Hi folks! Welcome back to our weekly recap of The Flash. It’s been a couple of months since we last met but the eighth season is finally here, and thanks to the readjustments made due to the pandemic, the first five episodes (a.k.a. this season’s first “graphic novel”) will be sort of a crossover event, with guest stars and a title on its own: “Armageddon,” and the main theme of this episode was “leveling up,” let’s dive right in!
1. Central City Citizen Media
Iris’s newspaper has evolved, and is now a news conglomerate that includes print, website, and podcast, it leveled up. Since the last time we saw our heroes, about 6 months have passed, there are three new reporters and a full team. But Iris can’t do it alone and she asks Allegra to be her editor, but she feels insecure because she is younger and less experienced than the newly hired reporters.
At first, when Allegra tries to be the leader, she has a lot of difficulty getting them to accept her orders, but after talking to Iris, she convinced her that she could do it, Allegra gave her corrections to the reporters’ articles and, despite their initial anger, she convinced them to rework their pieces to focus not only on the news but also on who it affects.
This story was nice to watch, because it reflects the current situation where the focus is on clicks and scandals that make a splash, and not on how it affects people. A news story is not a person’s statement, but to find out if that statement is a fact or lie, just as this newspaper focuses on the citizens of the Central City, there are some newspapers in real life that could learn a little from that.
2. A cavalcade of poker-related jokes
The Royal Flush Gang returned to the Central City, but their crimes are becoming more complicated than simple bank or casino robberies, they are stealing technology, freeing people from Iron Heights, and causing collisions on trains to obtain some energy device.
Chester gives Barry an idea, and they discover that the Royal Flush Gang’s intention is to steal the cryptocurrencies from the city’s casinos. They are leveling up. Fortunately, they are not a very difficult threat to the Flash, as he manages to fool the mind-reading queen, and he kills the team, and the threat, simply by walking.
This shows that we now have a much more mature Flash, aware of his surroundings and the weaknesses of the villains, so he makes decisions based on how he can avoid conflict and stop who needs to be stopped, our Flash is also leveling up.
3. What’s next for The Atom?
Ray Palmer crashes Barry and Iris’s house and is in town to attend the central city technology convention that is going to honor him, and Chester is excited to meet his hero, so he volunteered to accompany Ray during his stay in the city, one of Chester’s goals is for Ray to listen to innovative pitches to build a new company, but Ray stops him at that moment, because perhaps he is contemplating retirement and dedicating himself only to research.
This makes Chester feel bad but leaves Ray thinking about the possibilities of the future, maybe it is better to grow up and dedicate his life to various things and not just research. After saving the day, Ray reveals to Chester that he convinced him to invest in the future, so he created the Quincy P. Runk Foundation, to support young talent and innovation.
4. The “crossover” begins
While they are at the convention, Despero arrives from the future, convinced to kill Flash because, as we saw in the first scene, he couldn’t avoid Armageddon, which will happen in 10 years. Despero is a formidable rival, because, being from the future, he has tools at his disposal to easily finish off Flash, luckily Ray is there, and The Atom manages to damage Despero’s belt and save Barry from imminent death.
But Flash does not understand why Despero wants him dead, so he decides to speak directly with him, to try to fix the problem. In the cliffhanger scene, Flash reveals his identity and allows Despero to read his mind so that the man from the future knows that Barry is a man of honor, and now he has a week to prove that he is not going to ruin the world and cause Armageddon, and if he can’t convince the villain, the Flash is going to die.
Continued below5. Missing energy
I noticed that the actors’ performances, particularly Grant Gustin and Candice Patton’s, felt a little bit tired, I don’t know if it is because of that’s what the scenes required, but I think that they really looked a little bit jaded.
I think that it might be because of the shorter time between season productions and the probably exhausting measures that they had to take due to the Pandemic, but I hope that this problem passes rapidly.
And that’s it for today, it was a well written, well directed (those camera movements were great) and very funny episode, a great opener for season eight and the “Armageddon” mini-series. What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 802, the second part of Armageddon, featuring Black Lighting!
