Hi folks! Welcome back to our weekly recap of The Flash. This week’s episode is named “Central City Strong” and it works as an opener to the next storyline; also, it was all about confronting your trauma, Let’s dive right in!
1. Love, again
Just like we saw last week, love will be an essential part of the show from now on, front and center. We started this episode with Barry preparing a romantic dinner for Iris, and they talk about all their little escapades that they have been enjoying in the past days.
Of course, there’s something behind that many romantic moments, because, as we talked about two weeks ago, Barry was at his emotional worst, he feels guilty of not doing enough to save Central City (more on that next), and also because he was tricked by Mirror-Iris. He didn’t notice that his wife was not the real Iris, and he is trying to fix that mistake with gifts and travels.
However, Iris was okay with that, Barry was deceived, he is not the perpetrator, instead he is, like Iris and many others, a victim of Mirror Mistress, and the fact that she is able to move from that will help both.
2. Central City Strong
Iris and Barry’s relationship is a-ok, but Iris is not okay with herself. Allegra was afraid to show iris her notes on the Mirrorverse article, because it was trash, and had to confront her boss, she is missing an integral part of the story: her own voice. Iris argues that “she is the reporter, not the story” and I say to her, haven’t you Heard of Hunter S. Thompson’s Gonzo Journalism? Woman, you are your own newspaper, you are the news.
All joking aside, Iris doesn’t want to write her own story because she is not capable of confronting what happened to her, she spent three months stuck in the Mirrorverse, and it is hard to confront your traumas. She went to a support group of survivors of Mirror Mistress to interview a couple, but she is unable to do so and lefts.
But she is just one person, every citizen is taking efforts to move on past the tragedy, there’s a movement around town called “Central City Strong” and together, they are rebuilding both their relationships and their town.
3. Kadabra is back
Another person mourning in the city is Abra Kadabra, the villain from season three is back and he is hellbent on destroying the city, he killed a person and is collecting little monoliths to create an anti-matter bomb.
Kadabra wants to destroy Flash’s city and his life, the problem is that the bomb is made of valorium metal making it impenetrable, that means only the villain is capable of turning it off, and it won´t be easy to convince him, because as he tells our hero, he lost “his light”, with that, Barry realizes what happened. He had a wife and a son, and the Crisis is still showing it’s effects trough the multiverse, because they were wiped out of existence.
4. Face your Trauma
So, Barry confronts him and apologizes for being a survivor of the Crisis, unlike his family, but he convinces him to stop the bomb because, even if Kadabra manages to bring his family back, what would they think about what he did to recover them?
That stops Kadabra, and he reveals to flash his real name, Phillippe, and it seems that they are going to become partners, or at least work together to try to bring back his family, and just before a handshake a hulking monster attacks them and kills Phillippe! What an incredibly sad moment for the show, a villain redeemed who dies trying to protect our hero.
With that redemption, Iris is inspired to confront her own trauma, and goes back to the Mirrorverse survivors support group to tell her story, allowing herself to be healed and eventually write something about what happened.
5. Social Distancing
This is the first episode filmed during the pandemic and I kept noticing it, there is nothing bad about it, I just thought it was interesting seeing all the actors keeping their distance between each other. It was particularly noticeable in the scenes of the support group, with few persons spread apart around the room, there were also fewer scenes with more than one character in camera at the same time.
Continued belowAlso, they deserve praise for shooting frequently in open spaces, I noticed the extras walking around in the back or wearing tactical ARGUS gear. I’m glad to see that right away they came up with a bunch of ingenious ways to make everything seem “regular.”
BONUS: That giant monster? It looked like a woman, so it’s easy to speculate that she is affected by the strength force released last episode when Flash got his powers back.
And that’s it for this episode, it was a nice restart of the show, I enjoyed the new relationship formed between Cisco and Chester and I’m intrigued with what happened in the cliffhanger scene, setting up interesting conundrums for the season. What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 705, “Fear Me”.
