Well that was a bit different. Has the comics Flash gone up against a giant monster* before? That seems to be like it’s more up Green Lantern’s alley. Anyway it turned out to be not an actual metahuman, so by rights it should be Barry’s case. Too bad he and Julian seem to bonding now.
Lots of character development in this one, not the least of which we get to explore some of Caitlin’s background. I’m glad we’re going to see more of Killer Frost, but the writers really need to stop with all of the keeping of secrets. If Caitlin would only confide with Cisco and Barry, between the three of them they could probably solve her problem. Not HR though, he’s just a blowhard.
AKA “kaiju”. Apparently, Pacific Rim doesn’t exist on Earth-1.
How about a giant mosquito (15" wingspan?). Either Mirror Master or Captain Cold (because y’know how you get mirages at high temps? Same with low.) made illusions of stuff like that.
I was betting that HR* was really Abra Kadabra and the monster was his (and it might still be, given that I don’t see how a 15 year old kid could get his hand on the necessary tech.), especially the way he was waving the drumstick/wand around.
*I hate HR. He’s a douche. Also way too over-the-top.
HR is over the top, but Julian out-douches him, or at least he has up until this point. Poor Tom Felton…always the douche.* Why didn’t anyone point out how similar HR Wells and HG Wells are? Or did they and I missed it? Does HG Wells not exist in the Flashpoint universe?
As for secrets, if it wasn’t for characters stupidly keeping secrets from one another, there would be almost no TV shows. It is a crutch writers have relied upon since the dawn of TV. That trope really needs to be turned on its head.
*No need to point out any roles where he wasn’t a douche. I only know him from 3 roles, and he was the douche in all of them.
I was glad the new Wells didn’t turn out evil but fishing the Multi verse for a Wells to help you fix your problems was a dumb idea and asking for trouble.
They didn’t even vet him, or at least not with any diligence - they just accepted him casually into their circle. What if he’s evil and there’s a Flash on his world? Would he now know that “his” Flash is (probably) “his” Barry Allen?
Not really likely, from what we’ve seen. We’ve only got a sample size of 3 Earths, but neither of the other ones was the Flash Barry. (Outside of Flashpoint, he’s pretty consistent for the Flash on Earth-1 - 3/4 timelines that we know of (pre-Thawn, pre-Flashpoint, post-Flashpoint) have him as Flash. But that tells us, mostly, that a given Earth seems to work hard to preserve the major notes of its history.)
Unfortunately for the Barry of the world of any evil Wells who tries this, unless Evil-Wells has traveled the multiverse extensively to notice the significantly different Flashes of alternate worlds, he’s likely to THINK Flash is Barry…which will likely get Barry killed, and piss off the Flash.
Back when Mirror Master was basically ‘Lex Luthor, but with a thing about mirrors’, he shrunk Barry such that being accidentally trampled to death by towering humans was a real concern (and getting intentionally pulped by Mirror Master, likewise).
What? Look, a funhouse mirror makes people look bigger or smaller – so that’s already, like, halfway to actually making people bigger or smaller, right? And he could view, and teleport to, other places; because mirrors show other places, so, yeah. A mind-control device? He built one; it’s a mind-control mirror, so he could do that. (He also built a mirror that could remove the Flash’s speed; I don’t know if that was mind-control, or something else – but, see, it had the word ‘mirror’ in it, is my point.)
Strangely, goofy-Wells is probably the most realistic character we’ve seen. He doesn’t really appear to have a true Deep Dark Secret That Must Not Be Known, he’s basically exactly what he appears to be, and is most likely a lot smarter than he lets on. As much as Cisco is technically more intelligent, Wells does genuinely seem to pick up on things the ostensibly-more-brilliant members of Team Flash don’t. He also was able to exactly identify how each one of them liked their coffee with only a day or so to analyze the problem. Assuming this isn’t a super-elaborate deception for some even-more-terrible trick, he could be a valuable team member. I could see him growing as well as devleoping new skills as the season goes. Additionally, it seems like they kept Wells around because he’s a good actor with interesting character potential, but in-show, I wonder if the reason is supposed to be that Zoom taking out Earth-Prime’s Wells damaged the timeline, so that other Wells-people showing up is not an accident - that its to fill the hole in the universe or something.
I really want to see the genius Sheriff Wells again, though:
SHERIFF WELLS: "Weeeeeeeeeeelllllllll, yer prooooobleeeem heeeeeeeere is that them thar mettyhimmin can phaz through yer avreg evrdaaaaay matta. Gon need summin’ wit a loooot moooaaar kick to it to stop hiiiiiiiim.
BARRY: “?”
CISCO: “He said we need a dense material like lead to prevent the metahuman from walking through everything.”
Also, I wonder how many audience members guessed what was going on with the titular Monster before the reveal. I suspected even on the first appearance, just because of what happened.
Not only did it make noise (roaring and stomping and shit), it set off car alarms as it was stomping about. And was detectable non-visually from a satellite. Must be a, uh, hard-light hologram.
ETA: And how did a falling light post smash in the side of a bus? Lotta wtf in this episode.
The more I think about it, the more I like the Hipster-Douche-Wells is Abra Kadabra theory. The kid built his hologram. Hipster-Douche-Wells used 64th century magitech to add sound/solidity to the thing and was controlling it to some degree with a wand disguised as a drumstick.
See? It all fits together! (I hate Hipster-Douche-Wells and Kadabra when done right is one of my favorite Flash baddies, so my theory is perfect since it solves both problems)
But…but…that’s going to be the third person they’ll have trusted to come into the inner circle only to be subsequently discovered to be a supervillain. You’d think Team Flash would have learned their lesson by now.
I like him too. The actor seems to really enjoy playing different personas. Still not convinced he isn’t up to no good, but fine with it if he isn’t.
My first thought was hologram too.
They sure crammed a lot of character stuff into one ep, with Caitlin and her mom, and Julian getting all human as stuff.
I’m really enjoying some of the super speed effects. Kudos to the FX team.
I was a little confused about Snark. Did he take off with the Legends before or after Flashpoint? Both Flash and Arrow have mentioned it, but I thought this latest time line was a bit different. I’m kind of surprised the Legends haven’t shown up to fix Barry’s time screw ups.
I think what they’re going for now is to put into play a different version of Wells for each season, Earth-2 Wells notwithstanding.
Ground the “honest and good” Wells in Earth-2, with occasional visits, but put the “something’s not quite right but fun” Wells in the foreground each season, only to die or go back to their Earth and somehow be replaced by another alternate version next season.
Also, for this episode, I was sure HR Wells was behind the entire Monster thing, when he said he hid a series of clues about the place. Especially when it was obvious he was just repackaging back whatever ideas Cisco and Barry had, with a vague nudge here and there. Like he had engineered a fake attack as an exercise in team-work and show he can be part of the team, while attempting to get Cisco to like him.
Anyway, I’m willing to go with this over the top version of Wells for a while. The running “coffee was wiped out by blight” gag made me chuckle a little.
I can’t remember exactly, but HR did mention it in this episode. Something about writing on a subject with a similar title to one of the works by HG Wells (I can’t remember which), but by HR Wells, while chuckling.
