Mark Hamill to return as the Trickster!
http://www.bostonherald.com/entertainment/television/television_news/2014/12/mark_hamill_joins_the_flash_as_the_trickster
He played the role in the 1990s Flash series.
I’ve been grousing about (Green) Arrow as Batman since Smallville. I prefer Green Arrow; I’ve actually read more Arrow comics than Batman comics, despite the latter having 8000 series and being much, much older. But Batman is where the $$$ are, so putting him in different clothes makes economic sense.
I’ve also read more Flash than I’ve read Superman (I’ve also read more Batman than Superman). I guess I’m weird in that I prefer the non-flagship characters. That said, I’ve read the entire run of Superboy and the Legion of Superheroes, including all the Adventure Comics stories, so I’m not totally against Clark Kent.
I’m the same way. Never got much into Superman and Batman. When I was a kid, I liked Flash and The Atom and Plastic Man. As an adult, my favorite superhero has always been Green Lantern. OTOH, my “baby” sister (she’s actually 37 now) has always been a huge Superman fan, because she likes his “morality”. Though I love my sister so very very much, I actually went off on her, batshit-insane style (which I probably wouldn’t have done had I not already been drinking when I got her message), when she said she’d lost interest in Arrow because Ollie wasn’t “moral”.
My “going off” was via Facebook, since she and I live in different states now. But the benefit is that I can copy/paste exactly what I said:
She said: “I kinda lost interest halfway thru 2nd season. I want to see a hero have good morals, and he really doesn’t.”
“[Sister], I am going to now speak as your elder brother: Wake the H-E-double-hockey-sticks up. Heroes are people who do what the hell needs to be done, WHEN in needs to be done. What the flying frak do you expect from a “hero”? Superman isn’t even a freakiing human being. He’s an alien. He doesn’t answer to human standards. As a fellow Christian, I understand the call of Jesus. But I also understand the power of “story”. And you strike me as somebody who will abandon a story right in the middle because you don’t like the main character. And that is complete bullshit. The story isn’t over until it is over. You have to read the whole damned story to get the point. Stories aren’t fed to you bit by bit; you have to sit down and watch/read the whole damned thing. If you bail in the middle because of some stupid “this is immoral!” crap, you miss the whole point.”
She responded by pointing out that her “losing interest” didn’t mean that she wasn’t still watching. I ended up apologizing:
“Hey, I want to apologize for my rant. I meant everything I said, but looking back at it, I didn’t need to say it how I said it. The profanity was completely unnecessary and uncalled-for. And I honestly misunderstood “lost interest”. I’m not used to people “losing interest” in something, yet continuing to do it.”
“But the thing about stories … they’re not literally about real life. Stories will use multiple characters to represent different aspects of humanity, and the main character/protagonist is not always intended to be the representation of every aspect. This is one of the things I had to explain to [my former roommate] when we occasionally watched ST:TNG together. The different alien races in Star Trek represent different aspects of humanity. As far as morality in Arrow, it seems to me that the “moral center” of the show is Officer Lance, Laurel’s dad (I really identify with that guy). And, to a lesser extent, Diggle and Felicity.”
“Maybe it’s just because I read so much fiction, and have read so many comic books. But when it comes to fictional stories, I understand that one lone character in a fictional story does not, can not represent every aspect of humanity. Even if he/she is the main character. The other characters fulfill the aspects that are not represented by the main character.”
“In the case of Oliver Queen, the nature of the story is that, when he is “Oliver”, he has to act like “Oliver”, not like “Arrow”. If “Oliver” suddenly changed his nature, it would lead to questions that might compromise “Arrow”.”
“I guess what I got from your statement about “morality” was that you objected to his sexual conduct (correct me if I was wrong). To me, morality is about so much more than sexuality. Oliver/Arrow’s main moral question had to do with killing. By season 2, he had made the decision to stop killing (and had to wrestle with that, with some “slips”).”
“Other moral concerns with Oliver/Arrow have to do with how he treats/relates to other people on a personal level. And that moral drama is vividly played out via his relationships with Dig and Felicity.”
“Mind you, I have never read Green Arrow comics. I know very little about the character, beyond what every comic fan knows, and his interactions with the characters whose comics I have read, so what I’ve said is not based upon comic knowledge and “wait until you see what happens next”. My comments are all based on, “let the story play out until the end before making judgement.””
That kind of over-the-top reaction is what forges the general public’s image of ‘comic book geek’. I drop lots of series because I don’t like the main character, though the reason is usually not his or her morality.
Apologies — I neglected to explain in my post (prior to the quote) that the main reason I “went off” was that my sister’s comment was just the latest in a years-long line of similar, judgmental remarks on all sorts of subjects, and this one just happened to be “the straw that broke the camel’s back”.
She’s actually almost as big a superhero geek as I am.
Then again, she also thinks Twilight is a great love story.
S01E09
Well this is getting all timey wimey. Those superluminal tachyon particles have time travel written all over them. At this point, anyone could be Reverse Flash, except maybe Barry. Seeing Reverse Flash, Wells and Eddie all in the same room doesn’t convince me of anything. Barry’s prison dad could be RF.
What was that device Dr. Wells attached to the yellow suit at the end? A tachyon device?
For a moment, while they were fighting I thought that Flash and Reverse Flash would be sent back in time, right then and there, to kill Barry’s mom. I guess that they deliberately made the effects similar so that Cisco could voice what we’ve known all along.
Speaking of Cisco, he was wearing a “Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock” T-shirt, the game seen on The Big Bang Theory. If you’ve watched that show, you’ll know that Sheldon likes to dress up as The Flash.
Interesting that Amanda Pays is playing a character with the same name (Dr. Tina McGee) as she did in the 1991 Flash series
Brian
Great episode. So I am thinking:
Wells and Reverse Flash are one and the same but Wells may be from further along in the timeline and have a different agenda, possibly one better for Barry, than RF.
Reverse Flash looked Eddie right in the eye and spared him. I wonder if Eddie is his dad or something? I suspect Wells is ultimately motivated by somehow saving his wife using some timey wimey stuff.
It’s my take now that the evil Reverse Flash is some future Eddie Thawne (yellow-suit, red lightning), and the second Flash is actually Dr. Wells (yellow-suit, yellow lightning), outfitting a suit with time-travel capability to protect Barry as the true Flash from the Reverse Flash to keep the future timeline whatever whatever. Though neither Eddie or Dr. Wells have their powers… yet.
Or the inverse of the above. Who can say?
Actually digging this series more than I expected to.
I like this, or it can be Barry actually going back in time to save himself/Mom?
If they go by the comics:
Eddie would be an ancestor of the Reverse Flash, who as born in the 2500’s.
But it’s probably more likely it will be future Eddie, jealous that his girlfriend dumped him for Barry, or something.
Dr. Wells is an interesting case. He’s doing a lot of evil crap. I thought he was reverse flash, which doesn’t explain how he beat the crap out of himself. lol. he seems to be protecting the timeline though, as well as Barry. It’s almost as if he’s manipulating the timeline to suit some future vision though. I haven’t ruled out his involvement in mom’s death. It might have been something that ‘had to happen’ for Barry to become who he is.
Firestorm is apparently a good guy, he just isn’t on board yet.
In an earlier post, I claimed that Ronnie was still in the whatever-it-was that blew up. I should have remembered that
In the comics, Firestorm can phase through solid objects.
Ah, I didn’t know that, but it fits with the very in-group casting, naming, and general fun they have with the setup. (I was hoping for a Max Headroom riff in there somewhere… but that’s a consequence of being olllld. And damn she’s gotten… distinguished.)
(Possible spoilers for Arrow)
Related to the question of time travel here is what precisely the motivation is of that manipulative lady over in the Hong Kong flashbacks on Arrow who seems determined to train Oliver Queen for some reason. Maybe she got information from the future that he ended up being an important hero and is doing her part to ensure that happens in some weird tough-love way? Otherwise it’s very hard to see what could motivate her to kidnap a famous rich person and train him to become an assassin.
Interesting. She controls him by threatening his friends & loved ones. Why isn’t she still doing that? At some point he was able to tell her to bugger off. Was it because she considered his preparation for something to be complete? What was the something, or what will be the something?
I also like the slightly different yellow suits observation. I didn’t catch that.
Well, I’m not an expert on the character, but in the comics Waller doesn’t really have anything to do with time travel or precog or anything, she’s just a huge dick.
Also she’s roughly 5 times the size of this teeny tiny actress they terribly miscast into playing her. Pft, like a petite thing like that would get nicknamed The Wall.
Admittedly, it’s probably hard to find good actresses with exactly the right physical appearance, and Waller is a rather… distinctive… character. She’s supposed to be 5’1" and over 200 pounds, although she’s often drawn as being much larger.
I just saw the Captain Boomerang episode, and, well… am I the only one who was pretty much fine with 'ole Boomy putting a blade in Diggle’s wife’s* back? I mean, yeah, he’s a right bastard. But the blunt fact of the matter is that both she and Waller have some of the most heinous methods imaginable and do so with seemingly no real concern. Frankly, they suck at using torture to get information, seem to accomplish something between Jack and Squat, constantly get the Suicide Squad killed or do it themselves through poor planning and being Stupid Evil. How, exactly, are they sympathetic in the least?
*They’re NOT married! As they keep pointing out.
So, I think I missed something: when Reverse Flash snatched Wells, he just zoomed through the forcefield, right? But after the field got turned off, he took off to grab the tachyon thingamajig, as if he were only then able to do so. Why’d he go back into the field in the first case?
Also, in the ‘sinister dealings with Harold Wells’ scene at the end, he was in possession of the tachyon thingie; also, he spoke with the same voice effect as the Reverse Flash. Doesn’t that basically imply they’re the same person? Beating yourself up is no hard trick if you can time travel…
If they decide to borrow from the the comics, specifically The Flashpoint Paradox story line (the story line that birthed the New 52 reboot):
The Flash…
will have to let Reverse Flash kill his mother because the world in which she survives is much much worse.