The Flash, Season 3, Episode 6: Shade
As I return to Flash after not watching an episode for more than a month, there's... a fair bit of things that happens in this episode, and it suffers from trying to develop too many plotlines at the same time. I get what they're trying to do. They're trying to make this a simple villain-of-the-week episode with Shade being the threat they're facing (they even said so in the episode title!) with the main character arc being Wally and his flashbacks to Flashpoint and his desire to be Kid Flash. But then they try to stuff in so much more after Shade gets beaten halfway through the episode, like Caitlin's Killer Frost plot arc, an extension to the Dr. Alchemy plot, or the introduction of the new main villain Savitar.
Even discounting the sheer amount of lore and story behind Shade, something that I'm used to being untapped when villains are adapted into the small screen, Shade himself is very bland. He has like one line of dialogue throughout the entire episode, he shows up to kill a random dude with shadow powers, then menaces Joe's date, then gets beaten quite easily. He doesn't even get a cool fight scene! Barry just shows up, they punch each other a bit, then Cisco activates flood lights and Shade's just down. There's not even a token angry personality to the character that elevates him from what he is -- just a plot device to distract Flash while Alchemy does his weird mind-influence thing on Wally, who's suffering more and more from the Flashpoint flashbacks.
Alchemy himself was mostly a disappointment in this episode, too. He's got a creepy 'personal villain in the back of your head' vibe with how he's tormenting Wally and causing him pain, and the cultist feel when Wally confronts Alchemy is decent, but Alchemy himself just shoots beams while spouting creepy dialogue from his plague doctor mask. Oh, and Draco Malfoy's absence this episode and how he's continually disappearing whenever there's some supervillain-related thing going down really is trying to cast him as the dude we're supposed to suspect is Alchemy or someone related to him, isn't he?
Main villain Savitar appears in the end, and he introduces himself as the God of Speed. That's a pretty awesome introduction, as much as it irks me that we're getting three evil speedsters as main villains in a row. Savitar looks absolutely inhuman, like he hangs out with the movieverse Transformers and drinks motor oil with Starscream and Barricade. Certainly looks a lot more imposing than Zoom's skull-mask, that's for sure, and even if we've seen Reverse-Flash and Zoom do the same thing before, seeing Savitar and Flash just zoom around with bodies dropping on the floor while the mere mortals just try to get the hell out of dodge is pretty awesome.
But other than that, it's really only the strong performances by the main cast that carries this forward. As much as I would love Wally to just transform into Kid Flash and get on with it -- this time it actually feels prudent and well-done to stretch out his own motivations. Wally hasn't been given a lot of time to show off his character, and this argument between Wally and Joe -- with Joe admitting that, yes, he doesn't trust Wally as much as Barry because Wally is closer to his own personality than Barry is, but also admits that, yes, Wally needs this, so they're going to STAR labs for help. Joe's protectiveness in both jailing Wally up in the Pipeline and using Wally as Alchemy bait is also well-acted, and Wally finally making his own decisions in both situations, as well as bonding with Barry as an older brother, is well done. He also gets to punch Alchemy in the face!
Of course, at the end of the episode Wally touches the weird thing that Alchemy carries and gets turned into a giant coccoon, so we are going to have Kid Flash after all.
Caitlin is also on fire. Or, on ice, rather. She decides to confide her secret to Cisco, and Cisco vibes the two of them fighting in the future as Vibe and Killer Frost, which will be exciting to watch... but instead of pulling an Arrow and keeping this a big secret for half the season, Cisco barely manages half the episode before throwing subtle hints, before just breaking down and just yell at everyone that Caitlin has superpowers as well. It's a nice bit of parallel that isn't really shoved in your face about how Wally is so desperate to get powers, while Caitlin is so desperate to lose the ones she has. At the end of the episode Cisco apologizes and Caitlin accepts the decision and the two become buddy-buddies again, but come on. We're not going to let it end at that, and I'm sure Cisco and Caitlin will actually end up fighting as Vibe and Killer Frost. The question is when and how far down the line.
Speaking of keeping a big secret for half a season, I'm happy that Barry telling Wally that, yeah, he's Kid Flash in Flashpoint and he died was just, okay, it's a thing that you kept a secret from us, what do we do now and not treated as this huge, huge fallout.
We get a short scene with Iris where she says she feels like this useless member of the Team Flash operation, and Barry assures Iris that, no, her role of moral support is essential. Nice little bit for Iris, actually, even if like the character herself I really find her inclusion in all of this relatively unnecessary beyond the need for a love interest. There's a mini subplot about Joe's date and how H.R. just fucks everything up by being so much more charming, but I don't particularly care about those two. H.R. Wells is absolutely entertaining, though, and holy fuck, Tom Cavanaugh is a very talented actor. I mean, his scenes about making STAR labs a museum or wandering around with a hologram face or whatever isn't the most impactful scenes, and honestly when it comes to the end of the day H.R. can still be removed and would actually help to compact the episodes, but at the same time he's so damned funny that I don't want him to leave.
Overall, while the writing surrounding the main cast is a huge, huge improvement from season two's messy handling of practically everyone except for Joe, Harry and Cisco, the general main plotting and using the villains leaves a lot to be desired for. I think the main problem is the sheer lack of screentime that Doctor Alchemy has beyond being this creepy dude in a mask that restores Flashpoint powers, but otherwise feels non-threatening. He really could've had a couple extra confrontations earlier this season against Flash to really sell his role as the second in command, to make us care that, hey, this scary dude has a more powerful boss behind him.
But oh well.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Shade, a.k.a. Richard Swift, is a far more complex character than just some evil mook with shadow powers. I've already talked about Shade here before in one of my Justice League episode reviews, and quoting myself: "The Shade, a.k.a. Richard Swift, began his comic-book life as a simple gimmick villain that can manipulate shadows with a cane. He fought both the first and second Flashes, but during the 90's he received a drastic revamp that turned him into a much cooler character with a very rich backstory, reimagining him as someone with magical capabilities and immortality (or longevity) that was born in the 1800's and is involved in the backstories of several DC superheroes, acting as both reluctant supporting character and as an outright antagonist. It'll take a very, very long time to talk about Shade's comic-book story, but suffice to say few C-list villains have such a complex and developed story as Shade does."
- Savitar in the comics is a man who obtained super-speed after being struck by lightning, naming himself after Savitr, the Hindu god of speed. Unlike most speedsters, comics!Savitar has several other powers such as siphoning speed away, creating inertia forcefields and whatnot. He also has a cult devoted to worshipping him in the comics, so there's also that. He primarily fought Wally West's Flash as well as Johnny Quick (Jesse Quick's comic-book father) and Max Mercury (an older speedster). So as not to spoil too much of future episodes, though, I didn't read up too much on him.
- H.R. Wells mentions Grodd by his full comic-book moniker, Gorilla Grodd, and apparently Grodd's Earth-19 counterpart is very much active.
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