Hey guys, before we get into this character rewrite, I just wanted to give a bit of context to this whole thing as I feel it's important for the more critical readers. First off, I'm not a professional writer by any stretch of the imagination so please do bare with me on some of the rough concepts delivered here as I attempt to get a general idea across. 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 whole idea behind this little project is 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 at all 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 chose the Season 5 villain of the Flash series as my character rewrite challenge. After years of people complaining about The Flash having the same rinse and repeat speedster villains with secret identities connected to our heroes concepts, the writers decides to completely go the opposite direction. Season 4 gave us the Thinker which was met with a very mixed reception and now comes Season 5 making another non-speedster attempt with Cicada. Now, despite what this character eventually turned into, I will always admit how intrigued I was with the initial set up. One of my favorite things about the Cicada character was how refreshingly grounded the character felt from just about every aspect. This wasn't someone with god-like speed, inter-dimensional traveling capabilities, or over powered high intellect like previous season villains. Instead, he was literally just an injured man in a very simplistic costume with a murderous agenda on 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 anyone 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 character which I found absolutely fascinating. There was also this interesting mythology built around him that spanned the present day timeline via Nora West-Allen's future scenes. The future Flash museum in Nora's time is a narrative device used to 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 added to the mystery of his overall story. 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.
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. The fact that he watches over a slowly dying girl to which he acts as a caring father figure to gave us an emotional angle to work with. And then...it happened. Our Cicada origin episode comes around and gives us one of the most horrendously rushed feeling 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, 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 tells him that it's not his fault for his daughter's coma but instead the metas running around the city being unchecked as well as the fact that her parents were murdered by metas. But 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. To have a character shift between a caring parent to someone watching the news of their city's superhero saving the day while some other meta is on the loose committing crime motivating him to become a murderer should be carefully laid out. Well..it's not. There's not a single ounce of care 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".
However, to counter my own statement here, I suggest looking back to the opening of 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, yet intimidating presence as he holds the dagger tight when his co worker starts questioning 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 given during this scene never follows through to the rest of the season. All of that said, the unforgivable thing to come out of this character isn't just the performance or motivation behind him, but what the show decides to do with him as a result.
Throughout the rest of the season, we have to watch Cicada show up, try to kill whatever metahuman victim of the week, only for Team Flash to 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 funny. 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 taking him down. 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. And to top things off comes the big reveal during the last episode or so in the season finale. The big revelation that the Cicada that we got (Orlin Dwyer) was an intentionally downgraded villain created by Thawne. Let that sink in. 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 for narrative reasons.
This villain was an almost compete failure of execution but, and the reason why this article was written in the first place, there's still fragments of a great foundation within his initial set up that could've lead to something amazing for the show. This is where my rewrite comes in.
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 beginning and end 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 this story and could quite easily lead to the future Thawne conflict without any problems. Alright, now let's do a bit of observation and clean up here for the character. We need to see where the core issues come in before things evolved into exhausting repetition. The best thing to do is tackle Cicada's roots for becoming who he is. That is to say the Orlin character's motivation.
If we venture back to that origin episode, we see that it's Grace being in a coma and him having to witness her being in this state that sets him off. However, as I described in my context section, the show's execution of this completely missed the mark and felt both forced and rushed. 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. 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 revelation 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 to 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. He's deeply upset about the overall incident itself (his niece being severely harmed) 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, exclusively taps into the information and emotions of her uncle. Grace, in her comatose and confused state, senses this anger in her uncle, feeds off of it as a child would from their parental figure, and understandably 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 feeds his anger even more to unreasonable levels causing him to slowly develop 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".
His already established meta power (connection to the dagger and other questionable feats) 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 Grace showing up plot point complicating things 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 himself. He'd have extreme unexpected mood swings during the season showing his fractured mind due to his connection to Grace giving my version of Orlin a reason to "act" the way that he does. However, I'd have it to where his chest scar (the dark matter wound from the satellite shrapnel) glows whenever he acts over the top as a visual indication that it's Grace's telepathic link "talking" through those specific scenes of questionable acting.
So, with this concept, I feel like I've successfully found a way to solve Chris Klein's performance complaints, the overly convoluted plot with a second Cicada showing up from the future. However, there's still a couple other issues to address. There's still the horrendous approach that was given to Team Flash's numerous encounters with Cicada feeling repetitive and laughable. What if, instead of him just flying away to escape with them questionably not tracking him after each encounter, we actually have legitimate battles. In my version, Cicada is actually terrifyingly 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 times where they do manage to strike a notable blow to him causing him to retreat, but he then adapts 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.
Again, if the producers were truing to do something new stepping away from speedsters and high intellect threats, I think this version of Cicada would've more than satisfied that mission. Team Flash realizes that to stop Cicada, they need to help his niece recover leading to an emotional moment where rescuing his niece from her coma snaps him out of his psychic link and the two reunite in a heartfelt embrace. Orlin thanks Team Flash for saving his niece and we may or may not even get a narratively fascinating trial episode that follows how his crimes should be handled by the law. Actually, now that I think about it. That implied trial episode could've ended up being one of the most compelling episodes of the series yet. How does the city view Cicada's crime when considering 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.
Editor's Final Note: So, there you have it guys. My semi-rushed together rewrite of the Cicada character that I hope you enjoyed reading despite whatever grammatical 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 (still can't entirely fix Cicada's numerous encounters with Team Flash leading to one or the other just running off). However, I do feel comfortable in saying that I was at least able to give Season 5 a much more interesting central antagonist for the fans to digest. On a side note, if you'd like to see what I thought of the Flash series and other shows episode by episode, check out my Facebook Page here as that's where my central hub of discussions can be found outside of the occasional reviews on the Penny For Your TV Thoughts blog.
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