The Flash S03E04 Review: I Miss Captain Cold

The Flash, Season 3, Episode 4: The New Rogues

One of my biggest pet peeves with the Flash is how the main villains has always been the evil speedster. The first season introduced Captain Cold and later Heat Wave and Golden Glider as this small but growing team of elite supervillains, and hinted that Weather Wizard might join up with them. And as much as I enjoy Captain Cold and Heat Wave in Legends of Tomorrow, where they're easily my favourite part of the show, I'm honestly pissed that all the buildup in season one and Captain Cold has never been anything more than a recurring (if very memorable) villain, and never the main villain of a whole season or whatever. If not Cold, then at least the other Rogues.

As it is, without comic knowledge you'd be hard-pressed to realize that Captain Cold, Heat Wave, Weather Wizard, Mirror Master, Trickster and Top are all among the Flash's most frequent enemies, where the show treats all but the first two as on the level of literal Z-listers like Deathbolt and Peekaboo.

Mirror Master is the only one out of the 'traditional' core Rogues team to not have made an appearance, and everyone knows it's because the show's waiting for enough budget to justify his special powers, and I honestly thought that Mirror Master was going to be an ally of Dr. Alchemy back in the end of the first season, but alas, poor Mirror Master is reduced to... just a metahuman enemy.

Mirror Master and a gender-flipped Top are old members of Captain Cold's gang that tried to strike it out on their own, basically Central City's own Bonnie and Clyde, and as fun and hammy as they are... they're ultimately pretty forgettable. They had a fancy outfit, and they had fancy powers (even if Top's vertigo-inducing powers is nowhere as epic as her comic-book counterpart), there's not much depth to them beyond 'we've got powers! Let's fuck the city and Flash up!' We don't get much beyond the brief it-was-yesterday-for-me bit with Mirror Master being trapped in a mirror. It is entertaining, that's for sure, but I expected... more. As it is, they're just kind of a higher level of villainy to allow Jesse Quick to zoom in and be a superhero.

Captain Cold returning for a short cameo is very welcome, though. And them using Reverse-Flash's old hologram trick to fool Mirror Master is great.

Jesse Quick is awesome, though, and in my opinion stole this episode. I've never been a big Jesse Quick fan in the comics -- never hated her, but she was just there -- but she's so bubbly and such a fun little partner to the more experienced Barry that it's just fun to see her on the screen. Her guilt at not listening to Barry, and later making it up and beating the Top, is pretty cool.

Harrison Wells, well, Harry of Earth-2, has a small sub-plot where he's searching for a replacement throughout the multiverse, which is unexpected but absolutely fun as we see Tom Cavanaugh act out a cowboy version of himself, a French Mime version of himself, a British butler version of himself and so much more. Harrison Wells of Earth-17 shows up at the end (he's Hipster Wells, apparently) and Jesse and Harry return to Earth-2. I don't expect Harrison Wells of Earth-17 to be a pure angel, though, simply because all the Harrison Wells-es we've got have been quite dark in their own way.

Meanwhile, to save Barry from the mirror prison (which is very cool), Caitlin is forced to fool everyone out of the room, and then use her Killer Frost powers to break Barry out. Harry and Cisco seems somewhat aware that the freezing happened not because of their machine, whereas Caitlin is starting to transform more and more into Killer Frost if the bathing scene at the end is any indication. Just why is she so afraid to use her powers, considering she's buddies with two Flashes, Vibe, Firestorm and Jesse Quick? And will we finally get her turning evil? Was she already visited by dr. Alchemy, but too ashamed to admit it? It's a bit confusing, to be honest.

There is an acknowledgement of the weirdness of the borderline incestuous relationship between Barry and Iris, and someone finally acknowledges it. Joe is entertaining to see throughout, though I just honestly stopped caring for Barry and Iris themselves.

There's some dire warning from Harrison Wells of Earth-2 that was interruted by the portal sucking them in. Yeah, good job, Wells, don't tell the group for the two or three weeks that you were around.

Overall, a fun little episode regardless even if I'm sad that neither Mirror Master and the Top amounted to anything more than filler villains. Also does anyone else find it strange that they're keeping a metahuman in what appears to be a regular maximum security prison instead of STAR Labs' fancy one? I mean, yeah, vertigo inducing is nowhere as powerful as weather manipulation or eyeball laser beams, but still.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Mirror Master, a.k.a. Sam Scudder, is a man with the powers to travel into and out of a 'mirror dimension' (translated as the ability to create wormholes in here). He menaced Barry Allen and later died during the events of the Crisis on Infinite Earths. His look here might not use the orange-green traditional costume, but it is inspired by Sam Scudder's depiction in the 40's Flash TV show.
• Evan McCulloch, the second Mirror Master in the comics, is name-dropped by Harrison Wells as the name of the Mirror Master on Earth-2. McCulloch was an enemy primarily of the third Flash. CW's Earth-2 McCulloch is a dude that uses a ray gun instead of being a metahuman... which is just like both incarnations of the comic-book Mirror Master, though McCulloch did tend to fight with guns whereas Scudder tended to use collapsible mirrors.
• Top, Roscoe Dillon in the comics (instead of Rosa Dillon) is a man with the ability to spin around so fast like a top. Yeah. Somehow, Golden Glider dated him. Later on apparently years of spinning around so much gave him limited psionic abilities which led him to a stint as a far more dangerous enemy of the Flash than you'd think a man that spins really fast could be. He later died, possessed people and attempted to 'fix' and reform his Rogue buddies, with differing results. 
• We did get a reference to Top's comic-book powers because Jesse Quick spun her like a top when she defeated her.