CW The Thinker: What's your opinion on him ?

[Wall-Crawler]

So, what did you guys think about The Thinker/Clifford DeVoe as the main villain of S4 ?

[Wall-Crawler]

For me, he was surprisingly good, at least at the beginning, he felt like a genuine threat, and the actor did a great job, but therein lies the problem, as soon as Clifford transferred his consciousness to the first dude, he stopped feeling like a threat, I didn't feel any menace from him anymore, especially with the annoying short girl, and the extremely annoying accent from the country girl who couldn't act if her life depended on it. Once he took Dibny's body and we had DeVoe's actor back, he returned to greatness, not as much as he was at the beginning, but still a massive improvement over those two annoying girls.

[AJBopp]

he didn't seem like the culmination of what his name implies. He didn't think so much as he just knows everything.

Somehow.

To that extent, it felt like he was much the same as the previous season villains, who knew stuff. In their case, they knew stuff because they were from the future and knew how the past played out. Thinker knew stuff for no particular reason at all.

So to me he started lame, and then became a body snatcher and became more lame, and just was never engaging for me.

[Jokerz79]

I have to think about this.

[AnakinFlair]

Season 4 was the only season that I gave up on. I still haven't watched past the mid-season break. He was a terrible villain.

[KurtW95]

More interesting before he became a body/power snatcher with Unabomber motivation.

[Frontier]

I think he was an interesting concept that had a strong start thanks to a terrific performance by Neil Sandilands that was botched in the execution with the bodywaps and power-stealing.

[Sammael]

Season 4 was the only season that I gave up on. I still haven't watched past the mid-season break. He was a terrible villain.

You missed a great scene.

[Vakanai]

Worst main villain for the series to date. At least in my opinion. The main actor for him was pretty good though. Reverse Flash from season one still remains the best, followed distantly by Savitar and then Zoom. I'm withholding judgement on Cicada until closer to the end of the season, but so far pretty good, might easily make it to the #2 spot. Sadly this is less because he's a great villain and more because his character hasn't felt as underwhelming as the previous three. Love this series, but the big bads aren't that great.

[Jim Kelly]

Maybe I need to go back and rewatch the Savitar and Zoom episodes but they never stood out to me as all that great. They held off revealing who the villain was for so long that all you got was a faceless character. Maybe the voice actors were good, but it was hard to feel anything for them as villains because they were so opaque. And the whole thing with Barry having to be faster became repetitive. Savitar was the worst because they held back the reveal for so long and by the time they showed who he was it wasn't a shock or swerve, it was just a let down.

There may have been problems with the Thinker arc, in taking so long to get to where they were going. But it was nice to see the writers trying to do new things. On an episode by episode basis, I like more of THE FLASH than I dislike, but it was the Savitar season that was the worst in the end.

And with season four, the series feels like it's more planned out on the whole. Where it used to be that each season was just driving toward a familiar ending formula, in season four they started to think ahead of that season into the next season and beyond that to other seasons. So even if the Thinker turned out not so great, he set up a lot of other stuff that is panning out in this season. And this is the best season since the first one.

[Vakanai]

Maybe I need to go back and rewatch the Savitar and Zoom episodes but they never stood out to me as all that great. They held off revealing who the villain was for so long that all you got was a faceless character. Maybe the voice actors were good, but it was hard to feel anything for them as villains because they were so opaque. And the whole thing with Barry having to be faster became repetitive. Savitar was the worst because they held back the reveal for so long and by the time they showed who he was it wasn't a shock or swerve, it was just a let down.

There may have been problems with the Thinker arc, in taking so long to get to where they were going. But it was nice to see the writers trying to do new things. On an episode by episode basis, I like more of THE FLASH than I dislike, but it was the Savitar season that was the worst in the end.

And with season four, the series feels like it's more planned out on the whole. Where it used to be that each season was just driving toward a familiar ending formula, in season four they started to think ahead of that season into the next season and beyond that to other seasons. So even if the Thinker turned out not so great, he set up a lot of other stuff that is panning out in this season. And this is the best season since the first one.

Savitar and Zoom didn't stand out, but because they were opaque and mysterious most of their seasons them being crappy characters didn't drag the show down too bad. Because the Thinker got more time with us knowing who he was from the beginning however him being a crappy villain did drag things down more, in my opinion. The writers for this show haven't been able to write a good big bad since the end of season one, but at least it felt like they knew they couldn't and tried writing around that fact. With Devoe they didn't write around that fact, and I really feel they should have. Season four to me felt a little worse for wear because so much time was spent on a big bad that didn't feel worth it to me. Savitar and Zoom weren't great, but we didn't have to put up with that as strongly as we had to last season.

I actually think you could knock out the big bad for this series and actually get along better just focusing on the villain of the week. Also, it feels a bit wrong-headed of this show that Flash has such a great rogues gallery, but outside of Grod (almost wrote Zod here by the way, darn names that rhyme!) most never re-occur.

[Nate Grey]

I didn't really warm up to Thinker until he finished his goal of getting all the bus meta powers and the body-swapping was finally over.

Though I wonder if they were going for a Dolores Winters nod when he stayed in Fiddler's body for multiple episodes. I mean yes he stayed in Hazard's body for a few eps but he literally looked like Winters when he was in Fiddler's body.

[Vakanai]

I didn't really warm up to Thinker until he finished his goal of getting all the bus meta powers and the body-swapping was finally over.

Though I wonder if they were going for a Dolores Winters nod when he stayed in Fiddler's body for multiple episodes. I mean yes he stayed in Hazard's body for a few eps but he literally looked like Winters when he was in Fiddler's body.

Who is Dolores Winters?

[Nate Grey]

Who is Dolores Winters?

Remember seeing a white gorilla with a big head on the old Justice League/Justice League Unlimited cartoon named the Ultra Humanite? Well in the comics his original body was that of an old frail man, and when it finally failed he kidnapped an actress named Dolores Winters and had his brain placed in her body and her own thrown away (years later it was retconned that the assistant who helped with this placed it in ANOTHER body and she eventually became the villain Endless Winter).

[Jim Kelly]

It's not like I was immediately interested in the Thinker and Marlize. They seemed flat characters when we first met them. But we got to see them in different stages of their life, so they emerged as some of the most fleshed out characters on THE FLASH. Clifford DeVoe is an interesting character to study, because it seems like he starts out good and goes steadily bad. But as we learn more about his past, if you really think about it, he's always been a bad guy, he was just good at hiding it from Marlize.

Neil Sandilands and Kim Engelbrecht did some really good acting--playing all those different nuances. I think the most glaring problem was at the very end where Team Flash took pity on Marlize. She might have been led down the garden path by Clifford, but she was also a rather terrible human being when you get down right to it--so she shouldn't have been let off so easy.