Hi folks! Welcome back to our weekly recap of The Flash. With this episode, named “What’s Past is Prologue” we celebrate 100 episodes of your favorite speedster! A lot of things happened this time and they did not lose time, so let’s dive right in.
[By the way, if you are reading this, I assume you already have seen this episode, so I don’t regularly worry to warn you about possible spoilers, but this one has very important PLOT TWISTS for the future of the season, so: BEWARE, today it may be especially spoilery.]1. Team Flash finally meets Cicada
This episode starts with the team talking about Orlin and Sherloque and Ralph spying on him. They discuss what can they do to stop him, Sherloque tells them that it’s going to be hard to defeat Cicada while he still has his dagger.
Ralph proposes a device (name TDB) to get rid of the villain’s weapon, then Nora proposes going back in time and make said weapon with stuff recovered from various moments of Flash’s life. Barry accepts the proposal and prepares to go to three places, and Nora comes along, despite Barry’s hesitation, after all, she proposed that idea all by herself, am I right?
2. The quest for a power-dampening-dagger Power Dampener: Savitar’s Suit
First, they come back to season three, to take a piece of Savitar’s destroyed suit, here, Barry tries to escape from a Time Wraith while Nora takes the shred, there, she sees the Scarred Barry and Iris killing him. At first, I thought, “oh, this is going to hurt their relationship once again”, but not only that happened…
3. The Speed Force transmitter
Then, they get to the time when Hunter Zolomon takes Barry’s powers in season two. Looking for the transmitter that the villain used to inject himself with Flash’s power, Barry encounters Harry Wells, and gives him the idea to find for Jesse Quick using her frequency.
When they are about to go, they encounter Zoom, and while fleeing trough time, the Time Wraith takes him, but Barry and Nora end up in another time…
4. Emergency stop: The first Wells
They ended up that time on season two where Barry comes back to season one to ask Thawne to help him get faster, time travel is so easy!
Anyways, the transmitter is broken, so they have to ask the first Wells/Reverse Flash for help repairing it. Barry tries not to reveal much to him, but Nora just can’t stop revealing sensitive information to him… come on girl! Why would you trust Zoom?
The bad guy is fascinated with Nora and tells her that her father hates him. Before leaving this time, Thawne says goodbye to her with a hand gesture, I’m sure he was only being nice, it’s not like he will plot something evil, am I right?
5. The Particle Accelerator Explosion
Finally, they get to the day of the Particle Accelerator. In the Time Vault, Nora seems mesmerized by Zoom’s suit, and asks his father why he hates him so much, he then tells her that he killed her mother, and confesses that this is the reason he didn’t wanted her to travel time with him, Nora might discover conflicting parts of Barry’s past.
6. Coming Soon: Cicada vs. Killer Snow
After coming back from the past, Team Flash tries to fight Cicada, that’s right, they go after this season villain this early in the season. Barry tries to tell him that not all metas are bad, but he is willing to kill himself in order to get rid of every person that puts her niece’s life in danger.
Well, the plan fails and they lose their abilities, everyone except Caitlin, because Killer Frost wasn’t created with dark matter, so she’s immune to Cicada’s dagger, which will come in handy when they finally defeat him.
7. Wells
Remember when we talked about Sherloque being suspicious of Nora? Well, after some episodes without this plot point, we got hit in the face with the fact that he is right to be suspicious, not only someone encouraged her to travel back in time, she also seems to keep information given by certain someone in a journal, with the kind of writings Barry used to do when he came out of the Speed Force back in season four.
Continued belowWell, this episode made a very obvious tease that, somehow, it may be Eobard Thawne who helps Nora, and I thought “hey this is going to be an interesting plot to follow next episodes until the eventual reveal”. Well, that reveal was next scene.
8. The plot twist
In the first cliffhanger epilogue, Nora goes back to the future(™) and confronts the man that has been helping her: Eobard Thawne! This seriously turned the season’s direction 180 degrees.
Last week, I praised this season’s villains for being bad guys with personal stories, instead of grandiose motivations like The Tinkerer’s case, but then, the writing team came in and changed all of it, with an amazing reveal and the comeback of Flash’s biggest foe: the first one.
9. Tom Cavanagh
I have to praise Tom this time, he directed the episode and did it very fine, but what deserves praise is his acting. When Sherloque was introduced, I was sure that he was not going to last much, then, in this episode, we got to see different iterations of Harrison Wells and I was very tense watching him being first calm and then explosive, but always intimidating. I think that directing this episode, gave him the freedom to fully embrace the character and make every reaction exactly like he feels the role must be portrayed.
The scene of the Particle Accelerator deserves special attention, Wells is talking with Cisco, he puts his hand in the air to shake Cisco’s hand, but the gesture is just like when Cisco first vibes that Wells will try to stop his heart. That scene was amazing! (Also, can we call it retro-foreshadowing?)
So, it seems that Cavanaugh is going to have double duties again, playing both Sherloque and the first Harrison, and I’m really intrigued by what’s next.
10. The Flash’s future
The second cliffhanger epilogue of this episode introduced 90’s Flash and the Monitor, teasing next week’s crossover, “Elseworlds” and we all are excited to share our thoughts with you.
Then, Team Flash is going to deal with Cicada, who seems relegated as the season villain, and after him I’m pretty sure Zoom is going to make his comeback.
And that’s it for this episode, it turned out to be the best of the season so far, what did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us this Sunday for our take on the beginning of this year’s Arrowverse crossover, “Elseworlds”, with episode 509.
