At long last, the fifth season is complete! Hi folks, welcome back to our weekly recap of The Flash. This week’s episode is the season finale and it’s named “Legacy”, We have a lot of things to talk about, so let’s dive right in.
1. Where do I start?
Well, let’s do a recap of the season: After a mysterious girl appeared in some places of season four, and revealed herself to be Flash’s daughter, this whole season Team Flash dealt with a new villain while living with Nora in the present. Of course, the girl is a mess, absent father, overprotective mother and controversial mentor, but present-Barry and Iris learn to deal with being parents without even having to deal with at least the first 25 years of her existence, easy-peasy.
2. This episode’s recap
Last episode we learnt that the reason Thawne is so invested in helping Nora defeat Cicada is because in the future they are using the dagger as a power dampener, if the dagger is destroyed, he is free. Luckily, Ralph gets in the way of the shot of the mirror gun and prevents the dagger from being destroyed, but he got kinda deconstructed (great effects by the way).
After that, Sherloque deduces why Ralph prevented the destruction of the dagger and the team has a new conflict, how do they finish Cicada without freeing Eobard? In the meantime, Cisco, Caitlin and Sherloque yada-yada a solution to help Ralph and he awakes, and Barry talks to Nora about giving opportunities and trusting people. At the end of the first act, Nora comes up with a way to defeat the villain.
3. The final confrontation against Cicada II
The plan is to vibe Cicada to S.T.A.R.Labs’ force field where they trapped Thawne in the first season
while Nora connects with Gracie’s mind to convince her to take the cure. The girl is waaay to damaged, with the Original Cicada showing up and trying to convince a 9-ish-year-old to kill people, but also uncle Orlin appeared, telling her that killing is not the answer, she accepts the cure but old Grace returns to the cabin, and the cure fails. They have no other option, it’s time to destroy the dagger.
And that’s it for Cicada, without a dagger, there’s not an adult version of Grace and they finally defeat this season’s villain. I liked a lot how they developed this character, as two versions of the villain, each one with different approaches, Orlin-Cicada was great to me because it was not like last season’s Tinkerer, with plans for dominating the world, he only wanted retaliation; then, Grace-Cicada appeared and her plan was bigger, she wanted to practically do genocide to save regular people. A fresh, ingenious way to present us this season’s main villain.
4. The showdown or “Iris! WTF are you doing there with a gun?!”
The dagger is gone, and Thawne is free and of course he kills his captors, taking his time with the white bearded guard, then the time goes back and Flash and XS appear to confront Reverse Flash, then in the city, the whole Team Flash appears, including Iris with a gun? Damn woman, that’s not your fight, even if he manipulated your daughter!
5. The death of Nora
Then, Nora starts disappearing, it seems that the timeline is changed and she never gets conceived,
Eobard tells Barry that if she embraces the Negative Speed Force, she will live, but when they run, Nora stops, she doesn’t want to become evil, and accepts her death. The main character of the season (other than Barry) dies. It was a very emotional moment, that I’m sure that, if rightly explored in the future, broke Iris and Barry’s relationship, it’s never easy losing a daughter, even if they didn’t even have her in the first place.
6. My feud against Nora as a character
As you know, I had problems with Nora’s immaturity all season long, always choosing the worst possible choice, at the end, in this last two episodes she grown a whole lot, and I loved how the writing team handled the character.
I was thinking abut a Facebook post that said that Lena Headley is happy that people hate her and rejects pictures or autographs with her because of GoT, on one side it’s not cool to receive that much hate, but in the other, that means that her performance is so good that the actress gets lost in the character. And I think that’s my relationship with Nora, there were moments where I couldn’t stand her, and that’s exactly what the writing team planned, kudos to them for doing a character so great that I got fully involved with her whole arc.
Continued below7. The death of Vibe
After the fight with Reverse Flash, which flees, Cisco is dealing with his sentiments from all this season, is he fit to be a superhero? Does he still want to be one? And Thawne convinced him of taking the cure, because he doesn’t want to be remembered as one sidekick to Flash, when he can be remembered for being a great human being.
And with that, it seems that Carlos Valdes is retiring from the show, he made an awesome, unique, beloved character and I hope we still are able to have him at least in some episodes of the future.
8. Everyone has a happy ending
Joe becomes Captain after proving himself worthy last episode, as Singh goes up in the ranks.
Sherloque goes back to his earth (or is it another one) and meets his beloved woman.
Cisco is cured and in love.
Caitlin has a new suit thanks to Cisco, but we will have to wait to see it.
And Barry and Iris are dealing with losing a daughter, sad, but proud of her for not taking the easy solution.
This episode can very easily be the last one of the series and I would be happy with that.
9. Crisis on Infinite Earths
Thank god that’s not the case tough, in the last cliffhanger scene we see how the newspaper date changes: The Flash will disappear in 2019, maybe with the Crisis on Infinite Earths.
And I wonder what will come after that, is The Flash ending with season six or are we having more? How will we call the Arrowverse once Arrow ends? When will they premiere Batwoman?
10. The villains of this season
I want to take some time to praise this season’s villains, obviously the two Cicadas and Eobard were
awesome, but also the villains for each week where great, Block, Spin, Rag Doll, Icicle, Weather Witch and Silver Ghost where awesome characters with real stakes, forget all those end-of-the-world plots, they just had a simple, grounded motivations and tried to go out victorious, and I love that, not every villain has to be a grandiose character.
11. A little problem about LGBTQ+ representation
In the last SDCC, the actors said that they were introducing a new main LGBTQ+ character, but then nothing happened, the closest thing to that was the flirtation between Nora and Spin back in the fourth episode, that’s disappointing and I hope that they make good in their promise and next season they give us a character out of the closet, representation matters.
And that’s it for this season, overall, it is one of the better ones that we have had since the show started, and I couldn’t be more excited to see what’s coming to the Arrowverse. What did you think of this Season? Leave your comments below and join us soon when season six drops, thank you for reading.
BONUS: Do you want to read past thoughts? Go here.
