Last week, THE FLASH set a lot of new threads in motion. Barry has seen the future…actually billions of futures, and he knows his fate. It’s time to talk about the Crisis with Team Flash. Killer Frost is searching for her own life instead of living through Caitlin. Cecile has a new job. And, Dr. Rosso had a BIG surprise in his autopsy of…wait, you’ll find out more about THAT this week! Want to know more? Follow us after the jump!
SPOILERS AHEAD! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
NOTE: This review is posting prior to the airing of THE FLASH in the Pacific Time Zone USA. If you haven’t seen the episode yet, STOP HERE and come back after you see the show. You’ll be glad you did!
The Beatles had a song called, “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey”. In this episode, it seems that everybody actually does have something to hide. That’s not a good thing, and we can see how that plays out in multiple ways.
Barry and Iris tell Team Flash about the upcoming Crisis, but not about Barry’s fate. Killer Frost reacts in anger, and it’s not until much later in the episode that she can explain how she feels. Frost is afraid of dying before she ever got the chance to live. She never even had a birthday party and now the multiverse might end before she ever gets that. Barry wants to help her find her center before his fate in the Crisis…but he won’t share that fate with her, not yet.
And then, there’s Ralph…
Ralph’s mother has been arrested for robbing a pawn shop. Don’t worry, she’s innocent…of that. It may be the only thing she hasn’t done, since there is a long rap sheet of robbery, larceny, and bribery. What’s more, she’s hiding something more personal than that from Ralph. All of her boyfriends over the years, the ones that she told Ralph were dead…are all still alive! That causes a BIG rift between “Ralphie” and his mom. We’ll come back to that later.
Allegra is not enjoying being an intern. She wants to tackle the BIG stories, and she found a lead…a sighting and picture of Harrison Wells! Iris instead puts Allegra on filing duty while she and Cisco track down this new “Harrison Nash Wells”. He is like no other Wells we’ve seen before, and he isn’t a very easy guy to get to know. He doesn’t simply join up like the rest of the Council of Wells have, but instead leaves them as he searches for a multiversal element called “Eternium”. I like this new Wells, and I’m glad they didn’t just throw him into the team at first meeting. But, back to Allegra…
Allegra knows she isn’t getting the full truth from Iris, and she nearly quits her internship. Iris convinces her to stay…but sooner or later Iris will have to come clean with what’s really going on with this new Wells. That means explaining the Multiverse and possibly Team Flash as well. That’s for another episode. But for this chapter of THE FLASH…
The main thread in this episode surrounds Dr. Ramsey Rosso, soon to be known as Bloodwork. He starts to work with Barry and Frost while hiding his desire to steal their dark matter. Barry somehow convinces Rosso to give up the extra dark matter and to work with them to stop Mitch Romero. That’s the guy who died last episode and then suddenly came back to “life” with unbelievable strength. Romero is on the hunt for more dark matter, which he feeds into a chest wound that will remind everyone of Cicada’s wound from last season.
Eventually, Romero finds his way into S.T.A.R. Labs and finds Rosso. He nearly kills Rosso…then suddenly stops and begins to mimic Rosso’s every move! It’s like Rosso can control this undead man like a puppet. Just then Barry arrives and Romero is back to being the mindless killing machine. Barry tricks this behemoth into a cell in the pipeline, and then Romero does something that I don’t believe anyone has done in the history of the show (someone correct me if I’m wrong)…he smashes out of the cell!
This doesn’t look good for Team Flash, but Frost has an idea. She tells Barry to overload him on dark matter…and it works as Romero explodes! That dark oozing substance is everywhere now…but the danger is gone, at least for today. As Rosso goes back to his own lab, he has a sample of this substance…and it reacts to his every move just as Romero did! Rosso experiments by absorbing Romero’s “blood” into himself! We will see a LOT more of Rosso as the season progresses, but that’s it for the main storyline for tonight.
Meanwhile…
- Ralph has a long heart-to-heart with his mother, and they both realize that they have been afraid of real relationships ever since Ralph’s dad left them without so much as a goodbye. Ralph gives her an “addendum” to the Book of Ralph (wow, I would love for this show to publish a Book of Ralph just for the fun of it). They are back on good terms, and it was a very sweet moment.
- Barry throws a birthday party for Killer Frost! It looks somewhat like a rave, with some very wild characters invited by Frost herself. It’s a great time for everyone…until…
Frost realizes that Barry has been hiding something important…his fate in the Crisis. As Iris joins them, they realize that they need to come clean with the team. They tell Team Flash what is coming up, and that “none of you can save me”.
As the show ends, we see Harrison Wells in an alley, finding…something. Whether it’s Eternium or not, we’ll have to wait to find out.
NOTES: Where last week’s episode seemed to set up the “new normal” for Team Flash, this episode appeared to get us moving into the main plot of the regular season. We get to see Rosso developing more and more into the desperate bad guy character Barry will be dealing with for most, if not all of the season. We see Killer Frost developing more as a character, and I like what the writers are doing here. We’ve seen Frost before as either angry, snarky, or juvenile…but in this season we are seeing her develop as her own character with greater depth. I’m glad to see that. And, I’m intrigued by the new version of Wells. HOW does Tom Cavenagh play so many versions of the same character and make the all work so well?
SUMMARY: This was a solid episode of THE FLASH, moving us forward into the main plot of the season. We see some possibilities for characters to come to the forefront, and we see the development of the big bad of the year. I’ll give this an 8/10 – but that’s just my opinion. What do YOU think? Leave your comments below!