The Flash is back! Season Four picks up 6 months after the major cliffhanger that ended Season Three, when Barry entered the Speed Force seemingly for good. What has happened in Central City since then? How is Team (Kid) Flash doing? And, can Barry return (and how)? We’ll have at least some of those answers waiting for you in our review…just after the jump!

SOME SPOILERS AHEAD!

NOTE: This review is posting before THE FLASH airs in the Pacific time zone USA. So, we’ll try to keep this light on spoilers – please do watch the show.

The team has been struggling without Barry, and we are down to a bare minimum group. Harry supposedly exists but is nowhere to be seen. Julian has gone back to England. Caitlin is tending bar and staying away from the now-former Team Flash. Iris is running the show with Wally and Cisco, trying to clean up the town, but it’s tough

Enter the Samuroid.

This bad guy is looking for the Flash and won’t accept Wally in his place. The question then becomes whether it’s even safe to bring Barry back…even if it can be done in the first place.

There is a bit of “comic-book science” that even strains the limits of comic-book science, but of course we get Barry back. That’s the good news

The bad news is he is delusional. Totally, completely delusional.  This may be the weakest element of the episode. Grant Gustin is doing a fair job of the delusional rants, but his “delusional speech” is basically a bunch of free association interspersed with an occasional sentence that makes reference to past events in the show. It’s not a great script during these sections, even with Gustin giving it his all.

By shows end, we have Barry back to himself, the team back together (including Caitlin but no Harry as of yet), and this Samuroid defeated.

Of course, that leads to the reveal of the big bad of the season, the one who is responsible for yet another Samuroid in the making…and as you know if you’ve been reading the interwebs during the summer, it’s the Thinker.

NOTES: We do get a lot of nods to comic and pop culture history in this show. Wally puts on Barry’s costume at one point and is put into the pose we saw in the cover from the Silver Age Flash #181.  I’ve included that here for your reference…

We also get a “Great Caesar’s Ghost” and a Marvel-infused “Excelsior”, along with a couple of Hitchhiker’s Guide References.  That was a bit of fun. And, there were several good acting jobs in this show…just not as up to par from Grant (who was given a very tough script).  The supporting characters do shine in this show, and there are some very interesting subplot potentials for Caitlin this season already.  However, the episode seemed to fall at times below their usual standard for the show.

It’s not a spectacular opening to the season, but it does give some hope for what we could see later on. I’ll give this one a 7/10 – it’s got potential but there were some weak points here. Hopefully we will see much more as we get further into the season. I’m still on board for the long run (no pun intended) – what do YOU think? Leave your comments below!

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