Television

"Ain't nobody feeling Team Kid Flash."

When Season 3 ended on The Flash, Barry Allen/The Flash (Gustin) is trapped inside the Speed Force where he sacrificed himself to free his friends. Months later we find Wally West/Kid Flash (Lonsdale) acting as the team's speedster. Iris (Patton) is now in charge of the team, while Caitlin (Panabaker) has left to tend bar, mostly running from her Killer Frost persona. Joe West (Martin) is lending police support where he can, and Cisco (Valdes) has honed his teleportation skills and gets the players where they need to be. But they are barely holding their heads above water, and the stress is finally getting to them. And that was before a robotic Samurai arrives threatening to destroy Central City if the team doesn't bring him The Flash. Of course Cisco comes up with a plan to free Barry, and it's no spoiler here to reveal that he does just that. After all, the show isn't called Kid Flash. It's called The Flash, and Barry is always going to be a key ingredient to that name. If all of this sounds a bit confusing to you, you're starting in the wrong place. Check out our reviews of the previous three years here.

"This is not just about Gotham. This is all about Bruce Wayne."

It really is about Gotham. And it's about Jim Gordon. It's also very much about Bruce Wayne. The third season ended with Bruce finally starting to embrace his vigilante role, but it was crude and very much only a shadow of the hero he will become. There's a reason why all of the episodes of this season are subtitled The Dark Knight. Bruce is becoming more and more like Batman. Bruce even confronts his future alter-ego in a vision state. He's being propelled to that future because of Gotham and because he's also being manipulated toward his destiny by none other than Ra's Al Ghul himself, played by Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's awkward Doctor Alexander Siddig. He's taking center stage this season, and he knows Wayne's future and sees himself as the guiding force to make sure he gets there.

"My name is Oliver Queen. After five years in hell, I returned home with only one goal: to save my city. Today I fight that war on two fronts. By day, I lead Star City as its mayor. But by night, I am someone else. I am something else. I am the Green Arrow..."

Who the heck is this Green Arrow of whom you speak? If that's your first question, you need to go back a couple of grades and catch up with the rest of us. The comics are good place to begin, but the television universe is its own place and not tied so tightly to the DC comic book universe. Your best place to go to catch up would be the first five seasons. It'll be worth the effort, and I can get you started with those reviews found here. This review will not contain spoilers from the sixth season but very well must contain some from the previous year. So if you're not caught up, do that first.

When we first meet the Pierce family it is at the Freeland jail, where Jefferson Pierce (Cress Williams) is there to bail out his oldest daughter, Anissa (Nafessa Williams).  The show doesn’t waste time in tackling social issues as we see them have an encounter with the Freeland police force as they are pulled over for a traffic stop.  The reason for the stop turns out to be they are looking for a suspect who just robbed a liquor store, and because Jefferson is black, he of course is a potential suspect.  Having this scene early on, not just in the season but in the pilot episode, is a bold and important move by the writers.  This shows us that despite being a superhero show, Black Lightning is going to show us a superhero tale unlike anything we’ve seen before on the CW.

Family takes the center stage in this show, and while there is some superhero crimefighting that does get done over the course of the season, watching the Pierce family tackle social issues is just as important.  Jefferson Pierce is a high school principal in a neighborhood that is surrounded by gang violence and drugs.  It’s been nine years since he was fighting crime as the costumed hero Black Lightning. He’s had his costume stashed away in order to raise his family and help the kids at his school, which has made him a valuable figure in the community.  He even mentions early on how he’s saved more kids by being a mentor at his school than he ever did as the masked vigilante.  Seeing Pierce confronting gang members and helping his students is an engaging story already, though it’s something audiences have already seen before (Dangerous Minds, Lean on Me, etc).