The Arrowverse’s Wildest Episode Is Better Than Most DC Movies

The musical episode in The Flash was completely unnecessary and largely muddled, but it somehow managed to deliver better than a lot of other shows in the Arrowverse. The Flash season 3 featured a musical episode where Barry Allen teamed up with Kara Danvers from Supergirl to defeat a powerful villain known as the Music Meister, played by none other than Darren Criss.

While plenty of TV shows do have a musical episode at some point, this was new territory for the highly experimental Arrowverse, and it felt a little out of place in the superhero shared universe that was being established. But, considering the extensive cast of talented singers that the Arrowverse had accumulated, there was some sense to doing this.

The Flash’s Musical Episode Was So Unnecessary

Personally, I am a huge fan of musicals in general, and to this day, “Duet” remains one of my favorite episodes of any show from the Arrowverse. But that doesn’t distract from the fact that this episode felt really wedged into the lineup for both The Flash and Supergirl.

Of course, The CW loves to introduce drama into these stories, and having both Barry and Iris, and Kara and Mon-El, have a major conflict in their relationship provided a perfect set-up for this episode to swoop in and fix all of their broken hearts, but it wasn’t necessary.

Barry and Iris were on good terms, with some challenges, but the previous episode saw Barry break up with Iris, which already felt weird and out of character, only to fix it in the course of one musical episode. And frankly, it seems like this was more of an excuse to show off the talents of various Arrowverse actors like Jeremy Jordan, Melissa Benoist, Grant Gustin, John Barrowman, and more, who all had prior experience in musicals.

But, including people like Barrowman, who plays an Arrow villain, felt largely disconnected from both The Flash and Supergirl. Ultimately, if this episode hadn’t been included at all, the stories of each show would likely have progressed in identical ways.

The Flash TV Show Largely Focuses On Moral Storytelling

Despite all of that, The Flash is a show that places a lot of importance on moral storytelling. Barry Allen is a very different hero from the others featured in the Arrowverse, who places a lot of importance on things like friendship, kindness, love, and what it means to actually be a hero.

When it comes to moral storytelling, often musicals can hyperfocus and distill a message into its purest form, and in The Flash’s musical episode, it did just that with both Barry and Kara learning to love, forgive, rely on friends, and not be afraid to ask for help.

Sure, it feels kind of rushed, and all of these lessons are learned through song rather than challenging story arcs, but it was a fun and interesting way to develop the characters, and ultimately, it landed better than a lot of other Arrowverse projects. For this reason, The Flash’s musical episode works, and it deserves its spot on the slate.