The Flash Season 5 Finale: 6 Ups & 2 Downs From 'Legacy'

Ups...

6. The Opening Scene

After last week's ambiguous ending, The Flash could have gone down the stylistic (and, at this stage, tropey) route in the opening of its season finale to avoid directly giving away what happened. However, the writers chose to dive straight into the action instead, with the episode picking up where its predecessor left off.

As a result, viewers tuned in to immediately see Ralph Dibny/Elongated Man stretch his way between the blast of Barry's dagger-destroying gun and Cicada's dagger. While the dagger itself bounced off him, the blast from the gun did not. Thankfully, his stretchy cells protected him from being obliterated as they merely inverted and, after a blast from Cisco, eventually corrected themselves.

Again, credit to the writers here because, for a brief second, it really looked like Ralph was a goner. Everything that has been struck by a blast from that gun has been destroyed and it's well-documented that anything can happen in an Arrowverse finale, so toying with our emotions like that was a great method of upping the ante from the get-go and ensuring that everyone was paying attention for what came next.

Amazingly, things only got better from there.