The Flash [Season 1, Episode 1]
City of Heroes
Shown 07/Oct/14
This is the story of Barry, a young CSI who can practically solve a crime single-handed
just by looking at a tyre track.
His best friend is a gorgeous brunette, who works as police admin staff.
His mentor, her dad, is Police Detective Jesse L Martin (Law and Order).
All is well in the city of the happy people.
The Particle Colider has a small mishap,
which is why these things are normally built in relatively remote locations
instead of the middle of a huge city.
It spits superpower-creating energy out,
seeding it all over town the way that
Smallville
is seeded with Kryptonite.
Barry wakes up from a coma to discover he has a superpower.
Not only can he run at 700mph (without breaking the sound barrier at sea level),
but his injuries heal in hours instead of months.
Even at his fastest speed, he would take almost an hour to run the 600 miles to Starling City.
At least if he took the bullet-train he would be able to sit down and surf the Net.
And if his metabolism is super-fast,
why does he not need to consume vast amounts of calories to give his body the energy?
The biggest hole in the show is not even superpower-related.
There is no mention of Felicity Smoak,
either from Barry or the Green Arrow himself.
This is a bit of a shock, because she is Barry’s love interest in
Arrow
, the show that this has spun off from.
Barry has a personal agenda: prove the innocence of his father,
who has spent 20 years in jail for killing Barry’s mother.
Barry saw the real killer, a super-villain ...
but until Barry got superpowers of his own,
nobody believed that superhumans (or Meta-Humans, like in
Mutant X
) could actually exist.
John Wesley Shipp (
Teen Wolf
) is perfectly cast as Barry's father, Henry Allen.
Not only was he the father in Dawson's Creek,
he was also the title character in the 1990 Flash TV show!
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 2]
Fastest Man Alive
Shown 14/Oct/14
Barry decides to put his powers and his fireproof suit into action
by rescuing people from a burning building.
The city is not as corrupt as
Gotham
, or even as bad as Starling City in
Arrow
. But the traffic alone is so bad that the fire engines take forever to get to their destination.
Barry’s doctor (
Danielle Panabaker
) does not approve of him testing his powers in relatively safe, non-combat missions.
Neither does his foster-father, Detective Jesse L Martin (Law & Order) -
who ignores how he nearly died himself in the pilot episode,
until Barry used his superpowers to save him.
A businessman (Bill Sadler -
Roswell
) announces a great discovery in the field of cloning.
But he is targeted for assassination by a gang of six identical men.
Are they bee-like drones as in
X-Files
, or are they a different type of meta-human?
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 3]
Things You Can't Outrun
Shown 21/Oct/14
Barry has managed to balance his super-fast metabolism by consuming extra calories.
Basically, he lives on fast food and always super-sizes!
Barry’s day job as a CSI seems to suffer.
He has super-speed, and even before he got his powers he was super-smart.
Look at how helpful he was to the good guys on
Arrow
. But now he has superpowers, ordinary non-super police work is no longer good enough.
The super-villain of the week is a man who can turn himself into a toxic gas.
If he looks familiar, he is Victor Szasz from
Gotham
.
The normal prisons are not strong enough to hold meta-humans.
Since the first two super-villains were killed resisting arrest, this was not an issue.
But as Detective Jesse L Martin (Law and Order) points out,
that is not a solution unless they execute every super-villain they catch.
However, the wheelchair billionaire has an alternative plan.
They can construct makeshift cells in the collider tunnels in the basement.
This will require an impossible amount of energy, which the tech supplies with no problems.
Returning to the Collider gives the doctor (
Danielle Panabaker
) flashbacks to the night of the explosion.
The chief engineer (Robbie Amiel -
The Tomorrow people (2014)
) was her fiancé, who sacrificed himself to save the city.
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 4]
Going Rogue
Shown 28/Oct/14
Barry goes up against his toughest challenge;
a professional heist artiste named Leonard Snart (Wentworth Miller -
Dinotopia
). This villain does not have a superpower to rely on,
but instead has to live by his wits.
He gets his hands on a Cold Gun that works better than a canister of liquid nitrogen.
This is the only weapon that can really threaten The Flash.
It was developed by Star Labs, in case they had to take on a supervillain with super-speed powers.
Barry is uncomfortable working with a team who take every threat seriously,
and prepare for every potential situation.
The Detective boss (Jesse L Martin - Law and Order) has his life endangered.
This reminds Barry of how dangerous the job is,
and how he must not let the Boss’s daughter down.
Similarly, the Boss does not want his partner Eddie Thawne (Rick Cosnett -
Vampire Diaries
) endangered, because the guy is dating the aforementioned daughter.
Barry has another distraction on his hands. Felicity Smoak (
) pays him a visit, after he visited her city to see Olly
but never bothered to say hi to her.
Not only does she forgive him, she even double-dates him with his foster-sister and Eddie.
They go to a scifi-themed quiz, and lose to a team called The Padawans.
The ending sets Snart up as a recurring villain, and introduces his sidekick.
To give a clue, it is a co-star from Prison Break.
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 5]
Plastique
Shown 11/Nov/14
A young woman (
Kelly Frye
) breaks into a secure building, and sets off a bomb.
Barry runs up the side of a skyscraper to save a window-cleaner,
and this is not the greatest stretch of his powers.
If he goes fast enough, he could run on water ...
The meta-human of the week is a US army sergeant who dismantled IEDs,
and whose power is to turn items into explosives by touching them.
General Eiling (Clancy Brown -
Starship Troopers
) is after her, because she was once part of a super-soldier program managed by Star Labs.
Yes, the nice Professor made his money as a military contractor.
And with his history of wiping out competitors,
will he let the General live long enough to be a recurring character?
The ending sets up another recurring villain, a gorilla named Grodd.
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 6]
The Flash is Born
Shown 18/Nov/14
Barry helps the cops in a car chase,
but this week’s villain is a nasty piece of work named Girder.
His superpower is that he can turn himself into metal,
much like the supervillain in the first to eps of
Agents of Shield: Season 2
. Worse, the guy is the bully who used to beat Barry up at school.
And that means the villain reads the Lois Lane girl’s Streak blog,
and knows where to find her.
Detective Jesse L Martin (Law and Order) re-opens the investigation
into the murder of Barry’s mother.
He has deduced that the killer may have superpowers similar to Barry’s.
This means the killer probably went through the same process
- supercollider explosion and lightning storm.
He goes to the creepy professor for help.
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 7]
Power Outage
Shown 25/Nov/14
The city is besieged by a meta-human who can absorb and expel electricity.
He is like the Jamie Foxx character in
Amazing Spiderman 2
in more ways than one.
For example, he is the first ethnic villain so far.
The make-up is virtual identical,
and the character setup of him as a reluctant villain is the same.
However, his object for revenge is the Professor who operated the Particle Accelerator.
The electro-villain's powers manage to cure Barry of his Flash powers.
Yes, his hyper-metabolism is removed -
not that it was ever a real problem for him.
But now he is a mere mortal, like Olly in
Arrow
. How will he ever defend himself?
Barry begins to see the Professor’s ruthless nature,
albeit guided by principles that will benefit mankind in the long run..
While Barry now seems to actually LIKE the super-powered bully he imprisoned last ep
(in solitary confinement, a cruel and unusual punishment),
the Professor sees the thug as nothing more than something to distract this week’s killer.
Meanwhile, Tockman (T-Bag from Prison Break) is in the local police station.
Apparently he was transferred there from the
Arrow
's city in order to be denied compassionate leave.
However, he does what T-Bag does best - a Prison Break!
The cops get held hostage, including Detective Jesse L Martin (Law and Order)
and his Lois Lane daughter.
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 8]
Flash vs. Arrow
Shown 02/Dec/14
This week, the Flash is after a Meta-Human who unleashes his victims’ emotions.
Unfortunately this does not affect mechanical systems like CCTV or bank alarms,
so it is of limited practical use for bank robberies.
Also, since it needs direct eye contact with the victim
then a pair of specially tinted goggles would be a reasonable defence.
However, Barry and his merry band do not think of these things.
Arrow
turns up, along with Diggle and Felicity Smoak.
Felicity may not be Barry’s love interest any more,
but she manages to be (yet again) the only female cast member to show some skin.
Diggle also provides some useful comedy dialogue for a change.
They want help with a couple of things.
Firstly, they have the boomerang that the Syrian from
Spartacus
used in the previous episode.
It has traces of iron oxide (AKA rust), and the Flash’s city is full of the stuff.
Secondly, Star Labs might be able to trace the DNA of Sarah’s killer.
Barry’s mentors are mistrustful of Green Arrow.
After all, he is a serial killer linked to a dozen unsolved murders.
Trouble seems to follow him around.
But as Barry points out the Arrow’s local police have unofficially pardoned him,
and since Central City is outside the jurisdiction where the murders occurred
then there is nothing the local cops can do about it.
Arrow tries to teach Barry some combat skills.
After all, his ability to get to a crime scene quickly means nothing if he is running into a fight he cannot win.
Arrow’s willingness to fight dirty teaches Barry a few lessons.
But when the villain’s powers finally affect Barry, he unleashes his rage on Arrow.
The Lois Lane girl’s boyfriend is the compulsory cop-who-mistrusts-vigilantes character.
He has asked the boss for an anti-vigilante task force to capture The Flash.
Despite the fact that the Flash does not kill people (on purpose),
the villain-induced rage spasm (which a whole bank-full of civilians also suffered,
and did not get arrested over) is enough to outlaw The Flash.
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 9]
The Man in the Yellow Suit
Shown 09/Dec/14
Barry comes up against the yellow-suited SOB who killed his mother.
Unfortunately, despite training with
Arrow
our own dear little Flash is still useless in a fight.
After all, since the killer has the same speed as Barry (if not faster),
the only decider between them is who can throw a punch better.
Danielle Panabaker
discovers she has a homeless man stalking her.
He has a superpower (mastery of fire), and he looks like her dead fiancé.
Did he survive the explosion and become a meta-human?
Is he a supervillain, or potentially a new hero?
This certainly explains why the lady scientist is not being groomed as someone’s love interest.
Barry has to sort out his own love interest.
Will he be honest with the cop’s daughter about his feelings for her?
And if so, how will she respond?
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 10]
Revenge of the Rogues
Shown 20 Jan. 2015
Barry faces an old foe.
Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller -
Dinotopia
) is back in town, with the freeze-ray he stole from Star Labs.
He also has an old Prison (Break) buddy, Mick Rory (Dominic Purcell -
John Doe
), who uses a handheld flamethrower.
Between them, they can take on the local cops easily.
But they want to set a trap for The Flash, so he cannot force them emigrate.
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 11]
The Sound and the Fury
Shown 27 Jan. 2015
The creepy scientist is targeted by a super-powered stalker.
This new freak of the week is the Professor’s former protégé,
who is embittered at being abandoned.
He has developed a sonic weapon,
and uses it to further grudges against both his actual father and his surrogate one.
And despite never winning a chess match against the Professor,
he is still a master of the game - and an expert at concealing his true intentions.
This is another look into the pre-explosion era Star Labs crew.
The Professor was a father figure to them all,
but he was also a machievellian SOB
who had his own protégé thrown off the team (physically)
for doing a safety report that illustrated the potential dangers.
In the present day, everyone except Detective Jesse L Martin (Law and Order) trusts him.
The wheelchair and the reluctant admission of remorse and guilt
seem enough to fool everyone else.
In the flashback (no pun intended),
Cisco is wearing a Don't Panic and Han Shot First tee-shirt.
The irony will become apparent in
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 17] Tricksters.
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 12]
Crazy For You
Shown 3 Feb. 2015
Last week’s villain is back!
He offers Cisco the tech nerd a chance to discover what happened to
Danielle Panabaker
‘s fiancé. Surprisingly, he is actually true to his word.
The Flash tracks down a young woman who has a superpower that can actually challenge his own.
She is a teleporter, although she has certain limitations.
Among other things, she needs direct line-of-sight in order to teleport.
It is a credit to the casting that the so-called villain of the week
is actually a more empathetic character than the so-called hero.
Barry and Ms Panabaker go out for a night of karaoke and hard drinking.
Luckily, his body metabolises the alcohol so fast he cannot get drunk.
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 13]
The Nuclear Man
Shown 10 Feb. 2015
Thanks to the helpful supervillain last episode, we now know that
Danielle Panabaker
‘s fiance (Robbie Amiel -
Tomorrow People
) has melded with another scientist, Dr Stein (Victor Garber -
Alias
). In an incredible series of coincidences,
two other team members knew of Dr Stein.
The creepy Professor was jealous of Stein’s scientific achievements
(he was three-times winner of a trophy the Professor wanted).
And Barry the CSI bumped into Stein on a commuter train
on the day of the particle accelerator explosion.
What a small world!
The melded man (let’s call him Firestorm) is a menace.
The creepy professor actually comes up with a plan to save the day.
Rather than just sacrifice Firestorm, killing both men who were melded together,
he is willing to adapt his own tech to separating the two men.
Detective Jesse L Martin (Law and Order) takes Cisco the lab Nerd on a field trip.
They investigate the scene of Barry's mother's murder.
The Cop has to distract a lonely divorcee (
Chase Masterson
), while the Nerd turns decades-old blood traces into a 3-D holographic movie of the murder.
Barry tries to have a private life of his own.
He manages to get a date with journalist Linda Park (
Malese Jow
). However, can he make time for her in his busy schedule?
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 14]
Fallout
Shown 17 Feb. 2015
The cop has the lab tech test the blood against all employees of the particle accelerator,
with surprising results.
It turns out that there was time-travel involved.
Worse, Barry is now convinced he can change the past and save his mother.
The two scientists have been separated, but they still have a link.
Worse, General Clancy Brown (
Highlander
) is out to weaponise superpowers.
He sends a snatch team after Robbie Amiel (
Tomorrow People
) - they are in uniform, which makes this a lot less subtle
than anything the villains in the other show did.
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 15]
Out of Time
Shown 24 Feb. 2015
Barry takes his on-again-off-again GF Linda (
Malese Jow
) to the bowling alley. How very Grease 2.
However, his unrequited love has also gone there with her Policeman BF.
Luckily, the unplanned double-date is interrupted by a brutal murder.
One of the early villains was a weather-controller, who got shot dead by a cop.
It turns out that this supervillain had an elder brother who has an identical power,
and now wants revenge for his sibling’s demise.
They cannot be too close, because it took SIX MONTHS for the villain to get word that his next-of-kin had been killed.
Also, the details of the killing (including the cop’s identity) would be openly available to the public.
Instead, the villain starts torturing and killing people in order to get the cop’s name.
Why not just look it up online?
The killer is a very young-looking Liam McIntyre - ironic, since four
Spartacus
co-stars (Slade, Talia, Waller, Digger) have been villains in the sister-show
Arrow
, but this is the first one on this show.
Cisco the nerd has more suspicions about the creepy professor.
Not only did Joe the Cop (Jesse L Martin - Law and Order) suspect him
(until one of the 2 Flashes was revealed to be Future Barry, there was no DNA trace on the other Flash)
but one of Linda’s co-workers is building a story on him.
It seems ironic that everyone seems to suspect him without any hard evidence. Cisco has
Danielle Panabaker
distract the professor, but she is so nervous that any fool could work it out.
The question is - can the villain get to Cisco without revealing his secret to her (and everyone else)?
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 16]
Rogue Time
Shown 24/Mar/15
Barry discovers that he has gone back in time, but only to the previous day.
Despite the Creepy Professor’s urgings, he starts to change things.
He wants to save the cops the trouble of tracking down Weather Wizard (Liam McIntyre -
Spartacus
) but this allows other villains to come to prominence.
Fire and Ice, the Prison Break duo, are back in town.
They have super-weapons, and intend to take over a local Organised Crime family.
Cisco gets a new girlfriend.
Or a girlfriend, anyway.
Peyton List
is the lucky lady, last seen as a teleporting superhuman in
Tomorrow People (2013)
.
This episode illustrates the trend for non-police heroes to have their own private prison,
to avoid killing dangerous villains in cold blood.
The Flash has the basement cells in the supercollider, while
Arrow
has the cells on the prison island, Lian Yu.
Even Person Of Interest has a Mexican hell-hole for especially dangerous villains.
But what about recurring bad-guys?
If they all die or get locked up,
they will have to escape on a regular basis to re-appear.
Barry makes a toleration deal, but he has a couple of rules for them -
No killing, and No going after anyone close to Barry.
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 17]
Tricksters
Shown 31/Mar/15
Someone calling himself The Trickster is setting off bombs in the city.
It turns out he is a copycat - the original Trickster (Mark Hamill -
Birds of Prey
) is in solitary confinement, which allows for a
Silence of the Lambs
pastiche as Barry and his foster-dad go to meet him.
As the biggest star of the episode, Hamill gets a few more scenes.
He also gets to use a fan-wank line that emphasises the cheesiness of the show,
and has a certain irony since Cisco the Nerd’s favourite T-shirt reads
Keep Calm ... and Han Shot First!
Yes,
Star Wars
is an established fact of this universe.
Barry suspects the creepy professor is involved with the Evil Flasher.
Unfortunately the man is enigmatic - even his 600-page biography has few actual facts on him.
The flashbacks are of the creepy professor.
It turns out that he really is a scientist, and he really did plan to build STAR labs.
However, he had a nasty run-in with the Evil Flasher.
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 18]
All-Star Team-Up
Shown 07/Apr/15
Felicity and her BF the Atom (Brandon Routh -
Superman Returns
) turn up, with a great It’s a bird? It’s a plane? homage.
The Freak of the Week is Bee Girl AKA the Bug-Eyed Bandit (
Emily Kinney
), a woman who uses a swarm of bees to sting her enemies to death.
They are robotic bees, so she is not a metahuman, merely a mad scientist.
Nice to see a female one for a change.
Felicity claims the woman as her nemesis - they have a lot in common,
but the villain does not actually know that Felicity exists.
The Flash and the Atom work together much better than either did with the
Arrow
- they have a lot more in common, to start with.
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 19]
Who Is Harrison Wells?
Shown 21/Apr/15
Barry’s stepfather, Detective Jesse L Martin (Law and Order),
goes to Starling City to dig up the creepy Professor’s past.
He meets Captain Lance (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
), and they discover they have a lot in common.
Cisco the Star Wars nerd meets Assistant District Attorney Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassiday
), who is secretly a costumed hero in need of a useful ally.
He upgrades her sonic weapon in exchange for certain favours ...
Back in Central City, Barry and the team investigate a shape-shifter
who steals peoples identities and then robs their workplaces.
The innocent people end up in jail for something they did not do,
just like Barry’s dad was convicted of a murder the Evil Flash did.
They do not mention this particular parallel, but it is self-evident.
With step-dad out of town, Barry teams up with his partner Eddie Thawne (Rick Cosnett -
Vampire Diaries
) instead.
But the partner gets framed by the shapeshifter.
Worse, he has to come clean to his GF, Iris.
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 20]
The Trap
Shown 28/Apr/15
Barry and his team plan a sting.
Can they con the Evil Flasher into confessing to the murder of Barry's mother?
After all, only a direct confession can get Barry's father Henry Allen (John Wesley Shipp -
Teen Wolf
) released.
Will the villain be defeated with unexpected ease,
leaving the audience underwhelmed and disappointed?
Or is the superpowered villain from the future several steps ahead of our heroes?
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 21]
Grodd Lives
Shown 05/May/15
A well-armed man is staging armed robberies.
The Flash intervenes, and discovers what happened to General Clancy Brown (
Highlander
).
The heroes finally go up against the Evil Flasher's hench-person, Grodd.
Not only does Grodd have the body of
Mighty Joe Young
, he also has telepathic abilities.
So he can not only out-fight the Flash, he can mind-control him too!
Iris has finally worked out who the Flash is.
Perhaps the Star Labs team should put locks on their doors so she cannot sneak up on them.
She is less than happy that she is the only person who did not know.
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 22]
Rogue Air
Shown 12/May/15
The Evil Flasher activates the Particle Collider.
The countdown has approximately 36 hours before it explodes again.
But before that happens, the rogues’ gallery in the basement will be destroyed.
Barry cannot kill them or let them go, so he has to find a third option.
Unfortunately, Detective Jesse L Martin (Law and Order) is not the only one at CCPD
who is unhappy with Barry’s secret prison.
Even though Iron Heights Penitentiary has no facility to hold supervillains,
this does not mean that Barry can incarcerate people without trial in a secret basement.
Of course, Cisco the tech nerd could just install super-cells in Iron Heights,
but nobody thinks of this.
And while everyone feels sorry for Detective Eddie Thawne (Rick Cosnett -
Vampire Diaries
) who was tied to a chair for a few days and denied the opportunity to shave,
nobody feels sorry for the supervillains who have spent MONTHS in solitary.
The bad guys’ grooming regimens do not seem to have suffered
– do the cells have running water?
Argus (Amanda Waller’s secret assassination agency)
is happy to provide a plane so they can dump the super-villains on Lian Yu.
However, they will not provide an escort to get the prisoners
from their cells across the city to the airstrip.
Barry hires Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller –
Dinotopia
). But can he trust one super-villain to turn against the others?
Cisco works out how the Evil Flasher cheated and made himself faster.
It is too late for Barry to do the same, but at least he has friends.
Olly Queen somehow gets all the way from Nanda Parbat,
and the flying radioactive guy turns up for a team-up too.
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 23]
Fast Enough
Shown 19/May/15
Olly and Cisco take turns interrogating their new prisoner.
They are unwilling to credit him with all the help he has given them –
not only did he give their worthless lives a sense of purpose,
he also gave them superpowers!
The supervillain has a plan for time-travel.
If Barry runs fast enough he can open a time portal,
so the Flash can go back to save his mother
and the Reverse Flash can return back to the future.
The plan may be dodgy,
but at least Flying Radioactive Guy (Robbie Amiel -
Tomorrow People
) is still in town from the team-up.
His alternate personality, Dr Stein (Victor Garber –
Alias
) the scientist, can double-check the plans.
He is also a registered clergyman, so he can conduct weddings!
In the end, Barry has to choose - save his mother,
or let her die (depraved indifference) and the avenge her murder (vigilante justice).
There is also a cliffhanger ending that leaves the entire world on the edge of destruction.
The Flash [Season 2, Episode 1]
The Man Who Saved Central City
Shown 06 Oct 15
Six months after the devastating events of last Season’s conclusion,
our heroes have still not moved on from their losses.
Team Flash has been disbanded – the cops hire Cisco as a scientific consultant
to help them take down meta-human criminals,
but beyond that the city is defenceless.
Can Barry manage to get his father Henry Allen (John Wesley Shipp -
Teen Wolf
) out of prison?
The man has served eighteen years for a murder he did not commit
– he should have been up for parole almost a decade ago.
The fact that he never confessed counts against him, and as Barry could
not dig up any exculpatory evidence there was no hope of a retrial.
Bearing in mind Barry is the city’s best (and seeming ONLY)
Crime Scene Investigation tech, and he has a blatant conflict of interest,
the chances of a retrial are slim.
The Mayor holds a public ceremony to award the Flash with the key to the city.
Barry is reluctant to attend, since he blames himself for the messy ending.
Worse, the event is gate-crashed by a super-villain (The Edge –
Haven
) who is quickly nicknamed Atom-Smasher.
He wants to kill the Flash!
The Flash [Season 2, Episode 2]
Flash of Two Worlds
Shown 13 Oct 15
Dr Stein (Victor Garber -
Alias
) has filled the Creepy Professor’s role in the team, as mentor and expositioner.
However, a new character suddenly arrives.
He claims to come from the future, and provides much-needed exposition.
When the enormous wormhole opened over the city,
it opened a gateway to an alternate universe.
Zoom is a villainous speedster from the alternate world,
and he wants to kill all other Speedsters.
Hence, his new target is The Flash!
Zoom gets a new henchman this week
– a petty criminal with the power of turning into sand.
In the alternate universe, he is a super-villain known as Sand devil.
Cisco the nerd is incensed that the parallel worlders have had
the temerity of nicknaming a super-villain without his permission.
In the obligatory crossover with
Arrow
, our heroes watch the televised broadcast of Olly’s manifesto speech as
Green Arrow.
Nobody realises that Olly’s disguise is so non-existent that
a facial recognition scan would match him up with his driver’s licence photo immediately.
The Flash [Season 2, Episode 3]
Family of Rogues
Shown 20 Oct 15
Team Flash gets a request for help from their favourite supervillainess,
Golden Glider (
Peyton List
). She claims that her brother, Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller -
Dinotopia
), has been kidnapped. But the truth is far worse –
he is working for his father (Michael Ironside –
Total Recall
), a sadistic career criminal.
Can they save Captain Cold, who apparently does not want to be saved?
Can they trust Golden Glider, who is a known liar?
Can they arrest Captain Cold,
even though they destroyed all his prior police records last year?
The sub-plot mirrors the parenting theme of the main story.
Jesse L Martin’s wife, believed dead for the last two decades, turns up again.
She was an unfit parent at the time, but now demands a meeting with her daughter.
Romance is also in the air.
Cisco is flirted with by Golden Glider, while
Danielle Panabaker
tries to convince the parallel Flash to stay in her universe.
Barry helps his foster-sister on a mission, which re-introduces his ex-GF,
and then he gets the chance for further liaison with the lady cop co-worker.
The Flash [Season 2, Episode 4]
The Fury of Firestorm
Shown 27 Oct 15
Professor Stein (Victor Garber -
Alias
) is suffering form side-effects of his alter-ego's death.
Team Flash check the DNA of everyone in the city,
and discover two potential matches.
Both are African-American, a strange replacement for a Caucasian
who was the perfect match for another Caucasian.
They both have alliterative names - Henry Hewitt and Jefferson Jackson -
which is a good start for a superhero.
The favourite is a cerebral scientist whose temperament matches the Professor's.
However, realistically they would be better off with the other candidate, the athlete,
who can fill in the blanks in the Professor's stats sheet.
A rival hi-tech lab is burglarised.
Amanda Pays
identifies the burglar as the creepy professor, Harrison Wells -
who was wiped from existence in the end of the previous Season.
Detective Joe (Jesse L Martin) tries to keep this development from Barry until he has more info.
However, since Zoom is a villainous Speedster from an alternate universe
it is a simple deduction who the villain actually is.
The cerebral scientist, Henry Hewitt,
is a recognisable face from playing a serial-killer-of-the-week in Hannibal.
When he attempts to bond with Professor Stein, his latent superpowers are activated.
With his repressed rage issues, he will probably end up as a supervillain.
This is unfortunate, since being angry is not really a crime.
Iris, Barry's foster-sister, has trust issues with her estranged mother.
Apparently the mother's lack of honesty is unforgivable.
However, Team Flash have done nothing but deceive her for the last year and she is okay with that.
The Flash [Season 2, Episode 5]
The Darkness and the Light
Shown 03 Nov 15
After having his mentor turn evil in the first Season,
Barry now has THREE mentors.
Professor Stein (Victor Garber -
Alias
) is nowhere in sight, possibly off getting used to his new accomplice.
The Alternate Universe Flash, who was nowhere to be seen last episode,
is back again as love interest to
Danielle Panabaker
. And now there is another familiar face from the alternate universe …
The next supervillain that Zoom sends is also a familiar face.
He must have run out of killers because all he has is a bank robber –
Malese Jow
, the alternate version of Barry’s ex-girlfriend.
Will Barry kill his less-than-lethal ex?
Or will he hand her over to the cops and put her in Iron Heights prison,
thus leaving her vulnerable to Zoom’s punishment
(and publicly revealing the existence of the alternate universe).
The third alternative is to illegally imprison her in his basement,
beside the token black guy from last week.
The Flash [Season 2, Episode 6]
Enter Zoom
Shown 10 Nov 15
Barry has a plan to trap Zoom.
He tries to make a deal with Captain Light (
Malese Jow
), the alternate version of Barry’s ex-girlfriend.
She is scared of Zoom and wants to get out of town,
but she does not think Barry's team are good enough to win.
Among other things, the team is not at full strength.
Professor Stein (Victor Garber -
Alias
) and the Alternate Universe Flash are nowhere to be seen.
Barry's new GF, his lady cop co-worker,
wants to keep investigating the Captain Light case.
Detective Joe (Jesse L Martin) can hardly reveal his connection to Team Flash.
We discover more about the alternate universe.
Their version of the Green Arrow was Olly Queen's father!
The Flash [Season 2, Episode 7]
Gorilla Warfare
Shown 17 Nov 15
Barry is recovering from his spinal fracture last week.
His super-fast metabolism, which he never feeds, is healing him just fine.
However, his self-doubt is crippling him.
Luckily his father Henry Allen (John Wesley Shipp -
Teen Wolf
) drops by to give him some encouragement.
Cisco takes the coffee-shop girl on a date to see an art-house showing of
The Princess Bride
, an excellent choice of film. However,
when he touches her he gets a flash of someone from the alternate universe.
Instead of just phoning the alert in to Team Flash HQ,
he ditches his hot date and his chance to watch a great movie on the big screen.
Inconcievable!
Gorilla Grodd is back in town,
telepathically controlling victims and murdering them to leave no witnesses.
Of course, he sheds his hair all over the place so he is hardly subtle.
He kidnaps Caitlin (
Danielle Panabaker
) and tries to get her to create more apes like him.
After all, the big fellow must be lonely.
The real problem is his anger issues,
because real gorillas are placid and peaceful for the most part.
Harry the creey Professor poses as his evil alter-ego the Reverse Flash,
and they try to send Grodd to a better place.
Not a farm upstate, but a nature preserve in the Alternate Universe. Honestly.
The Flash [Season 2, Episode 8]
Legends of Today
Shown 01 Dec 15
Cisco meets the coffee-shop girl for a second date after
The Princess Bride
. However, they are attacked by a Rasputin lookalike.
It turns out that the girl is the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian priestess.
The villain is an immortal who gains power every time he kills her.
Barry and Cisco take the babe across the country to Star City,
where they team up with Olly Queen and Team
Arrow
. Where this story will be concluded ...
The creepy professor tries perfecting his super-speed formula.
It is meant to act like viagra for speedsters.
He needs to test it on the alternate Flash,
who may have lost his powers but still has Speedster DNA.
However, there are a couple of problems with this plan.
Firstly, the alternate Flash may still be hanging around,
but he still does the opposite of whatever the Professor says.
Secondly, Barry's GF the trigger-happy lady cop is around.
The Flash [Season 2, Episode 9]
Running to Stand Still
Shown 08 Dec 15
Weather Wizard (Liam McIntyre -
Spartacus
) breaks Trickster (Mark Hamill -
Birds of Prey
) and Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller -
Dinotopia
) out of Prison. He proposes a supervillain team-up to kill the Flash!
However, Cool prefers to stay neutral when the Flash is involved.
Barry's GF, the trigger-happy cop girl,
has a revenge quest of her own.
Her daddy was a have-a-go hero,
protecting the money of a well-insured bank
when he got bumped by Weather Wizard.
She chases after the villain,
running into every super-trap set for the Flash.
Barry, in his Flash guise, tries to talk sense into her.
She appears to be ignorant about his secret identity.
Was she affected by the time-reversal in the crossover with
Arrow
?
Meanwhile, the Season's story arc is still proceding.
Zoom is still manipulating the creepy Professor.
The Flash [Season 2, Episode 10]
Potential Energy
Shown 19 Jan 16
The team cannot increase Barry's speed,
and even if they succeeded then Zoom would take it from him.
Cisco's plan is to take Zoom's speed first.
This means catching the Turtle (Chief Tyroll -
Battlestar Galactica 2003
), a super-powered klepto who slows everyone around him
so he can steal items of sentimental value.
This leads on to a couple of literary references concerning Cisco
- the cops call him Cisco Quixote, while he himself quotes one of Ahab's lines from
Moby Dick
.
Barry has to decide if he will invite his trigger-happy GF to join the team.
The others are all keen to have her on-board,
since she already knows about Harry the creepy Professor.
But there is a down side.
If any of the villains know that she is the Flash's girlfriend,
they will make her a prime target.
The Flash [Season 2, Episode 11]
The Reverse-Flash Returns
Shown 27 Jan 16
The Reverse Flash comes back from the future that will not happen.
He must continue going back in time,
so that he can replace the original Harry and create the Flash.
The cop discovers that his new-found adult son is a professional street-racer.
Not on foot, like Barry, but in road-cars like in
The Fast And The Furious.
The Flash [Season 2, Episode 12]
Fast Lane
Shown 02 Feb 16
Barry and Harry start to work together.
Barry reminisces about his former mentor,
although that mentor was actually his arch-enemy who murdered the original Harry!
Luckily, the parallel Harry advises Barry not to be so trusting.
Will Barry be as forgiving when he realises that Harry is being blackmailed by Zoom?
The cop's ex-wife is dying.
His son is still involved in illegal street-racing.
The cop is okay with it, because he respects his son as an adult.
However, Iris is obsessed with protecting her newfound brother from himself.
She claims it is a dangerous sport,
although if he were a professional jockey or Nascar racer would she still object?
The freak of the week is a petty criminal who got dunked in liquid tar.
Now he is back as tar-man, and he wants revenge on his former criminal associates.
The Flash [Season 2, Episode 13]
Welcome to Earth-2
Shown 09 Feb 16
Harry, Barry and Cisco go through the wormhole to Earth-2.
The society and technology are the same, but there are some differences.
Barry-2 is still a CSI, but Iris is a police detective.
Also, since his parents are still alive she is not his foster-sister.
The good news is, Caitlin (
Danielle Panabaker
) and her fiance (Robbie Amiel -
Tomorrow People
) are still a couple.
The bad news is, they are supervillains who Zoom uses as his enforcers.
However, for the first time Caitlin actually looks attractive!
Alternate Cisco is quite impressive,
and Cisco even gets the opportunity to team up with him.
Unfortunately even Alternate Cisco lacks the ability to plan ahead,
especially if he intends to defy Zoom's authority.
The Flash [Season 2, Episode 14]
Escape from Earth-2
Shown 16 Feb 16
The away team on Earth 2 have a problem.
Cisco and Harry are on the run from Zoom.
Cisco wants to modify the psychic visor his Alternate used as a weapon.
However, Harry orders him not to bother. And if they had thought ahead,
they would have recruited Killer Frost AKA Alternate Caitlin (
Danielle Panabaker
) immediately. Instead, they now have to track her down.
Barry's Wife comes along, even though she has a personal grudge to settle.
Barry is locked in Zoom's dungeon with Harry's daughter.
She is meant to be a genius, but she comes across as a whiny damsel in distress.
There is a third prisoner, gagged and locked in an iron mask.
He tries to communicate by tapping,
but the damsel just ignores him without trying to decode the knocks.
Back on Earth One, the Geomancer starts blowing things up.
Can the Alternate Flash take care of the problem before someone gets hurt?
Unfortunately, this means taking the speed steroid
that will accelerate his already fatal condition.
Poor Caitlin always seems to lose the people she loves.
The Flash [Season 2, Episode 15]
King Shark
Shown 23 Feb 16
Over in Star City, Diggle's wife is now the boss of ARGUS.
They have King Shark in custody,
but he breaks out and easily evades them.
He is a gigantic man with the head of a great white shark,
so he cannot exactly blend into a crowd or even fit into a car.
How he walks a thousand miles without getting noticed is not explained.
However, ARGUS is so amateurish that their soldiers do not even have proper SWAT body armour.
Perhaps they would be better off hiring mercenaries from the HIVE terrorists,
because at least Damien Dork can get his men the right equipment.
Meanwhile, Joe's long-lost son Wally asks Joe's adopted son Barry to help with his engineering homework.
This leads to a bit of Soap Opera friction between the two.
Caitlin Snow (
Danielle Panabaker
) is grieving because she lost yet another love interest.
Cisco is still recovering from meeting her alternate self in Earth 2,
and now he is worried that she will become Killer Frost.
The Flash [Season 2, Episode 16]
Trajectory
Shown 22 Mar 16
Team Flash are trying to increase Barry's speed.
Barry and the gang are overworked,
so they take the evening off and go to a night-club.
By incredible coincidence,
an evil speedster chooses exactly that night to run in and steal the petty cash.
Caitlin Snow (
Danielle Panabaker
) realises that the new Speedster may have been created by the drug, Vector Nine.
She even identified a key suspect, a lab girl she asked for help.
Since Caitlin has lost two love interests and counting,
what are the chances that her platonic friendships will be cursed as well?
Iris is still a newspaper reporter.
Her new boss is very cynical about the Flash,
and does not even consider the possibility that there is an evil speedster in town.
Of course, the very idea that a potential supervillain of the level of Zoom or the Reverse Flash
would waste time on nickel-and-dime heists instead of robbing Fort Knox or the Federal Reserve.
Harry's daughter gets the voicemail he left for her when he thought he was going to die.
Despite the bonding they did in the previous episode,
this is set to push a wedge between them.
The Flash [Season 2, Episode 17]
Flash Back
Shown 29 Mar 16
Barry needs to learn how to become faster, and the only way to learn is from another speedster.
The only other speedster is the Reverse Flash, so Barry goes back in time to meet him.
He ends up in the events of
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 11] The Sound and the Fury
. Unfortunately he has to fight a secondary villain too.
The Flash [Season 2, Episode 18]
Versus Zoom
Shown 19 Apr 16
Barry finally has the advantage over Zoom.
He calls him out for a straight fight.
But despite having numbers and technology on his side,
not to mention the intel to wage psychological warfare,
Barry makes a big mistake.
The most classic tactic any super-villain can ever use
is to kidnap someone that the hero loves.
Using human capital as leverage is the oldest trick in the book.
The Flash [Season 2, Episode 19]
Back To Normal
Shown 26 Apr 16
The creepy professor goes looking for his estranged daughter.
However, she is still upset with him because he sacrificed a mass murderer to save her life.
This is ironic, because Wally seems pretty happy that Barry sacrificed Caitlin Snow (
Danielle Panabaker
) - and anyone else that Zoom attacks in the future - to save him in the previous episode.
Mutant X
- he can stop a van by letting it smash into him at full speed.
He also has superhuman strength.
However, every time he uses his superpower he ages noticably.
This is unlike Barry, who burns off thousands of calories every time he runs
but has no detrimental side-effects as long as he eats a cheeseburger once a week.
Currently, Barry does not need to eat the occasional cheeseburger
because he gave his speed power to Zoom.
He must defeat this villain by outwitting him.
All he has to do is let the guy punch him until one of them dies of old age.
A plan straight out of the Rocky movies.
Admittedly, Rocky did not have Cisco to armour-plate his skinsuit for him.
Nobody thinks of helping the poor metahuman,
whose crime is to be angry at the creepy professor for setting off the supercollider explosion.
All he wants is a cure, and since his condition is manageable it is theoretically reversible too.
But nobody wants to avoid violence in this show.
In Zoom's world, Caitlin is held prisoner.
She discovers what happened to her evil alter-ego, Killer Frost.
Also, the mysterious man in the iron mask is still locked up.
Perhaps someone should rescue him,
because he seems to be the only one who knows the truth about Zoom.
The Flash [Season 2, Episode 20]
Rupture
Shown 03 May 16
Zoom comes to Barry's world, and starts to take over the way he did on his own world.
He starts by evicting the cops from Joe's precinct house.
Joe wants to fight Zoom the old-fashioned way.
However, they really need a metahuman to fight him.
The creepy Professor has a plan - duplicate the event that originally gave Barry his powers.
If they wanted to really win, they would create new metahumans too.
Barry's birth-father is against giving Barry his powers again.
Nobody really has a plan to defeat Zoom.
Zoom has brought Caitlin Snow (
Danielle Panabaker
) as a hostage.
He also brought one of his henchmen - Rupture.
This is Vibe's brother, and he blames Cisco for his death.
He would be a great recruit if Cisco sould persuade him to defect.
After all, Zoom is the one who really killed Vibe.
Instead, Cisco prefers to hang out with his own brother.
If the brother were put in the supercollider with Barry
then he would have his own Rupture superpowers,
but nobody bothers to think of this either.
The Flash [Season 2, Episode 21]
The Runaway Dinosaur
Shown 10 May 16
Barry is missing, believed vapourised.
Cisco uses his Vibe superpower to discover that Barry is alive,
but trapped in Speed Force that creates his Flash superpower.
This is a relief, because the show still has a few episodes to go.
However, the team have to see if they can do without Barry for one more episode.
The supervillain Girder, introduced in
The Flash [Season 1, Episode 6] The Flash is Born,
breaks out of the facility's morgue.
Yes, apparently he got killed and disected -
and now the supercollider experiment has brought him back as a superpowered zombie.
The Speed Force is not merely another dimension.
It is sentient, and can decide whether nor not to give Barry his superpower back.
Strange that it somehow thinks that Zoom and the Reverse Flash are both worthy.
Anyway, the Speed Force appears to Barry in the guise of his family members.
Its goal is to get him to remember his favourite childhood book - The Runaway Dinosaur.
Zoom brings over his army of supervillains from the other universe.
The Flash [Season 2, Episode 22]
Invincible
Shown 17 May 16
Zoom's army rampages across the city.
The police put up a bit of a fight,
but in a normal episode they cannot fight a single supervillain never mind an army.
Even Wally tries to help out.
He saves a woman from a purse-snatcher,
and by incredible coincidence the petty thief turns out to be supervillain.
Meanwhile, Zoom's last remaining trusted lieutenant is the evil version of Laurel Lance (
Katie Cassiday
). Yes, she relies on technology rather than a super-power, but she has one advantage.
Instead of wasting time on petty theft she destroys entire buildings.
The brainy scientists at the supercollider try to work out a way to defeat all the villains simultaneously.
Meanwhile, Barry's father is hanging around a lot.
Almost as if the showrunner is worried that we might forget who he is.
The Flash [Season 2, Episode 23]
Man in the Iron Mask
Shown 24 May 16
Zoom calls Barry out for a final confrontation - a super-race.
Of course, the villain has a secret master-plan.
Cisco complains Why can't the villains just TELL us their evil plan,
but it is nice to see protagonists be smart enough to work things out for themselves
rather than just rely on the old-fashioned James Bond movie monologues.
Zoom's master-plan is to use Barry's speed-force to power an energy machine
that will destroy every world in the multiverse.
All except Earth One, AKA Barry's homeworld.
The rest of the team decide that Barry should not risk the multiverse in a race.
When Barry does not listen to reason, they lock him in one of the secret jail cells.
Zoom is defeated, but takes one of the heroes prisoner.
And he still has the mysterious Man in the Iron Mask prisoner.
This was his greatest enemy, the real Flash,
but Barry never cared about Zoom's other victims.
However, now Zoom has someone Barry values then the rest of the Multiverse can die for all he cares.
Seriously, if you want to see how selfish Barry can be then watch the final sequence of the episode.
The Flash [Season 3, Episode 1]
Flashpoint
Shown 04 Oct 16
Barry has gone back in time and prevented the Reverse Flash from killing Barry's mother.
The good news is, this created an alternate universe which is a relative paradise.
The particle accelerator at Star Labs is now the HQ of Cisco Ramone,
the richest man in the world thanks to his tech apps.
There is no freak-of-the-week, merely a single villainous speedster named The Rival.
Luckily, the heroic Kid Flash (AKA Wally West) is around to save the day.
Yes, things are looking good for Barry.
He can even hook up with Iris now, because she is not his foster-sister!
With the Reverse Flash locked up in a makeshift prison in a derelict factory (reminiscent of
Saw
), Barry has pretty much become a supervillain.
He used his powers for personal gain,
which is not so much an actual rule but more sort of a guideline.
Now everyone else is stuck in a parallel universe he created,
and it is only a matter of time before Barry realises that he has made a bad decision.
The Flash [Season 3, Episode 2]
Paradox
Shown 11 Oct 16
Barry is back, but everyone seems depressingly unhappy.
Iris is still angry with her dad for not telling her that her mother was still alive,
something she originally forgave him for long ago.
Worse, Cisco's brother is dead too, killed by a drunk driver.
This is not apparent at first, because Cisco rarely talked about (or to) his brother.
However, now he is apparently bereaved beyond belief by his loss.
Cisco blames Barry - not for the death, but for not changing history to save him.
Even when Barry explains the consequences of messing with the time-stream,
all Cisco does is call him a hypocrite.
There is another super-villain in town.
This one calls himself Anarchy,
and has the power to unleash potential super-villains on the world.
There is another new face in town.
Somehow, Barry has had a cow-orker at the Police CSI unit for the last few months.
The newcomer is Julian (Tom Felton -
Harry Potter
), a specialist in meta-humans.
The Flash [Season 3, Episode 3]
Magenta
Shown 18 Oct 16
A blue-collar worker gets home from a hard day of wage-slavery,
and discovers that the woman who spends all the money in his pay-checks
is too lazy to put something in the microwave for him.
Worse, his foster daughter has a split personality - a
Carrie
clone named Magenta.
Barry's cow-orker at the Police CSI unit, Julian (Tom Felton -
Harry Potter
), is actually quite good at his job.
Better than Barry or Detective Joe, in fact,
even though they have special insider knowledge when dealing with meta-humans.
Harry and his daughter Jesse are in town from the alternate universe.
It turns out that Jesse is a speedster,
and she needs Barry and his crew to train her up.
She also bonds with Wally West,
who is put out that he does not have speedster powers of his own
- or any superpowers, in fact.
The Flash [Season 3, Episode 4]
The New Rogues
Shown 25 Oct 16
Three years ago, when the particle accelerator exploded, Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller -
Dinotopia
) was having a heated debate (involving firearms)
with a couple of former business associates.
He managed to get away without developing any superpowers,
but the couple got one each.
She got the power to make people lose their sense of balance.
He got the power to travel through reflective surfaces.
Seriously!
The villains are after revenge on Snart.
Barry knows that he left with the
Legends of Tomorrow
, but it seems nobody knows about his heroic fate.
It is a pity, because Snart's cold-gun would actually have been useful
against this one particular superpower.
The team have to free Barry from a mirror by freezing it to absolute zero.
Luckily, Caitlin Snow (
Danielle Panabaker
) gets left alone with the mirror for a few seconds ...
Harry and Jesse are still in town,
so Jesse can join Barry in a mixed-gender tag-team against the couple.
Nice to see a female superhero,
and not just because (like Barry) she has to wear a skin-tight suit.
Harry gets Cisco and Caitlin to help him contact his other selves in the multi-verse,
so they can have a replacement Harry as mentor when he is not around.
Unfortunately he is still an insufferable snob,
and refuses to acknowledge than any of his alternate selves are good enough.
No wonder that nobody realised the Season One Harry was a ringer!
The Flash [Season 3, Episode 5]
Monster
Shown 01 Nov 16
Harry, the alternate Harrison Wells also known as H.R. Wells,
is staying with Cisco and Barry.
However, Cisco seems to think
there's something really off about that guy
. The others all seem to like him, if only because he takes
Supergirl
's advice on giving everyone coffee as a breakfast bribe.
An enormous monster is stomping around down-town.
It appears and disappears at will,
and the only trace it leaves are blown-out power transformers.
Barry tries to bond with Julian (Tom Felton -
Harry Potter
) in order to get better access to the cases.
We finally get to see Julian as something other than the show's Malfoy.
He seems to have a two-faced opinion on meta-humans.
We know that the super-villains are abusing their incredible talents,
but when the Flash saves lives Julian just accuses him of making the cops get lazy.
Elsewhere, Caitlin Snow (
Danielle Panabaker
) has taken a few days off to go see her mother.
Luckily her mother is a world-class medical expert
on the very disorder Caitlin has secretly contracted.
The bad news is, momma dearest has alienated her offspring
by putting her own career above parenting.
The worse news is, Caitlin never considers that not only is momma a terrible parent,
she is also a terrible boss as well.
The Flash [Season 3, Episode 6]
Shade
Shown 15 Nov 16
The villain of the week is a killer who can be seen only as a shadow.
H.R. names the killer Shade,
after a supervillain from his own reality who has similar powers.
Wally West, Joe's son, has dreams about being Kid Flash.
Yes, it seems that he is due to be Doctor Anarchy's next victim.
The good news is, Joe decides to use this opportunity
to set a trap for Anarchy and his minions.
Who is Anarchy's secret identity?
There are only a couple of new recurring characters this Season.
Julian (Tom Felton -
Harry Potter
) is one, and the lady District Attorney (Joe's love interest) is another.
The Flash [Season 3, Episode 7]
Killer Frost
Shown 22 Nov 16
Caitlin Snow (
Danielle Panabaker
) goes after Anarchy, in the hope that he can remove her superpowers
before she becomes her evil alter-ego Killer Frost for ever.
She starts by infiltrating the Police station and torturing a minion.
Then she abducts Julian (Tom Felton -
Harry Potter
) and forces him to help her.
She needs someone who can do some expert computer hacking,
and since Julian can probably send a few emails he will have to do.
Normally this would be Cisco's job,
but since he has his Vibe powers
he is one of the few people who can defeat her.
The Flash [Season 3, Episode 8]
Invasion! Part 2
Shown 29 Nov 16
A meteorite crashes into Central City.
Barry is first on the scene,
and discovers it is actually a starship crewed by a dozen super-strong aliens.
The aliens do not perform any aggressive actions,
and claim they are merely peaceful explorers.
However, POTUS does not want to be the man who lost World War Three.
His plan is to launch a sneaky pre-emptive attack.
Barry forms his own super-team of super-heroes to save the world.
Caitlin Snow (
Danielle Panabaker
) does not want to use her own powers,
and Wally West is a newbie so his family secretly sabotage his fledgling career as a hero.
Cisco manages to overcome his anger at Barry for changing the timeline,
and opens a gateway to Earth #38. Yes,
Supergirl
is now invited to the party.
She is joined by Barry's usual team-up partners, Team
Arrow
and the
Legends of Tomorrow
. This is the first time that Barry discovers what happened to Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller -
Dinotopia
).
The Flash [Season 3, Episode 9]
The Present
Shown 06 Dec 16
The team get back to the Season villain arc.
Previously they faced evil speedsters like the Reverse Flash and Zoom.
Now they are up against Savitar, the god of speedsters!
Julian (Tom Felton -
Harry Potter
) once conducted an archaeological expedition in the Indus valley.
They uncovered a magical rock that was reputed to give people super-powers.
In a typical piece of genre blindness, nobody makes a reference to
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
. Also, in all the time Julian has been hanging around
nobody has yet considered that he might be Savitar's priest, Doctor Alchemy!
Barry needs a super-hero team-up to take on Savitar and Alchemy.
He still refuses to recruit and train Wally,
formerly Kid Flash in the alternate timeline,
so he goes to an alternate universe and recruits his alternate father (
).
This is the Xmas episode, so after the main plot with Savitar
- setup for the rest of the Season - they have a schmaltzy Xmas party.
Julian's gift is that he gives Barry his old job back.
Barry had previously been technically unemployed,
but this did not stop him from renting an apartment in his and Iris' names.
Yes, his gift is that he expected her to pay half the rent
- and since he was unemployed, she would have to pay HIS half too!
The director is
Rachael Talalay
, a veteran of the other Arrowverse show
Supergirl
.
The Flash [Season 3, Episode 10]
Borrowing Problems from the Future
Shown 24 Jan 17
This is set over a month after the previous episode.
The Flash and his new sidekick, Kid Flash, save an ungrateful cop (Greg Grunberg -
Alias
). The rookie is doing well, but still feels unappreciated.
Barry has other things to worry about,
because he is preoccupied with his vision of Iris' death in a few months time.
Caitlin Snow (
Danielle Panabaker
) does not want to keep her own powers,
because every time she uses them goes further to the dark side.
She should have thought of that before she used them to create a white Xmas in the previous episode.
Now she goes to Julian (Tom Felton -
Harry Potter
), her former victim, for help.
He would be a great addition to the team, especially since he already knows Barry's secret.
If he and Kid Flash were to team up, they could equal Barry in brains as well as speed.
The villain of the week is a smash-and-grab artist.
He soon gets nicknamed Plunder because he wears an eyepatch, like a pirate.
Just like Captain Cold, he has no superpowers
but somehow got his hands on a hi-tech energy rifle.
H.R. tries to make Star Labs into a profitable business again.
After all, they need a source of income and an excuse to keep the building in operation.
His plan is to make it into a science museum.
This is a great idea - it is a large function space with its own story to tell.
However, the others are somewhat reluctant to embrace the idea.
Cisco is particularly unsympathetic, which is a bit out of character for him.
After all, he should have gotten over his mistrust of H.R. months ago.
The Flash [Season 3, Episode 11]
Dead or Alive
Shown 31 Jan 17
A bounty-hunter from Earth 19 arrives.
H.R. Wells has been sending his memoirs home for publication,
and she has come to collect him for punishment.
Inter-dimensional travel is illegal there,
ever since they were victims of an invasion.
The bounty-hunter has the same power as Vibe,
but she is much better at it than he is.
So when he agrees to duel her,
he only has a few hours to develop a winning strategy.
The Flash [Season 3, Episode 12]
Untouchable
Shown 07 Feb 17
A super-villain starts killing off seemingly random people.
It turns out to be yet another Flashpoint victim.
His powers include necrosis-by-touch,
so when he touches a regular character there is a race against time to save her.
He also apparently has teleportation,
because one moment he is at a train station as a choo-choo leaves
and only minutes later he is far in front of the speeding train.
Joe meets his new girlfriend's tweenage daughter.
It turns out she is a groupie for Kid Flash,
which is good news for Joe's son.
However, nobody thinks this through.
What happens when one couple inevitably breaks up?
Kid Flash has a lot of potential,
but he still has a lot of skills to master.
This week it is phasing - he has to move his hand up and down really fast.
This should come easily to a teenage boy.
The Flash [Season 3, Episode 13]
All Hail Grodd AKA Attack on Gorilla City
Shown 21 Feb 17
Jesse the Girl Flash arrives from Earth Two.
Her dad has been abducted by Gorilla Grodd,
and rather than save him herself she went to Barry for help.
Now she agrees to stay in Central City and hang out with Kid Flash.
Barry leads a small team to Gorilla City,
the home of the intelligent super-gorillas in Earth Two.
Cisco is the one who can open the portal, and Caitlin Snow (
Danielle Panabaker
) was friendly with Grodd when she was his hostage.
Julian comes along to help Caitlin.
However, despite bringing a browning pistol he is not much use.
The heroes' use of superpowers seems selective, to say the least.
Barry and Cisco cannot use their powers while locked in Grodd's cage,
but Caitlin's power works perfectly well.
Barry has to duel a gigantic killer ape in the arena,
and despite Barry's super-speed and experience in many battles
he is beaten up with the minimum of effort.
Grodd is unhappy at being exiled from Central City.
Why he feels this way is not really explained.
After all, he lived in a sewer and was treated badly by many humans.
However, he seems to resent the other Gorillas.
Perhaps he liked being a big fish, so to speak.
The Flash [Season 3, Episode 14]
Solovar AKA Attack on Central City
Shown 28 Feb 17
Grodd leads his army of massive gorillas to attack Central city.
Barry and his super-powered militia try to stop the invasion.
Just to add some soap opera relationship stuff,
Jesse Quick's dad pays a visit to help.
He seems happy enough to let her stay with Wally,
but as always there is something he is not telling everyone.
The Flash [Season 3, Episode 15]
The Wrath of Savitar
Shown 07 Mar 17
Wally West is the only one who can save his sister.
There are two other speedsters - Barry and Jesse - but Wally is the fastest.
Unfortunately he also gets a lot of visions of Savitar,
the villainous self-proclaimed God of Speed.
Savitar has been locked up somewhere.
Barry does not know exactly where,
but he does know that the only thing that can get him out is a magic stone.
Naturally, Barry threw the stone into the Speed Force ...
never once considering that that was the best place to imprison Savitar.
There are other things that Barry does not realise.
For example, in the previous two Seasons he was betrayed by someone close to him.
This time, Savitar actually spells it out as a prophecy.
The twist is blatantly obvious - this show is not exactly subtle.
However, Barry and his team are Law Enforcement or scientists
- they should be able to put the clues togerther a bit better than this.
The Flash [Season 3, Episode 16]
Into the Speed Force
Shown 14 Mar 17
Wally West is trapped in the Speed Force.
Previously it was meant to be a good thing,
but now it turns out to be some kind of Hell Dimension for speedsters.
Barry goes in to save him,
but has to pass tests by ghostly images of dead allies - Eddie Thawne (Rick Cosnett -
Vampire Diaries
), Robbie Amiel (
Tomorrow People
) and Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller -
Dinotopia
).
Back on Earth, Jessie Quick decides to go after Savitar alone.
Everyone else agrees that this is the stupidest plan ever.
She punches HR in the faces, and boasts that she got pleasure from it.
A villain would be called sadistic for something like that.
The Flash [Season 3, Episode 17]
Duet
Shown 21 Mar 17
Supergirl
has been put in a coma by a supervillain named Music Meister.
Mon-El and Shawn Shones carry her through a portal to Earth One,
in the hope that Barry's crew can help her.
Barry gets attacked by Music Meister too.
He ends up in a shared delusion with Supergirl.
Because of their shared love of musical films,
they are in a musical theatre show in a 1950s nightclub.
John Barrowman (
Torchwood
), best known in the Arrowverse as Malcolm Merlyn,
guest-stars as a gangster who owns the nightclub.
Victor Garber, his co-star from
Legends of Tomorrow
, appears as the gay lover of a rival gangster.
The Flash [Season 3, Episode 18]
Abra Kadabra
Shown 28 Mar 17
A new metahuman is in town.
He steals hi-tech devices, but leaves a trail of bodies lying around.
It turns out he is form the distant future,
and uses nano-tech to perform feats that look like magic.
Gypsy, the bounty hunter from Earth 19, arrives and delivers exposition.
Cisco tries to romance her, but he is amateurish and she is preoccupied.
The villain killed someone whe cared about,
one of the great cliches of the police procedural.
Caitlin Snow (
Danielle Panabaker
) has issues of her own.
Her relationship with Julian (Tom Felton -
Harry Potter
) has cooled off because of her paranoia about becoming Killer Frost again.
Unfortunately the major down side of being Killer Frost -
the psychopathic personality that has no concept of friendship -
is the flip side of her special healing powers.
Barry is obsessed with saving his fiance.
Since the villain of the week is from the future,
he knows Savitar's true identity (and thus how Barry can defeat him).
Will Gypsy give in to Barry's request,
to save the living instead of avenging the dead?
The villain only wants to go home to see his own family.
Is it fair for Barry to put his own family's happiness above that of the villain?
The Flash [Season 3, Episode 19]
The Once and Future Flash
Shown 25 Apr 17
Caitlin Snow (
Danielle Panabaker
) becomes Killer Frost yet again.
The good news is, she looks more attractive than her goody two-shoes version.
The bad news is, she goes on a rampage and tries to kill all her friends.
There is absolutely no motivation for her actions.
She is a villain purely for the sake of villainy.
Compare that to Barry, the title character.
He literally collects other meta-humans and keeps them locked up in his basement,
but despite his terrible deeds he is still portrayed as having a motive.
Barry runs into the future, to the year 2024.
Unfortunately nobody there is able or willing to tell him what Savitar's secret identity is.
Worse, Team Flash has been disbanded.
The super-powered members have been rendered inactive in one way or another.
Can Barry set it up again without any other superheroes, just mundane humans?
Well, it turns out that Cisco can make technology that can defeat superpowers.
There are a couple of super-villains on the loose - the ones from
The Flash [Season 3, Episode 4] The New Rogues
. The last time Barry defeated them he needed another Speedster
for a tag-team of his own.
The Flash [Season 3, Episode 20]
I Know Who You Are
Shown 02 May 17
The trip to the future has one pay-off.
A scientist named Tracey (
Anne Dudek
) will win a Nobel prize for proving the existence of the speed force.
However, she has spent ten years on her PhD and has nothing to show for it.
She never bothered contacting Star Labs or the Flash
(or Girl Flash or Kid Flash) for any inside info.
Worse, she is now considering a career at Big Belly Burger -
and none of the Star Labs crew offers to hire her (even as a tour guide).
Savitar's hench-woman Killer Frost (
Danielle Panabaker
) tries to kill Tracey.
We know this is the evil version because she is so much more attractive than usual.
Normally the evil woman has enhanced cleavage, the female equivalent of a goatee beard.
With this actress that would be futile,
but she has traded in her boring pencil skirts for Pretty Woman thigh boots!
Cisco has a few easy shots at Frostie, but he keeps bottling it.
He is holding back because he fears killing her.
It seems Barry did not bother telling Cisco the alternative -
Cisco loses his hands (and his powers and his mojo)
and Caitlin spends the rest of her natural life in a plastic bubble.
The Flash [Season 3, Episode 21]
Cause And Effect
Shown 09 May 17
Savitar's secret identity has been revealed.
The twist is that he is not from the past as he claimed,
but from the future.
This explains why he knows everything Team Flash will do before they do it.
Cisco has a plan - mess with Barry's brain so his memory is altered.
Unfortunately it works too well, and Barry gets amnesia.
This is bad, because he is due to testify against a supervillain.
The prosecution case relies entirely on his ability
to explain the physical evidence that the suspect left behind.
We later discover that the suspect never wears a mask while committing crimes,
so it is a wonder there is no CCTV footage or eyewitness testimony.
The good news is, Savitar is now out of action.
However, Killer Frost (
Danielle Panabaker
) wants him back in action again
so he can make good on the mysterious deal he cut with her.
Team Flash go along with Frostie,
although they do try to talk some sense into her as well.
The Flash [Season 3, Episode 22]
Infantino Street
Shown 16 May 17
There is less than 24 hours left
until Savitar is due to kill Barry's greatest love.
Cisco has his very own spy satellite,
and scans the entire planet for the biggest power supply.
He finds it in the impregnable (but unshielded) vault under ARGUS HQ.
Unfortunately Diggle's wife from
Arrow
refuses to give Barry the alien power globe he needs.
Not that she does not like him,
but with his track record for altering history
he is hardly a safe pair of hands for the most powerful energy source on Earth.
Barry recruits Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller –
Dinotopia
) from a scene in Season One of
Legends of Tomorrow
. Their plan to infiltrate ARGUS is basically the Wookie Prisoner trick.
However, Barry seems to have a new, ruthless edge
that only a villain like Leonard Snart would tolerate.
Back in the lab, HR Wells is bonding with Tracey the scientist (
Anne Dudek
). Will he eventually see that she is a potential Star Labs employee?
The Flash [Season 3, Episode 23]
Finish Line
Shown 23 May 17
Savitar seems to be victorious.
After all, how could he fail when he knows everything that Barry knows?
The answer is obvious.
Someone left Barry out of the loop, and started to work independently.
Savitar has a backup plan.
He has to defeat the ghoulish monster that chased Thawne in
Legends of Tomorrow: Season 2
. Luckily he has Killer Frost (
Danielle Panabaker
) as his minion.
The Flash [Season 4, Episode 1]
The Flash Reborn
Shown 17th October 2017
Iris is now in charge of Team Flash.
Her brother Wally West takes point as the speedster,
and Cisco is now a full-fledged Field Agent.
Barry has been gone for so long
that the Police Lab is thinking of firing him
and hiring a replacement.
After all, since Julian is no longer working there
they must have no staff at all to run things.
Cisco has a plan to get the old team back together.
He goes looking for his old buddy, Killer Frost (
Danielle Panabaker
). She has not left town, just kept a low profile.
The Flash [Season 4, Episode 2]
Mixed Signals
Shown 24th October 2017
Cisco has a new job, as the weird tech guy at the local Police Department.
Well, someone had to help out when Barry and Julian were not around.
Iris takes Barry to a relationship counsellor.
It turns out that Iris still has issues.
So does Gypsy, Cisco's girlfriend who pays a visit.
The Flash [Season 4, Episode 3]
Luck Be A Lady
Shown 31st October 2017
We start with the creepy futuristic super-genius guy.
Previously he got a scene at the end of each episode,
but now he plays a much bigger role in order to provide exposition.
The original Meta-Humans were created in the particle accelerator explosion.
Last Season introcuced more Metas, created by Savitar's minion.
But now we have a third group of Meta-Humans on the loose.
As always, they choose to indulge their greed and thirst for revenge.
So much for Central City being a utopia inhabited by good people.
Last week Barry got up to date on watching
Game of Thrones: Season 5
. Now we get a character who still uses her Myspace page.
Yes, it seems that Barry's world is a few years behind our own.
The villain of the week is a young woman who used to have terrible luck.
Now she has great luck, but at the expense of everyone around her.
When Barry and the team set their sights on her,
their luck turns comedically bad too.
Harrison Wells (Tom Cavanagh) arrives from Earth Two.
The bad news is that he brings a special holographic cube for Kid Flash.
The Flash [Season 4, Episode 4]
Elongated Journey Into Night
Shown 7th November 2017
Cisco is on yet another hot date with his interdimensional girlfriend, Gypsy.
She refuses to reveal her real name, or anything about her family.
Cisco does not seem to realise that this could be a seriously bad thing.
After all, they could be siblings.
Unfortunately, Cisco soon meets Gypsy's father.
He is Breacher (Danny Trejo -
Machete
), the ultimate psycho-dad, and insists on spending the next 24 hours hunting Cisco.
Barry and Joe investigate the bus passengers.
They discover one of them was Ralph Digny,
an ex-cop who Barry got fired for planting evidence in Season One.
Digny has a super-power.
All he needs is a Superhero name.
Good ideas might be Mister Rubberpants or Johnny Raincoat.
Unfortunately the best one, Rubber Johnny,
was used for a character in Marshal Law.
The Flash [Season 4, Episode 5]
Girls Night Out
Shown 14th November 2017
Felicity (
Emily Bett Rickards
) is in town for Iris' hen party.
Caitlin Snow (
Danielle Panabaker
) reluctantly tags along,
but she has unfinished business with local crime lady Ahmanet (
Katee Sackhoff
).
The plot device everyone is fighting over is The Weeper,
a male damsel in distress.
Presumably he is one of the twelve Metas from the bus.
The computer system in Caitlin's van is so high-tech
it displays a 3-D representation of the building
and can remotely interface with any computerised control system in that building.
Felicity compares Killer Frost to
The Incredible Hulk
. This is the first reference to the Marvel Universe so far this Season.
It will not be the last.
As the females explore their role as powerful women,
the males go out to a strip club.
This is deemed to be a bad choice.
Someone complains that society is dictated by the male gaze.
Nobody says anything similar
when Felicity and the girls think an unsuspecting man is a male stripper.
The Flash [Season 4, Episode 6]
When Harry Met Harry ...
Shown 21st November 2017
Harrison Wells offers to help find the Season's arch-villain, Devoe.
He creates a think tank with alternate versions of himself.
They include a German scientist, a Hugh Hefner type and an Australian cyborg from a
Mad Max
universe.
Cisco mocks him for only socialising with versions of himself.
However, Wells is regarded as a mass murderer after the events of Season One.
He cannot walk freely and make friends with members of the general population.
Digny is now part of Team Flash.
He certainly seems a lot more interesting than Kid Flash.
Poor Wally West was just a nice guy who tagged along for the adventure,
but Digny is a more unlikeable character.
Not unlike Harrison Wells, in his own way.
Yes, it seems like this show has found the trick to making characters interesting.
The villain of the week is a Native American woman.
She used to be a Professor of Anthropology,
but now she has superpowers she chooses to kill white folk instead of educating them.
Her power is to bring statues and manikins to life.
Luckily for her, there is always one nearby when she needs it.
There is a problem with the premise of the episode.
She is a Lakota Sioux, and her obsession is with an ancient religious item.
Unfortunately, her tribe's home is the Pine Ridge Reservation -
a community crippled by poverty and alcoholism.
The return of a symbolic necklace will make no difference to them.
And since they hold its value to be sentimental rather than financial,
they cannot hope to earn money by renting it out to a museum.
The Flash [Season 4, Episode 7]
Therefore I Am
Shown 28th November 2017
This starts with a flashback to four years ago.
Devoe was an absent-minded Professor of History.
His wife is a technology expert,
and builds a cap that will enhance his intellect.
Strangely she does not bother to build one for herself.
Unfortunately they needed a power source.
Luckily, a man calling himself Harrison Wells
is about to activate a particle accelerator.
Barry is convinced that Devoe is the Season arc's super-villain.
He tells Iris that his Spidey Sense is tingling -
the second reference to the Marvel Universe so far this Season.
Devoe does not see himself as a villain.
He does not want to use his powers for personal enrichment,
but to save the world.
Somehow he has managed to get enough funding to build a hi-tech lair,
even though he and his wife are still paying off the mortgage on their house.
The Flash [Season 4, Episode 8]
Crisis On Earth-X, Part 3
Shown 5th December 2017
This follows on from
Arrow
. The heroes are on Earth-X, in a prison camp run by Quentin (Paul Blackthorne -
Dresden Files
).
Leo Snart (Wentworth Miller -
Dinotopia
) is a freedom fighter, who rescues his buddy (Russell Tovey -
Being Human
). Unfortunately their boss, General Winn,
wants to blow up the portal back to Earth One.
Oliver Queen actually uses the line
It's the strong's duty to protect the weak.
This is actually a reference to a cliched line
that a Marvel SJW has tried to popularise.
Ironic that the Marvel comics have more in common with the DC TV universe
than they do with the
Back on Earth One, the super-powered males (and token female) are locked up.
Luckily Iris and Felicity,
a pair of females with no super-powers or physical skills,
are still on the loose.
Can they successfully do a Die Hard?
Can a hundred-pound woman with no weapons or training
take out a fully armed Nazi stormtrooper with a single punch?
The follow-up is on
Legends Of Tomorrow
.
The Flash [Season 4, Episode 9]
Don't Run
Shown 12th December 2017
Caitlin Snow (
Danielle Panabaker
) is jealous of her alter-ego, Killer Frost.
Then she gets kidnapped by local crime lady Ahmanet (
Katee Sackhoff
). Meanwhile, Barry gets kidnapped by Devoe.
Ahmanet gives Caitlin her sob story.
She never got a proper education,
because she was too stupid to get a free Government scholarship in the UK.
Instead she got a glamourous job as an airline stewardess,
where she made good money and had the opportunity for romance with airline pilots.
Of course, getting super-powers turned her from being an ungrateful whiner
into a murderous super-willain.
It seems that powers do not necessarily corrupt,
they just allow the person to take their natural personality to the next level.
Iris, team leader, is conflicted because her husband and her friend have been taken at the same time.
Which one should they concentrate the search on?
She cannot choose.
Team Flash (AKA Barry's extended family) hold an Xmas party.
Wally West is unable to attend, because he is out of town.
He had to go all the way to Cambodia,
because if he was anywhere in the Americas
he could run home in a couple of hours.
There is a twist that seems reminiscent of the film
Get Out
. In fact, the comparison is most disturbing,
because the movie was twisted and exaggerated
while this version is played completely straight.
The Flash [Season 4, Episode 10]
The Trial of The Flash
Shown 16 Jan 18
Barry has been expertly framed for the death of a suspect.
In all fairness he walked right into it,
and his own refusal to obey a restraining order is primarily to blame.
Luckily, he has the District Attorney (
Danielle Nicolet
) on his side as a pro-bono defence lawyer.
The Prosecutor (Mark Valley - Human Target)
uses prejudicial language to inflame the jury against Barry.
Yes, there is no attempt to portray this as a fair trial.
The grieving widow blubbers on the witness stand,
even though she proveably had as much motive as anyone to kill her husband.
Meanwhile, Barry's poor time-keeping at work
is used to make him seem like a villainous sort.
The Prosecutor refuses to look at the QUALITY of Barry's work,
which must be poor if he does not remember to wear gloves while murdering someone.
Barry's wife, Iris, does not seem to have much of a plan.
She wears a distractingly cleavage-enhancing outfit in court,
which hardly reflects the seriousness of the occasion.
Then she interrupts the Judge in order to make a declaration.
Yes, she has decided (against Barry's wishes) to out him as The Flash,
in the hope his celebrity status will render him immune to a guilty verdict.
There is a subplot concerning a radioactive man.
Wells and Cisco try to track him down,
because the Police (for whom Cisco works as a CSI) are no good at their job.
Luckily Barry is only on bail, despite the severity of the charges against him.
This means he can work as a vigilante while not in court.
The Flash [Season 4, Episode 11]
The Elongated Knight Rises
Shown 23 Jan 18
Barry is stuck in prison.
By incredible coincidence, he is in his father's old cell.
He should be in the protective wing,
because he is a police employee and his step-father/father-in-law is a cop.
Ironically, the only one that he actually imprisoned there,
Junior Trickster, does not hold a grudge against him.
The same cannot be said for the resident 1980s-style mixed-race street-gang.
Nobody notices that the Flash is not keeping the city safe.
That is because there is a new super-hero in town.
Digny has a terrible costume,
and Cisco has still not bothered to give him a name.
Junior Trickster gets jailbroken.
He wants to get his father's attention,
so he decides to challenge Digny to a battle to the death.
Unfortunately the original Trickster has left town,
because Mark Hamill was off promoting his new movie
Star Wars 8: The Last Jedi
.
The Flash [Season 4, Episode 12]
Honey, I Shrunk Team Flash
Shown 30 Jan 18
A crook has the super-power of shrinking things.
For example, he shrinks Cisco and the Rubber man.
HR tries to un-shrink them, but just makes it worse.
The only way to save them is to get the super-crook to do it.
Barry is stuck in prison, in his father's old cell.
The Warden (Richard Brooks -
G versus E
) seems like a nice guy.
The Flash [Season 4, Episode 13]
True Colors
Shown 06 Feb 18
Barry gets locked up in the Meta-Human wing of the prison.
The Warden (Richard Brooks -
G versus E
) makes a deal to sell his Meta-Human prisoners to local crime lady Ahmanet (
Katee Sackhoff
). This means that Barry must lead a prison break of the supervillains he imprisoned.
Team Flash also try to help.
Rubber Johnny discovers that he has a strange new superpower.
After getting a job offer from an old friend (Paul McGillion -
Stargate: Atlantis
), Johnny discovers he can shape-shift into an exact duplicate of another person.
Joe's woman (
Danielle Nicolet
) discovers a new superpower of her own.
Since she is pregnant, the temporary changes in her hormone levels and body chemistry
have rendered her telepathic.
Devoe, the Season's villain, has his own problems to contend with.
The Flash [Season 4, Episode 14]
Subject 9
Shown 27th Feb 2017
Team Flash identifies the next target on Devoe's list.
She is a young woman who works as a singer.
To paraphrase Blues Brothers,
she does both kinds of music - country and western.
Barry and the team find the woman and train her to use her powers.
She can send strong blasts of sonic energy.
The effect is amplified if she uses her violin.
This is a strange counter-part to this week's episode of
Legends Of Tomorrow
, which focuses on the guitar used by Elvis Presley.
Rubber Johnny starts to bond with the sonic woman.
On a similar note, HR Wells starts to bond with Joe's woman Camile (
Danielle Nicolet
).
The Flash [Season 4, Episode 15]
Enter Flashtime
Shown 06 Mar 18
ARGUS are transporting a secret cargo at the airfield.
Detective Joe and some local cops provide security.
Just as well, because some terrorists in SWAT armour turn up.
Luckily, average cops with pistols can easily match an equal number of SWAT-equipped gunmen.
Despite the terrorists being equally matched,
Barry does not wait for ARGUS to send in their own SWAT team to save the day.
Instead, he charges in to save the day.
Just as well, although somehow he manages to be too slow.
The terrorists detonate a nuclear explosion.
The good news is that Barry can walk around in the very moment that the explosion started in.
As a result, he can wander around and try to find a solution.
Other speedsters can do the same thing,
so he gets Jessie Quick and his dad's doppelganger to help.
It appears that Devoe has no part in the episode's villainy.
Instead the episode has some new bad guys, the Eden Corps.
This is a very strange choice of villain.
To fit in with the Trump era,
the villains are eco-warriors ...
the next thing to Social Justice Warriors.
One cannot imagine the sister-shows having SJW villains. Would
Legends of Tomorrow
adopt a homophobic tone, or would
Supergirl
have a Feminist bad-girl?
Not for the first time,
Jessica Parker Kennedy
is hanging around in the gang's favourite coffee shop.
Yes, she clearly has something to do with the Season's story arc.
Well, one of them.
Yes, there appear to be two different story arcs!
The Flash [Season 4, Episode 16]
Run, Iris, Run
Shown 13 Mar 18
The team find a new meta-human.
Actually, there are a couple of them.
One is a well-dressed man who does not bother to disguise his face while he robs a bank.
The other is a Chinese man who acts as a vigilante.
Iris ends up with Barry's powers.
This is a good thing, because she can lead from the front.
Rubber man chastised her for staying safe in the command room.
The Flash [Season 4, Episode 17]
Null and Annoyed
Shown 20 Mar 18
Ralph and Barry disgree on the nature of heroism.
Devoe's wife begins to have second thoughts about participating in the Enlightenment.
The Flash [Season 4, Episode 18]
Lose Yourself
Shown 27 Mar 18
Barry and his team discover a way into Devoe's lair.
Joe is worried about Wells' behaviour.
He thinks that Wells has become addicted to the thinking helmet.
Ralph considers crossing the line.
He is Devoe's main target now, so he has nothing to lose.
The Flash [Season 4, Episode 19]
Fury Rogue
Shown 03 Apr 18
Devoe has defeated Team Flash and taken out two of them.
Barry has to transport the nuke-powered Meta,
so he calls in backup - the Leo Snart from Earth X.
Hopefully Devoe has not been able to plan for the unexpected.
The Black Siren (
Katie Cassiday
) from Earth X comes along for the ride.
Her side has been defeated, and she is being hunted down by the former rebels.
Of course, in their alternative world the National Socialists
were not a mass popular movement,
merely an oppressive master-race of meta-humans,
so the transition has been clean.
Devoe has problems of his own.
He has his own face back,
but he does not have the perfect ability to predict the future.
His wife tries to explain that his weakness is his inability to comprehend human emotions,
but he has become so intelligent that his brain works entirely on logic
and cannot function on a basic hormonal level.
The Flash [Season 4, Episode 20]
Therefore She Is
Shown 10 Apr 18
Devoe has gotten all the superpowers he needs.
Now he just steals whatever he wants and kills anyone who gets in his way.
Cisco has been holding off on Breacher's job offer.
Now he has to sort out his relationship with Gypsy.
Especially since she gets called in to help.
Harry babysits Camile (
Danielle Nicolet
). She is a mind-reader because of her pregnancy,
but his scattered mind should be impossible for her to read.
In the spirit of every other show since
Lost
, the main storyline is interspersed with flashbacks.
Devoe is basically the Unibomber,
someone who wants to remove all advanced human technology.
His wife was a humanitarian who joined the Peace Corps.
Her big contribution was to invent a water purifier,
even though such inventions have been mass-produced and sold cheaply for decades.
The Flash [Season 4, Episode 21]
Harry And The Harrisons
Shown 08 May 18
Devoe is not acting on his plan any more.
Everyone takes advantage of the lull in the action.
Harry gets the Council of Harrisons to help him.
He is no longer smart enough to be in the real Council,
so he joins the council of rejects instead.
Caitlin Snow (
Danielle Panabaker
) cannot get Killer Frost back,
so she goes looking for local crime lady Ahmanet (
Katee Sackhoff
). She has not been seen for many months,
so her minion Norvok has declared her dead and taken over her operation.
Will Amhmanet help save the world,
or will she sit back and let herself be lobotomized (along with her customers and allies)?
Nora (
Jessica Parker Kennedy
) delivers a big bad of diapers (nappies) to Camile (
Danielle Nicolet
). She may not be a villain, she may be a time-traveler from the future.
Which means that Devoe's plan is doomed to failure.
The Flash [Season 4, Episode 22]
Think Fast
Shown 15 May 18
Devoe is back to his original plan.
He wants to lobotomize the entire human species.
To do this, he breaks into a secret ARGUS base.
Barry and his team use a holodeck to simulate different scenarios.
Caitlin Snow (
Danielle Panabaker
) does not have her powers any more,
so she is reduced to using Snart's cold gun instead.
She visits a shrink in order to get over losing her alter-ego.
The Flash [Season 4, Episode 23]
We Are The Flash
Shown 22 May 18
Barry's wife has convinced Mrs Devoe to help.
She explains her husband's one major flaw.
The only one who can outsmart him is himself.
Camile (
Danielle Nicolet
) uses her telepathy to send Barry into Devaux's mind,
where he finds out what happened to Rubber Johnny.
Devoe multi-tasks.
He chases down his wife and Team flash in the real world.
Meanwhile, in his subconscious he sends dozens of clones after Barry.
Straight out of the second
Matrix
movie.
The ending takes place after the end of
Legends of Tomorrow (S3)
, so a guest-star makes a surprise appearance.
we also discover that Nora (
Jessica Parker Kennedy
) will play a big role in the next Season.
The Flash [Season 5, Episode 1]
Nora
Shown 9th October 2018
This takes up where the previous Season left off.
Nora (
Jessica Parker Kennedy
) introduces herself.
She somehow cannot run fast enough to return home,
so she must have changed the timeline somehow.
Now she becomes part of the team,
delivering exposition the way Harry used to.
Ralph the Rubber Bandit learns that time travel is a thing.
Then he deduces that the multiverse must also exist.
Yes, he really did not pay much attention in the previous Seasons.
The villain of the week is called Gridlock,
and his power is that he can convert kinetic energy into electricity.
Hence, when the Flash hits him Gridlock merely gets stronger.
The natural step would be for him to jump off progressively taller buildings
so he could get stronger and stronger.
Instead, Gridlock gets on a plane and ends up trying to crash it.
Not on purpose, although it would make sense.
No, he tries to mug one of the other passengers.
Worse, the plane is on course to hit some skyscrapers.
Collateral damage that would not benefit his powers in any way.
Nora is the central character to the episode,
even narrating the prologue and epilogue.
She seems out of place,
because although the actress played teenagers while in her twenties
she is now a thirty-something whose biggest role was as a naked whore in
Black Sails
. It now just seems off to have her once again playing ten years younger than her real age.
The money must be great, as well as the status of being a lead role in a major TV show,
but the reality is that she is being stuck in a childish role once more.
Also, as a superhero her mask is far too small,
and unlike Barry she does not have a hood to cover her head.
The Flash [Season 5, Episode 2]
Blocked
Shown 25th October 2018
The villain of the week is a female arms dealer.
She just got out of Iron Heights penitentiary,
and it has left her in a murderous rage.
Yes, the justice system failed at rehabilitation yet again.
She wants to take back her illegal business in the weapons trade.
Barry regrets that he no longer has his own personal spy satellite,
but he can always jury-rig other technology to provide a deus ex machina
and quickly tie up a potentially interesting story.
As always, the thriller plot plays second fiddle to the soap opera storylines.
Barry gets stuck looking after Nora (
Jessica Parker Kennedy
). She is untrained and over-eager,
so she exceeds her capabilities and makes rookie mistakes.
Her father turns to the only mento figure left - Detective Joe.
Ralph and Caitlin Snow (
Danielle Panabaker
) try to help Cisco to get over his break-up with Gypsy.
Despite his depression, Cisco manages to make a cool reference to
Thor (2009)
. Yes, he has previously referenced
Star Wars
(despite Mark Hamill playing The Trickster in this show) and Big Bang Theory
(despite Sheldon Cooper's obsession with DC's The Flash comic).
But this show is a DC, and Thor is Marvel.
Astonishing to think that the MCU is fictional within the DC universe.
The Flash [Season 5, Episode 3]
The Death Of Vibe
Shown 1st November 2018
Team Flash hunt down the new villain, Mr Cicada (Chris Klein -
Rollerball (2001)
). To do so they need a detective.
Well, Joe is a detective while Barry and his daughter are CSIs.
Instead they get one of the alternate Harrison Wells to help out.
Sherloque Wells uses psychological and geographical profiling to locate a suspect.
Meanwhile the real Cicada captures Joe,
and tries forcing him to lure Cisco into a trap.
It turns out that the killer is not just a vigilante who targets super-villains,
but rather he is a serial killer who hates all meta-humans.
Elongated man is the show's comedy relief.
Sherloque Wells is also a comedy relief character,
but Wells is not impressed by Rubber Johnny and refuses to work with him.
As a result, soiled Rubber gets to spend more time with Caitlin Snow (
Danielle Panabaker
) in her own private subplot.
She wants to track down her father, and visits her estranged mother to find clues.
The Flash [Season 5, Episode 4]
News Flash
Shown 8th November 2018
Someone is staging domestic terrorism incidents in the city.
The people involved are somehow brainwashed into it.
There is no obvious motive, but an online news app -
run by a rival of Barry's wife, Iris West -
manages to get the scoop on all the events.
Barry and Iris send their daughter to investigate.
We discovered that in
Arrow
, Olly would not have biological grandchildren because his son was a homosexual.
Now we see Barry's daughter flirting with a villainess.
It is a wonder that they did not hook up earlier,
since they hang out in the same coffee shop all the time.
Anyway, the actress may have done some great girl-on-girl scenes in
Black Sails
but that would seem oddly out of place in a dumbed-down kids show like this.
Luckily for the censors, her mother is a total clit-blocker
and manages to mess up the flirting before it gets to the next level.
The subplot is actually the main series arc.
Rubber Johnny and Sherloque investigate the Cicada’s disguise.
He wears a special breathing mask.
The Flash [Season 5, Episode 5]
All Doll'd Up
Shown 15th November 2018
This starts with a robbery.
It is not meta-related, but Team Flash love beating up people who cannot fight back.
To make things interesting, the daughter (
Jessica Parker Kennedy
) refuses to listen to anything her mother says.
Unfortunately her mother, Iris, is the team leader
who commands everyone over radio from HQ.
Until she learns to become a team player,
she gets exiled to domestic duty with her step-grandmother the DA (
Danielle Nicolet
). She uses another piece of futuristic swearing - shrap.
This is either an abbreviation of shrapnel
or a combination of sh*t and cr*p.
Iris and Barry investigate a robbery case.
Neither is a police detective – he is a CSI, she is a journalist – but nobody complains.
The suspect was alienated by his own mother.
Iris reflects on her own apparent failure as a mother.
The daughter states Iris was an over-controlling helicopter parent.
This explains why the daughter is an overgrown child.
The villain is a bendy man, like Rubber Johnny but a burglar.
He climbs down chimneys and through air ducts,
and his fingerprints elongate along with the rest of him.
Yes, he is a family-friendly version of Eugene Victor Tooms from
The X-Files
, who steals heirlooms instead of eating people's livers.
One victim is an architect who wants to add a new building to the
Gotham
skyline. Unfortunately it is unlikely we will get a crossover.
To start with, they featured different versions of Ras Al Ghul.
The B-Team try to track down Caitlin's father (Kyle Secor -
). It turns out he was a scientist, and a friend of Dr Stein (Victor Garber -
Alias
). Cisco vibes some clues,
but using his superpower re-opens his wounds – like stigmata.
This never happened before, but is a typical de-powering.
Everyone whines that the Star Labs satellite has been destroyed.
However, the only reason it got destroyed was because it was hijacked by DeVoe.
And the only reason he used their satellite is because he was locked out of his own ones.
Yes, there are four brand-new next-generation replacements already in orbit.
And nobody bothered to remember about them.
The Flash [Season 5, Episode 6]
The Icicle Cometh
Shown 22nd November 2018
Cicada (Chris Klein -
Rollerball (2001)
) is still on the loose.
His new hunting ground is the same coffee shop that the show's regulars use.
Instead of looking for him with traditional police work,
the heroes try to locate the victims from last Season's climactic explosion.
Yes, just like the Bus Metas we have a bunch of new super-humans created.
The common factor is Barry Allen himself.
Yes, the Flash's existence is enough to generate new enemies for himself.
Ralph Digney (AKA Rubber Johnny) is sent to find answers.
Joe (Jesse L. Martin) is busy, so Ralph gets DA Camille (
Danielle Nicolet
) to come along with him.
They go to a FEMA field hospital where the victims of the explosion were treated.
Unfortunately the City's DA has no authority over a Federal agency.
Sherloque and Barry's wife go out looking for clues.
The daughter, Nora (
Jessica Parker Kennedy
), tags along in the hope of bonding with her formerly estranged mother.
Caitlin Snow (
Danielle Panabaker
) goes to a remote outpost at the North Pole to find her father (Kyle Secor -
). He mentions he kept in touch with a fellow scientist, Doctor Victor Fries.
This is Mr Freeze in
Gotham
although (like Ras Al Ghul) it is probably a different version of the character.
Cisco does not trust Dr Snow,
who wants the team to provide him with a new gene therapy.
Is he Caitlin's father or Killer Frost's daddy?
The Flash [Season 5, Episode 7]
O Come, All Ye Thankful
Shown 29th November 2018
This is the thanksgiving episode.
Just like all the other CW shows, it is all on the theme of family.
Well, every TV show made for the mainstream American audience is made on that theme.
What makes this episode different is that Nora (
Jessica Parker Kennedy
) has to confront her issues with her father.
Oh wait,
Legends Of Tomorrow
already did that with Nora Darke.
Weather Wizard (Liam McIntyre -
Spartacus
) has a tweenage daughter named Joss.
She demands that Flash hands over her daddy,
and she will destroy the city if he does not comply.
Team Flash refuses to comply,
no matter how many peoples' lives are put at risk.
Nora Allen (
Jessica Parker Kennedy
) is upset that her father keeps putting himself in jeopardy.
Much like Joss, she does not want to be abandoned by her daddy.
However, he is a superhero who risks his life every single week.
She should have gotten used to it by now.
Meanwhile, the Season arc villain Cicada (Chris Klein -
Rollerball (2001)
) is having daddy-daughter issues of his own.
He has a series of flashbacks about his own relationship with his daughter,
which depict him trying to do his best as a father despite everything.
And we see the accident that led to him becoming a supervillain.
All in all, he has the best motivation of any villain this year.
Except possibly The Professor in
Supergirl: Season 4
.
The Flash [Season 5, Episode 8]
What's Past Is Prologue
Shown 6th December 2018
Sherloque and Rubber Johnny manage to keep Cicada (Chris Klein -
Rollerball (2001)
) under surveillance without him apparently noticing them.
However, his weapon can defeat any Meta-Human's powers
so he might as well be setting a trap for them.
In other words, Caitlin Snow (
Danielle Panabaker
) might actually be more use against him than Killer Frost!
This would be just the time for them to call in ARGUS or Team
Arrow
, who do not rely on super-powers to get the job done.
Since Barry's super-speed will not help him in a direct attack,
he uses it to time-travel back to create a weapon to defeat Cicada.
He must collect items from previous villains to defeat the new one.
Armour from Savitar's suit in Season 3, a gadget from Zoom in Season 2,
and some dark matter from the evil Wells in Season 1.
The brains of this operation is the daughter, Nora (
Jessica Parker Kennedy
). Everyone trusts her, although Sherloque is now suspicious of her.
She seems obsessed with Eobard Thawne ...
The Flash [Season 5, Episode 9]
Elseworlds, Part 1
Shown 13th December 2018
Barry Allen and Olly Queen wake up in each others' bodies.
Nobody on their Earth will believe them,
so they go through the portal to the
Supergirl
universe.
The Flash [Season 5, Episode 10]
The Flash & The Furious
Shown 15 Jan 19
The Weather Witch, introduced in
The Flash [Season 5, Episode 7] O Come, All Ye Thankful,
is now up for trial.
Another super-villainess breaks her out of prison
and attempts to recruit her into an evil Taylor Swift squad.
Nora Allen (
Jessica Parker Kennedy
) is upset because her mentor was a bad man.
Well, she knew all along that he was a convicted super-villain.
However, she had unrealistic expectations that were soon quashed.
As a result, she now refuses to give anyone a second chance.
Cisco gets his hands healed.
He seems to have discovered a potential cure for Meta-Humans.
Caitlin Snow (
Danielle Panabaker
) is horrified at the thought.
It seems she and her alter-ego, reformed super-villainess Killer Frost,
have a much closer relationship than anyone should feel comfortable with.
Just like in
The Gifted (S2)
) and
X-Men 3
, it seems the worst thing super-humans can imagine
is someone weaponising a cure for superpowers.
The alternative is to engage in a weapons race,
using powered armour and super-soldier serum.
The Flash [Season 5, Episode 11]
Seeing Red
Shown 22 Jan 19
Cicada (Chris Klein -
Rollerball (2001)
) gets hold of a list of paroled supervillains,
and decides to use that as a hit-list.
Barry and Team Flash arrange with the Feds -
not ARGUS for some reason - to put them in Witness Protection.
Nora Allen (
Jessica Parker Kennedy
) gets injured in the line of unpaid duty.
Her vertebrae are fractured,
and the power-dampening means that her super-healing is delayed.
As a speedster she cannot bear to stay still,
so she is under a lot of stress until she gets healed.
Barry is enraged about his grown-up daughter's
Caitlin Snow (
Danielle Panabaker
) has problems of her own.
She is trying to complete a cure for meta-humans,
but her alter-ego Killer Frost is horrified at the thought.
Frostie does not trust Caitlin for some reason.
Can Rubber Johnny melt her icy heart?
The Flash [Season 5, Episode 12]
Memorabilia
Shown 29 Jan 19
Sherloque plans to use the memory gun to access Grace's memories.
The best subjects to use would be Barry and Nora (
Jessica Parker Kennedy
), since they are both speedsters.
However, this means Barry would have access to Nora's memories
and she wants to retain some boundaries.
Not only is he her father,
she is from the future and does not want to mess up the timeline.
Also, she has an actual secret that she does not want divulged.
The problem for Nora is that while she needs to keep her secrets,
she also acknowledges the that Sherloque's plan is the only one they have.
As a result, she secretly goes into Grace's mind by herself.
Naturally, it all goes horribly wrong.
Both parents have to go in to save her.
Meanwhile, Rubber Johnny takes Cisco on a mission with him.
It is more of a dudes night out, with Cisco as an unwitting wingman.
The bad news is, they inadvertently end up in a lesbian bar
and are so clueless they do not notice it.
the good news is the barmaid is straight,
The Flash [Season 5, Episode 13]
Goldfaced
Shown 05 Feb 19
Barry and Ralph team up for some undercover work.
The gadget they want is in the hands of a gangster named Goldface,
who specialises in weaponised super-technology.
Thanks to an intro by Ralph's buddy (Paul McGillion -
Stargate Atlantis
) they go undercover as prospective buyers.
Barry is unhappy at the idea of living in peace with criminal types.
Especially when he discovers that they are selling cop-killing super-guns.
This is a natural step in the development of technology -
if it is good enough, it will be mass-produced and weaponised.
The exception turns out to be life-saving technologies,
which are limited to expensive for-profit American hospitals.
Barry and Ralph are so good at pretending to be crooks
that Gold-face hires them to help steal a piece of technology.
Since he does not trust newbies,
he makes them wear power-nullifying bracelets controlled by a switch on his belt.
This leads up to the line make daddy use his belt,
probably a sly reference to Ethan Van Sciver -
the comic-book creator black-listed for not supporting Hillary Clinton.
Mrs Allen does the Lois Lane thing, and gets back to investigative journalism.
She finds a good lead on Cicada (Chris Klein -
Rollerball (2001)
) - he has used the name Rabbie Burns.
Somehow this is enough for her to hunt him down.
Of course, she does not bother with backup.
Cicada has taken on every Meta-human in Team Flash -
can a woman with no super-powers defeat him?
Nora (
Jessica Parker Kennedy
) has her own subplot.
She tries to set Sherloque up with the local universe's version of his ex-wife.
When this fails, she gets in touch with his ex-wives.
It turns out that he married the same woman seven times.
Despite their differences in clothing,
they are all shrill gold-digging harpies who feel entitled to alimony payments.
Yes, none of them apparently has a career - or a sense of personal responsibility.
That said, the most confusing thing is how they have access to inter-dimensional video-call technology.
In every alternate universe it must be as widely available as skype.
The Flash [Season 5, Episode 14]
Cause and XS
Shown 12 Feb 19
Barry has to spend an hour in the Speed Force,
to process a vial containing the potential cure for meta-human powers.
While he is away, he puts Nora (
Jessica Parker Kennedy
) in charge.
Cisco has the night off, so he takes Kamilla on a date.
Nowhere exciting, just a coffee-shop with snobby entitled waitresses and customers.
Rubber Johnny tries to help out, but convinces Cisco that
based on Kamilla's social media posts she does not like to date scientists.
The reality is that the only thing Kamilla knows about Cisco is that he is a scientist,
and she has still agreed to date him.
Despite this, Cisco's low self esteem convinces him that Ralph is right.
Hence, Cisco starts to pretend that he is something other than a scientist.
Mrs Allen reaps the consequences of the Lois Lane thing last episode.
She has an office listing, so she is easy for Cicada (Chris Klein -
Rollerball (2001)
) to track her down.
This makes her the obvious bait to trap Team Flash.
Nora resets the timeline every time it goes wrong.
But this is not a vaiable long-term strategy.
She will need a proper plan sooner or later.
Sherloque gets suspicious.
The Flash [Season 5, Episode 15]
King Shark vs. Gorilla Grodd
Shown 05 Mar 19
The team have finally perfected a cure for metahuman powers.
They need a test subject.
However, they consider it immoral to weaponise the cure
or to test it on someone without informed consent.
Just like in
X-Men 3: The Last Stand
they think it is better to use lethal weapons than a weaponised cure.
Strangely, Cisco would rather be murdered than be saved by the cure.
King Shark, a meta-monster from Earth 2, is still in the custody of ARGUS.
They have hired a biologist
who interface with him via a telepathic crown.
She is the widow of the Earth 1 version of the man who became King Shark.
Naturally, romance is around the corner.
Mrs Allen does not want to work in her office
because she is concerned Cicada (Chris Klein -
Rollerball (2001)
) will come back again.
She tries working at her father's house, since Joe is back in town again.
Her next move is to the coffee shop filled with snobs.
A telepath hijacks King Shark via his telepathic crown.
This teep is none other than the other giant beast ... Gorilla Grodd!
The only one immune to his powers is King Shark.
Will KS revert to his shark form permanently,
thus abandoning his chance at consumating true love,
in order to save the city?
The Flash [Season 5, Episode 16]
Failure is an Orphan
Shown 12 Mar 19
Now the cure seems to work, Barry wants to use it on Cicada (Chris Klein -
Rollerball (2001)
). Instead of weaponising the cure,
the plan is to ask the serial-killer for his consent
to have his super-villain powers removed.
Eobard Thawne has already provided Nora
and the audience with exposition about the new timeline.
Now it turns out that there is a female version of Cicada ...
let's call her Chick-ada (
Sarah Carter
).
The Flash [Season 5, Episode 17]
Time Bomb
Shown 19 Mar 19
Eobard Thawne realises the new timeline is beyond his control.
Rather than offer to help if Nora sets him free,
he just tells her to confess everything to her daddy
in the hope that Daddy will sort it out for them.
Cicada (Chris Klein -
Rollerball (2001)
) has been abducted by his female version, Chick-ada (
Sarah Carter
). She has come back to kill all meta-humans,
starting with the rat bastard who killed her parents.
The Police did a poor job of investigating the deaths.
Chick-ada thinks they just out-sourced it to The Flash.
Detective Joe blames the former Mayor,
who had a policy of covering up Meta attacks to avoid a panic.
However, Team Flash soon discovers the killer's identity.
The episode's theme is about secrets and lies.
The bomber did not want to tell her own family the truth about her Meta-human status.
Nora struggles to tell her parents that she got help from his arch-enemy,
although Sherloque has his suspicions about her.
Cisco's subplot is about him wanting to keep his hobby secret from his girlfriend.
Ironically, Rubber Johnny -
the one who originally persuaded Cisco to lie about who he was in order to impress her
- is the one who now advises Cisco that honesty in a relationship is the best policy.
The Flash [Season 5, Episode 18]
Godspeed
Shown 16th April 2019
The so-called good guys breach Nora's privacy by reading her private journal.
This leads on to an extended flashback of her life as a CSI - 25 years in the future!
There was a string of mysterious robberies,
and it seems that a speedster is responsible.
Nobody wants to believe this,
since apparently there have been no super-villains or meta-humans in decades.
Star Labs has been turned into a museum.
Eobard Thawne has somehow spent the previous fifteen years in solitary confinement,
guarded by a sadistic thug who electrocutes him for fun.
Nora almost feels sorry for him, but does nothing to stop the torture.
And there is a clock slowly counting down towards zero.
The Flash [Season 5, Episode 19]
Snow Pack
Shown 23rd April 2019
Barry has been a judgemental prick towards Nora,
and once again made a massive decision without consulting his wife.
Nora did the same thing Barry would have done under those circumstances.
Sherloque gets the blame for not telling the others of his suspicions earlier.
Nora goes back to Thawne for more advice.
He teaches her about the Reverse Speedforce, which is fueled by rage.
His agenda is unclear, but he seems to be using reverse (flash) psychology on her.
Every time he gives her seemingly sensible advice,
she does exactly the opposite.
And even though the countdown is at ten, he still does not ask to be rescued.
Barry's wife takes it upon herself to time-travel into the future to see Nora.
Rubber Johnny tags along to help out.
Icicle (Kyle Secor -
), supervillain father of Killer Frost, is back.
Caitlin must work with her estranged mother to escape him.
His plan is to give his ex-wife cryo-powers of her own,
so he has his own ice-family.
The theme of this episode seems to be nepotism.
The apparent group of diversity hires - Nora, Caitlin and Gracie -
all got super-powers from the caucasian father-figure in their lives.
Meta-humans are basically an aristocracy.
The Flash [Season 5, Episode 20]
Gone Rogue
Shown 30th April 2019
Nora time-travels back, and has a secret plan.
She hires a group of super-villains - Bug-Eyed Bandit (
Emily Kinney
), weather Witch and Ragdoll.
The target is McCulloch Industries, a hi-tech weapons manufacturer.
Can she really be okay with the idea of the super-villains
selling stolen weaponised tech on the black market?
Weather Witch seemed to be redeeming herself in her previous appearance,
The Flash [Season 5, Episode 10] The Flash & The Furious.
Now she and Nora start to bond over their mutual sense of abandonment by their fathers.
It would be terrible if this was just a setup for a corny double-cross.
Rubber Johnny gets The Book of Ralph back from Cisco,
who somehow actually seems happy with its results.
Ralph then goes off to help Caitlin get over her grief.
Also, they must follow their newest lead on Chick-ada (
Sarah Carter
).
The Flash [Season 5, Episode 21]
The Girl With The Red Lightning
Shown 7th May 2019
Chick-ada (
Sarah Carter
) has weaponised a lethal version of the meta-human cure.
This version targets meta-humans, but kills instead of cures them.
She is driven on by visions of her uncle.
Nora still has visions of what Chick-ada is doing.
Ever since she was trapped in Gracie's mind, this has been an issue.
The good news is that the negative emotions that powered her Reverse Speed Force
is obviously what she was channelling from Gracie.
Detective Joe and his wife the District Attorney
goe to the Police Captain for help.
They want to use the police station as a safe haven for meta-humans.
It might seem a bad idea to put all the potential victims in one spot,
but Chick-ada's super-weapon will kill every meta for thousands of miles.
There are so many undiagnosed metas in the city,
civilians who are neither hero nor villain,
that the station cannot accommodate them all.
While Joe is not allowed to weaponise the cure,
he is more than happy to use it on voluntary patients.
Nora uses a mind-enhancer machine to boost her visions.
How else can they work out where Chick-ada will attack next?
Well, they could start with the police station
where it is already established that all her victims are.
The Flash [Season 5, Episode 21]
Legacy
Shown 14th May 2019
Rubber Johnny works out what Thawne's plan is - but too late, unfortunately.
Ralph gets zapped and messed up so he cannot tell the others what he knows.
Chick-ada (
Sarah Carter
) has a new plan - to time-travel back further,
to prevent the particle accellerator from creating meta-humans.
Nora is angry at Thawne because she thinks his plan was self-serving.
This is in spite of her own selfishness,
exploiting his desperate situation for her own benefit.
In truth, the man simply does not want to be murdered by Big Government.
He does not want to conquer the world or kill everyone,
his agenda is to avoid a cruel and unusual punishment.
Team Flash weaponise a teleportation device to create a less-lethal grenade,
and teleport their victim into a forcefield-enclosed area.
This is more what you would expect from the
Star Trek: TNG
level of technology.
The final showdown is between Barry and Thawne.
Will this be an honourable duel, one on one?
Or will Barry bring Nora - and the rest of Team Flash?
And Thawne has been rotting in a cell for over a decade,
so he should be physically weaker than usual.
Nora has a decision of her own.
Can she live with a dark side to her personality?
It works well enough for Caitlin, having Killer Frost as her alter-ego.
Similarly, Cisco has to decide if he wants to be a super-hero -
or just a normal everyday super-smart human.
After all, in the alternate future where Killer Frost destroyed his hands
(and thus removed his super-powers) he was pretty much dead inside.
The Flash [Season 6, Episode 1]
Into the Void
Shown 08 Oct 19
Barry's wife Iris visits a scrapyard
to retrieve her last memento of Nora.
She is attacked by what Cisco describes as a Fracking Black Hole
... yes, he references
Battlestar Galactica (2003)
despite having met a character played by
Katee Sackhoff
. Anyway, Team Flash have to save the city.
Caitlin Snow (
Danielle Panabaker
) attends the funeral of her mentor.
The dead woman's son, Ramsey Rosso (Sendhil Ramamurthy -
Heroes
), is an old friend of Cait's.
He is also a mad scientist,
who injects himself with a serum that turns him into a monster.
If this sounds familiar,
it is because the same actor had the same storyline in TWO other shows.
Check out
Beauty and the Beast (2012)
.
The Flash [Season 6, Episode 2]
A Flash of the Lightning
Shown 15 Oct 19
Cisco gives Killer Frost (
Danielle Panabaker
) some help disguising herself as Caitlin Snow.
She joins Cisco and Ralph at an art gallery,
but her blunt and villainous attitude offends the artists.
DA Camille (
Danielle Nicolet
) is assigned to prosecute a career criminal
who allegedly manslaughtered a victim during a robbery gone wrong.
Unfortunately Camille's superpower, telepathy,
means that the suspect's guilty plea does not hold water.
Camille gets the Judge to bail out the suspect,
but the suspect makes things difficult for herself.
Barry travels to an alternate universe to meet Jay,
a different version of The Flash.
He wants to see if the Crisis warning is true, and that he will die soon.
The Flash [Season 6, Episode 3]
Dead Man Running
Shown 22 Oct 19
Someone murders a gang of black market arms dealers,
and steals the dark matter from their super-weapons.
CSI Barry invites Killer Frost (
Danielle Panabaker
) to the crime scene as a consultant,
and she makes a leap of logic.
Caitlin's friend Ramsey Rosso (Sendhil Ramamurthy -
Heroes
) gets accused of the crime,
which wastes a potential whodunnit storyline.
DA Camille (
Danielle Nicolet
) is now a defence attorney.
Her first client is Ralph's mother,
a veteran con-woman who has a lot to hide.
Iris and Cisco investigate the arrival of a new Harrison Wells.
The new intern gets nosy, and wants to know all the facts.
Not to satisfy her own curiosity,
but to splurge the facts in front of an audience
and then take no responsibility for the consequences.
The Flash [Season 6, Episode 4]
There Will Be Blood
Shown 29 Oct 19
Barry and Cisco reluctantly team up with Nash Wells.
They break into McCullough Technologies
in an effort to steal a secret serum
recovered from the alien invaders a few years ago.
Cisco willingly gave up his teleportation superpower.
Despite the trip that Barry once made to a possible future,
when Cisco lost his hands and thus access to his powers,
he has not become mentally unstable.
Also, that superpower is no longer needed
because Barry can just carry Killer Frost
and run to wherever he needs to go.
Other superpowers are also variable in nature.
The Flash might be faster than a speeding bullet,
but he is not quick enough to save a hostage getting his throat slashed.
Caitlin's friend Ramsey Rosso (Sendhil Ramamurthy -
Heroes
) goes off the rails.
He becomes a super-vampire with an army of zombies.
This is all very grim, more horror than regular sci-fi,
but apparently this is the halloween episode.
The Flash [Season 6, Episode 5]
Kiss Kiss Breach Breach
Shown 05 Nov 19
This starts in media res, with Cisco getting arrested.
Then we go back to twelve hours earlier,
to the real start of the story.
Camille (
Danielle Nicolet
) offers to help the Black Hole guy ask a coffee-shop girl out on a date.
After all, with the super-power of empathy
she can read the coffee girl's mood.
What could possibly go wrong?
The Flash [Season 6, Episode 6]
License to Elongate
Shown 19 Nov 19
Barry accompanies Ralph on a mission.
They dress in tuxedos and gatecrash a party
run by a creepy millionaire (Carlo Rota -
Home Is Where The Hell Is
). It all turns into a James Bond pastiche.
Thanks to the villain's meta-powers dampener,
they must save the day without their superpowers.
Nash Wells tries to convince the Intern to help him break into the Monitor's vault.
She is reluctant, on the grounds that she does not want to hurt anyone.
After all, she does not want to end up like her cousin,
the supervillain codenamed Ultraviolet.
The Flash [Season 6, Episode 7]
The Last Temptation of Barry Allen, Pt. 1
Shown 26 Nov 19
Ramsey Rosso (Sendhil Ramamurthy -
Heroes
) attacks Ralph.
Their superpowers allow them to alter their own bodies at a molecular level,
so they can fight as equals in a way we have not seen
except when two speedsters face off against each other.
Ralph gets infected by Ramsey's bio-attack.
Frost (
Danielle Panabaker
) teleports in, even though Cisco no longer has his powers.
She brings Caitlin back, so she can find a cure.
Barry lets them transfuse some of his blood into Ralph.
Unfortunately the side-effect seems to be
that Barry halucinates about Ramsey.
The Flash [Season 6, Episode 8]
The Last Temptation of Barry Allen, Pt. 2
Shown 03 Dec 19
The Flash [Season 6, Episode 10]
Marathon
Shown 04 Feb 20
The Flash [Season 6, Episode 11]
Love Is a Battlefield
Shown 11 Feb 20
The Flash [Season 6, Episode 12]
A Girl Named Sue
Shown 18 Feb 20
The Flash [Season 6, Episode 13]
Grodd Friended Me
Shown 25 Feb 20
The Flash [Season 6, Episode 14]
Death of the Speed Force
Shown 10 Mar 20
The Flash [Season 6, Episode 15]
The Exorcism of Nash Wells
Shown 17 Mar 20
The Flash [Season 6, Episode 16]
So Long and Goodnight
Shown 21 Apr 20
The Flash [Season 6, Episode 17]
Liberation
Shown 28 Apr 20
The Flash [Season 6, Episode 18]
Pay the Piper
Shown 05 May 20
The Flash [Season 6, Episode 19]
Success Is Assured
Shown 12 May 20
