1) Savitar, The Wedding Destroyer
Although Savitar doesn’t have the coolness factor of either the Reverse Flash or Zoom (at least in my opinion), the mystery surrounding who he is, how he came to be and what his connection to Team Flash is has me glued to my set every week.
In the appropriately titled “The Wrath of Savitar,” we learned how calculating the self-proclaimed God of Speed really is when he duped Wally West into freeing him from his prison in the Speed Force, effectively forcing Kid Flash to take his place. Furthermore, the strenuous events depicted in this episode successfully caused Barry and Iris’ engagement to implode after only one week.
Recently, I pointed out that Savitar looked a bit more practical in promos for this episode and, as it turns out, I was absolutely right. Although he still looked pretty badass, it’s hard not to get past the fact that he’s been a CGI creation to this point and is now a stuntman in a rubber suit with LED lights. In other words, he looks like a Savitar cosplayer. But, on the plus side, he would definitely place first in a costume contest.
This brings me back to what I was talking about back in the Legends portion of this article: The noticeable cutback on visual effects. In last week’s roundup, I did point out that the second part of The Flash’s “Gorilla City” event was very obviously not as over the top as the first and wondered if indeed the VFX budget had been blown. Maybe we got our silent answer this week.
Either way, they probably had to create a practical Savitar suit at some point if an unmasking is to occur. Still, it’s no secret that despite DC TV shows being renewed across the board, ratings are down this season. Let’s just hope that The CW doesn’t dramatically slash the budget going forward because, much like the source material, these series are heavily reliant on dynamic visuals. It’s part of the appeal.