I like this more low key and lighter season. It is good for the show. Let Arrow be the dour show.
Yes, ***Flash ***needs to be fun, not dark, gloomy and angsty.
Ralph Dibny, telling the Flash what all of us were thinking, “You could have saved him and caught her!” I admit it, the character is growing on me. He’s a great comic foil for the often too-sincere Barry Allen.
The Council of Wells was great. But I’m disappointed that Harry the Grey was excluded. This is a world where Damien Dahrk was/is/will be a threat, so magic is a real part of it. A wizard could give some good advice.
Are we sure that wasn’t just a guy who’s seen every Lord Of The Rings movie a bunch of times, loves playing dress-up, and maybe knows a little sleight-of-hand?
By that measure, Wells 2.0 could just be doing Mad Max cosplay.
I was really hoping that Cisco would react to Gandalf Harry, only for him to reveal that he was just at Comic-Con and is actually a normal guy.
I’m a little disappointed in this episode because so far this season they’ve had semi-credible reasons for Barry being unable to beat the villain using super-speed (hacked suit, bad luck field, drunk). We’ve gone from Barry dodging bullets to being knocked out by a slow moving dinosaur tail and being outrun by a slow job.
“You’re a wizard, Harry.” 
I would also like to see Harry the Grey again. I’d enjoy seeing Damien Dahrk’s reaction to him.
Yeah. For heaven’s sake, he keeps walking into the room and telling the villain “Give yourself up.” Then the villain spends a couple of seconds animating golems or whatever while the world’s fastest person does … well, nothing much. What’s wrong with zapping into the room, putting on the magic no-whammy handcuffs, and then saying “Gotcha”? Someone ought to tell Barry about rolling for initiative.
I also spent most of the episode thinking that the three part bison necklace was some kind of magic artifact that would make psychotic Sioux girl unstoppable, but no. It was apparently just some random ceremonial trinket that was apparently worth killing a bunch of people for.
Yep, I assumed it would tie into the “totem” storyline on Legends of Tomorrow.
I don’t think the Flash writers have that kind of sophistication. The Legends writers do, but they presumably have already planned out which character has which totem.
It’s fascinating how different writing teams handle multiple narrative threads in these shows. Yesterday’s Supergirl just advanced the various threads without regard for how well they fit together, resulting in a disjointed episode. This episode of The Flash was all about the Thinker, his secret origin, Barry confirming his identity, and Barry becoming aware that the evil villain was far, far ahead of him. There was passing mention of the upcoming wedding, Joe and Cecile’s baby, as well as the return of Wally (where he apparently saved the world from Starro*), but the focus was firmly on the Thinker. This episode was thus stronger and more coherent than Supergirl. It also cements the Thinker as a formidable adversary.
Next week, Barry and Iris are finally getting married. A big event that merits a multiverse-spanning crossover. I’ve created a separate thread for it: Crisis on Earth-X
- Starro the Conqueror. Do you think we’ll ever get a flashback episode where see Kid Flash battle a giant mind-controlling starfish from space?
I don’t get the Thinker’s motive.
He experimented on himself, it went badly, and now he wants to take down the Flash? Why? What’s in it for him?
ETA: The trailer for the crossover event looks awesome.
I’ve just realized that in the flashback showing the press conference before the particle accelerator was turned on, Harrison Wells there was actually Eobard Thawne. And he knew exactly who Clifford Devoe was.
I’m not sure he has a choice.
He states, in this episode, that his goal is saving humanity. As far as I can tell, that’s what he was after before Barry even became the Flash – and why he came up with the idea for the Thinking Cap, and got his wife to build that prototype, before Barry even became the Flash. So he’s already at work on whatever that plan is, when Joe and Barry show up at his place to start asking him some questions.
He reassures them as best he can – enough to sucker Joe, and enough to sucker the rest of Team Flash when they hear about it second-hand – and if it had been enough to sucker Barry, then maybe he’s done with Barry and gets back to his pre-existing plan. But then Barry shows up to ask some pointed questions at the guy’s job; and so DeVoe puts in a word to Barry’s boss, who is also suckered and tells Barry to leave the guy alone. And if that had been enough to stop Barry, then maybe DeVoe gets back to his original plan; but then Barry breaks into his house looking for evidence, and so DeVoe gets Barry suspended for weeks with a warning and a restraining order.
And if that had been enough to stop Barry, then maybe DeVoe goes back to Plan A; but Barry promptly violates the restraining order to confront DeVoe yet again. So what the heck else can DeVoe do, after that, other than try to take him down?
Barry - you have a mask, that you wear almost every day, while doing all sorts of things: why (oh, why) weren’t you wearing it when breaking into someone’s house?
or atleast do that whole blurring thing.
Yep, writing that poor always pisses me off and pulls me out of the narrative. I hate when they make Barry carry the idiot ball.
Was it just me/my copy of last night’s Flash, or did anyone else notice during Eobard Thawne’s* press conference that the screen flashes yellow for just a split second? It’s exactly in the gap between the two sentences: “advancements period. < YELLOW > This is the future.”
It’s between 15:29 and 15:30 when I watch it but I can’t slow down the picture enough to see what it is.
Is it just me? Or is it…a clue?!
*And I miss Thawne/Wells
Could be a clue. Yellow is Thawne’s color for speeding.
It occurs to me that Barry’s behavior this episode looks particularly bad when you consider the situation with Dibny. Barry (correctly) disapproved of Ralph’s determination to violate the law to convict someone he “knew” was guilty, but this week, Barry does whatever he wants to find evidence against DeVoe - because he “knows” DeVoe is bad.
Didn’t DeVoe say something about feeling like the “luckiest man alive”–I wonder if that’s a reference to Lou Gehrig’s famous speech, since they both have ALS. (My husband says if DeVoe had said it with an echo, it would have been more recognizable.)
So he likes the name “the Thinker”–other than Ralph, who refused to be called “Plastic Man”–have any of the people Cisco has named rejected their names?
Thawne practically said “Squee!” when he realized it was the Thinker in the audience.