Anna Daniels
(Welcome to The Clock Tower, where we’ll break down the goings on of the The CW network’s Arrowverse. We’ll touch on things like themes, cultural impact, lead-ins to major events, ships, and more every week! Warning: this Clock Tower is filled with spoilers. Proceed at your own risk.)
It always feels like the Arrowverse goes on hiatus right when we need it most. That’s not a shot at the shows – in fact, it’s quite the opposite. Because of how they tackle current events, it’s always weird to go a week without them when the world’s falling apart. All the same, the world spins on. Thankfully, we have plenty of stuff to dive into while our heroes are away.
Families Are Complicated
Man, I could not have been more off the mark with my theory of what was going on between Nash Wells and Allegra Garcia. Sometimes they get you, those writers! There was no deeper Crisis on Infinite Earths connection going on there, she was just Well’s surrogate daughter. Y’know, the surrogate daughter who he all but murdered with his ambition.
The Earth Prime relationship between these two characters has been super interesting, but we’ve gotta touch on the grief that Nash went through when Eobard was trying to take over his body. Nash is a fast and loose kind of guy. He doesn’t look back and he’ll win his prize by any means necessary. But he’s always known that Maya’s – the name of Allegra’s doppelgänger – was his fault. Sensing that weakness, Thawne sought to beat him down mentally and take over Earth Prime. Totally normal stuff for that creep.
Barry Allen, still wrapped up in his own grief over what he did to the Speedforce and the loss of his daughter Nora, finally has a breakthrough of his own and is able to work with Cisco to help Nash face his grief. The Mirrorverse angle they’re going with might not be doing it for me, but this whole Nash/Thawne angle really drove home the emotional beats that make The Flash exceptional.
The Reshaping of Alex Danvers
While Kara’s rightfully always been the focus of her own show, I feel like we don’t spend enough time acknowledging the growth of her sister. Alex started off as a hardass, by-the-books agent. Over the course of the series’ five seasons she’s been given levels of complexity, come out of the closet, and decided she wanted to become a mom. It’s night and day from where she was in the beginning, and now we’re seeing her take on a new challenge with the idea that she can no longer run the DEO.
With Lex running things, Alex reasoned that she had to step out of her role as director. Now she finds herself working with J’onn at The Tower which, as far as I can tell, is kind of an alien private investigators kind of situation. The thing is, she can’t quite find her footing just yet. While I suspect her departure from the DEO is only temporary, I look forward to watching her tackle this new challenge.
Conflict of Conscience
Sticking with Supergirl for just a moment – what they’ve been doing with Brainy is, well, great. There is a clear logical path, but that logical path causes his pain. The data he has shows that the only way to stop Leviathan is to work with Lex. But working with Lex means he has to lie to all of his friends and spurn the woman he loves. That is complicated and I am into it.
Bringing Winn Schott in as an ally was a really smart move. It took the story from deceptive and eye-roll worthy to something infinitely more complex. Brainy is afraid of what he’s doing, but knows that he has to on a deeper level than the typical hero “I must do this alone” nonsense. Full marks to this arc. It’s interesting and engaging and I really look forward to the day when he gets to punch Lex in the face.
Fate Looms
I suppose it’s time we finally talk about this whole Loom of Fate situation that Legends of Tomorrow’s got going on right now. It’s still early, but I’m not quite sure how I feel about the whole situation just yet. Though I will admit that it’s exactly the kind of nonsense I look forward to from the show. My trepidation may just be because I’m still salty over Ray and Nora’s departure. Particularly because Ray’s moral compass seems pretty important when we’re dealing with things like changing other people’s fates all willy nilly.
All the same, it’s a new and fresh angle for the Legends to tackle. Astra might do her best to murder Constantine first, and the woman who’s talking in her ear in hell is clearly one of Charlie’s sisters, but that predictability doesn’t necessarily make it a bad story. Legends of Tomorrow is known for big dumb fun with a solid heart punch tossed in every now and then. So long as it maintains that I’m fine with a little predictability every now and again.
Same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel
Well, friends. Until such time as the world ends, we’ll act as though it intends to spin on. Sorry – was it weird to use a Marvel quote here? My bad. What I’m sayin’ is we’re still here, we’re still kickin’ and we’re gonna keep talking about superheroes for as long as we can. We’ll see you next week. Stay safe and stay inside!
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