The Flash S02E18 Review: Zoom Origins

The Flash, Season 2, Episode 18: Versus Zoom

I wouldn't say that the second season of the Flash is bad. It had a lot of great promise and a lot of great potential in the first half, even with a shake-up of the status quo thanks to several characters moving away and the introduction of several new ones. But it's this episode that really solidified how utterly messy the season has been. I could look over the odd time travel episode from last week as it just not confirming to my expectations of what a Flash time-travel episode should be. But this one? It's just, well, badly written. And it's not just about Jay Garrick being written out almost entirely, or about the utterly horrible way they handled Caitlin Snow for the entire season that came to a head.

No, it's simply the utterly baffling way that they recycled the premise for Reverse-Flash and copy-pasted it almost entirely for Zoom in here, despite the two characters being quite different in the comics. But if I wanted to talk about the injustice that Show!Zoom did to Comics!Zoom (and Comics!Jay) I could probably churn out three articles on it, so I'll save that for a later episode.

See, the concept for this episode is that all throughout season 1 2, the evil speedster Reverse-Flash Zoom, whose identity is shrouded in mystery and is revealed to have come from the future an alternate Earth, is actually masquerading as the Flash's older mentor/ally figure Harrison Wells Jay Garrick, having assumed that identity, which doesn't exist. He is actually the villainous and utterly psychotic Eobard Thawne Hunter Zolomon, and any good qualities he might have had are all just fabrications. When Barry discovers this treachery, the villain manages to beat Flash up to a pulp steal Flash's speed, and then kidnap Flash's ally Eddie Caitlin and escape, setting up several episodes' worth of buildup for the finale.

Except, y'know, Reverse-Flash's identity being Harrison Wells is a big surprise and a great shock considering how it's been established before that Wells and Reverse-Flash could appear in the same room together. And both Harrison Wells/Eobard Thawne and Reverse-Flash have been greatly influential characters in Barry's life throughout season one. Here? Zoom's a cipher, just this arc villain whose deal is 'rawr me steal speed' and being mosntrously scary strong. He just barely beats out Doomsday for lack of proper motivation. Jay Garrick? I complained about him being left out of a huge chunk of the season, and honestly as a mentor he gets overshadowed by Earth-2 Harrison Wells and Joe. Now, if Jay had actually had proper scenes instead of him just complaining about how life sucks and how he's dying and having a nonsense romance subplot with Caitlin (which I'll talk about later)...

It's not the fault of the actor, of course, who did his best with this inconsistently-written role he got. Jay-Zoom still delivered a pretty menacing vibe even unmasked, but any tension that scene where the prisoner exchange went was just ruined by them just... standing there and not doing anything after Zoom let Wally go. They had guns pointed at Zoom, Barry still had his speed, and has proven to be able to at least give Zoom a fair fight earlier in the episode. But they just stand there. The least the writers could do is have Zoom hold Wally or someone else hostage so it doesn't look like an utterly bafflingly stupid moment as everyone stood in place, even Earth-2 Wells, while Zoom does his thing. No contingencies, no sabotage of the speed extractor, no shooting those funky guns, no usage of the Turtle speed-draining serum. And, yeah, for the second time this season, Zoom steals the Flash's speed. Again. Thanks to shitty writing. It's just flimsy writing for the sake of getting characters in place, and it doesn't work at all.

Thankfully, Enter Zoom does have its share of great moments, it's just not great moments that help elevate Zoom up as a proper nemesis-style villain. Compared to his predecessor, Reverse-Flash, Zoom just felt really weak in comparison. 

The messiness of this episode is compounded by how horrible Caitlin was handled this episode. In season one, Caitlin got as much screentime as Joe or Cisco did, with her own little subplot regarding chasing Ronnie Raymond and him being unstable, as well as her development into the 'heart' of the team despite her initial clinical iciness. I've mentioned it before, but Caitlin has really been shafted throughout this season so much that I don't think I can really name a standout scene for her. All her scenes revolve around being Jay Garrick's girlfriend, and Jay Garrick isn't a well-written character in the first place. She's stuck in the periphery for most of the season. And this episode shows that, well, apparently despite learning that Jay is Zoom, Caitlin neglected to consider that, hey, that information she learned about Jay's Earth-1 counterpart being called Hunter Zolomon might be, oh, I dunno, fucking important?

But no. All she has time is to talk about boys and destiny and Earth-2 Barry/Iris shipping with Iris. The writers totally did not do her justice.

Also I'm wholly pissed about Jay Garrick being wiped out as a character, being a fan of his comic-book incarnation where he's not a badly-written shoehorned-in character, but Jay Garrick in this show has been such an uninteresting and a pale shadow of his inspiration that I honestly don't care. Still pissed on principle, though this means that we might get a proper Jay Garrick next season Or maybe the real Jay Garrick is the man in the iron mask.

That's not saying that this episode didn't have its great moments, though, because it did, in spite of the horribleness surrounding Zoom, Caitlin and Barry being an utter dumbass. Zoom's origin scenes are decently written to add some trauma to the crazy fucker's past. It's painted as the dark reverse of Barry's past, where Zolomon's father actually did kill his mother. But painting Zoom as just this psychopath from the get-go really felt like a really lazy way considering how much more tragic and conflicted Comics!Zoom was in comparison -- a former ally of the Flash who wanted nothing more than to be a good cop, was crippled and lost his wife in a Flash-Grodd fight, and begged Flash to change the timeline, and when Flash refused Zolomon obtained speed and resolved to get Flash to experience tragedy to properly 'mature', and starts targeting Flash's loved ones. Far, far more interesting than 'psycho man who got speed and wants to steal more speed', innit?

Credit where credit's due and let me praise the standout scenes here.

Cisco as Vibe was really impressive this episode, though, and that scene where he confides in Barry and has a huge lack of confidence in his own abilities could've been really cheesy and badly written, except that it's not, and it's a great example of how Flash's more optimistic tone really carries over well to heartwarming moments. Barry talking about how he's going to be there every step of Cisco's transition into Vibe by telling Cisco how they've always been there as Barry keeps discovering new powers as the Flash is really nice. They easily stole the show.

Joe and Wally coming into understanding as father and child worked pretty well too, mostly due to Joe's superb performance, but really felt superfluous in the face of the huge stakes going on in the rest of the episode with the coming of Zoom. It's mostly decent fun, though. And kinda builds up how soul-crushingly horrified Joe would be when Wally is kidnapped. The rest of our heroes really haven't interacted all that much with Wally, but Joe has considered Wally to be his son, and we (and Barry) are sad for Joe if nothing else. 

Barry also gets a power-up thanks to Eobard Thawne last episode, and with the wacky chest device he went so fast he randomly zipped into a different universe (a.k.a. Supergirl crossover) but returns within like a second. It's a nice way to facilitate that crossover, and it doesn't really break the show's progression. Barry's power upgrade allows him to fight Zoom on equal footing and actually outrun him on one point, and thanks to using, um, cardboard cutouts of Hunter Zolomon's parents... okay... yeah, that was kinda dumb and cool at the same time. They actually got Zoom nailed down, which is cool!

Less cool is Barry Allen pulling a Blofeld and ranting about how Zolomon has lost instead of knocking the fucker out and putting him in a cell. That was just dumb.

So yeah, other than those last couple of scenes that I mentioned -- Zoom's origin flashbacks, everything about Cisco, Joe and Wally, Barry vs Zoom round one -- this episode is messy, a bad retread and mostly just disappointing.