So Jesus is canon in the Arrowverse, but apparently The Da Vinci Code never came out. Good to know.

I'm catching up on the previous three episodes before the finale airs and, my goodness, did I watch the same episode as the reviewer?

I've been wondering about the reduction of Mehcad Brooks' role the whole season. I want more James.

Their quest to prevent Savitar from killing Iris is already a mission to change the future, so it's no real big deal for Barry to travel there at this point. He can't do anything worse than their actual plan. Whether he physically goes there or not, if they succeed, they're still erasing that future and, potentially,…

I agree with all of that. I'm no Mon-El fan. But he's not there to appeal to white males. I don't know who he's there to appeal to because he's been pretty off-putting to me the whole season.

I was offended? I thought I was just disagreeing with the nature of Mon-El's genesis on the show. They certainly didn't add him to the mix to appeal to subsets of men missing in their audience and you won't convince me otherwise. If they did any conscious simpleton male outreach during season two's planning, it was…

That I am. If they'd continued to let him dude-bro around like he did when first introduced, that would be standard white male pandering. As much as I don't like current Mon-El, he's 1,000% more palatable as a romantic blank slate than he was as party boy Mike.

No. James thinks he's John Henry Irons…who he should've been from the beginning.

Unlike many, I liked season 1 Laurel. Season 2's alcoholic Laurel and season 3's "I take kickboxing, so I'm ready to Canary" Laurel were the worst. The reason season 4 Laurel was winning me back over (one of the few bright spots that year) was because she was behaving more like her season 1 self a.k.a. a charming,…

I'm pretty sure they added Mon-El for romance reasons and that's the opposite of how shows pander to white males.

"…although it does have the unfortunate side effect of centering a white male lead in a show that used to focus on women and feature an interracial relationship."

I'm talking about in the flashbacks. Between Russia and back to Lian Yu. Before she had a "You killed my dad" beef with Oliver.

Flashback Oliver tortured General Shrieve for hours back during the endgame of season 3. I always saw that as the coming out party for the monster. Others had coaxed and poked at it, but that was where Oliver took agency over his own darkness. Amanda Waller and Shrieve really broke him during that stint in China.

He's still got six weeks to find a balance between the monster and the man - probably at Talia's mountain assassin school. Then the big retcon will be us learning he (or an ally) chartered the boat that got him off Lian Yu and he'd only been back on the island a few days when we saw him rescued. 'Twas all a plan to go…

I'm two episodes from the end now and my main issue - a shoestring budget being a close second - has become how much the show deviates from Iron Fist lore on factual and character levels. Not in minor, understandable ways (Bucky being aged up in Cap 1), but they've done a wholesale rehaul here.

It would be kind of bigoted if he'd been in modern Hong Kong, Mumbai or Kyoto and I said that. But he wasn't. He was in a mystical city on another plane of existence - that operates on a way different wavelength - and matured in that culture.

Of the superheroes cited for being a Mighty Whitey, Iron Fist is actually the least egregious within the standard parameters of the trope. It just happens to be coming out last.

"just comes across as naïve at best"

Oh, I know that annoyance.

Bruce didn't kill Ra's, he just didn't have to save him. ;-)