Hi folks! Welcome back to our weekly recap of The Flash. This week’s episode is named “Dead Man Running” and finally, we got to know this season’s Wells! Meanwhile, Barry is having troubles with the idea of dying. Let’s dive right in!
1. Ralphie’s Mother
We met Ralph’s mother, she’s at CCPD accused of robbing a Pawn shop, and the crime is believable, given her history with police, but Cecile believes in her innocence and they go off hunting for the truth.
They go to an underground casino, but the owner refuses to give them the tapes of the night that would prove her innocence, (at least of the robbery, ´cuz she was still in an illegal gambling place), so, Ralph steals the videos from the owner’s computer, only to discover that his mother’s ex is alive, every ex of his mother is alive.
They have a fight, as he believed for a long time that every ex of his mother died, and she has been lying to him all his life. Turns out that, after Ralph’s disappointment because his father left them, she didn’t want for Ralph to have his heart broken every time she broke up with a guy, she was protecting him and he will need to live with that truth, which is always better than the truth.
2. ‘Nash’ Wells
Central City Citizen’s new intern, Allegra has a scoop: Harrison Wells is alive!
Well, everybody knows that, in fact, Team Flash has been dealing with a multiverse of Wellses for six years. So, Iris takes Allegra’s lead and recruits Cisco for a mission to meet the newest Wells.
It seems that this season’s Wells is going to be “Nash,” an Indiana Jones ripoff/trope on the hunt for Eternium, some rock useful to debunk mythologies, but this Wells is not so friendly, I mean, he’s not “secretly plotting against them for a whole season”-unfriendly, but he’s not there to make friends either, so he produces a smoke bomb and flees.
So, first impressions about this version of Wells? I liked it, it’s going to be fun to see how their inevitable friendship blossoms and I’m here for Indiana Jones-related jokes.
3. Journalistic integrity
This scene was brief, but I liked the aftermath of Nash Wells disappearing, Allegra saw everything from the outside and she’s angry that Iris is hiding the secret of Wells being alive, to which I thought, wow, I didn’t think about the fact that the rest of the world has no idea of the truth about anything! To them Wells died in the particle accelerator explosion, so, looking back on past seasons, seeing every single Wells out on the open and screamed “how could they be so reckless with that?!”
The other meaningful thing, is that Allegra is kind of right, I mean, it would be hard to explain “hey folks, so, there’s a Multiverse”, but other than that, Iris as the owner of her own newspaper, has the moral integrity to tell the truth, “not control it,” says Allegra. And although it was a set up scene for a storyline in future episodes, it made me think about journalistic integrity. (Rant below, in the bonus thought)
4. Mitch Romero
This week we continue the story of Ramsey Rosso and the murder of a criminal named Mitch Romero, well, this dark matter zombie has been looking for dark matter in all the city, he killed his employees, practically dismantling an illegal gun operation, and then he kills people in a science facility.
Killer Frost, who is helping Barry, immediately thinks of Ramsey and his desperation for dark matter, so, they pay him a visit and he decides to help Barry despite Killer Frost’s aggressiveness. Turns out he’s only aiming to steal dark matter from Star Labs and he and Barry have a fight.
Barry behaves like a dead man walking, certain of the inescapable death he’s getting close to, just like Rosso’s mother, and that is driving him crazy! He is also a dead man walking, how could Barry be so resigned about his fate? –Well, he doesn’t know Barry already looked at a billion futures, pretty depressing stuff– He says “it takes courage to fight death”, to which Barry responds:
Continued below5. “It takes more to accept it”
And that’s the main theme of this episode, accepting your own mortality.
Ramsey is obsessed with surviving, and that is slowly turning him into a monster that controls other blood monsters. Killer Frost has anger issues, she has been out only for a couple of weeks now after 30 years, and now they tell her that she only has seven weeks to live? How is that fair?
Finally, Barry decides to train his team for a future without the Flash, in this episode he helps Killer Frost, but the most important thing is for him to accept his fate, and to know how to act when the Crisis comes. Dying is not easy for anybody, if our relatives suffer our loss, imagine how hard it would be to know that your death is certain and close, how would I react to that?
The answer Barry tells Rosso is that he gets his strength from his loved ones, they are the only group of people that can keep us strong during our time, and that’s the lesson for this week, keep your family and loved ones close, for when you need them, they will be with you. That and make parties in your workplace, apperently that works too.
BONUS: A show is always great when it reflects problems of the real world, so let’s get political, how fun! Speaking about journalistic integrity, reports came out that Donald Trump suggested on March to make a moat with alligators and to shoot migrants! And the news was reported by the NYT until fucking October in order to publish a book! (“Border Wars”). Then, 43, yes, forty three women! Made allegations of sexual misconduct from the president, and what do the reporters do? They keep the news on hold to publish a book! (“All the President’s Women”). I mean, damn! How could they be so uninterested in telling the truth and instead they keep ahold of the information to make a bombastic splash with a book! Where’s their journalistic integrity?
And that’s it for this episode. Wow, what a start for this season, it has not been that bombastic, but it’s filled with emotional and personal storylines, I’m loving it. What did you think of this episode? Leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 604, “There Will be Blood”.
