The Flash S03E18 Review: Abhararakadhararbarakh

The Flash, Season 3, Episode 18: Abra Kadabra

Hey, Abra Kadabra! I'm excited, of course, at the introduction of yet another major character from the Flash's comic-book lore, but at the same time kind of dreading whether the show will actually bother to make the character be a memorable villain the way Reverse-Flash, Captain Cold or Gorilla Grodd are, or if Abra Kadabra will end up panning out like Shade and Mirror Master, reduced to little more than a thug. I have always wanted more focus on the Flash's Rogues Gallery instead of giving us speedster after speedster after speedster as the main focus of the show. Captain Cold and Heat Wave were awesome during their short tenure on the show, and had an amazing run over in Legends of Tomorrow, but it's just not the same. The first season teased us with the Rogues being formed slowly over the show's run, but that didn't pan out. The Weather Wizard had like three, four recurring appearances where he's little more than a thug with weather powers. Ditto Golden Glider. The Mirror Master and the Top were completely unrelated to the others, and were honestly pretty shit. The Trickster, while played by the immortal Mark Hamill, was little more than flip-flopping between being, well, literally just the Joker or dropping eyeball-rolling Star Wars jokes. Pied Piper is... somewhere in limbo? Captain Boomerang only shows up once, and ends up in Lian Yu limbo. Abra Kadabra is perhaps the only major member of the classic Rogues that hasn't shown up, and I'm worried that he's going to get the shaft again.

The end result is... hit-and-miss. Abra Kadabra himself was immensely enjoyable, of course, being far more over-the-top in a good way as he just snaps his fingers and stuff happens, really selling the man as a performer as well as a criminal. They didn't change his origin story either, keeping him as a criminal from the 64th century, a time when technology is so advanced that it might as well as be magic to us in the 21st century. The visuals weren't trippy or whatever, but teleportation, changing guns to squirt water instead of bullets, creating a shower of playing cards or trapping museum guards in a cage of water are all pretty cool stuff. And he definitely was far more than a fair match when four superheroes -- Flash, Kid Flash, Vibe and Gypsy -- show up to fight him. (Cisco really needs to go superheroing with Wally and Barry more often, honestly).

There are some really great actions sequences, like Vibe rescuing Kid Flash from being dropped from the sky, or Joe, Julian and Caitlin having their mad escape from Abra in STAR Labs, or Vibe's absolutely badass and corny "YOU! SHALL NOT PASS!" line, or the tie-in to Eobard's mysterious power core...

But the addition of several other plotlines are kind of annoying. Surprisingly, the Savitar stuff added into this is good. Abra Kadabra's role as someone so far-flung into the future, from the 64th century, even moreso than Eobard's 26th century homeland, means that everything that happens here is ancient history to Abra Kadabra, and both Barry and Joe really sell the moral debate of cavorting with the devil that is Abra Kadabra in trying to find out Savitar's true identity. Joe's desperation is definitely understandable, and the final decision they made not to cooperate with Abra works well too. I thought the show struck a pretty neat balance between introducing Abra Kadaba as a character, as well as tying him into the Savitar plotline, though at the same time it all ended up being a red herring and Abra Kadabra doesn't get to reveal the juicy, juicy information he knows about Savitar. It's... a double-edged sword. On one hand, it does mean that Abra isn't eclipsed by the big Savitar reveal. On the other hand, it does make all the screentime where Barry and Joe try to coax information out of Abra Kadabra kind of wasted, and in retrospect I'd rather those be given to develop Abra Kadabra as a villain on his own right.

The Vibe-Gypsy stuff isn't particularly compelling, not helped by the fact that Gypsy is kind of a hit-and-miss character. Cisco is entertaining as always, but as much as she tries Gypsy's whole "Abra Kadabra obviously killed someone important to me but I will be vague about it" shtick served to do nothing but be irritating. And her romance with Cisco is a 'your mileage may vary' bit. I certainly don't mind her, but if she never shows up again I'm not going to miss her. The fact that she's set up as the Lawful Good character who wants to bring Abra Kadabra to justice, but doesn't really present a good argument for immediately bringing him back to her handlers for execution instead of, oh, I dunno, tricking Abra Kadabra for a bit?

We also get a surprisingly decent Killer Frost subplot, with Caitlin and Julian getting some great moments, a genuinely heart-rending moment when Julian, Cisco and H.R. desperately try to deal with the convulsing Iris, and the grief in Julian's eyes when he rips out Caitlin's necklace. The idea of a Killer Frost episode in the future is definitely appealing, for sure!

Less appealing is Barry's big plan to travel into the future. Because, um, fucking around with the timeline worked out so well the other five times he's done it before. Jeez, sometimes I just wish the big Savitar reveal was done sooner more than later. Eobard and Zoom's big reveals happened around this time during their respective seasons, which allowed them to grow as characters (somewhat, in Zoom's case -- he was still pretty m'eh in the end) which is something that I don't think is ever going to happen satisfactorily with Savitar... and at this point I can't really think of a character that would become Savitar that's going to be satisfactory. I would really like the show to prove me wrong, though.

DC Easter Egg Corner:

• Abra Kadabra, the last of the 'classic' Rogues to be featured in the show, is Citizen Abra (or, as the post title shows, a really messy and unpronounceable name) from the 64th century, a time where science is so advanced that to our 21st century minds, it seems like magic. He clashed with Barry Allen's Flash multiple times during their career, at one point having his technology damaged so badly that he gets turned into a ghost-like being. He alternates between being as threatening as the other Rogues (which is to say, not really), or being a cut above them and being one of the more powerful Rogues that Barry and Wally ever faced. One of his more notable feats is tricking five members of the Rogues to 'accidentally' kill themselves (they got better, naturally) by having them attack certain locations in Central City to create a city-wide pentagram to summon the demon Neron, exchanging his technology for real magic.
• Clifford DeVoe (well, just DeVoe) is briefly mentioned by Abra Kadabra alongside Savitar, Zoom and Eobard Thawne as some of Barry's deadliest enemies. DeVoe is the alter-ego of the original Thinker, a criminal mastermind and a supervillain that clashed with both Jay and Barry. A hint for the future?
• Abra's time-travel ship has a lot of resemblances with the ships used by the Time Masters from Legends of Tomorrow, with the cockpit in particular resembling the Waverider. 
• Caitlin mentioning that she's never a two-piece girl might be a throwaway line, or might be a reference that even the more revealing Killer Frost costumes tend to resemble one-piece swimstuits.