The Flash S02E01 Review: Atom Smashers

The Flash, Season 2, Episode 1: The Man Who Saved Central City

I don't think I need to re-state my love for the Flash and how absolutely great its first season was. Moreso than Agents of SHIELD, Arrow, Gotham, Daredevil and so many other superhero TV series out right now, the Flash has been the one I absolutely love everything about. So the very moment season two premiered, I watched the first episode. And with the absolutely smashing finale we got that wrapped up the Flash's new, revised origin story (and likely to be the definite one for me) we start off the second season with a modest, more character-driven stuff while all around us hints are being dropped about what direction the second season is taking. And while this first episode may have been unnecessarily slow at times, it has absolutely done its job perfectly to hype things up for this season, introducing all the new big players while still being insanely vague about it, this episode's villain showcases that we're not just going to have variations of energy beams and the special effects are going to be more elaborate... and so on.

Spoilers from here on out, so be warned.

We start off with an absolutely fun (and slightly over-the-top hammy) scene of the Flash and Firestorm fighting Captain Cold and Heat Wave, every single one of them having a blast and eating the scene up. A great way to start the episode... and we get a bit of a celebration time... until Eddie shows up. And you think that whatever Barry did in the season finale against the wormhole revised some things in the timeline... and then Wells shows up. And despite the Flash being generally more optimistic than its sister show, it's not afraid to make its casualties permanent.

We've had a six month time skip, and we see that things have relatively changed. We get a short flashback to what happened after the big wormhole thing -- after Flash stabilizes it by running around, Firestorm combines and shoots up, using the nuclear force from them separating to close the wormhole. Except Ronnie apparently is consumed by it and Martin Stein is the only one to make it out alive. Now anyone who knows anything about superhero fiction knows that being consumed by a portal with no body shown basically is tantamount to survival. Add that to knowing that Firestorm will be a main character in Legends of Tomorrow... so Ronnie, likely, isn't dead. Maybe he's just reduced to a mental voice in Martin's head, in a neat little reversal of their comic-book dynamic (sometimes) but whatever the case we have not seen the last of Ronnie.

It's kind of a poorly handled death, and the lack of screentime given to his "death" in the flashback and only the shortest of reaction scenes from Caitlin kind of basically sells it as 'yeah we know he's coming back', so it's kind of a weak point there.

His death affected the group dynamic, though, as Barry has grown morose and doing his best to channel his Oliver Queen and trying to work alone without playing it up too much. Caitlin is coping with grief and has gone over to work at Mercury labs. Cisco is working with Joe and developing anti-metahuman weapons for the police, which is awesome. And Central City's apparently left somewhat in tatters, with Barry actually zipping in and out of some old haunts -- like Jitters Coffee -- and helping to rebuild. 

But in a nice contrast to how Arrow is viewed in his hometown, the Flash enjoys a shit-ton of popularity even while he's in his brooding phase, with the city celebrating a Flash Day, no doubt building up to having stuff like the Flash Museum. We do spend a rather inordinate amount of time for Barry to brood about not deserving the glory (which I guess sort of segues into the flashback to Ronnie's "death" rather well, but it does take a bit too much screentime) before eventually showing up.

And, of course, have a metahuman battle! After a short mystery about finding the dead body of Al Rothstein very early on in this episode, he shows up dressed in Atom Smasher garb to gatecrash Flash Day, all angry and shit. Now DC comic geeks know Atom Smasher as a B-lister hero associated with the Justice Society, but right here he's just a villainous angry metahuman. The effects for Atom Smasher, with his mass-increasing size, looks a bit odd at times but it certainly does illustrate him stretching to a larger height and mass pretty well. The effects of his helmet-mask opening and closing is also absolutely cool. We get some nice little demonstration of Cisco and Joe's new "Boot" weapon, and some hints of Cisco's power of being able to see through dimensions, but ultimately the fight ends up inconclusive because we need to save the beatdown for the third act.

The rest of the episode has a 'get the gang back together into a team' with Iris and Cisco spearheading the effort to get Barry to open up and basically re-recruit everyone back to STAR Labs. I'm not exactly sure why Barry is pushing everyone away other than Ronnie's death -- which would affect Caitlin more than Barry you'd think. But everyone eventually gets together. And the scenes are definitely written well and aren't grating, but I'm just left with the feeling if all of this is necessary and if some of it couldn't be trimmed out.

And Wells-Thawne has left one last, final gift to Barry at the end of his death. Barry is given STAR Labs itself, as well as a USB drive, which has Harrison Wells unexpectedly confess to the murder of Nora Allen, delivering some damning evidence... before telling Barry, cryptically, that he will never be happy even if he gets what he want. It's a nice moment that carries vibes of both 'awww he does care' and 'what sadistic thing is he planning' that Harrison Wells had to him before he went all hammy villain, and is pretty well done.  "You'll never be truly happy, Barry Allen. Trust me. I know you."

And Henry Allen gets released! And, uh, immediately just decides to leave to figure out his life and knows that the city needs Barry more as a superhero. We know Henry's actor isn't a regular, and he's really not going to do anything exciting to the team, and he has been more genre savvy about superheroes and whatnot.... and while a strange direction for the show to take beyond possibly real-life actor issues, it still delivers a pretty strong scene between Barry and Henry. Again, it just takes a bit too much time with all these moments when I'm expecting something more adrenaline-driven for a first episode.

The chase for Atom Smasher is pretty simple. They figure out something about his metahuman powers -- he absorbs radiation to survive -- someone comes up with his comic book codename (Martin Stein this time, earning a hug from Cisco)... except Barry, while being a bit of a hardass, tries to take on him alone and fails. They try together, and succeed in taking Atom Smasher out. Which is pretty simple, and pretty entertaining.

Then comes the big reveal -- the Al Rothstein body that they found in the beginning of the episode? It wasn't Atom Smasher pre-change, or if he has some weird duplicating powers or whatever. The Atom Smasher that Barry fought wants to 'go home', and this mysterious 'Zoom' dude promises to take him home if he kills Barry. So, yeah, alternate universes confirmed, and it seems like the portal was what brought Atom Smasher (Earth-2's Al Rothstein) here. And he killed this universe's Al Rothstein. Honestly I'm pleased that I didn't think of Atom Smasher being a dimensional jumper even though I know Earth-2's going to be a thing, and I just thought that the weird Al Rothstein corpse thing was just part of this version of Atom Smasher's powers. It's a great little twist, and the fact that they bring it up a couple of times without making it too obvious is definitely a plus.

Of course, you could nitpick and remember that Harrison Wells listed Al Rothstein as one of the people 'killed' by the explosion of his reactor way back in episode 5 or 6 or whatever, but hey, apparently this universe's Al Rothstein survived long enough for him to get killed by his universe-hopping counterpart.

And, of course, the ending has the new big player show up -- Jay Garrick, a.k.a. Earth-2's Flash, a.k.a. Flash I, for comic-book readers. Whose helmet we saw randomly show up in season one's finale. And Zoom, a blackened figure with blue lightning, shows up in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment when Cisco sees through space and time to see him talking to Atom Smasher. Yeah, that was a lot faster than I expected them to show up, but I am certainly glad we're hopping into the Zoom and Earth-2 plot almost immediately.

Uh... what else? New suit has a new symbol like everyone expected. No big deal there. Flash's Bat-signal ripoff is kinda dumb, but dumb in a charming way. 

So overall? The main plot of getting the gang back together felt a bit tacky. It's a series of pretty powerful scenes... except that it doesn't really make sense that Barry is the one being emo and driving everyone away when by rights it should be Caitlin and Iris that are mourning Ronnie and Eddie. And Barry being a bit of a dick during his second fight with Atom Smasher kind of came out of nowhere. But honestly the scenes are pretty well-scripted and well-done, and despite some odd directions that the show takes -- like Henry immediately going off the show -- it still holds up pretty well, and I'm willing to overlook the large amount of padding in this episode and see it for what it is: building up the bigger picture.

Also, freaking Jay Garrick.