So It's Britannia and the Resistance Now.
While the final issue of Lois Lane and the Resistance does move away from treating Grifter as the main character, that does not mean the focus shifts entirely back to Lois Lane. The tie-in ends much as it began with Lois feeling like a supporting character along for the ride rather than a lead character driving the story.
If you were to jump into this limited series with the final issue and did not real the title of it, you could easily believe the character of Britannia is supposed to be the star. That is suddenly the case here as the story begins with her origin and ends with her making a valiant stand against the Amazons to save what's left of the United Kingdom. Are there post-Flashpoint plans for this character? Because it comes off as awkward and pointless to have this new character showing up and stealing the spotlight in a story event that's primarily about seeing familiar characters in unfamiliar circumstances. As for Britannia specifically, she is not a terribly inventive character either. There is a heavy generic quality to her, because Abnett and Lanning stop just short of giving us any details that would make her stand out. She has a stock "science gone wrong" origin and a suit of armor that is supposed to be really powerful but lacks any defined qualities to it telling us why. With a real name like Penny Black, the character is pretty heavily patriotic, which is fine but that borderline stereotypical qualities does add a bit to the generic feeling.
It seems that Abnett and Lanning have been loosely coordinating with Tony Bedard on this subplot about how the war between Wonder Woman and Aquaman has been fabricated by their closest advisors. It is a subplot that has honestly done serious damage to Flashpoint, because it guts the war between two iconic characters and leaves it hollow. This issue's role in it is apparently to have Wonder Woman learn how harsh her rule has been, because she apparently pays no attention to anything. It is an out of place moment, and it strangely tries to protect Wonder Woman from any of the blame of what the Amazons have done to people. Why? This is an alternate reality. It is unnecessary.
Lois Lane has spent most of this series blundering along as a passenger to the story, driven by circumstances dumping her in Europe, then in Cyborg's employ and then with the resistance movement. She also ended the previous issue by being taken hostage. It is somewhat of an understatement to say this is not a Lois story to hold up with pride. She does become more of an active participant in this issue, though. This builds up to her big hero moment, which honestly does not come off as particularly big or heroic. It's the standard climax for a reporter protagonist where they give to ta communication device and broadcast the truth to the world. The problem with this is that we have never really been given a solid indication that the world at large doesn't already understand that the Amazons are scary and doing bad things. It is almost like someone in North Korea broadcasting to the world that the government is oppressive, people are starving and there are a number of human rights abuses happening. ...Yeah, we already figured that. So Lois' big moment of telling the world that it sucks to be conquered by the Amazons reads like a pointless event and a waste.
There so obviously could have been a good story here, and it's amazing to see how it could be messed up like this. If the most relevant point to this tie-in is Wonder Woman learning the truth about her aunt's betrayal and cruel conduct, how in the hell do you have Britannia as the character to expose the truth instead of the character with her name actually in the title who also happens to make a career out of reporting on the truth? Seriously, this should be a joke. The obvious story here was to have Lois Lane discover the conspiracy going on behind Wonder Woman's back and actively work with the Resistance to investigate and expose it. Instead, we get this story where Lois barely does anything of worth and the truth is revealed to Wonder Woman accidentally by Britannia in the final issue.
This story also seems very confused about what we care about. We all know that the conflict to pay attention to is whether the original timeline can be restored from whatever the Reverse Flash has done to it. This story seems to think we are concerned with whether the Amazons can be beaten. We are not sticking around in this timeline, story. Whether or not the Resistance succeeds is pretty irrelevant.
Lois Lane and the Resistance is not one of the worst of the Flashpoint tie-ins. It comes off as more frustrating than horrible. It came to us with the promise of a Lois Lane-centric adventure in the Flashpoint timeline and then practically insulted the very interested parties it was trying to cater to by presenting us with a passive, ineffectual Lois who reads like a supporting cast member of her own limited series. It shifts around to characters like Grifter and Britannia in the lead roles like it doesn't even know what the story is it wants to tell and ultimately blunders to the finish, just managing to hit the one relevant story beat it needed to hit. It mostly carries itself along with decent action, making it a bearable read if not a very satisfying one.
