The Flash: Grade the 'Armageddon' Finale — Plus, Did Katherine McNamara Get Some Arrow Spinoff Closure?
The following contains spoilers from the Dec. 14 episode of The Flash.
This week on The Flash, “Armageddon” (as in the 5-week event) and hopefully the prospect of Armageddon itself came to an end. All told, what did you think of the season-opening, not-a-crossover event? And what on any Earth did that final image mean?
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“Armageddon” Part 5 opened with Team Flash nabbing Eobard Thawne with conspicuous ease, after which they penned him up at STAR Labs. Seeing that Thawne was fading from the corrected, permanent timeline (because reasons), a debate ensued: Let him go and thus “die,” or save him by sapping him of his speed.
Weighing in on the side of “I say, let the plane crash!” was Mia Queen, who swung by 2021 while searching for her brother. When Iris then privately checked in on hot-headed Mia, the future hero disclosed that for two years now she has been trying to locate William, who was abducted at the end of Arrow’s “Green Arrow and the Canaries” backdoor spinoff pilot.
“I mean, ‘Poor William!’ is all I’ve got to say,” sighs Arrowverse vet Katherine McNamara, who reprised her role as Mia this week. “He’s been a hostage for two years, so maybe he’s the next super villain — we don’t know! — or maybe he’s thriving on a tropical island somewhere with a cocktail in his hand….”
Oliver and Felicity’s daughter also revealed to Iris that her only possible clue to finding William is the “family pet rock”/.hozen they were holding when he got taken. Iris suggests that Mia reach out to Felicity for help, but Mia worries that her mom won’t understand to what kill-y lengths she has gone to find her kin.
“Mia has lost William and hasn’t necessarily lived up to the Green Arrow mantle in a way that she had hoped — and in a way that she would assume her mother would’ve wanted,” says McNamara. “It’s difficult for her to face that, knowing how much the [Green Arrow] legacy meant to both of her parents.”
Despero was also on Team Kill Thawne, arguing that to let the villain live was to allow the slim chance of Armageddon eventually happening. In the end — and after Mia for a hot minute turned Glowy-Eyed, Despero-Controlled Assassin — Chester broke out some special, golden boots for The Flash, so that the speedster could run circles ’round Despero and dissipate the energy source with which he aimed to proactively destroy Central City. With the alien neutralized, Team Flash went about powering down Thawne, against his will, and locking him up at ARGUS.
A private party for Team Flash followed, where no “shop talk” was allowed — until, that is, Damien Darhk showed up. He meant no harm, but merely sensed he was about to himself fade from this corrected timeline. But before he did, he briefly and sweetly reunited with his daughter in a purgatory space, as Nora headed back to her rightful place among the living.
Having earlier drawn a blade on Damien (who after all once killed her friend Laurel’s… doppelganger, whom Mia never knew?), Mia shared with Iris that she had decided to reach out to her hacker extraordinaire mother, before putting 2021 in her rear view mirror.
“I think that Felicity and Mia have always had a bit of a contentious relationship, given her upbringing and all the other parental angsts that exist in the Queen family,” McNamara notes. “But [what Iris said] is exactly what Mia needed to hear. She has to realize that Felicity will understand a lot more than Mia thinks she will, and there’s a real opportunity there for that resolution.”
While Joe took a confused Nora Darhk aside to loop her in on what all has transpired, Barry toasted Team Flash. But before the CW series went bye-bye until March 2022, we got a bonus scene in which, at the CCPD, Bart and Nora suddenly materialized in the background of a framed photo from the station’s 2014 New Year’s Eve party.
Meaning…? I dunno, y’all get speculating! Did powering down Thawne somehow have a ripple effect that trapped Barry and Iris’ kids in the past? (Ergo, the return of both Eddie and Ronnie later this season?) Tom Cavanagh did indicate that Thawne would be playing the long game with his final act of revenge….
As for Mia’s next steps after dropping in on Felicity, McNamara posits, “If there’s anything we know for sure it’s that Mia will not rest until she finds her brother, because he’s the last piece of her family [in 2040]. She made a promise to Oliver that she would take care of William and take care of Felicity, and she feels as though she’s broken that promise by losing William, and she can’t rest until she fixes that.”
But short of ever seeing that mystery get solved on any remaining Arrowverse show, did McNamara get a bit of closure from her visit to The Flash, given that The CW back in January opted not to move forward with Green Arrow and the Canaries, which would have her, Katie Cassidy and Juliana Harkavy?
“I got a little bit of closure,” she told TVLine. “I mean, look, there’s still a lot of Mia’s storyline that is yet to be resolved, and I’m very glad for that. I think that by the end of this episode, Mia feels very welcomed in this world, and I hope it’s not the last time we see her.”
The Flash will resume Season 8 on Wednesday, March 9.
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