It’s The Finish Line For Flash Season Nine

The Flash wrapped after almost exactly nine years of filming. It was the last geeky show standing since before I began this blog. (I’m not counting the ebbs & flows of Doctor Who.) Having Game Of Thrones, (Green) Arrow, Agents Of SHIELD, The 100, Gotham, & The Flash on together was a wild Renaissance era. Many of the sites I frequented back then have gone belly up or discontinued episode reviews, leaving me to carry on their burden. Did the rest of The Flash’s final run live up to its strong start? SPOILER alert: Of course it didn’t! More specifics for the last six episodes of season nine to follow.

If you’re not caught up on The F-Lash yet, go binge Willow & The Mysterious Benedict Society immediately before Disney+ deletes them tomorrow! (It’s it’s already too late by the time you see this, watch GOTG Vol. 3?) How dare Disney+ copy the HBO Max model of stripping streaming content! Wasn’t prematurely cancelling both bad enough? Doing this during the writers’ strike to avoid paying creatives residuals sure makes them look villainous. Ditching Willow right before Pride Month is terrible optics when it stars Tanthamore, Disney’s first canon lesbian princess couple. Ditto brainsweeping The Mysterious Benedict Society during Mental Health Awareness Month when everyone is coded neurodivergent. This feels like everything earmarked to be abruptly erased is being punished for Disney losing the Indian Premiere League cricket streaming license. It’s like there’s no one at the wheel.

“Don’t panic! I’m not the guy from the movie!”

GOTG Vol 3 Flies Off Into The Beautiful & Forever Sky

James Gunn had once been fired by Disney, but luckily he’s been reinstated to finish off the Guardians Of The Galaxy trilogy. It’s a quaddrilogy if you count the delightful GOTG Holiday Special on Disney+. (They were filmed simultaneously if you’d rather merge them together.) Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 is his Marvel Studios swansong before he heads up DC Studios. Our Wages of Cinema collaboreviewis reassembled for SPOILERS! (They also saw SHA2AM & DADHAT with me but declined to podcast about them, leaving the review onus on me!) This one’s short by my standards.

Where Is Your Masterverse God-Lyn Now?

Deluxe Masterverse Masters Of The Universe Revelation God-Lyn finally exists! She arrived the first week of April, which was ahead of Mattel Creations’ estimated June release. I’m no longer waiting for God-Lyn! It takes about a year to produce an action figure, so it’s possible my blog influenced Mattel to produce her. It’s equally possible Mattel ignored all my online entreaties since it planned to make this anyway. I don’t regret preemptively ranting since it lead to a positive outcome for once. It’s It’s my blog, so I’m giving myself the benefit of the doubt: I’m responsible this! Crank the Bear McCreary because it’s customized photo time!

“By The Power Of Grayskull … I have The Power.”

The Mandalorian & Yodaling Season 3 Is Homeward Bound

I successfully binged the first season of Fakes instead of Andor’s premiere! (It has TWO unreliable narrators! Sally is THE MOST theater kid.) Everybody insists I should’ve watched Andor (despite me being lukewarm on Rogue One) because it’s the best Star Wars ever. I didn’t, however, want to diminish my enjoyment of The Mandalorian in comparison. The Book Of Boba Fett turned into The Mandalorian season 2.5, but here’s SPOILERS for season 3. Come for me questioning the worldbuilding of a galaxy far away; stay for me eventually hyping up Ewoks!

Your toys will get lonely if you don’t buy them toys of their own!

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Lets The Good Times Roll

In high school, I never got invited to play Dungeons & Dragons with my so-called friends. That’s right: I wasn’t cool enough for D&D! I did play one game later & found the math-centric experience unappetizing. Shows like Stranger Things & The Flash have tried to make playing Gary Gygax’s tabletop role playing game look hip (In Riverdale, citizens play Gryphons & Gargoyles instead! Sadly it’d be anachronistic in the 50’s, though that might not stop ’em from tossing G&G back into the mix.), but I’m not amused by watching others play games without boards. Pick a better subject for me to live vicariously through! There was an open game license scandal by Hasbro & Wizards Of The Coast that infuriated hardcore players this year, but I was able to bypass it completely by not being a gamer.

Luckily the makers of the delightful Game Night have adapted expansive game franchise into an actual fantasy movie rather than unexciting voyeurism. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is actually the fourth DnD film. The second & third went straight to video, so you’re excused for only remembering Jeremy Irons devouring scenery to renovate his Irish castle in the original. The first is referenced in its subtitle. DADHAT is a pretty snappy acronym. So I will never stop calling it that. I saw it on poisson d’Avril Lavigne, but this critique is no jest. Roll your icosahedrons if you got ’em for this SPOILER review! Or would you rather wait until Jarnathan arrives?

Edgin Darvis lives for lute & plunder!

Riverdale Returns For The Last Time

Much like The Flash, Riverdale is back for one final season! Is it still in the new age of wonderment? When last we visited, the townies were transposed back to 1955 after Cheryl Blossom used the Phoenix Force against a misaligned comet. That’s in the trailers, so the end of season six shouldn’t be a surprise. Worry about SPOILERS for new stuff in the season seven premiere, “Don’t Worry Darling,” below. Verily I have become All Context Riverdale, the antithesis of no context riverdale. (This sums up the two kinds of Twitter checkmarks. @CherylBombshell never followed me back like she promised.)

As opposed to my other CW reviews & SHAZAM: Fury Of The Gods, this is another non-DC property for 2023. It’s easy to get confused sometimes though. Wonder Twins movie powers activate! Nevermind! That KJ Apa vehicled got swiftly Zaslaved. Gotham with Riverdale dialogue doesn’t have any Babs & Tabs with Choni talk? Camila Mendes in a top hat is a pair of fishnets away from being Zatanna, especially the DC Super Hero Girls iteration. I’ll dip into The Flash again afterwards anyway.

The trailer for the final season was released less than a month before the premiere. They actually released a bunch of intriguing stills for the first several episodes, particularly of Choni. Why can’t The CW’s superhero shows do likewise?

Ms. Madelaine Petsch’s perfectly madcap dialogue delivery will be missed.

SHAZAM! 2: Lightning Boogaloo

Is it too late to change the title of SHAZAM! Fury Of The Gods to SHAZAM 2: Lightning Boogaloo or SHA2AM? It was among the DC movies originally scheduled to premiere last year before the WBD merger shuffled or cancelled projects. David Zaslav still having the top job at Warner Bros. only makes sense in Bizarro World. This sequel is the first of four DC films scheduled to release in 2023, but I still worry Blue Beetle & Aquaman 2 aren’t safe. Speak “SHAZAM!” to see sequel SPOILERS! You don’t even need to be reading this at  Amersham Shazamersham station.

Captain Cheesesteak has to settle for Skittles since Babybel funded the wrong Captain Marvel!

Red Death Speeds Toward Superman & Lois Season 3 & Willow!

It’s my eighth blogiversary! Let’s roll out the celebratory SPOILERS for the third season premiere of Superman & Lois! Will season three confirm or deny the existence of Beebo in its universe? (I’m glad we reside in the universe where Everything Everywhere All At Once swept the Oscars!) If that doesn’t have enough snark for you, I’m supplementing it with The Flash. You thought I was going to say Gotham Knights!

Instead I’m going to be furious that Disney+ cancelled Willow! When #stopWillow trended, people didn’t mean the show! Now we’ll never get 1/12 scale action figures for it! The crummy fake nostalgia 1/18 ReAction figures are a cruel mockery of a series that deserved better than to be axed by bean counters that didn’t give it a chance to grow its audience. Must we wait another thirty-four years for the story to be resolved? #SellWillowToNetflixSoTheyCanAlsoNotGiveItTimeToBuildViewershipBeforeCancellingItOnAnEvenBiggerCliffhanger is apparently longer than allowed for a hashtag. As if WB TV didn’t give me enough to be mad about. “Look at all these series we’ve axed in honor of International Women’s Day!”

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They don’t call her Swolois Lane for nothing!

Is Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania Too Small To Fail?

I’m temporarily pausing the 2023 DC deluge for Marvel. (The other outlier thus far is my Willow season one review. I’ve unilaterally decided the ship portmanteau for Thraxus Boorman x Scorpia is Thraxorpia.) I’ll bounce back to The Flash’s final run like a boomerang later. Now it’s Kang time for Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania, which seems like it’s missing an m. Or have we all been saying “Quantum-mania” when it’s really “Quantu-mania?” Shrink down for SPOILERS with The Wages Of Cinema collaboreview! We left the Spy Kids 3D comparisons to those who actually saw it. (Why hasn’t Robert Rodriguez directed anything Marvel yet?)

The Flash’s Final Season Begins Its Sprint

The Flash has become the Beeboverse’s longest running program & its last one standing. (Superman & Lois is set on another Earth that doesn’t qualify unless it confirms Beebo exists there as well.) It’ll be ending a year earlier than the first season said Barry would vanish fighting Eobard during Crisis On Infinite Earths, which also happened ahead of schedule. Maybe if The Flash film hadn’t been chronically delayed, WB would’ve insisted on axing the TV show earlier under its misconception that there can only be one? (The first trailer debuts this Sunday, yet I already feel like I’ve seen it?)

The Flash cast will finally be free? This will be the season’s shortest run at only thirteen episodes. It’s the end of an era as the real O’Shaugnessy’s bar has been demolished & WB TV softball teams are going extinct. (Or it’s the end of an error, according to the subset of DC fans that loathe the limitations of network television.) Will you speed-read through this to get to the SPOILERS? Sorry it’s not as exciting as fixating on Power Girl & Lois Lane. Don’t fret; I found a way to make The Flash’s final run all about Legends Of Tomorrow!