him was broken. I know this show sometimes works on Power Rangers-level logic, but, that’s got to mean something.
Maybe Reverse Flash has created his own Sage Force, or something like that? He killed Joe, he tampered with Star Labs, and had to psychically make the whole city think everything was normal so the timeline changes could cement into place.Two cents says that Mia Queen brings along a copy of Gideon from the future when she arrives for Flash to have.
As much as I expect Thawne to be responsible (in Letscher’s form, since a Cavanagh return doesn’t seem likely), I’d love it if it were a fake by the writers and it was really Grodd or Mr. Mind or Dr. Psycho or someone completely out of left field. If we’ve learned anything from this show, though, it’s that they don’t try to outthink us; week after week, it’s always variations on Barry making bad decisions.
Iris apparently needs to start running sensitivity courses cause that was a shocking outburst from one of her senior staff today. Doesn’t Allegra know that she just can’t say stuff like that anymore in these current times?
Kara and Jonn are off world? OH NO! Never saw that coming. Surprised they didn’t face time with Lois who regrets that Clark is on the toilet after a bad experience with some kryptonite laced chili. I hope this doesn’t end up with some Dallas thing like Barry waking up and finding Joe in the shower.
I’m surprised they even bothered to give the off world explanation, as I believe Grant Gustin mentioned in an interview they hadn’t really come up with any story reason why Supergirl was sitting out (though the actual line was recorded by Chyler Leigh separately, so it’s possible they snuck it in day of).
“I almost can’t believe I’m writing this, but what if Barry is right and everyone else is wrong?”This is what I thought, Barry doesn’t go crazy but the whole world does and he is in the future the only sane person around. I mean he knows Joe isn’t dead so I think Barry is a one man gang on this one.
It seemed pretty obvious that Barry was getting gaslighted (gaslit?) in this episode – the overly dramatic reactions to him just seemed off all-around.
We know all about TV tropes, but Cecile showing up at the house right after Barry and the news showing up on the TV as soon as they turned it on was a bit over the top.
I realize the logistics of it make it difficult (if not impossible), especially with characters from shows that have ended, but this is what I wish every Arrowverse episode was like; small pop ups here and there just to acknowledge everyone does actually talk to each other more than once a year.
They did a lot of this the first year Arrow and Flash crossed over, with even supporting characters like Quentin Lance popping over on occasion or Flash randomly showing up for a few minutes in the Arrow season finale. But yeah scheduling made it tricky, and also what the appropriate pay scale was to pull one actor out from their show to do another.Ironically I think it might be easier after the series have ended, when actors have yet to be pulled onto a new show.
I am in only for Chyler Leigh. Never saw any (non-crossover) episodes of any other Arrowverse show. And all we get is — two video call scenes? My reaction was about the same as that bit from the Simpsons where Homer says “D’oh!” 20 consecutive times or whatever. I understand the additional location stuff she did is not being used, so that’s it. At least there was a throwaway explanation for SG and JJ not showing up to help. In other news, Psy instructed her lawyer to file suit against Xotar for trademark infringement…
Being that Barry will also be reverse flash this season its easy to assume that Thawne is disguised as Barry and as such is the reason why in the future it seems like he is the bad guy. My guess is because of the timelines it’s probably the reason why no one except cecil is sad about Joe being dead
Who wore it best?
Kidding aside, Xotar was pretty lame, but is it now canon
that mental manipulation powers are purple? First Psych, now Xotar? I
don’t recall Vomit Vixen (the one who makes you dizzy whose name I
forget at the moment) having a color for hers though.LOLOLOL
at Iris’s crack team of bloggers being told “the Xotar story is our top
priority.” The red ink and printer paper are going to flow tonight,
ladies & gents!
The Hall of Justice was pretty
clean for a place no one has been too since it opened. And there was a
fire! Is Gleek basically the building superintendent now?Even
the few seconds of Cress Williams we got was enough to make me miss
that show. Black Lightning was good. I very much hope that Jeff &
Ryan Wilder (whatever with Choi, the vastly inferior Ryan) get to meet in this crossover.
I
actually thought that when Barry was being put in the psychic camel
clutch by Xotar and mentioned needing lightning to get rid of her that
Jeff was going to show up, but instead we got the silly vibrating atoms
MacGuffin.“He’s got the strength and invulnerability of
a Kryptonian.” “Great, let’s get Clark & Kara out here and make it
two against one!” “Sorry, Clark’s got a football game tonight and Kara and J’onn are off-world, and by ‘off-world’
I mean ‘picking up potstickers and wine for charades. Oh, but I’ll
come, I’ve got a gun that turns into other guns and a My Chemical
Romance eyeliner set.”
Is Vomit Vixen the Top? Her power is yellow-green.
YES, thank you, I don’t know why that escaped my brain.
Vomit Vixen is a cool name.
Yeah this is definitely Despero fucking with Flash – the investigation, STAR labs, making people think Joe is dead (or making Barry forget he was – but I’m putting my money on the first one), setting up vague prophecies to set people against him.
I really appreciated the goofy humour in the first episode, and how this episode then immediately follows that up by being unstable and bleak. I love that the writers are going with “Barry’s nuts but probably isn’t”. I know they said Zotar/Xotar’s effects wore off once she was in the cuffs, but she said something to Flash along the lines of “I got my claws into you long before I showed up”, which makes wonder if she’s more powerful than she lets on – after all, she hid her telekinesis powers. Hmmmm.
Everybody Hates Barry lmao
Really not happy that Allegra dropped some casual xenophobia and no one called her on it. She said she didn’t buy that Despero could possibly care about Earth when he’s not even from here. Um, excuse me, are you saying Kara and J’onn don’t care about Earth? (And possibly Nia, although I think she was born on Earth even though she’s of extraterrestrial heritage.) Supergirl has pretty explicitly equated prejudice against people from other planets with prejudice against people from other countries, so to hear Allegra express sentiments which very closely mirror what some American bigots say about immigrants (and sometimes about Jews and members of other groups, including those who were born here) is pretty inexcusable.