The Flash – Armageddon, Part 1 review S8 E1

November 17, 2021November 17, 2021 Jeffrey Lyles 0 Comments Brandon McKnight, Brandon Routh, Candice Patton, Carmen Moore, Danielle Nicolet, Danielle Panabaker, Grant Gustin, Kayla Compton, The Flash, Tony Curran

The Flash’s eight season premiere is in an interesting spot as it serves to both kick off the latest installment of the series and the next big ‘crossover’ event Armageddon. It largely succeeds on both fronts.

And as regular reader Tim said, the CW Verse knows how to do these crossover events well and this doesn’t seem to be the exception.

We get a glimpse of Central City 2031, which in a state of chaos and shambles. Not Star City 2049 levels of madness and despair, but still pretty bad. Despero (Tony Curran) surveys the mayhem and teleports away with the intent of fixing this carnage before it starts.

Iris is thriving at the Central Citizen, which has now been rebranded. She brainstormed Meta, but thought that was a little on the nose and opted for CC Media. Wait, is Zuckerberg gonna use an app to make us all superheroes? I can’t wait to rate the lame ones.

Like any self respective journalist these days, Iris has a podcast that’s doing big numbers. Kristen Kramer is the latest guest talking about the need to disband the CCPD Meta Task Force. Weird how Kristen is now all totally pro-meta now that she is on. I wish Iris called her out for this blatant hypocrisy.

To give Allegra a powered-down subplot, Iris makes her the new supervising editor. None of the staff will listen to her though, which seems weird since Allegra has basically been at the Citizen since the start. Seems like she’d be the deputy editor at worst.

Ray is back in town and dropped in without calling. He needed a place to stay, which is weird since he’s being honored at the CCTV tech conference. You’d think some intern would get kicked out of their room in favor of a VIP.

Ray’s having a bit of a crisis of conscience, not not that one, but one where he’s trying to find balance between being The Atom and getting sucked back in to the siren call of tech/startup mogul life. Ray probably isn’t thrilled about the prospect of shooting his own rocket into space with tax credits.

One thing that was immediately clear after a few moments of Barry and Ray interaction? The CW Verse needs more Brandon Routh. Is it too late to make him a regular/semi-regular this season?

The Royal Flush Gang and their litany of amazingly awful puns are back on the loose, which allows for the catchphrase of the episode — leveled up — to be used roughly 80 times. I might be off by one or two. Flash’s fight with the RFG featured some clever use of his powers and I don’t care at all if some of it was borrowed from Quicksilver from X-Men: Days of Future Past.

With the RFG taken care of by the halfway point, it allowed for Despero to show up as the real threat. And while it seemed like we were just going to get teases, we actually get full on CGI glory comic mostly accurate Despero on the episode. Complete with third eye. Nice!

It was kinda neat seeing Atom and Flash partnering up to stop Despero as they were a regular pairing in the Justice League Silver Age era. And it was a nice touch having Ray do the Superman run and pull of his shirt to get dressed as Atom.

Flash tries to convince Despero he’s not a killer and asks to see why he thinks he harmed the planet. Despero’s visions are convincing, but there’s no sight of Flash even reversing time because Iris stubbed her toe so I gotta side with Barry here. Ray manages to disable Despero’s temporal belt sending him away for a time.

With the Big Bad dispatched for a moment, Caitlin figures it makes sense to call Alex in National City…as opposed to the superpowered Martian Manhunter, who could track down a telepathic alien and also use his abilities as alien?

Alex was the most overexposed character on Supergirl and bringing her in is like calling in Felicity from Arrow. Although Mia ‘wait’ll they get a load of my spin-off’ is a very close second. Maybe it’s the genes?

Sadly, Barry doesn’t take Ray up on his offer to stay, which would have been cool. I’m now worried this crossover is just going to be Barry with random heroes and not a group effort at all. That wouldn’t be ideal, Bob.

Post credits, Despero comes to STAR Labs looking for revenge. Barry does what Barry does to show a sign of trust and reveals his identity. At this point why even bother wearing a mask, Barry? Despero can’t read any deception in Flash, but opts on the safe side and still plans to kill him. But now he’s granting Barry seven days to prove his innocence. That’s not a bad premise.

It’ll be fun to see how the rest of this four-week event plays out, but this was a pretty strong start to Armageddon and the season in general. Hopefully this season stays safely on the rails this year.