Why Harrison Well Appeared Again in Season 4 Flash
the-flash-cw-season-4 - Review
Tin can't outrun the Season 4 curse.
Note: this is a mostly spoiler-free review of The Flash Season 4. I'll avoid discussing major spoilers until the cease of the review.
After this year, Arrowverse fans might start to feel a sense of dread when one of these shows reaches its fourth season. Arrow really hit a wall in Season 4, which easily ranks every bit the series' worst to date (despite all Flavor 6 did to try to "beat" it). The same phenomenon struck again with The Flash in its 4th season. The series plummeted in quality, with many of the changes aimed at fixing the problems of Season iii instead making matters worse. At this point, fans can only hope that the Flash will keep to follow Arrow'southward case by turning things around in Season 5.
From the start of this season, it's clear the writers were intent on moving away from the conventions established in the first three years. Criticisms that the series had grown also night and brooding during the Zoom and Savitar era were taken to middle, resulting in a revamped tone that redoubled its emphasis on lighthearted one-act and banter. And after three years in a row driven by Team Flash's feud with an evil speedster, the series finally shook things upwardly by focusing on a completely different sort of villain. Both of those changes sounded similar just the shot in the arm the series needed, but neither worked as intended.
The bug began immediately in the premiere, "The Wink Reborn." With Barry (Grant Gustin) having doomed himself to a lifetime of Speed Force imprisonment in the Season 3 finale, it fell on Wally (Keiynan Lonsdale), Iris (Candice Patton) and the rest of Squad Wink to fill that void. I know I wasn't alone in existence excited at the prospect of Wally taking the atomic number 82 for a while, nor was I the only 1 supremely disappointed in merely how cursory his tenure turned out to exist. Within the first 15 minutes of the premiere, Barry was already dorsum and the seeds were being sown for a completely new conflict.
The Flash made a lot of mistakes in its quaternary season, but mayhap its biggest was wasting so much potential when it came to Wally and Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker). Comic readers know that Barry's expiry paved the way for Wally to take up the mantle for the better office of two decades, condign the definitive Flash in the eyes of many fans. Information technology was never realistic to expect this serial to shelve Barry for years, just at least a handful of Wally-centric episodes would have been appreciated. Instead, the character was sidelined almost immediately and rapidly booted off the testify entirely. The silver lining here is that Legends of Tomorrow has thankfully been making better use of the character.
Caitlin at to the lowest degree received more attention in Flavor 4. Only given where Season 3 left her, fleeing her home at STAR Labs in order to battle the villain within, it was more than a little foreign to see her abruptly return to the fold. Even stranger was the fact that Killer Frost was treated as more a source of comic relief than a legitimate threat. The cutesy dynamic between Caitlin and her alter ego is non where I expected the series to go in the wake of Flavour 3.
That speaks to a larger problem with Season 4 in terms of the ongoing struggle to balance humor and drama. In that location's no question that the series needed to lighten upward. The moroseness of Season iii and the Savitar conflict had become likewise overbearing. But Flavour 4 tended to veer also far in the contrary direction. The series became shallow and too oft lacking in substance. Rarely did it recapture Season 1'south winning alloy of sense of humor and grapheme drama.
The decision to sideline Wally proved all the more perplexing given how much emphasis Flavour four placed on Squad Flash'southward newest recruit, Ralph Dibny (Hartley Sawyer). Why the evidence needed to replace Wally with Ralph was never properly established. That's non to say Ralph'due south presence on the series didn't result in some strong storylines. Sawyer'south energetic and mannerly portrayal of the character helped. Ralph'south full general evolution from self-captivated individual eye to selfless superhero was solid, if repetitive and overlong at times. Several key Ralph moments from belatedly in the season also stand up out as some of the high points in Season 4. Notwithstanding, Ralph never felt like a truly natural and organic addition to the series, and he every bit much every bit whatever other character was responsible for the chronic disability to balance sense of humour and drama.
The series did at least encounter some benefits from its new villain in Season 4. Clifford DeVoe (Neil Sandilands) quickly established himself as a very different breed of Flash rogue, i who used strategy and smarts to outwit the fastest man alive. Together with his wife/partner-in-crime Marlize (Kim Engelbrecht), DeVoe fabricated for a stately and oftentimes compelling foil to Team Flash. He was besides a grapheme who, unlike Zoom or Savitar, showed depth and pathos from an early phase. Some of the best moments of the flavour focused on DeVoe's troubled background and his human relationship with Marlize. Often, the series suffered when Sandilands remained out of the pic for likewise long (a large trouble in the center third of the season).
Simply every bit memorable equally the DeVoes themselves were, the actual overarching narrative for Flavour 4 oft came upward curt. DeVoe's master program didn't really mensurate up to DeVoe as a character. The season was generally dominated past the "motorbus meta" storyline, with DeVoe and team Flash racing confronting each other to track down a new batch of metahumans. That resulted in a nifty many banal "villain of the week" scenarios and little frontwards momentum. Nor did the climax to the season resonate in the manner previous seasons managed. The drawn-out structure and weak payoff suggest that The Wink may do well to infringe a page from the Agents of SHIELD playbook and focus on delivering several smaller storylines per season rather than one season-long arc. This one clearly didn't accept enough meat on its bones.
Alarm: The rest of this review contains spoilers for Season 4.
DeVoe'due south master plan to rid the earth of all human intelligence isn't the just area where Flavor iv failed to capitalize on its various plot threads. Principal amid these is the mystery of what exactly happened to Barry while he was trapped in the Speed Force and what it means for the futurity of the Arrowverse. The mode things wrapped upwards with the long-awaited debut of Nora Allen makes information technology seem as though those threads are being saved for Season 5 instead. That'southward probably only going to make Flavour 4 seem worse in hindsight if the whole thing winds upwards existence a giant detour before the true fallout of Season 3 is finally explored.
There'southward also Iris' halfhearted graphic symbol arc. I appreciate the attempts to make her a more assertive and active actor this season, particularly given how and so much of Season 3 was driven past the fight to prevent her from being murdered. But too oftentimes she seemed like a secondary priority. Even her conclusion to rededicate herself to her journalism career amounted to very lilliputian.
So there's Barry's brief stint as an Iron Heights inmate. Certain elements of that storyline worked well, including that especially haunting shot of Barry accepting his new life in the same prison cell where his father was once wrongfully imprisoned. I also enjoyed the cursory storyline involving the character Big Sir (Neb Goldberg). Barry'due south prison stint made it seem as though the serial was shifting in a darker direction once again, only it ended every bit abruptly as it began, with Barry'southward freedom restored and barely a wrinkle to the show's overall status quo.
The one character who generally seemed to fare well in Season 4 was Harry (Tom Cavanagh). Initially, I was a little dubious at the prospect of The Flash bringing dorsum an earlier version of Harrison Wells rather than continuing the trope of introducing a new 1 every year. Merely Season 4 proved how much growing Harry had left to do every bit a person. He learned empathy and how to live without his massive intellect every bit a crutch. That culminated in a strong farewell that was hands the highlight of the otherwise underwhelming season finale.
The Verdict
The Wink needed a strong showing in Season 4 to reassure fans after the uneven Season three. Unfortunately, it utterly failed in that mission. This flavour wasn't uneven; it was pretty consistently mediocre from outset to finish. It failed to build a compelling conflict between Team Flash and The Thinker. It routinely struggled to discover a balance between humor and drama. And with few exceptions, this season failed to properly use its large bandage of characters. Surely in that location's nowhere to go from hither but up?
Mediocre
The Flash lacked balance and focus in its 4th flavour, resulting in the series' almost disappointing year so far.
Source: https://za.ign.com/the-flash-cw-season-4/126838/review/the-flash-season-4-review
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