In Review: The Flash (S8 – EP1) Armageddon Part One

Synopsis: In Part One of Armageddon. A powerful alien threat arrives on Earth under mysterious circumstances, Barry, Iris and the rest of Team Flash are pushed to their limits in a desperate battle to save the world. But with time running out and the fate of humanity at stake, Flash and his companions will also need to enlist the help of some old friends if the forces of good are to prevail.

The Story

Things take a little while to get going in this episode as we get treated to lots of expositional junk which kind of shows the everyday lives of team Flash. Things don’t really get motoring until the arrival of Ray Palmer, which coincides with a robbery by a gang of meta-humans calling themselves The Royal Flush. As the team investigates they learn that the Royal Flush is stealing high-end technology. Their ultimate plan is to rob 50 Million Dollars worth of CryptoCurrency.

While the investigation of The Royall Flush gang is going on. Chester P. Runk is looking after Ray Palmer at a Technologies Convention while Allegra struggles with finding her feet in a new management position at Iris’s Media Company.

As the team manages to bring The Royal Flush gang down. Their celebrations get curtailed by the arrival of Despero who has a mission to kill The Flash. Despero tells Flash that he is going to destroy the world in about ten years, and it is his job to stop him by any means. Thankfully Ray is on hand as The Atom to help Flash temporarily stop Despero, but he later returns and gives Flash 7 Days to prove that he will not become the evil tyrant he will see in the future. 

The Acting

The acting throughout this episode is pretty solid Grant Gustin is strong as ever as Barry Allen and The Flash. Brandon McKnight continues to channel his inner geek as Chester P. Runk. While Tony Curran literally blows all of the cast out of the water with his epic entrance as Despero. So much so that it will probably take cast members from all of the CW’s Arrowverse plus members of the Royal Shakespearian company to bring this Despero geezer down. 

We get a nice guest appearance from Brandon Routh who slips back into his role of Ray Palmer after nearly 18 months away from it. And his scenes with Brandon McKnight are fun to watch. But in order to bring down this Despero dude. The actors of Team Flash are going to need to take something to boost their acting prowess or be utterly downstaged. They just about hold their own here.

Overall

Part One of Armageddon just about manages to get the ball rolling. I felt that they might have been better off doing away with The Royal Flush gang, who were kind of villains of the week anyhow. And just went straight in with the main threat and ditched some of the expositional stuff that we were treated to. The writing felt a little inconsistent for example we have a character moment scene at the start of the episode where Caitlin is having a walk to the coffee shop with Barry and she says something along the lines of, “Does it ever get old walking for a coffee when you can like run 4000 miles per hour?”. Are you shitting me? Caitlin has known Barry Allen AKA The Flash for like eight years and she has only just come up with that question. Also after that scene, we have lots of fawning over what a great hero The Flash is. It really felt quite overdone and feels like the writers are softly trying to reboot the show for a new audience in so many ways.

Hopefully, this is just an off week with such strange character interactions. And we get much more into the meat of the story. Because the above character interactions really felt out of place and was a disservice to the two actors who had to play the scene.