I’m going to nitpick a lot. But my overall rating was my inner 10-year-old bouncing up and down on a chair saying “YAY!!!”. I really liked the episode. But…
Ok, the Harrison Wells guy did a great job keeping something like four different versions of one character distinct but still recognizably that character. That said, the interviews fell flat for me. And I really don’t like (or trust) hipster-douche Wells. He’s waaaaaaaay too old for the look. (Also, broadcasting a “Here we are, come kill us” signal all over the multiverse is not a smart idea)
I have no prob making the Top a woman, but dudes…she’s…y’know…The TOP. Keep the vertigo powers, but she needs to spin or the name doesn’t make sense.
Loved the reference to McCoullough and his mirror gun. Hopefully Scudder gets his hands on it because just teleporting through mirrors isn’t enough for the Mirror Master. For his next power, it’d be cool (especially given what Flash did) if he got his very first power back: he could capture people’s images in mirrors and make solid-light holograms of them (Flash #105, circa 1957).
I hated Jesse Quick’s costume last time and now that we’ve seen it in action, I hate it more.
And the follow-up question pretty much asks itself, right? Since the Harrison who’s just a diiiiiiiiiick is of course heading back to look after things on his world, the broadcast is apparently meant to find someone who (a) is the world’s smartest man on his world; and (b) will gladly commit to filling Harrison’s shoes hereabouts.
Uh – shouldn’t a guy like that be some kind of indispensable do-gooder on his world? He’s got that much braininess and that much altruism on tap, and he’s not busy doing anything right now? He’s off-the-charts smart, and ready and willing and able to save the world if you ask – but not, like, his world, because, what, no one asked?
Presumably some Harrisons are more successful than others, some have risen to positions of greater prominence. Maybe there were a bunch of responses we didn’t see saying “hey, solved your riddle, but I’m quite happy with my life here, so no thanks”.
Also unclear why everyone agrees that Barry’s earth is “Earth Prime”. Maybe that makes it special, so more tempting for someone to come help out there?
I’m perfectly happy to grant that some other ones maybe weren’t interested in leaving for Barry’s world. I’m asking a related-but-separate question: why the heck was this one enthusiastic about leaving for Barry’s world? What must his situation be like, on his world, that he’s got nothing better to do – despite being that smart and that willing to pitch in?
Again, it maybe wouldn’t have jumped out at me – except, well, the last time we saw somebody that smart and that willing to pitch in, he was the guy who then insisted on leaving, because of course he did, because, hey, (a) there’s a world that could sure use some help from its resident World’s Smartest Guy, and (b) the fact that he’s nice enough to pitch in on Barry’s world is the reason he’s now leaving Barry’s world to instead handle problems on his own world.
So, again, given someone who (a) gets recruited by that Harrison Wells, because he (b) is significantly similar to that Harrison Wells – well, shucks, that makes me ask, wait, if he’s likewise brainy and keen on fighting crime and saving lives, then why wouldn’t he likewise be keen on doing that in his own world?
(Oh, and speaking of significantly similar: anyone else think the Top looked like she could’ve been Jennifer Lawrence’s kid sister? No? Just me?)
I figure, you make first contact, you get to name names.
From the fact that they were able to just blast their message into the void and expect to hit a respectable number of Earths, that they were able to number the universes the way they did (instead of being 5-7, based on the order they were encountered), and Cisco’s comment while opening the portal about going through ‘19 universes’ to do it, they seem to be in a stacked cosmology, with their earth at the bottom (or top), or at least, as the origin point of the message they’re responding to, good enough for the sake of having a consistent point of reference.
This is odd logic. The reason Harry has a mess to go back to is that he screwed up. A Harrison Welles who didn’t blow up his STAR Labs is likely a Harrison Welles who doesn’t have a world full of metahumans to deal with. And it certainly doesn’t take a lot of altruism to get a bored genius to want to explore. Even if there is stuff going on on their Earth, a Welles who isn’t a villain like Thawn-Welles, or a huge ego like Harry is likely to have set up a network he doesn’t need to oversee personally, and, thus, like the ones from worlds where things didn’t go wrong, has the option of indulging his desire to explore. Given what we know of Harry, and the Earth-1 Welles before Thawn replaced him, it’s likely the main consistent factor of the responding Welleses is not having family that they didn’t want to leave.
I’m going back and forth on HR being evil or not…Harry objecting to him, and his being almost theatrically nice point to it.
On the other hand, they did the straight up villain Welles with Thawn-Welles in the first season, and the generally good Welles with ulterior motives that will cause problems for Team Flash in season 2… Keeping the pattern, that makes season 3 the time for an actual good Welles.
I’m really hoping that before this show is over we have a scene like this but with various Harrisons.
I hope we see more of Harry-2. He really grew on me over the last season.
Also, did anyone else notice that Barry finally beat the bad guy all on his own? I think my favorite joke was when everyone went off to do something and he just mumbled that he would stay there and figure out how to stop Mirror Master.
Hey, Fenris, thanks for starting the episode thread. My internet got knocked out last week, more than a week ago actually, and only got restored (more or less) today.
I thought this was rather a refreshing, Silver Age-style episode, with both Mirror Master and Top no less. And Jesse Quick. And Killer Frost. Though poor Wally is still stuck with having no powers, but he seems to have gotten over it. Loved the multiple Harrison Wellses. There was some great comedy writing. Generally they just present the various plot lines for the overarching season plot arc without much regard to how they fit in with episode being currently presented. This episode had tighter writing than usual; even Killer Frost played an essential role.
I like how they presented the Top’s power, Vertigo-style. As special effects go, it was low key (and probably cheap to produce) but super-effective.
Zoom said that this Earth, Earth-1, was some sort of nexus that allowed it to more easily access other places in the multiverse. This was why, to destroy the rest of the multiverse, he built the magnetron (or whatever the hell he called it) on Earth-1.
I see neither Barry nor Jesse has wigged into the whole “to defeat non-speedster villain, run up to them real fast and punch them in the head” concept, preferring instead to engage in some conversation beforehand and inviting said villain to attack, escape, take hostages, etc.
