The Flash, Season 4, Episode 23: We Are The Flash
Well, that ending is certainly... different, yet basically what everyone expected. As has been telegraphed all season long, all you need to win is love and emotions and all those touchy-feely stuff. And, of course, Ralph Dibny gets rescued after the Thinker takes over his body (no word about the other metahumans, so I guess they're all flat-out dead?), Marlize joins Team Flash for this finale, the Enlightenment is stopped and DeVoe is defeated. It's honestly feels like the finale is just going through the motions at some points, and DeVoe has devolved into such a boring and simple generic final boss that not even Neil Sandilands' performance can make me really care about Thinker as a character.
But on the other hand, at least we went with something different. Cecile is about to give birth, but her mental powers are the only thing that will allow Barry to stop Thinker through some wacky 'journey into the mind' shenanigans. It's a bit more exciting than straight-up fisticuffs and running as Barry runs around in DeVoe's mind to try to find whatever 'good' part of DeVoe that's left. That good DeVoe has been murdered, apparently, but Barry manages to team up with Ralph, and fighting a bunch of illusory mental DeVoe things, they manage to kick DeVoe's... soul? Out of Ralph's body. DeVoe spends a bit of time basically taking over his chair, bur Marlize apparently kills DeVoe by ripping out his CPU or something.
Oh, and we've got falling satellites and the Flash, Vibe and Elongated Man go around to save the city from the falling debris. Somewhere between that, the mysterious future speedster helps out. Oh, and Cecile gives birth to her daughter while all this is happening, Cisco manages to fix Harry's mind (although he's not super-smart anymore, basically brought down to a normal, stable human) and Caitlin... hallucinates about something something Thomas?
Overall, it's honestly not the most exciting climax or final battle. The stakes are there, sure, but all the plot twists are so terribly and obviously telegraphed from a couple of episodes away, and injecting the randomly inconvenient delivery of Cecile's baby doesn't really add much other than a cheap effort to go "guys, it's so tense, right?"
The episode ends with everyone celebrating the good that they've done. DeVoe is defeated, Ralph is alive, Harry is restored and emotionally healthy (although he scampers off to Earth-2 to meet his daughter), Cecile has a baby... and then the mysterious speedster arrives, introduces herself as Nora Allen, Barry and Iris's daughter... and sheepishly admits that she made a mistake. I guess fucking up the timeline is genetic, huh? It's nowhere as dark as the endings of Flash's previous two seasons, though, and there's the ongoing mystery of the words that Barry repeats after his original exit from the Speed Force (apparently he's parroting what Harry and Nora are saying this episode), and whoever 'Thomas' is... but honestly? This season of Flash has been so terribly uneven with so many preditcable and bland storylines and a main villain that was stretched on and on and on with a characterization that is extremely inconsistent and flat at times. Whereas Arrow suffers from randomly changing the main villain halfway through the season and ending off unsatisfactorily with a half-baked villain, Flash suffers from stretching a villain without much content for way too long.
Hopefully, next season will be better. This episode was all right as a conclusion and as a final battle sequence, I suppose, but it's just so predictable and honestly boring that I can't get worked up to be excited while watching this.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- In the comics, after the original Clifford DeVoe died, his successor, the fourth entity to be known as the Thinker, is indeed a highly intelligent computer program based on imprints of DeVoe's mind. Instead of being DeVoe himself, this second Thinker identifies as DeVoe's "son". With DeVoe reduced to a computer program, it seems to be a nod to this storyline.
- The future Speedster who everyone thought was Dawn Allen is identified as Nora Allen, daughter of Barry and Iris. In the comics, Nora is a minor character featured in the Justice League: Legacy possible future in DC's Rebirth imprint, as part of a group of the Justice League's future children. Nora Allen is the speedster taking the name Cruise, and is the daughter of Barry Allen and Jessica Cruz, the nwewest Green Lantern.
- Wally returns from his migration to Legends of Tomorrow, and references the events of the latest season.
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