Geeking Out About Television #2: Arrowverse Rewrite | Cicada's Character

  

Context From The Author Before Reading

Now before we get into this character rewrite, I just wanted to give a bit of context to this whole article as I feel it can be beneficial to the more critical readers. First off, I'm not a professional writer by any stretch of the imagination so please do bear with me on some of the more abruptly thrown together concepts presented here. Also, keep in mind that I came up with this in roughly 10 minutes or so as I wanted to challenge myself with an insanely limited time window. The general idea behind this little project was that I wanted to see how I'd fare against a professional team of show writers who had weeks to craft out something amazing versus me, a complete amateur, who had hardly any time to make some major tweaks. 

I also wanted to step into the high pressured shoes of a writer, so as a fan and critic, I can be much more appreciative and understanding of the challenges that comes with creating these shows. So, with that out of the way, let's talk about why I specifically chose the Season 5 villain of the CW's Flash series as my character rewrite challenge. After years of fans complaining about The Flash having the same rinse and repeat speedster villains with secret identities connected to our heroes, the writers decided to venture into a completely different direction for the sake of variety. As a result, Season 4 gave us the Thinker which was met with a very mixed reception followed by Season 5's Cicada. 

Now, despite my issues towards what this character eventually turned into during this season, I will always admit how genuinely intrigued I was during the initial set up of this arc. One of my favorite things about the Cicada character was how refreshingly grounded he felt from just about every aspect contrasting previous antagonists. This was not someone with god-like speed, inter-dimensional traveling capabilities, or over powered high intellect like what we've seen prior. Instead, he was literally just an injured man in a very simplistic costume with a murderous agenda towards specifically metas. 

What was also refreshing about him was, unlike every other season villain, he didn't necessarily have a close connection/mission towards Team Flash. There was no personal conflict with Barry or any one of our heroes whatsoever. Barry is simply just another person on his list of people to take out just for simply existing as a metahuman. Like few people have said, and I 100% agree, Cicada is basically a meta hunting Jack the Ripper figure which I found to be absolutely fascinating. There was also this interesting mythology built around him that spanned the present day timeline via Nora West-Allen's future continuity. The future Flash museum in Nora's timeline is a narrative device used to essentially hype up who Cicada was in the present by describing him as "the one who got away" in Flash's rogues gallery. 

Just the idea of him being a serial killer that never got caught by our hero according to history added to the mystery and allure of his overall presence. There's also an article from the future detailing that heroes like the Green Arrow and Supergirl couldn't defeat him which brilliantly amped up the audience's anticipation to see him in action. Simply put, there's an impressive great deal of work that the writers put into Cicada's offscreen attributes building him up to be a formidable force unlike what we've seen before. This aspect to the character is what appealed to me the most and what I believe to be the show's greatest strength surrounding him. 

Last but not least was the initial set up for Cicada's motivation. Unlike previous season villains, Cicada actually has a relatable element for audiences to somewhat latch onto. Presenting him as a caring father figure watching over a slowly dying girl is a profoundly emotional angle that viewers have never experienced in the show's season villain gallery before. And then...it happened. Our Cicada origin episode finally came around resulting in the writers giving us one of the most horrendously rushed villain motivations to date. Orlin Dwyer's (Cicada) story revolves around Team Flash's destruction of the Thinker's mind corrupting satellite where fallen debris struck both him and his niece. 

When his niece is shown to be in a comatose state while he barely survived the event, he looks at a breaking news report talking about Team Flash's victory and decides "Every meta will die". What's the connection here? His emotions when watching the news footage causes the satellite shrapnel that was extracted from his body to unexpectedly yet perfectly fly into his hands. Instead of realistically freaking out, he just "connects the dots" seeing this as a weapon for him to murder metahumans because...he's angry. Prior to this, the nurse caring for his comatose niece tells him that it's not his fault for his daughter's condition but instead the metas running around the city being unchecked as well as the fact that her parents were murdered by metas. Wait...what?! Is this nurse secretly Emperor Palpatine trying to create her own Darth Vader? It just feels jarring.

Remember, this isn't some ex-criminal or someone with mental issues who just so happen to be given this opportunity or excuse to surrender to sheer raw emotional release. Orlin was set up as just an average Joe trying to be a good parental figure to his niece before a tragic incident almost killed them. This wasn't a case of a metahuman attacking them but instead a casualty of a superhero saving the day. Take a look at the shift that takes place here. Orlin goes from being a genuinely caring "average guy" parent who gets into an accident during the Flash's rescue mission with his niece. He looks at a news story where they showcase that Flash indeed saved the day (the world even) despite some major casualties while some other meta criminal is on the loose in the side bar story.

This news story then motivates him to becoming a murderer to kill "all metas". Do you see the gap there? There's not a single ounce of care being given to the structuring of this narrative. To make things worst, Chris Klein's vocal and facial performance as Cicada is by far the most laughably terrible display of acting in the show's history up to this point. It borders on an elementary school play "bad guy performance" more so than a big threat that we're supposed to take seriously. Yes, we've seen some over the top Flash villains on the show, but the majority of them has been given the villain of the week position rendering them forgettable and non-impactful in scope. This is your primary antagonist that an entire season is going to be revolving around. Everything from storytelling to performance and presentation has to be consistently firing on all cylinders. Alas, it's not here. 

However, to counter my own statement there, I suggest looking back to the opening scene of Season 5 Episode 2 where we first saw Cicada unmasked at a factory having flashbacks to his fight with Gridlock. Chris does an excellent job at playing this injured, grounded, and yet intimidating presence as he holds his dagger tightly while a curious co-worker starts to question his scars. Why am I highlighting this scene? It shows that under the right direction, actors can either shine or disappoint in a role. Unfortunately for Chris, whatever successful direction and performance was given during this scene never followed through to the rest of the season. With that said, the real unforgivable thing to come out of this character isn't just the performance or motivation component, but what the show decides to do with him directionally speaking. 

Throughout most of his Season 5 screen time, we have to watch Cicada show up, try to kill a metahuman, only for Team Flash to also show up and constantly fail to catch him after he "flies away". The fact that this is repeated over and over again made it all the more unintentionally hilarious. This is the first and possibly only season villain on the show that had me questioning why the team couldn't have easily stopped him with the most basic methods of tracking and capturing. There's even an argument to be made that the police by themselves could've actually taken out Cicada with just basic SWAT team tactics. How often do I get to say that about a supervillain in any comic book property? 

And to top things off comes the big reveal during the last couple of episodes. The big revelation that the Cicada that we got (Orlin Dwyer) was an intentionally downgraded villain created by Thawne. Let that sink in for a moment. We had to watch for the majority of a season a down scaled, unimpressive, terribly performed version of what was teased as being this legendary criminal in Flash's future. And why? For narrative reasons. Guys, this villain was an almost compete failure of execution but, and the reason why this article was written, there's still fragments of a great foundation within his initial set up that could've lead to something amazing.

Cicada's Character Rewrite

So, as with my other Arrowverse rewrite articles, I'll try my best not to stray too far away from what the writers did on the show. Instead, I'll work within most of the show's general storytelling points while making some tweaks here and there. If Cicada is intentionally supposed to be a result of Thawne's manipulations then I'll keep that intact. However, I'm not so sure that the Gracie Cicada II is necessary to the story as this felt more like a twist for dramatic escalation that didn't really add anything substantial overall. Instead, I think Orlin Dwyer is the only Cicada that's needed for the narrative and could quite easily lead to the future Thawne conflict without any problems. 

Alright, with that out of the way, let's do a bit of observation and clean up work surrounding our villain spotlight. We need to see where the core issues come in before things unfortunately evolved into exhausting repetition. The best thing to do in my opinion would be to tackle Cicada's roots (his origins and motivations).

If we venture back to that origin episode, we see that it's Grace being in a coma and him having to witness her condition that sets him off. However, as I described in my context section, the show's execution of this pivotal moment completely missed the mark and felt highly artificial. Now to be fair, there is the added context that her parents were apparently murdered by a meta as well, but this is hardly brought up with Orlin during his transformation arc. But what if we can actually keep that rushed feeling of a character shift and still make it work in the grand scheme of things? As a matter of fact, I found a way to actually make Orlin's fast paced villain turn a pivotal part of the story. Here it is. 

Orlin, in a big twist that happens later down the line, is revealed to have been guided by his niece this entire time as a meta murdering threat. That's right. He's been influenced by a comatose, frightened, and angry child via her newfound meta ability from the dark matter wound in her head. What is this power exactly? Grace can psychically affect other metas by exploiting an already established strong emotion within them. Here's how I break down this transition. Orlin was upset about his niece's medical situation and briefly learned that it was a satellite crash caused by a meta human (the Thinker). He's deeply upset about the overall incident and the effect that it had on his niece more so than the idea of metas being responsible for it. 

This is the mind and emotional state of a reasonable adult as Orlin was shown to be for the most part in that very same episode prior to his turn. However Grace, in her child-like nature to rushingly piece things together without all of the details, telepathically taps into the information and emotions from her uncle's mind. In her comatose and confused state, she senses her uncle's anger, feeds off of it as a child would from their parental figure, and immaturely creates the powerful idea of getting rid of the "bad guys" who hurt her and her family. This idea gets psychically projected into Orlin which profoundly feeds his anger like pouring gasoline on an open flame. This leads to him gradually developing the idea of avenging his niece by killing every meta human in the city leaving only them behind as the ones who "deserve to live". 

Is it unreasonable? Yes, because it comes from a child who is naturally unreasonable especially when given only fragmented information. This is why I think it would've perfected perfectly to see Orlin shift so drastically to becoming what he is. His already established meta power from the dark matter exposure (connection to the dagger and other questionable feats of strength) becomes amplified due to her influence making him a terrifyingly formidable but also unstable threat. It becomes a story about a toxic parent-child bond caused by a tragic circumstance that was completely outside of their control. I feel this would've made for a refreshing new take on what a season villain meta human threat could be. 

There's no need for a future timeline Grace showing up complicating things as the series did as this alone would've been a fascinating conflict for our heroes to tackle. This could also explain Orlin's over the top behavior (the terrible villainous performance) as he's essentially channeling the rage of both his young 10 year old niece and an unreasonable version of himself. You can show him having extreme unexpected mood swings during the season reflecting his fractured mind due to his poisonous connection to Grace. So in a way, I've essentially written in the perfect excuse for Chris be occasionally cringeworthy in his performance. However, I'd have it to where his chest scar (the dark matter wound) glows whenever he acts over the top as a visual indication that it's Grace's telepathic link "talking" through those scenes.

So, with this approach, I'd say I've somewhat successfully found a way to solve Chris Klein's performance complaints and the overly convoluted plot with a second Cicada showing up from the future. However, there's still a couple other issues to address here. There's still the horrendous approach that was given to Team Flash's numerous encounters with him feeling repetitive and downright laughable. What if, instead of him just flying away to escape with them questionably not tracking him after each encounter, we actually have legitimately tensed battles. In my version, Cicada is glaringly powerful and intimidating always coming close to killing our heroes before they're the ones that barely escape most of the time. 

There will be instances where they do manage to strike a notable blow to him causing him to retreat leading him adapting to a newfound power that throws them off next time. They surmise that the dark matter wound is frequently cycling through his different abilities rendering him unstable which makes each encounter a fresh and engaging new battle. There's no real sense of repeated victories or defeats but instead close calls allowing them to learn from one another. Is it a flawless concept? Maybe not, but it does allow for versatile hero-villain confrontations with the same bad guy forcing both sides to be more tactical. 

Again, if the producers were trying to do something new stepping away from speedsters and high intellect threats, I think this version of Cicada would've more than satisfied that objective. Team Flash comes to the solution that in order to stop Cicada fully, they need to help his niece recover. This leads to an emotional moment where rescuing his niece from her comatose state snaps him out of his psychic link and the two reunite in a heartfelt embrace. Orlin thanks Team Flash for saving his niece, shows them how deeply sorry he is for the damage that he costed, and we get to explore a narratively fascinating trial episode centered around how his crimes should be handled by the law. 

Actually, come to think of it, doing a court trial episode with that type of concept could've made for arguably one of the most compelling episodes of the series yet. Think about that for a moment. How does the city view Cicada's crime when putting into consideration the complex involvement of a confused and comatose child's psychic link affecting his behavior? Wow, Season 5 could've actually been pretty awesome even without Thawne having to come in which is crazy to say. What starts off as a seemingly unstoppable Jack the Ripper serial killer story becomes a tragic and heartfelt science-fiction family story. A season worth admiring for its refreshing take on is main villain and story arc. 

Editor's Final Note: So, there you have it guys. My semi-rushed together rewrite of the Cicada character that I truly hope you've enjoyed reading despite whatever  errors may have made its presence known. Now yes, I may not have fixed all of my issues with Season 5 as a whole including Cicada himself, and I'm sure that I've opened up a can of issues in the process. However, I do feel comfortable in saying that I was at least able to give the season a much more interesting antagonist for the fans to digest and speculate over. On a side note, if you'd like to see my thoughts on the Flash series as a whole and other shows episode by episode, check out my Facebook Page here. That's where my central hub of geeky discussions can be found.