The Flash, Season 4, Episode 1: The Flash Reborn
The last season of Flash is probably one of the most uneven seasons it has had, and having been given a couple of months to let the season digest, I find that there are so, so many things about season three of Flash that I just flat-out dislike. That's not to say that the season is unwatchable, or that individual episodes suck (Supergirl season one, I'm looking at you) but as a whole, it's easily one of the most blah seasons to come out of CW, and considering some of Arrow seasons, that's saying something.
So yeah. Season four of the Flash has the unenviable task of setting up the rest of the season and the rise of the seeming new big bad Thinker (which, thank god, isn't yet another evil speedster) and resolving the cliffhanger of the third season with Barry being eaten by the Speed Force... and, well, considering the title of the episode, my hopes for a season, or at least a half-season, with Wally West as Flash is dashed. Of course, I know I'm in the vocal minority for someone who really likes Wally's comic-book counterpart, and that Wally's show counterpart really hasn't done that much...
The episode starts off pretty great, though, with old season one metahuman baddie Peekaboo having to fight the combined forces of Kid Flash, Vibe, Joe's police forces and Iris taking over Cisco's role as mission control. We get some amazing visuals as Kid Flash zooms around a building and fights with Peekaboo -- and I could quite literally watch that sequence all day long. In addition to being a pretty sweet-ass action scene, it also sets up Iris as being the stern, demanding boss that throws herself wholeheartedly into being productive to not have to deal with Barry's loss (unfortunately causing me to feel a bit underwhelmed since I watched this right after Supergirl went through the same thing with Kara) and Vibe and Kid Flash, while being superheroes, not being... as optimal as Barry is.
Sadly, unlike Flashpoint early in season three, this one doesn't quite manage to capitalize on the new status quo. Other than some bits of establishing where everyone is -- Julian's returned to London, for example -- and having the Samuroid show up, knock everyone around and almost immediately everyone goes "OH MY GOD WE NEED BARRY!" without actually trying to do anything about it... well, Wally did around five minutes later, earning him some time in the red suit, but he gets his fibula sliced and almost immediately discarded aside.
While I have no illusions that the show will bring Barry Allen back, I really wished that we were given some time to at least allow the B-listers to do their thing. And the fact that most of the explanation for Barry's return was somewhat half-assed, with Cisco just using SCIENCE! to randomly make the speed force bazooka be able to bring Barry back (whatever happened to "someone must always be in the prison"?). Sure, we did get Barry go all crazy like he's seen some shit and all, but that doesn't feel good enough.
And a lot of the rest of the episode also feels like they're asspulling everything to make everything feel like they're returning to the same status quo. Caitlin's return is another example. I've always loathed how they decided to turn Killer Frost into an evil personality that takes over that thus frees everyone's favourite scientist from any moral culpability to have any agency in what Killer Frost does, and I always felt that Caitlin has been a bit of a mess throughout the second and third seasons. This episode, while not completely ignoring the Killer Frost angle (she transforms to beat up an asshole at the end of the episode that hints at another big enemy), basically turns her back into happy Caitlin, geeking about the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy with Cisco, and everyone just forgives her literally instantly.
And, hell, considering Wally's just basically "shittier Barry that can't even live up to Barry's example", it honestly makes me wonder just what is the end goal of his character in the Flash, or if he's doomed to just be a dude in a cool costume that hangs around forever but has a relatively static personality the way Roy Harper was handled relatively poorly in Arrow. Joe gets some great scenes with Iris and Barry in this week and Jesse L. Martin is consistently one of the strongest actors the show has, but at the same time I don't think a couple of great Joe speeches justifies the sudden transformation that Iris goes through.
We do get some token character development, with Iris having faith that Barry will return back to sanity and save her in a pretty convoluted fashion, and her... letting up on the obsessiveness she's been displaying earlier in the episode? I dunno. Whether it be Cisco, Iris, Caitlin or Barry, none of the character arcs displayed in this episode feel like they progressed naturally. There are so, so many great possible ways that an obsessed-with-bringing-Barry-back Cisco, a trying-to-move-on-but-failing-to boss-lady Iris, or a Caitlin trying to reconcile her two separate personalities could've been done in a way that is far, far more interesting than the truncated character arcs we got in this episode.
The Samuroid is... okay. He's a robot samurai with a katana that makes shockwaves, that's just around to draw Barry out for something that the mysterious Thinker wants to do, and we do get a particularly cool-looking scene of Barry bursting through Central City all the way to that awesome set-piece with the windmill generator things and ripping off the Samuroid's jetpack while saving Iris... but his purpose is just to be a huge huge threat to throw around Wally and Cisco so they have an excuse to bring Barry back. The Samuroid is delightfully silly-looking but everyone takes it seriously as a killer robot, and I do enjoy that zaniness. Thinker and his mysterious female partner seems to be going to be the 'episode villain machine' for this season, and I'm fine with that.
Oh, and I really, really love the visual effects that we got of out-of-control Barry. From him moving so fast to save Iris that the entire Pipeline cell just quite literally explodes and throws Joe out of the way, or when the portal opens to unleash Barry out of the Speed Force and he just rips through Central City until he stops in front of a random car? That's just some amazing stuff that's honestly just a variation of the normal 'Flash runs, lightning streaks behind him' stuff.
So yeah. The episode itself is a bit of a mess as it tries to dig itself out of the hole it's written itself in, backpedaling hard on some of the writing decisions they made in the previous season (and backpedaling on Caitlin is definitely something I support... but the execution is kind of poor), while trying to re-assemble the cast back into the original team (swapping out Harrison for Wally) and the original status quo, and while it's not completely horrible, I'm still very tenuous about the future of this show. I do still enjoy the actors involved in this show, though, as even characters like Kid Flash who doesn't have much to do can still deliver some great one-liners.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Thinker, a.k.a. Clifford DeVoe, is almost certainly the man we see at the end of the episode with wires attached to his head and saying "I'm thinking". We've talked about him before when I was reviewing season 3 and DeVoe gets name-dropped, but the original Thinker is an enemy of Jay Garrick's Flash is a particularly smart inventor whose best invention was the 'Thinking Cap', a hat that allows him to project mental force. Several other Thinkers have shown up down the line, including DeVoe's "son", who's a sentient A.I. created by the original Thinker.
- Samuroid is based on the Samuroids, which in the comics are the robotic minions of the villain Baron Katana (not to be confused with the superheroine Katana), and are indeed the enemies that Barry Allen has fought before.
- The mysterious "Amunet" that Caitlin refers to made me squee, because it definitely refers to one Amunet Black... but talking too much about her is going to be hard without spoiling who she is. I just really enjoy her from the Wally West Flash era of the comics.
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