CW's Flash

Damn. Girl went straight for the proverbial jugular huh? Dropping a humvee on your dad is a good way to get the job done.

Edit: It's funny to think the rest of the ep could have been avoided if they actually gave up Marden. I mean, she seemed ready to just fart off after she thought she killed him.

And next week, Barry and Nora pull a Flashpoint. C'mon man! I thought you were smarter than that!

Edited by HandsomeRob on Nov 27th 2018 at 10:12:28 AM

Normally I'd be like "GR, FLASHPOINT" but, this being the 100th episode, and the possibility of seeing Savitar and Zoom again - I'm ok with this.

Edited by Soble on Nov 28th 2018 at 3:32:06 AM

I really like Cicada, he is intimidating, yet sympathetic.

Nora however is really getting on my nerves right now. Always grabbing the Jerkass Ball.

Also, Cecile's and Joe's absence was explained, but noticed how nobody even mentioned Ralph this time?

Given what we know of Ralph, I assume he's taking a page from Barney Stinson and spending Thanksgiving at a strip club with a kick-ass buffet.

So what do the people of Central City think of XS? We saw a little in that episode with the skeevy blogger, but not much. I mean, a second speedster shows up out of nowhere and is very close with the Flash. Do people know she's his daughter? She calls him Dad in public, but generally people don't overhear things unless the plot requires it, and nobody knows time travel is possible.

The public has no way to know how old the Flash is either, though.

Yeah. He sounds young, but quite often he disguises his voice.

More to the point, he could sound younger than he is (that is a thing after all).

Fair point. And since Iris still runs a very successful blog, I suppose she could have spread the news through there to clear up any rumors that might otherwise occur. She could fake an interview very easily, like how she got an interview way back in season 1. Hell, she wouldn't even need to fake it. "Yes, the Flash told me that XS is his daughter. Here is a transcript of the interview."

Odds of someone saying XS is the Flash's girlfriend, like it happened to Kara?

...she does?

She's the one who broke the news about DeVoe last season, which led to a public response that got the team enough information to stop the Enlightenment. I also assume she's where people found out about the old warden's corruption, and her blog got mentioned in "News Flash."

I'm about halfway through "News Flash" now. Eh, I took Nora's dismissal of Iris's blog a bit further than I should have.

I love how, after all the trouble started by time travelling to specific important points individually, Team Flash is just deciding to go "screw it" and hit them all at once.

Any blog is going to look bad when compared to one that is literally creating news. Not to mention Nora still hated her mother that episode.

It's kind of interesting how Supergirl and Flash are running the same basic concept for their villains. Decent people who turn into Fantastic Racist serial killers because of the consequences of the protagonist's previous battles.

I think they did it a little better with Agent Liberty, though. Cicada's pretty much just "raaargh kill them all!" when you down to it. The incredibly hammy way he just leaps straight to it the moment Gridlock shows up because "why not that nurse told me to" doesn't help - this episode shows his murders aren't even really because he thinks they'll help Gracie in any way.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Nov 28th 2018 at 8:51:45 AM

It's possible that the knife is also influencing him in some way. Or his dark matter infested wound.

How would he have expected killing metas to help Grace? Unless the dagger was absorbing meta lives and giving it to her, which I think we would have seen before this episode.

Anyway, I don't find his motivation all that surprising. He was an angry drunk before Grace, he turned his life around for her, then something happened to her and he needs someone to blame. Maybe they could have emphasized the doctor blaming the metas a bit more, maybe even have it be her idea that he go after them, but this works well enough. Nothing about Cicada has struck me as him being a rational man. Cold and pragmatic on the job, yes, but still driven by emotion.

If he’s supposed to be irrational, he needs to be written that way. Having him be a dutiful guardian and mournful survivor one second then snap to <gravelly voice> “raargh murder” </gravelly voice> thirty seconds is the sign of an inconsistent writer, not an irrational character. Especially when there’s no sign he was ever prone to that sort of thing before Gracie came along.

To give another CW example, Manchester Black in Supergirl is very similar: had a loss, becomes an increasingly violent murderer in response. The difference that in Supergirl (which is really killing it villain wise this season, though again the resemblance is uncanny) Manchester is explicitly noted to be violent thug before the person he lost came along, him backsliding is an outright part of his character arc, as is the fact that violence is the only way he knows how to deal with what’s happened to him. The Jumping Off The Slippery slope works because he’s actually written that way.

Orlin hops pretty much within the span of a sentence between caring for Gracie and wanting to go on a killing spree in her name, so abruptly that the dagger influencing him actually makes sense.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Nov 29th 2018 at 9:30:51 AM

It'd be kinda hilarious if it turns out De Voe, being the super-genius he is, predicted exactly where all the debris from the satellite would land, knowing it would create Cicada, as one last "screw you!" to Team Flash.

I mean, apparently, Cicada exists on multiple Earths, so it would have created him no matter what. It's just that it created a different Cicado due to Nora's interference.

(Also, another hint that the dagger is influencing Orlin: the guy who was supposed to be Cicado was a terrorist, I believe, but without Nora's interference, when he was Cicada, he was still a metahuman serial killer. Perhaps the dagger wants to absorb more dark matter energy, so influences anyone it hits into becoming Cicada?)

Edited by alliterator on Nov 29th 2018 at 10:37:55 AM

That's an excellent point that I didn't consider.

I have a bad feeling that the show won't follow up on it, though. They're not great at really making truly motivated villains. None of them have been terrible, but not great either. Most of them are like "here is my reasonable goal, and I will accomplish it with murder and torture because I'm EVIL." That worked reasonably well for Thawne, ehhhh for Zoom, pretty okay for Savitar, and terrible for DeVoe.

So, given that Barry is gonna time travel again, gotta ask, how many more times he can do that before dogs become the dominant species?

Since we’re getting stopover in every season, I wonder if we’re going to get every season’s Wells in one episode.

Addendum: I was just thinking of "Back In Time" today. Deja vu, for real.

Addendum #2: The instant presence of the time wraith does make it extra noticeable that pretty these evil speedsters were time travelers who completely sidestepped their presence (except Zoom).

Addendum #3: Somehow, I really hoped we would get to time travel back to the day where Barry, himself, already time traveled to.

Addendum #4: Are... are they setting up the idea of Eobard having something to do with Nora? I swear, if they're doing " actually the daughter of the archenemy" bit again...

Addendum #5: This episode really plays like a whole-show showcase, chronicling all the major points we saw along the way. It's... odd. The show isn't ending, is it?

Addendum #6: Okay, seriously. What was the point of all that if it was just going to be undone a literal minute later. IIRC, they did the same thing last season with Devoe.

Addendum #7: Oh, shit. Ohhhhhh, shit. They're in trouble. Sherloque is Thawne.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Dec 4th 2018 at 6:00:32 AM

welp now they gotta deal with that after they fix time

100th episode. They did a similar thing with Arrow.