The Flash is back! Let’s skip the preamble and get to it.
1. Kid Flash suits up
If I recall, the first promo image released before this season was that of Wally suited up as Kid Flash. Aside from the “Flashpoint” episode, we have been waiting for this all season. The show, thankfully, skipped a lot of the arguing over whether Wally is ‘ready’ or not (although there was a bit of that), and let him show off his powers and get some adulation from the Central City population, even if Greg Grunberg is still cranky this isn’t a J.J. Abrams joint.
Wally as Kid Flash is going to be an interesting look into the show’s relationship with its comics source material. In so many ways, Barry is actually more like the comics Wally West than the comics Barry, so where does that leave Wally? What I hope happens is that they let Wally develop organically, instead of trying to fit into one of the Flash tropes and, so far, it seems as if that is exactly what they are doing. I’m looking forward to seeing how they differentiate the two Flashes – it will be nice to see that one of them is clearly superior at doing X and the other Y, so that when they team up they’re more than just two of the same skill set.
2. Plunder? Really?
Look, they can’t all be winners, but can we stop debuting villains who could be really interesting and relegating them to almost worthless stature? Sure, he was an important plot point because of the TV broadcast that Barry sees (more on that in a bit), but why did it have to be Plunder? Again, not to constantly compare the show with the comics, but Plunder in the comics is pulled from an alternate reality, accessed by the Mirror Master. That’s a super fun origin. What was this Plunder’s deal? We have no idea; he should’ve been called Corrugated, because he was cardboard.
3. Barry is finally talking to people!
For the past year or so, Barry has been acting like one of the characters from LOST, who always refused to share information with one another. Here, everyone (well, everyone save Joe) is alerted to the fact that Barry witnessed Iris’s death in the future, and he wants their help to stop it. Not only that, but we see Barry bring Iris into the Time Vault to look at the article. Barry is being a team player! And since that team now includes Julian, and that means that almost everyone is on the same page. This shouldn’t be a huge deal, but it is! It is a real change in how the show has organized itself in the last season or so.
Having Julian join the team is hopefully something more than a “oh shit, we just took away Julian’s whole purpose” move, but I like what he brings to the table. Of course, soon most of Central City will be on Team Flash, especially as they built a goddamned museum on top of their headquarters, so expect lost kids and grandmas looking for a clean bathroom to wander in and join the squad at any point now.
One note on the museum: I understand that it serves three purposes on the show: it brings in an income (a legitimately funny proposal for the TV show to worry about – the bills), it gives H.R. something to do (although that would apparently happen next week anyway), and it will one day become the Flash Museum, one of the best aspects of the comic that, rightly, isn’t part of the show yet. That said, it feels pretty forced right now, doesn’t it?
4. Vibing to the future
OK, let me geek out for a second. I love it when the show does this. This is like Barry running through the Speed Force and seeing 90’s Flash, Supergirl, and a Legion flight ring. This is also the sort of storytelling that helps the show so much. They have a number of plot points that they now have to focus on – Killer Frost’s return, a gorilla attack, the Music Meister (which we know is the next Supergirl crossover), etc – and this will paint the path towards the finale, give each episode a little more importance, and let the finale truly build over half a season. Bravo, Flash writers: you’ve just established the back half of the season to be far more interesting than the first.
Continued below5. H.R. is being stalked, you guys
It was only a matter of time before the show brought us someone who knew H.R. before he came over to this Earth, and it looks like that’s happening next week. There has always been more to HR than meets the eye, and that’s due, in part, to Tom Cavanaugh’s consistently impressive and surprising acting that he brings to the role. But the show has also been wise to make H.R. a character that slowly reveals more about himself/his world over time (like how reptiles are housewarming gifts, or how he wrote a time travel romance novel).
By adding in an antagonist, this will force the show’s hand in two ways: one, it will make the team either fully embrace or summarily reject H.R. when they find out more about him, and it will give his Earth (Earth 19, if I recall) more of a presence on the show, and will (hopefully) allow for a visit there sometime this season.
All told? I’m really happy The Flash is back again. I’m less thrilled having to review this and Legends of Tomorrow in the same night, but so goes the life of a comics journalist.
What did you think of the episode? Let me know in the comments!
