Headscratchers / The Flash 2014 Season 4

New entries on the bottom. Spoilers, naturally.

Did Team Flash give up on the "Secret Identity" thing?

• Not that they've ever been very vigilant about it (especially Barry) but by the third and fourth seasons it seems like the characters blatantly talk about (and do) superhero stuff in public. Cisco/Vibe doesn't even bother wearing a mask and Caitlin has used her powers in public on various occasions, not to mention Barry's habit of taking his mask off any time there's a dramatic scene, no matter how public the place. In the Season 4 premiere they have a conversation about Barry being stuck in the Speed Force while sitting in a random bar where anyone could overhear it. And wouldn't people wonder why Barry disappeared for six months? Are their identities still supposed to be secret at this point?
  • Cisco is wearing his goggles when operating as Vibe, which covers at least as much of his face as the small domino masks worn by the Canaries. As for the public conversations, you have to assume the standard trope that unless you explicitly show someone listening to a conversation, no one else hears conversations in public places. Barry's disappearance was, as explicitly stated by Joe, explained by claiming he'd gone on sabbatical.

Removing all the amazing tech because of one meeting with a technopath?

• Okay, so because they happen to come across a technopath who could control Barry's suit we now have to remove all the amazing (although probably overpowered) tech from the suit? That seems like an overreaction. (although I get not wanting to make the Flash into Iron Man, especially with those hand beams)
  • They didn't remove all the tech, just most of it. The raft ended up being useful later. Too bad they didn't keep the hand blast thing, though.

Mind Virus

• what is an organically-produced virus? how does it interfere with technology? wouldn't the reversal of the virus not knock him out, but just destroy his current batch? How does lightening kill it? If it was part of Kilgore, wouldn't he be dead if they reversed the code? Is the virus killing him? How Does Any Of This Work?
• The lightning didn't kill the virus, it shorted out the tech in Barry's suit so that Kilgore couldn't use any of it. As for the rest dark matter did it. It pretty much can do whatever the plot calls for anyway.

So, does superhuman good luck mean that casino owners stop caring that you might be cheating?

• Okay, imagine that you're a casino owner. You've got a pretty good business going. You're making money hand over fist. Now, imagine that one day, some woman comes in and starts playing craps. She wins every single time, in blatant defiance of logic and probability. Surely you would start to be suspicious of her winning streak long before she got to thirty-six wins in a row. No casino staff made any kind of effort to stop her from playing?
  • Chances are, there aren't that many casinos in Central City, so the staff probably recognized her and figured she would lose sooner or later.
  • Any management that attempted to stop her from playing or thirty-six her from the floor could very well have been delayed or dealt with by her supernatural luck the same way Barry was forced to trip on marbles before she even knew he was after her.

Why NOW to pull Barry out of the Speed Force?

• A lot of weeks: Produce The Flash, or people will die. S4ep 1: Produce The Flash, or people will die. Team Sans Flash, who's been without Barry for 6 months: *shrug* Let's risk everything right now and not before now getting Barry out of the Speed Force after the bad guy kicks our butt and asks TWICE!
  • It wasn't weeks, it was less than a day. The Samuroid demands the Flash return in 24 hours or it'll destroy Central City. They try to fool it by using Wally, but it doesn't work, so they work to get Barry out. And Cisco was spending those six months looking for a way to bring Barry back and only recently managed to do so.
  • It's also likely DeVoe was waiting until he knew Cisco had finally developed a way to get Barry back before he initiated a threat big enough to make them desperate to get Barry back.

How could they legally bury H.R.?

• This just came to my mind just now: How exactly was Team Flash able to legally bury H.R. without there being an investigation or anything? There are no birth records or anything for him, as he is literally not of this Earth, and given that Harrison Wells is a deceased criminal on Earth-1, and he looks exactly like him and even has the same last name, how come nobody noticed that?
  • With their A.R.G.U.S. connections, they could have had an identity created for him. For his appearance, it could have been a closed casket funeral or they could have used his holographic disguise, though that might not be necessary if no one would be there that would know who Harrison Wells was that didn't already know what the situation was with H.R. being his double.

Barry's terrible defense

• Is Cecille really bad at her job? She calls no witnesses to speak to Barry's character, short of cross-examining Singh, no way to confirm Barry's alibi for the supposed time of Devoe's murder, or the fact that Barry has never been arrested for anything. Instead, she allows Marleze to spout her bullshit about Clifford allowing her to sleep around (and the jury actually buys it instead of instantly being suspicious of infidelity) without challenging it. And there had to have been ways for Barry to answer the DA's questions without admitting being the Flash. Or does he consider anything but the absolute truth to be perjury? A defense attorney's job is to cast doubt on the prosecution's case, so that enough jurors are unwilling to vote "guilty", and Cecille does nothing of the sort. She doesn't even object to the prosecutor testifying during his opening statement instead of simply presenting his case.
  • Barry spends the entire trial convinced that DeVoe has won, and that he will be outmaneuvered at every turn. That by itself took a lot of steam out of the defense. We can also theorize that after Singh's positive testimony got torn to shreds, Barry didn't want to subject any of his friends and coworkers to that.
  • This article proves otherwise.

The Monster named Barry

• When Judge says that Barry is most monstrous person he had ever seen I find that hard to believe as well as very insulting. Even though he was convinced Barry was killed someone I don't think that is the horrific thing he encountered. This suggests that he sees the man who only supposedly killed one person as more of a sociopath than I don't know, the man who happily committed mass murder by putting bombs in toys and then proceeded to brag about it. Really?
  • We don't know exactly what cases the judge oversaw, but Barry was resigned to his fate the entire time, which didn't look good. We know of course that he didn't think he could beat DeVoe at least at the moment, but from an outside perspective the fact that he made basically zero attempt to defend himself looks like a sociopath who is just going to trial for the sake of it but doesn't actually care enough to try. Hell, knowing DeVoe, it's possible he specifically manipulated things to get a judge who had never overseen a particularly heinous crime (he had probably overseen murder trials before, but the defendants were more contrite) so that he'd be horrified and give the maximum sentence.
  • There is also something to be said of how the prosecution was presented, painting Barry as a man who used his position in law enforcement (the good guys meant to protect people) as a cover to stalk, harass, and then ultimately murder. There's a distinct difference between a single murder of passion, and a long term harassment/pre-meditated murder committed by someone who is trusted and relied upon to protect you.
  • Over on Arrow, while in a similar situation, the judge there actually pointed out that, in this day and age, the possibility of a doppelganger is something to consider. Of course, he had been replaced by Christopher Chance, which only proves the point.

The Thinker stealing powers

• So he is able to use telepathy by transferring his mind into Dominic Lance's body (aka Brainstorm), okay, that I can understand. But what still bugs me is that with his mind now transferred into another meta's body like Hazard, he's still able to retain telepathy on top of gaining the new host body's powers. How exactly does he collect all their powers when different meta humans have different powers? I mean, it's not like manipulating quantum probability is an extension of telepathy.
  • He got this mega awesome chair that can steal powers, he must have tinkered it so when he swaps body, he keeps powers he previously gained. It's not like he's improvising, he planned gaining all this powers from the very beginning.

Iris,Team Flash leader

• Can someone explain how she came to the point of proclaiming herself team leader ? Hasn't Barry put Cisco in charge in S3 ?
  • Well at the start of Season 4 she was directing Cisco and Wally during their efforts to keep the city safe while Barry was in the Speed Force.
  • Leader in this case is the person coordinating the team. Which Iris started doing between 3 and 4 because Cisco and Wally were both needed in the field since they were undermanned. Even after the full team comes back she's still the best choice because Cisco and even Caitlin now might need to take the field, while the non powered Iris almost never does (except in rare occasions like the Bachelorette party).

De Voe Ignores Emotions

• So DeVoe has made it clear that he disregards emotions as being of any value, especially in regard to his goal of "enlightenment". But then he gets mad because he did not account for emotion when confronting Barry in Ralph's body. How can he claim to be so smart, but fail to realize that emotion (the very thing he wants to get rid of) IS a factor that needs to be accounted for?
  • As Harry told him, he's not as smart as he thinks he is. Look how he's alienating his wife; anyone with any sense can see it won't take much for her to betray him due to the way he's acting, as he himself initially did (and made contingencies for) but as time is going on he's simply losing any emotional intelligence he had, and with it the capacity to consider emotion as relevant.
  • Don't forget, she left him once before...

Clifford De Voe, master of extremely specific circumstances?

• How did DeVoe manage to manipulate things like where Barry came out of the Speed Force or which specific powers the dark matter would give the Bus Metas? I know that his thing is being so smart that he can predict the most probable outcome, but "most probable" does not equal "a certainty." His plan seemingly hinged on these things going exactly the way they did so that he could bring about The Enlightenment. In particular, what if Barry emerged from the Speed Force literally anywhere other than where he did? The Speed Force is a Sentient Cosmic Force that does not bend to the will of other people, especially not a superintelligent megalomaniac who plans to enslave the world.
  • I will say 'the power of the plot', but for a less meta answer, here is my two cents: When someone gains powers, they are usually tied to their personality. De Voe knew each bus passengers and so knew each and every powers they might obtain. Maybe Ralph, for example, had 30% to gain a stretchy body, 50% to gain invulnerability and 20% to gain a super brain forcing other people do what he says. But whatever the power Ralph gains, DeVoe knew Ralph's body will be able to support him. He didn't have a plan, he had several thousand different plans depending on each combinaison of the power gained by the bus metas... like he had multiple plans during the Flash's trial depending if Barry told he's the Flash or not.
  • As for the speedforce, it still has to obey some physics laws. DeVoe could have calculated where the vortex would open to set his plan in action.
  • Still, he was SOMEHOW able to predict the arrival of an alternate universe Black Canary, one that he couldn't have even known about in the first place...

Does Ralph have all the bus meta's powers now?

• In the Season 4 finale, Ralph, with Barry's help, regains contol over his body and kicks DeVoeout, who proceeds to upload his brain to his chair. But nothing is mentioned about the various bus meta's powers that DeVoe stole over the course of the season also leaving Ralph's body. Does that mean he still has them? And if not, how can Ralph taking control over his body back somehow undo DeVoe transferring al those powers to Ralph's body?
  • Well we will get a definitive answer during season 5. But I can imagine 3 outcomes.
    • Ralph keeps all powers and so leave Central City to not outshine The Flash.
    • Ralph keeps all powers but isn't clever enough to figure out how to use them (except his own).
    • All powers except his own are in the chair and are lost ... for now.
  • It's possible that all the powers were linked to DeVoe's consciousness. So when his mind was overwritten by Ralph, the powers were lost. Ralph could've easily stopped the satellite debris from raining down on the city single-handedly, and yet we saw him using his own powers and not the other bus metas's powers.

Ralph being the only surviving meta

• Todd Helbing confirm in the "Inside Subject 9" YouTube video and Entertainment Weelky that the bus metas' minds were absorbed by DeVoe when he took over their bodies and were subsequently killed. Yet Ralph's mind was kept intact, because the body would've died? Wouldn't by that logic, the previous bus metas would have still been alive while being taking over by DeVoe,and therefore would have been able to tak back their bodies once he left their respective bodies? How did Ralph survive besides plot armor?
  • When The Thinker leave a body, he destroy everything he doesn't take with him.
  • When The Thinker leave a body, he takes everthing, then kill the now useless mind of the previous host in the new body.
  • The orginal host' mind needs to find a portal (like Ralph did) to regain control of their body. They don't know about the portal, they don't know where it is and they have only a few minute to figure it out before the body died because brain isn't functionning.
  • Previous bodies were dying, maybe The Thinker leaving a body accelerate the process or turn the brain into a liquid (literally)
  • The way The Thinker steal power while bodyjumping is fatal for the victims. After all, even the bus metas who wasn't used as replacement body for The Thinker died.

Dave Ratchet's fate

• Precisely how is Dave Ratchet, who was broken out of Iron Heights and dumped into China, supposed to live anything resembling a full life? He has no money on him, no identification, there is no indication that he can speak any Chinese dialect, and he'll frankly draw a lot of attention to himself just being there. He even admitted that everyone in his life abandoned him. He might have had a better chance somewhere like the Australian Outback or the Yukon, but there just seems to be no way this ends well for him.
  • I seems to remember he was deposed in a temple. Not somewhere he could leave a full eventful life, but a place in the country he likes and where he could find peace.

What is the difference between Star Labs breaches and Vibe's breaches?

• In Flashtime, Cisco couldn't form breaches while in flashtime because breaches take too long to form. Quick then went off to Earth-3, presumably via Star Labs' breacher, to recruit Jay Garrick...but how? Both of them admitted that they don't know how to draw others into flashtime, so she couldn't so much have put the machine into flashtime to allow it to operate...so that nixes the unlikely situation that Star Labs' breaches open more quickly.
  • Well ... Vision isn't impaired while in flashtime ... meaning that their speed is way slower than speed of light ... and ... electricity works at lightspeed so ... Hmmm ...No, doesn't work ... Maybe the portal was already open on Universe 3 ... or maybe it's just a plot hole.
  • Simple answer: Barry accidentally created a breach to Earth-38, so it's logical that other speedsters could do the same in an emergency. As for time difference, Barry spent a day on Earth-38 but when he came back, it was less than a second later, so it's possible.

Gideon being active again

• So Gideon reappears in "Think Fast" and comments that its been 1078 days since she was last activated. The next episode has Barry commenting something like that Gideon doesn't work anymore. So this means that not only has Team Flash known she was still there, but they have never thought to consult a super computer A.I. from the future on how to possibly defeat The Thinker or any other threat they have had over the past three years? I know that that Word of God said something like that Gideon was destroyed at the end of the first series, but if the writers knew they were going to bring her back, they could have still just addressed it earlier.
  • They may not have realized how to bring her back online. Harry with the Thinking Cap was smart enough to do so, but the rest had no clue.

So... Devoe doesn't steal Barry's powers why again?

• As the title says, why doesn't Devoe steal Barry's powers and probably body along with them? He has numerous opportunities to do so, and even expressly states that he needs Barry's connection to the Speed Force to spread his Enlightenment throughout the multiverse and gain infinite knowledge... which he would have gotten by simply stealing his powers to begin with. On top of that, having a connection to an infinite power the Speed Force would've solved his energy issues long before he got to Ralph's body. Instead he goes through this extremely convoluted plan of deliberately getting Barry's mind into his head to accomplish what he could have easily done without it. I mean, reasons aside from "then the good guys couldn't possibly win" of course.

How did Iris survive financially after Barry's "death"?

• She previously quit her job at Jitters and she stopped writing her blog during the whole Savitar affair (was that ever a source of income?). The others had to move on and get other jobs. There was no will acted on, as the official story was that Barry was on sabbatical. How could she afford her new house, food, etc?
  • She might've had access to Barry's accounts for STAR Labs available to her.
  • It’s... entirely possible that she has savings, or that Barry had savings, especially since his father had a wrongful imprisonmentnand you can make a lot of money from those. Furthermore, nobody had to “move on and get another job” except Caitlin, who had to get another job because she left.

Team Flash and killing

• Putting aside Barry killing the Sand Demon with lightning for a second... Iris, in a situation similar to Ralph's (superpowered villain wants to kill them, Team Flash can't stop him so they hide out in STAR Labs, etc) shot Savitar in the back in Season Three (HOW?). But she's against Ralph taking a similar action in Season Four. Are Iris and Barry the only ones with a "license to kill"?
  • I think it's because they've been so ruthless in the past that they're against it.
  • Or the writers just forgot how the previous season ended?
  • Somehow, I can't see that "We don't kill" speech really landing after that fight with Savitar.
  • Iris killing Savitar wasn’t premeditated murder; he was about to murder her fiancé. Ralph wanted to find De Voe and kill him. It’s not the same thing.

What was Team Flash's plan for stopping De Voe's satellites again?

• Recruit Blacksmith to give them one "magic grenade" to disrupt De Voe's FIVE satellite plan? Was ANYONE particularly surprised that this was not a successful plan?
  • Well seeing as De Voe needed all five satellites for his plan to work, disrupting even one of them would set him back. Of course, they didn't expect him to hijack the STAR Labs satellite, but if he hadn't done that, his plan would be for naught.

This house is bitchin?

• Why did that have to become a thing and a matter of who said it (which turned out to be Nora Allen II) instead of being just a throwaway joke?
  • It was a plot point foreshadowing the fact that Nora would turn up. That's how stories work, you keep the audience guessing, and conventional storytelling rules dictate that there's payoff at the end. A "throwaway joke" would have been dissatisfying.

Why did Killer Frost decide to become good?

• It never really made any sense for her to have a sudden change of heart.
  • She wasn't angry with Team Flash after season four, she had all her anger focussed on Amunet and Iris helped her and listened to her, making Killer Frost realise that Team Flash could care about her