The Flashs Armageddon Crossover Event Wasted DCs Despero

The Flash’s Armageddon Crossover Event Wasted DC’s Despero

The Flash’s latest 5-part crossover event completely wasted DC’s supervillain dictator, Despero, in a convoluted CW adaptation of Armageddon.

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The Flashs Armageddon Crossover Event Wasted DCs Despero

The CW’s crossover event, Armageddon, kicked off the latest season of The Flash and subsequently wastes DC’s Despero. This five-part crossover is unlike any previous CW event as it does not span the CW’s catalog of superhero shows. As the network’s first post-COVID crossover event, production opted to keep the event self-contained within The Flash due to extensive health and safety protocols. Consequently, the event will only feature small guest appearances from stars such as Brandon Routh (Ray Palmer), Cress Williams (Black Lightning), and Javicia Leslie (Batwoman).

Unsurprisingly, this means that the bulk of this Arrowverse event falls on the shoulders of Grant Gustin and the rest of Team Flash. The Flash season 8 event began with Despero, an alien time traveler from the future, arriving in Central City to prevent the coming Armageddon. To do so, Despero must kill Flash before Flash turns evil and lays waste to Earth. Naturally, Barry does not take this warning lightly and sets out to ensure this future never becomes a reality while on the run from Despero and his dangerous psychic abilities. While the core structure of the event is similar to its comic book namesake, Despero is a puzzling addition to the story.

Despero acts as the de facto stand-in for the Armageddon character, Waverider. This was a surprising decision considering Despero is known for being a dangerous Flash supervillain. In fact, The Flash introduced Despero (Tony Curran) as a would-be hero with an understandable motive and an empathetic story of already having lost one homeworld. Unfortunately, this creative take on Despero fails to capture the character’s genuine threat as a formidable psychic warlord capable of taking on the Justice League. Therefore, The Flash’s Armageddon completely wasted Despero in this convoluted comic book adaptation.

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Instead of simply introducing Waverider or another character as the harbinger of Armageddon, the CW elected to reimagine Despero as a would-be hero. This decision to give Despero an honorable mission to save the world goes directly against the character’s origins and what makes the character stand-out as a DC supervillain. Despero is meant to be a ruthless tyrant whose motivation is to definitively prove himself the ultimate galactic champion. That’s what makes him an incredibly dangerous threat to the heroes of Earth. Therefore, this is how the CW should have introduced the character.

The Arrowverse would have been better off to bring in Despero as the event’s singular threat without the pretense of saving Earth from the future Flash. Doing so would have allowed The Flash to explore Despero without the baggage that comes with borrowing the name of a notable comic book story. Though the CW has managed to pull off previous adaptations like Crisis on Infinite Earths, the network didn’t have the right characters in place to adapt Armageddon. Unfortunately, it seems the Arrowverse is more concerned with name recognition than properly utilizing the characters available to them such as Despero.

The Flash should have streamlined its 5-part event by simply having Despero arrive on Earth to establish his rule over the planet and challenge its protectors. This would have still allowed the event to put Team Flash to the test and feature appearances by guest heroes. After all, the point of any strong CW event shouldn’t be the storyline that’s being adapted; it should be the new challenge the heroes must face. Shoe-horning Despero into The Flash’s Armageddon adaptation wasted the character’s potential because it restricts his ability to represent the real threat and dials back the character’s innate ferocity.

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Link Source : https://screenrant.com/flash-armageddon-crossover-event-despero-villain-wasted/

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