A selection of a few of the reviews of Wentworth’s performance in “The Flash - Going Rogue”. Enjoy!
Whilst there’s a lot going on in this latest episode of the show, it’s only fair that Emily Bett Rickards and Wentworth Miller get some time in the sun. Much like Felicity is often depicted as the glue that holds Team Arrow together, here she uses her experience and skills to smooth over some potential cracks in the dynamic between Barry and his chums at S.T.A.R. Labs. Similarly, she also acts as the voice of the audience here, asking the logical questions to the S.T.A.R. Labs crew about Barry’s condition and its potential repercussions. And while Felicity is a reassuring voice for Barry Allen et al, the tones of Wentworth Miller are absolutely perfect for Leonard Snart. From the moment he deadpans “Hey, cool it” early on, Snart has your attention. There's some pun-tastic mouthfuls of dialogue, yet all are handled in just the right way. Slow, methodical, callous and clinical, this adaptation of a character often seen as a C-level joke in the comic book world has huge potential to be something special. Now Captain Cold is never going to fill the role of the main villain of a season-long arc, but we just hope that he’ll get to dip his icy toes into The Flash at regular intervals – it certainly appears that he’ll be appearing at least once more in Barry Allen’s future. But safe to say, Miller completely nails the character, giving an eerie, calculating calmness to a villain often mocked in other formats.
Captain Cold, aka Leonard Snart is one of the Flash’s main Rogues. And this episode does a great job of introducing him and setting him up as such. First off, Wentworth Miller was a great cast as Snart. I never really watched Prison Break but I know of Miller’s work on that show and in other places and I like him. He pulls off the cold, calm and calculated persona of Snart extremely well. There’s a sense of arrogance to him that he brings that is so necessary when you have a villain (who isn’t a Metahuman) going toe-to-toe with a character like Flash in a recurring role. Even better, at the end of the episode, they show Snart recruiting a new partner to help him take on Flash. While some folks might have guessed that it’s the character Heatwave, you might not know that Dominic Purcell (also from Prison Break) will be playing that character. So I fully expect to be seeing more and more top level Rogues going up against Barry and his team.
Prison Break star Wentworth Miller made his debut as Leonard Snart/Captain Cold on this episode, and he was an absolute joy to watch on the screen. This was the live action debut of the character and Miller pulls it off with such a great charisma, you know he could go down in television villain history.
I loved his performance on the show however there was one part about his character that irritated me. It is a key part of Captain Cold in the comics. He does NOT kill. They hinted at his moral code in the beginning of the episode, however he went on to kill some people later. Hopefully, since this is the origin of Captain Cold, they do highlight this and have him develop his moral code over the show, but other than this detail, everything about Wentworth Miller as Captain Cold is perfect.
Not much information is given on Snart’s back-story, but already we are given a sense of how calm and calculating he is as a leader. Wentworth Miller played the role very well and being that Leonard Snart is a huge villain from the comics, he’s really doing the character justice. He pulls off the villainous persona well enough and fortunately we’ll be seeing more of him as the episode concluded with his escape.
As for the rest of the story, Wentworth Miller as Captain Cold was pretty great, and his arrival brought us more information on Cisco, and his reckless creation of tools without prior approval from STAR Labs. He is a good villain, and one we are interested in seeing a little more of at some point in the future. After all, it was nice for there to be a villain not captured within the hour.
One minor criticism from me on the show up to this point was the lack of engaging villains. That problem is completely solved in this episode with Wentworth Miller’s Leonard Snart aka Captain Cold. From the minute he’s introduced the character is menacing and intelligent and immediately seems like a credible threat to Barry and his team. Very little time is wasted in getting him his signature weapon and putting it to use. He quickly susses out Barry’s major weakness being that he cares for innocent people and, like Zod in Superman II, puts people in danger to keep Barry distracted. Despite the fact that he has no powers to speak of his strategic intelligence more than makes up for this. I’m glad that he will definitely return as he’s a great foil for Barry as well as being a superbly acted villain.
Wentworth Miller's Captain Cold finally gives the show an engaging and menacing villain who feels like a character instead of an antagonistic force that needs defeated. It has been pretty much the only thing the show has been missing since it began so it's encouraging to see this start to happen. It's also great to see how he tested The Flash and how well the speed powers were visualised even if the CGI was slightly ropey in parts. Spectacle is something this show does very well.
But the real star of the night was Wentworth Miller as the first smart villain that Barry has ever faced, Leonard Snart, aka Captain Cold. He’s not a meta, he’s a career criminal who, after his diamond heist is stopped by the “Streak,” gets Cisco’s stolen cold weapon and goes on an anti-Streak rampage. From the beginning, he’s set up as a new arch-nemesis for Barry. Snart’s dad was a cop gone bad who’s now rotting in jail, “Snart’s dad’s in prison too? We should start a club.” But where Barry is fun-loving and impulsive, Snart is thorough and meticulous. He kills anyone who tries to leave his crew, but won’t kill cops unless it’s necessary. He also seems to share his comic counterpart’s code to not kill children, as he’s seen being friendly to a child while casing a museum. Captain Cold lives up to his name, he’s a stone-cold badguy who thinks things through down to the second. Miller plays him perfectly, down to his deep monotone voice and almost sassy badassery (and sexiness). He quickly discovers that Barry’s true weakness is his need to save people, after Barry is slowed down by the gun and can’t save a man from its blast. Finally, a real match for Barry! As he says to Felicity, “opposites attract,” and this new villain is the right other side of the coin for The Flash, at least for now. In the end, Snart endangers a train full of civilians in order to get away, only leaving Barry alive after the arrival of his science sidekicks. Thank goodness he gets to live to fight The Flash another day! In fact, he even usurps Wells’ place in the final scene. This time we see Snart in a Keystone City motel recruiting a mysterious fire-loving friend named Mick to his anti-Flash crew. That can only mean Mick Rory, aka Heatwave, another Rogue who’s been cast as Miller’s Prison Break brother Dominic Purcell.
Miller not only gave Snart an incredibly appealing and menacing personality with more than a few cool tricks up his sleeve, but also realized the first truly good villain that the show has yet had overall. Some of his lines bordered on cheesy, perhaps as a nod to Captain Cold’s occasionally goofy personality in the comics, but even then, Miller made everything work wonderfully, even when he dons the character’s trademark parka at the climax of the episode. His altercations with Barry worked very well, with Barry even being haunted by a security guard that he fails to save from Snart’s Cold Gun, leading to a nice conflict that ties back to Detective West’s warnings from the previous couple of episodes.
The highlight however easily came when Snart tricks Barry into following him, believing Snart is trying to escape, before Snart derails a train with his Cold Gun and tries to make his actual escape. This leads to one of the most awesome sequences that the show has had yet, with Barry constantly speeding in and out of the bouncing, flipping train cars in slow-motion as he individually zips every passenger to safety. Even for television, this scene was amazingly shot and very ambitious, and the twist that Captain Cold even planned for Barry to succeed so that he could distract him and kill him made things all the better!
The only thing that may bug some here is that Cisco tricks Snart with a fake Cold Gun, leading to Snart just arbitrarily walking away. You could argue however that Snart saw through the ruse, and simply thought it would be more fun to dick with Barry another day, especially since he thanks Barry for giving him more of a challenge. The fact that he keeps the diamond may have felt like a loss, but for a villain this cool, it’s almost satisfying to have him walk away with his loot, and get another shot at Barry later. The ending tease with Snart getting back in touch with his old buddy, Mick, and giving him another stolen weapon that generates super-heated flames, should also get fans quite giddy for future episodes as well!
The Flash may possibly be one of the most consistently solid shows that is currently airing and it just seems to be getting better and better as the weeks go by. Before the pilot season started we brought news about some of the stars of Prison Break reuniting as villains for the show, well the ball has officially started rolling on that as one half of the duo make their Flash debut this week and as always, Wentworth Miller absolutely killed it every time he was on screen!
How did you like Wentworth Miller's introduction as Leonard Snart, Captain Cold?
Hank: I didn't just like him, I loved Wentworth Miller as Leonard Snart. He brought such a cool (pun intended) quality to the role without making Snart feel campy at all. Captain Cold could have easily come across as cheesy as Arrow's original Count Vertigo. Instead Wentworth's subtle performance and mannerisms made Snart a believable and grounded villain. Nothing cartoony about this Captain Cold!
Tanya: I thought it was fantastic. I'm honestly not overly familiar with the comic-book version of Captain Cold, but he made a great TV villain and worthy adversary. The fact that he's actually not a meta-human, but just a very good criminal with a really powerful weapon, also makes him standout.
Narsimha: I don't know if I agree with Hank that Miller's Captain Cold isn't cartoony. I thought that Miller's stoic, but often times too rigid performance made him fit into this comic book villain role even better. It added to the anesthetic. I've always thought Miller was an okay actor who was just perfect for Prison Break, and he seems to be well cast once again. I love that he isn't a meta and that he's complex in the way he tries to limit unnecessary kills, but then is smart enough to use one of Barry's weakness (his compassion) to get the better of him and doesn't hesitate in harming civilians.
From the very beginning of the episode, Leonard Snart, aka Captain Cold, was a large and looming presence. At first I thought it was going to be difficult to separate Wentworth Miller from Prison Break’s Michael Scofield, but Miller had such a command of the character that it was easy to see him as a villain. – See more at: http://www.thenerdmachine.com/the-flash-going-rogue-review/#sthash.C95PCTws.czSqXeEf.dpuf
Credited Source: Wentology
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