This is an episode a lot of FLASH fans have been waiting for…when Iris becomes a meta! How could this happen? After all, Cecile gained meta powers when she became pregnant – it Iris expecting? Will she keep her powers and join Team Flash as the latest meta-powered human? Okay, it’s not that…but what it IS, is a really solid episode of THE FLASH! Want to know more? Follow us after the jump!
SPOILER ALERT!!!
Note: This review is posting prior to THE FLASH airing in the Pacific Time Zone USA. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, STOP NOW and come back after viewing the show! Trust us, you’ll be glad you did!
Harry has come up with a way to outsmart DeVoe, or at least match his intelligence. Harry saw the security footage of DeVoe wearing that Thinking Cap on the night of the particle accelerator accident, and has decided to build a cap of his own! Harry won’t call it a “thinking cap”, though – his cap is an “Intelligence Booster”. Same thing, except for one detail – Cisco refuses to help him build it. With DeVoe having been warped by the process, he fears the same thing happening to Harry. This plays out over the course of the episode…we’ll get back to it later.
Meanwhile, the meta who will (briefly) become known as “Melting Point” tries to rob a bank. He’s stopped by a mysterious person who takes his powers away…and that man, Matthew Kim, becomes the focus of our episode.
Iris and Joe track down Matthew Kim, to ask how he was able to take those powers away. Thinking they are there to take his powers away, he threatens Iris. Joe calls for the Flash, who arrives to…
Lose his powers!
When he laid hands on Matthew Kim, Barry’s powers were taken away…and transferred to Iris!
There doesn’t seem to be a way to reverse this, so for now Barry is on comms and Iris is out in the field as the new speedster! The show then revolves around training Iris and watching out for her in her first adventures as a speedster. Wearing one of Jesse Quick’s spare masks and later wearing a special uniform Cisco made for her, Iris bolts into action.
Her first try is dealing with a burning building. She saves all the people, but becomes trapped in the building during an unsuccessful attempt to put out the fire. Barry freezes a bit while acting in Iris’ place as team leader, but Cisco breaches over in time to save Iris as the building collapses.
The second time comes when they realize there is a NEW “Melting Point” in town.
What you may or may not have caught in the earlier scene from the bank is that Matthew accidentally transferred Melting Point’s powers to another person…a combination of Meatloaf and Jack Black wearing a Kiss t-shirt.This new Melting Point knows how he got his powers, and uses them to keep Matthew Kim at bay.
Iris arrives and cuffs Kim, then tries to stop Melting Point. How to do it?
This is where that Intelligence Booster comes into play. Harry puts on the cap and figures out that the only way to stop this superheated bad guy is to have Iris create a tidal wave. What? Yes! A tightly focused tidal wave as it turns out, just wide enough to go down the street and stop the bad guy without flooding the city. Iris isn’t sure she can do it…but Barry encourages her and she is able to make it work!
Afterward, Matthew Kim apologizes to the team and offers to switch the speed back to Barry. Iris agrees…and then Kim joins the team!
Back at the West apartment, Iris explains why she was willing to give up her speed. She said, “What makes a great speedster isn’t their speed. It’s being the light that everyone needs when the world goes dark.” And, she goes back to her original journalistic effort…that blog from season one, to chronicle the efforts of The Flash! That takes us to the…
EPILOGUE: Harry uses the “Intelligence Booster” one more time…with Cisco’s help…and learns the names of the last two metas!
NOTES:
- The reason Iris went with Joe to meet Matthew Kim in the first place was a conversation she had with Ralph Dibny. She wanted to prove to herself that she wasn’t afraid to go into the field, to take the risks that the rest of the team took every day.
- By show’s end, Iris was able to take that experience and help Ralph to be able to overcome his own fear. She told Ralph how she dealt with her own fears when Savitar was after her, and Ralph has decided to stay in the game…and…
- Ralph plans to visit the Mayor as “Clifford DeVoe” to see if he can help Barry get his job back. The Mayor won’t give in until she meets with the DeVoes, so we will see in a future episode if that works.
- Seeing Iris as the speedster really worked. We got a fresh view on the joys of being a speedster, and Candice Patton really shines as Iris/Flash in this episode. While I’m glad they didn’t stretch this one plot thread out over several episodes, I still have to say that Iris made a really good speedster.
SUMMARY: I’ll give this one a 9/10 – but that’s just my opinion. What do YOU think? Leave your comments below!