The Flash S01E14 Review: Firestorm Begins.

The Flash, Season 1, Episode 14: Fallout

Yet another in an astounding series of excellent showings from the team behind the Flash, I am perhaps a little less excited about this episode than I was of the previous ones, but there really isn’t much to complain about. Part of why I wasn’t truly tense is that I more or less knew what was going to happen with Firestorm as far as his backstory goes, so there isn’t that much surprise for me when we get to the proper comic-book version. But nonetheless, we wrap up this little origin story for Firestorm, and both sides of Firestorm, as well as returning villain General Wade Eiling, both make absolutely grand showings for themselves.

Basically the origin story for Firestorm with both personalities finally recognizing the fact that they need to achieve acceptance with each other in order to properly control the singular Firestorm entity is perfected. It’s a bit of a shame that the big cliffhanger with Firestorm blowing up last episode is practically resolved within a minute as Barry and Caitlin just zoom back to pick up Ronnie and Martin. But naturally, the separation process doesn’t last, and at first they have synchronized brainwaves and behaviours and shit while they are apart, and as they are forced to battle against the General, Ronnie and Martin voluntarily fuse together and form the Firestorm entity we know and love from the comics… which is to say, Ronnie’s physical form and consciousness with Martin Stein being a split personality ‘voice’ in his head. And they made the fusion special effect pretty well.

Both parts of Firestorm really get a good amount of screentime both on their own and interacting with their loved ones, and there is a fair amount devoted to both of them trying to live normally until both their unique condition and the General’s attack forces them to mature and accept their fate that they are now Firestorm. Ronnie gets significantly less screentime than Martin Stein, I think. After the initial joyous reunion with Caitlin, he tries to get her to agree to leave the city and away from the madness, but, of course, while Caitlin doesn’t really want to, the fact that the General’s men are after Ronnie kind of throws a wrench into their plans. And by the end of this episode Ronnie proves to be still as selfless as he was when he ran into the pipeline to defuse the nuclear explosion. We get a pretty awesome moment where Ronnie basically carves his own arm to send a message to Martin Stein, and for two people who bicker with each other so much early on in the episode – it’s clear that they don’t like each other, at least until their voluntary fusion – I do like how selfless Ronnie was.

Also he totally punched Eiling in the face to rescue Barry. Guess that’s what you get for talking at length about how awesome your new weapon is instead of pulling out a gun and kneecapping your targets.

Martin Stein gets a bit more screentime compared to Ronnie, but that’s because he’s relevant to the Reverse-Flash plot running throughout this episode, and I’m frankly quite impressed by how well they did in intertwining the Firestorm and Reverse-Flash plots. We get him acting like an excited little child when Barry starts to ask him about time travel, and he basically doesn’t see the rather conflicted expression in Barry’s face and is ranting about how absolutely exciting it would be to punch a hole in the space-time continuum and how he would like to go back and talk to Nicola Tesla. I do like how he goes from responsible scientist to a bit of a jerk when talking to Ronnie, er, Ronald, and then into this kid just basically so happy to talk about his theories. And I do like just how pained his scream was when Eiling shocks him with the electric gorilla prod. Which, in retrospect, is a bit of clever foreshadowing for Eiling’s fate later on in this episode.

Oh, and Firestorm combines and heads off to presumably train their new powers, which nicely keeps him out of the action until presumably the season finale, which is nice. All that super-awesome flame special effects would be demanding if they need it in every single episode. And the flames? Absolutely well done. The scene with the combined Firestorm just being a super-awesome badass is just excellent.

Caitlin gets a bit sidelined compared to the Firestorms, but she still manages to get a couple of excellent scenes. She’s obviously happy with Ronnie back and whatnot, and by the end of the episode she’s basically happy Caitlin again. And there’s also the scene where she basically tells Ronnie that while she loves him, she also has things she can’t leave behind with their little crusade against the meta-humans. She doesn’t get much, but I liked what little she got.

Eiling is a wonderful villain this episode. In addition to being a recurring villain who already has ties to all this metahuman stuff from previous episodes, Eiling’s speech about how this is going to be the next big thing to make America the strongest nation or something like that makes him a rather imposing, if rather generic-ish, ‘for the good of the country’ villain. Though being played by the absolutely phenomenal Clancy Brown, can you expect less? Eiling is also genre savvy enough to make use of the fact that Barry Allen was emotional enough to remove his mask way back in the Plastique episode to figure out his secret identity, figure out both Ronnie and Martin’s identities, and blackmails Wells into handing Martin Stein to him. Granted, Eiling gets out-gambitted by Harrison Wells in the end, but he had a good showing himself.

And he’s obviously a non-combatant. Or rather, he can’t really hope to match against the metahumans in physical terms. Ronnie takes him out twice – first in his normal-Ronnie form, and then in his full Firestorm mode. And the Flash manages to wipe out Eiling’s entire attacking force in the span that it takes for Eiling to turn around and see what’s going on behind him… which is a pretty impressive visual. Eiling does bring along this little shrapnel grenade that sends like three dozen little attracted-to-speed scalpels digging into Barry’s body which is a horrifyingly painful-looking visual. There’s also this phosphorus bazooka which Barry disables by creating a vacuum. And this ion grenade that zaps Firestorm’s atoms into submission. Either one may or may not be foreshadowing a future villain… Blacksmith or Shrapnel (who technically already showed up and died in Arrow) or Dr. Phosphorus or whoever uses ions to fight… or maybe I'm just so excited at the prospect of foreshadowing and those are just cool stuff thrown in to make Eiling's forces be awesome.

Granted, all the parties involved during the attack on Area 29 – Barry, Ronnie and Martin – are idealistic types who leave Eiling beaten down but alive… but he doesn’t get to cheat death a third time because Harrison Wells finally has enough. But for his run, Eiling is a magnificent bastard of a villain and I absolutely enjoyed him. I do hope he returns in some future episode mutated into the General, but for now I think we can safely say that we’ve seen the last of Eiling for a long while.

Although… while Eiling’s death has kind of undoubtedly acted as a powerful blow against this psycho branch of the military, we now know that the military has weapons strong enough to disable Firestorm and the Flash. And they work. And we already have a Checkmate equivalent in ARGUS in Flash’s sister show of Arrow, so we may have a confrontation coming in the future.

Barry himself doesn’t get too much of character development on the Firestorm front, but he does get a significant amount of character work in no small part thanks to Joe revealing to him about the findings of last episode – that they found Adult-Barry’s blood on the murder scene of his mother. And I do like how Barry and Joe just quickly put two and two together and figure out that at some point in the future, Barry Allen will travel into the past, fight the (a?) Reverse-Flash… and then fail. And I do like the little discussion with Wells and later Martin about the various theories of time travel, with Cisco and Joe going ‘Terminator.’ ‘Ah.’ ‘Back to the Future.’ ‘Uh-huh.’ as examples while Wells talks about the various theories of time travel. Which is pretty awesome especially when Wells joins in talking about how awesome Doc Brown is.

We get Barry going into a bit of a sulk regarding the fact that he’s destined to fail despite being present, but then ramping up his confidence by realising that now that he knows he’ll fail, he will know what not to do when he does go back to the past in the future. Which is cool. Also to note is that Joe and Barry and everyone else has basically wiped Harrison Wells off the suspect list, even if Barry never had that thought in the first place. That will make the moment when Wells actually does get outed as the Reverse-Flash be a gigantic shock. Do like how the mysteries in this show are executed in general.

And Wells? Wells is a magnificent bastard. He played Martin Stein so he gets kidnapped by General Eiling, and then denying that he had any involvement by, y’know, virtue of him being a cripple. And he also then sicced the Flash on Eiling to rescue Stein back, and possibly even knowing that this would force Ronnie and Stein to work together to create Firestorm, which may or may not be the intended purpose of Wells’ plan. And when all is said and done, to truly make sure that Eiling will never bother his plans for Barry or whatever, Wells dons the Reverse-Flash suit (the first time we’ve actually seen him actually in the suit instead of it simply being implied) and zoom-zoom’s Eiling out of his completely secure military facility and feeds him to Grodd.

Wells basically goes all ‘I protect my own’, which may or may not be true regarding Firestorm. But whatever the case, he does get Eiling right off the map. And then comes the chilling realization that, yes, Wells and Grodd might actually be working together moreso than ‘Wells allowed Grodd to run free’. And Grodd is as horrifying as a rampaging gorilla can be, and we get a glimpse of Grodd’s telepathy in this episode (with Eiling telling us helpfully that the voice is in his head) before he, y’know, goes all gorilla on Eiling.

Also, ‘not God. Grodd.’ is probably one of the most awesome lines ever delivered by a villain.

Running as a B-plot that I really couldn’t give two shits about is Iris’ little adventures in Picture News and how her superior (whose name I’ve since forgotten) basically plants seeds of doubt in Iris’ mind and gets her to investigate her friends at STAR Labs. Especially when he puts two and two together and realizes that Firestorm, the Burning Man, is Ronnie. Who everyone basically lies about to Iris in a rather hilarious way. I don’t really give two shits about Iris pulling a Quentin Lance and trying to investigate the truth behind the Flash or STAR Labs, but I suppose that’s a better, if equally clichéd, way to involve her in the grander scheme of things other than to be a not-love-interest and damsel in distress.

Poor Cisco basically got sidelined in this episode, delivering a couple of snarky remarks but otherwise not really doing anything. And we continue our stretch of Eddie-less episodes.

We do have a fair amount of meta-jokes nods all over the place, though. In addition to the callback to the first episode with the ‘run Barry run’, we also get Cisco making little hints to how they beat the Mist at ‘week three’ and how the impossible is ‘just another Tuesday’, which of course refers to the Flash’s airing schedule. We also get nods to some DC comics cities. Firestorm heads off to train with an unnamed friend of Martin Stein’s in Pittsburgh, which is the city comic-book Firestorm hangs out in. While lying to Iris, Caitlin and the others namedrops Midway and Central City, the former being the home of Hawkman and the latter being the home of Hal Jordan/Green Lantern.

Overall? A pretty smashing episode and fitting end to the Firestorm arc. Also we get a couple of internal revelations, a recurring villain is dealt with, the Reverse-Flash plot is expanded upon, we get some emotional moments for multiple characters and Iris gets to get a bit to do. Excellent stuff. Next week’s preview makes it clear that shit is going to go down on the Reverse-Flash front, so naturally the show’s not going to return for another month. Grodd damn it.