The Flash S03E02 Review: A Mess... but hey Draco Malfoy

The Flash, Season 3, Episode 2: Paradox

Nope, no gas mask in his classic appearance

I think this episode is trying to close the gateway to even more "Flash travels back in time and changes something" plotlines. I get that it's probably what they were thinking about when they wrote this episode... but holy fuck this episode is a huge drag. I really appreciated 'Flashpoint' last week because it kind of glossed over the expected drama of Barry angsting about how everyone isn't friends anymore, and instead focused more on Barry's internal turmoil. Here, everything I hoped wouldn't be dragged out shows up and is dragged on and on in a very long-winded story where everyone is mad at each other for reasons (Joe and Iris hate each other over the mom subplot last issue, apparently Cisco's brother died offscreen) and apparently just by Barry talking over a couple of minutes, it's over and they're all friends again.

The thing is, they shoved over the whole 'time travel changes cannot be repaired' thing so many times. First with an honestly unnecessary (but welcome) cameo by Felicity where Barry recaps everything to her and the audience, then Jay Garrick also makes an honestly unnecessary (but equally welcome) cameo with a cup, and then Barry goes over it all with a whiteboard and some lines. The fact that Barry spends nearly the entirety of the runtime just keeping it hidden from his friends and not just "okay guys, let me get this straight. I changed the timeline and you guys are acting different" makes it a long chore to watch. Also, Barry, seriously? Someone is going around giving powers to people who had them in Flashpoint, and you don't even have the brains to even tell Wally that he's the Flash over there?

And Angsty Emo Cisco? Not someone I like to watch, especially not when we don't get the events that would bring the Cisco we all know and love and turn him into this angst-ridden ball of anger and hate that blames Barry for not returning back in time and saving Dante. And apparently Barry going up and basically apologizing while giving a 'sorry, but I can't do it anymore' lecture is enough to get Cisco out of his flunk, adding the 'Doctor' to newcomer villain Alchemy.

We also get new character grown-up Draco Malfoy Julian Albert, who hates Barry and seems to just take over Eddie Thawne as the police officer that suspects Barry Allen as hiding something. He's... well, he's got a fun accent, and I am a big Harry Potter fan so I like seeing Draco again, but as a character he just felt kinda there. He might be Dr Alchemy's secret identity, too, who knows? It would be the overtly obvious answer.

The Rival returns this episode, and apparently Dr Alchemy has been going around stripping people's skins off into husks and restoring the powers of those who gained them in the Flashpoint universe. Okay, then. We get a short talking scene from Dr Alchemy -- who promptly disappears from the plot, but mostly it's just Flash and Vibe (with fancy shades and superhero gauntlets!) fighting Rival, with some shots lifted wholesale from the previous episode. It's not the worst action scenes and I definitely loved seeing Cisco in action as Vibe, and Dr Alchemy's got the most metal helmet ever, but it sadly doesn't lift the bulk of the story from being mediocre, because the revelations felt more like an afterthought instead of the epic entrances that they probably should be.

What else? It's the first actual appearance of Jay Garrick the Flash as an actual character, isn't it, since all the past 'Jay' has been Zoom. It's a cool moment, though one that felt shoehorned in. His talk about having made the same mistakes Barry did is a nice touch. Apparently the Arrow universe isn't affected other than the gender of Sara Diggle (though John Diggle Jr is the future Green Arrow, if Legends of Tomorrow's post-apocalyptic storyline is canon). There's some romance nonsense with Iris and Barry that I honestly don't give a shit about. There's a very cool Flash-vs-gunman-on-a-motorcycle opening action scene that I really like for some reason.

Oh, and Caitlin has Killer Frost powers, something that apparently only she knows about. Huh.

Overall it could've been dramatic and emotional, but the episode was too repetitive and tried to shove in way too many things -- Jay Garrick, Felicity, Alchemy's debut, Julian's debut, the husks mystery, Rival being angry that his power was 'wiped out', the Barry/Iris romance, Cisco being Vibe and dealing with the death of Dante, etc. I dunno. With a couple of scene shuffling and extensions and cutting, it might've been a decent story, but as it is, it's probably one of the most underwhelming episodes of Flash I've seen in a while... because it tried to sell us on HUGE CHANGES and not actually going through with any of them, since everything is more or less back to status quo at the end other than Dante being dead and Sara Diggle being a man.


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The titles of this episode and the previous one, "Flashpoint" and "Paradox", make up... Flashpoint Paradox! Eh? Eh??
• Dr. Alchemy is indeed a supervillain that gained power from, well, alchemy. From the Philosopher's Stone, in fact, and the classic version also suffered from multiple personality disorder. So far as I know, though, Dr. Alchemy is your run-of-the-mill themed supervillain and doesn't have the power to remember alternate universes or grant superpowers. I don't think his comic-book counterpart wears a gas mask either, the appearance I'm familiar with is the bright green hood and a domino mask, which a version I put as the image here.
• Cisco's rants about how the Flash would run back in time to change the timeline if it's his family, while refusing to do just the one thing he's begging is actually quite similar to how the comics' version of Hunter Zolomon ended up -- he was the third Flash's (Wally) police ally in the comics, and he begged Flash to return back in time to change an accident that crippled him. Unlike Cisco, Hunter went completely off the deep end.