Hi folks! Welcome back to our weekly recap of The Flash. This is the third part of the “Armageddon” storyline, and the crisis is worse for Barry and Team Flash, let’s dive right in!
1. The Injustice Protocols
Barry has just had the worse day of his life, he lost his job, his base, destroyed his house, attacked his friends and the people of the city, and worse of all, Joe is dead; and with the blackouts, he can’t even trust himself! But there’s a solution, for better or worse.
Apparently the League made a protocol, where if any hero turns bad, another hero is in charge of depowering them, this is an emergency action only to be used on the worst-case scenario, and Barry believes that this is the time for him.
Black Lighting, his “sponsor” is reticent to immediately act and depower Barry, first of all, he doesn’t see this as helping the “greater good”, “killing” the Flash could mean a ton of lives not saved, plus, Barry seems to be hiding something.
Later in the episode, when Barry finally reveals that he is being hunted by Despero because he “saw” a future where he turns bad, Jefferson questions Despero’s “nobility” to save the world by killing the Flash, but Barry is convinced of his future crimes and fights with his fellow hero to “prove” him of the bad he will cause. Like, dude, you are not helping yourself!
2. The team divides itself
Meanwhile, Team Flash is convinced that they can save Barry, but they have different reasonings, while Cecile is trying to help him in his mental health crisis, Iris believes that there’s something or someone else behind all of this, maybe Barry is being framed, like many times before.
But Cecile is deeply hurt by what Barry said, and although she wants to help him, she is not willing to believe that he is innocent just as easily. This seems weird to me, because this has happened before and I don’t remember Barry being particularly hurtful, Cecile is taking very personally his denial to accept Joe’s death, but everyone copes differently and you can’t just blame the person for not processing a dead exactly like you did.
3. Cecile is a mess
So, the team is divided.
Cecile, Caitlin and Chester try to find a way to use Cecile’s empath powers to locate Barry using a “cerebro”, given that Despero is more powerful and has four brain lobes, they enlist the help of Rosa Dillon, a.k.a. Top. At first, Cecile suffers the intensity of their amplified power, but Top convinces her to stop thinking about her dead husband to make herself better.
When they finally find Barry, Despero arrives and takes the information from Top and almost kills her, but Cecile protects herself with thinking about Joe, which calms Caitlin, who feared the risk of Cecile disconnecting from her feelings.
4. Iris discovers dust
On the other part of the team, Iris and Allegra go to the train station where Joe died, he fell into the railway, but the video is badly cut, when they arrive, Iris briefly sees some kind of dust or particles, then they went to the security guard and saw the original recording, and Iris wants to end their search.
Fortunately, Allegra keeps digging, and finds dozens of “coincidences” that led to Joe’s death, like the hydraulics failing despite being inspected earlier in the week. When she gives the file to Iris, she sees the same particles and goes back to the train station.
Deon, the Still Force, arrives there and Iris asks him to remove his “treatment”, suddenly, they see all the particles decaying, someone tapped into the negative Still Force and changed the past. Barry is being framed indeed.
5. Life in 2031
When Barry decides against losing his powers thanks to Black Lighting, Despero appear to try to kill him, Iris also arrives and reveals him that he is being framed, and with the help of Deon, Barry goes to the future.
In the future, Thawne is shown sharing a message to a bunch of other heroes, thankful for having the love of Iris, when Barry arrives, everybody looks disgusted by his presence. Was Thawne faking being Barry? Did he travel back in time again to mess with the Flash’s reality? We’ll know in a week.
And that’s it for this time, this felt as a transition episode, with little advancement of the plot (at least until the end). To be honest I am a little tired of the big bad always being Thawne, I mean, I get it that he is the biggest bad of Barry Allen, but he is always behind our heroe’s worst crises, at least this time he really messed with Barry’s mind. What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 804, “Armageddon, part 4.”
