Thogek

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I'm having increasing difficulty with Liz's apparent loss of thinking skills. I get that she's angry as hell as Redd, but what led her to believe that a one-pound semtex bomb was an appropriately surgical tool with which to take out Redd and only Redd in a hospital, regardless of how you think you've timed the placement? How does the very idea not scream out collateral damage?

At least Aram's afterward reaction seemed deeply appropriate. Everyone else... and especially Donald...

I feel a little like, alongside Dembe, shaking my head at it all...

Soooo, if, as the Major apparently has planned, the military is able to deliberately replicate the genetic mutation in new people, will it have the same effect as the 828ers; would the Death Date effect somehow still relevant (as those people didn't skip over any time) and, if it is, how? That plotline, with or without the Major, has some interesting possibilities...

Con: The whole cause of the secondary Shakespeare emergency was the Legends being, as Damien always called them, idiots. (I mean real true you-guys-know-better-than-that idiots.)

Pro: Almost everything else, in classic wacky-Legends style.

And then, of the Original Legends, there were two...

Lena Luthor, meet Clifford "The Thinker" DeVoe. Clifford, Lena. You two should talk.

In the Good Omens book, Crowley's old Bentley was quite the character in and of itself, especially when it came to that fire. Not as much in this series, up 'til now; It's nice to finally see it get its due here. :-)

I'm feeling like some of these side-adventures that incidentally affect some far-off village deserve their own short-story collection.
Eliot and the First Key.
Margot and the Ice Axes.
Quentin and the Repair of Small Objects
...

Woowww.

"I know who you are. You are the whirlwind." —John Pilgrim

"Behold, a whirlwind of the Lord is gone forth in fury, even a grievous whirlwind; it shall fall grievously upon the head of the wicked." —Jeremiah 23:19

"Damn right." —Frank Castle

Thank you, Jon Bernthal, for bringing to such life the Frank "The Punisher" Castle we will all remember.

Gotta like just about everything so far. Matt has a long way to come back from in many ways...

If I had to sum up a low and a high...

Low: No real explanation of how Matt survived Midland Circle? Really? That's disappointing.

High: Every time Sister Maggie spoke.

That sight at the end, of John lighting his cigarette by leaning into the fireball, was worth pausing on for several seconds to appreciate the poster-shot appropriateness of the moment.

From now on, whenever Oliver says "I have an idea" like that, John's stomach should drop, hard.

Oh, Quentin. I have to wonder which path would end up destroying you more, this one or the bottle...

I didn't quite get why they allowed him to return his transit-clone with his memories of the encounter. He's clearly established that they won't be able to talk or threaten him out of continuing to attack them, so any little piece of information they can prevent him from obtaining about what happened and how they pushed him back... and what he offered the colony worlds' representatives... Sigh.

But other than that, fun stuff. And yet another don't-mess-with-Five reminder.

It is rather amazing how richly these few well-chosen flashback-brushstrokes of Kate/Kaplan's past fleshed out her history and motivations toward both Masha/Elizabeth and Raymond, as well as why she acted to help Liz behind Redd's back the way she did. A masterful filling-in and tying together of so much.

Honestly, after all this, it's become difficult to decide who should come out on top between Raymond and Kate (if either one truly must). Kate seems to be the only one who fully understands how Raymond's original mission of protection has evolved into an unshakable obsession of control to the point of itself repeatedly threatening the mission...

Alan kept me wondering 'til the end what he was really playing in that intricate mind of his, knowing that his daughter's fate might still depend on what he does and where he goes...

These characters are all always good for their artistically agile snippery, but...
"You know of Swayze?" earned a quick use of my pause button so that I could resume breathing before continuing. (And the following recitation did not disappoint.)

If I ignore the reverse-the-feed-and-overload-their-power-systems solution, and even with AP-5's overdoing the arrogant monologuing, it was a fun diversion before the madness heats up next ep. ;-)

I've grown used to expecting Will Bowman to go into full blown family-protection mode and start dropping bodies of anyone and everyone threatening his family, but there's something entirely different about seeing Katie Bowman do the same. Wwoooww.

That and, I gotta say, I was not-that-unpleasantly surprised to see Bob get a true gut-feel for the pain he's been inflicting on others. Not that he'll take it as a hint of any such thing, of course. But still...

I do hope we get to see more of Ethan in the future. He's almost like a little mini-Martin, minus the extremes of Martin's haunting suicidal demons, and maybe yet another lifeline for Martin's own future. And watching the two of them together is just good fun.

Poor Radovid looked like he was having one hell of a panic attack there at the end.

I like seeing occasional episodes that focus on various other characters, but this...

This felt like the writers took a genuinely interesting story-concept idea and tossed together some quick and sloppy story around it. There were some good bits in there, but most of it was... disappointing.

I was actually encouraged by the first four episodes of this season; still not as good as Superman & Lois, but certainly easily better than much of The Flash's recent seasons. Then... sigh.

Some small clunky bits here and there, but overall a pretty good closer to the series. Certainly better than some of the other Arrowverse shows got.

I actually kinda liked that the main story was wrapped about 2/3 in, and the remaining third was postscripts and other wrap-ups which we're all done pretty well, if a bit more abbreviatedly than I'd've ideally liked. And, of those final closing bits... Artemis may well have delivered the biggest and most impressive daaamn reaction of the season, and Shade one of the best closing lines.

Not bad, peoples. Not bad.

The weird choppy visual of the worlds coming within "sight" of each other, like some sort of TV signal being erratically interrupted, was odd. I very much doubt something like that would look so sharply back-and-forth choppy. But, IMO, that's a relatively small complaint in yet another solid segment of the story.

A larger complaint might be: Why does no one seem to remember the existence of others who might be able to help: Kara, Barry, Jefferson, etc? That story-hole has been annoying me much more, lately.

Hmm. So how much of the Dark Army Minions' willingness to die for the cause is fueled by their belief that White Rose will bring them back once the mission is complete?

So, basically, Tannhaus created the break, Jonas/Adam and Martha/Eva perpetuated it, and everyone else suffered through this ultimate twist on Greek tragedy, all until Claudia finally figured out where the original break was. And we all felt our brains stretched and twisted trying to follow all of the convolutions that a bunch of time-traveling breaks and perpetuations would cause, despite what all the other time-travel stories have told us.

Interesting at the end to see some of who would still have existed without all the mad timeloop feedback yarnballing the family trees (and thinking through why they're still there and others aren't), and that Hannah would be the one to somehow Kenobi-sense the millions of voices crying out in release...

Daaaamn.

There was probably no way to wrap up all of that interwoven complexity in a way that would make all viewers happy, but I'm at least satisfied that this wrap-up make some sense and tied (so to speak) up the loose ends, despite the loss of some characters that will now never be. Well done.

So much of this episode (including that panoramic battle sequence) had so much potential to build and be the climactic sendoff of the series. However, so much careless lazy clumsiness in the design of its details wasted so much of that potential that the result... Sigh.

I think the only part that I actually liked was Esme grabbing the All Stone and throwing it down to break it in three. Besides that Esme may have been the best acted in this episode (and the moments featuring her generally being the better ones), that one move reflected some of how I felt about most of the episode as a whole.

I'd been wondering how Rita would finally end up back in the present. The possibility of her doing a Dr. Helen Magnus return had occurred to me, but... still... 😮

Welcome to the Dada Sanctuary?

At the end, that security monitor image with the cell ("zelle") number in the corner... I have to wonder if the use of cell number 2187 was a deliberate reference.

It ain't detention block AA-23, but...

That's okay. Finn didn't get the reference, either.

"Nah. I got this."

Oh, crap.

What could go wrong?

As weirdly entertaining as the whole Five-vs-Five thing was to watch...

Would it have worked (and been much simpler) to never contact fourteen-days-ago Five but instead to quietly stalk him until he, as he did before, dropped his mission and briefcase to transport himself back to 2019, and then grab the briefcase he left behind? As it turns out, this seems like it'd have cost them the same amount of time and a lot less risk...

Other than that, fun and crazy entertainment as always...