The Flash S06E04 Review: The Monitor's Secret Sewer Base

The Flash, Season 6, Episode 4: There Will Be Blood

I've actually done a bit of a binge-watch of The Flash and Supergirl over the past couple of days, am halfway through Arrow and Black Lightning's backlog, and hopefully we'll be ready to finally review Crisis on Infinite Earths within the next couple of weeks. I plan to maybe also catch up to Batwoman and Black Lightning by that point? Despite the lack of DC superhero TV reviews on my part over the past couple of months, it's an event that I'm unreasonably excited for. I'm remaining completely unspoiled over the apparently insane amounts of cameo that Crisis on Infinite Earths has, and I do love that at least two of the shows are intrinsically tied into the build-up to Crisis crossover.

The Flash is honestly just buying time until we get to the Crisis crossover in episode 9, by building up Ramsey "Bloodwork" Russo as this arc villain while also giving a bit of a focus on a member of Team Flash in the episodes leading up to it, which is pretty neat thematically even if it doesn't really work as well as it should. Last episode it was Killer Frost, and this episode it's Cisco.

Fresh off the revelation that Barry Allen's going to die and there's nothing they can do to stop it, as much as Barry and Iris have accepted it, none of the others are quite as willing to do so. Ralph spends a good chunk of his minor screentime being kinda somber; Joe manages to hold his own until that amazingly powerful scene at the end (he's Barry's dad, after all), but the focus of the episode is how Cisco is taking it, and that's by trying his damnadest to find a way to save Barry. And, to be fair, this is a team who spent nearly every second of every episode of season four basically saying 'fuck you' to the thought of Iris being destined to die to Savitar in the future. So yeah, you can definitely bet that Cisco's going to do whatever he can to stop his buddy from dying.

While Cisco's all trying to find a way to stop Barry Allen from dying, Barry himself is trying to train Team Flash to be prepared to take over from him when he's gone, and in Cisco's case it's by distracting him and getting him to help save a life -- Ramsey Rosso's, in this case. The audience, of course, knows that it's a fucking bad idea and that Ramsey's an utter psychopath that's being set up to be the main villain of the season (or at least half-season, if we finish dealing with him by episode 9), but there's something that's so Barry Allen in seeing him basically see Ramsey as a sad, frustrated man who he can help. Plus, hey, Barry thinks that this would allow them to cure at least one form of cancer. Which I'm surprised isn't higher in STAR Labs' super-genius scientists' to-do list.


Also while all of this goes on, our new mysterious and suspicious dimension-hopping Nash Wells shows up, and he quickly uses his plot device powers of plot devicing to tell our heroes that McCulloch Technologies has the tissue-replicating serum that can cure every disease by giving people tissue-replicating diseases, apparently lifted from the Dominator homeworld (!) after that whole alien invasion a couple crossovers back. Nash makes a deal with Cisco and Barry, directing them and helping in the heist to take the magic drug, in exchange for Cisco building him some sci-fi cyber-whatsit-plot-device-or-other.

The heist is pretty standard stuff, nothing super exciting, but Cisco ends up pickpocketing the serum because he wants to use it to save Barry instead of giving it to some other dude. Which is selfish as all hell, but you can kinda see where it's coming from. Of course, the fact that the serum needs to be kept at precisely minus fifteen degrees means that it's pretty quick for Barry to figure out that, hey, Cisco randomly has a new freezer set at minus fifteen degrees. It's kinda ridiculous, but at the same time Grant Gustin and Carlos Valdez's acting are pretty great in this scene. Barry's full of disappointment, but Cisco's indignation and defense, and later shame at realizing what he's done, are all done very well.

Meanwhile, while all of this is going on (and the Barry/Joe and Ralph/Iris storylines play out in the background), Ramsey Rosso, the random person that Barry's just trying to save because he's a god-dang superhero... is still doing psychotic experimentation with blood, trying to figure out just what made Mitch Romero tick in the previous episode. And in comes Barry with some alien goop and, hey, maybe we can avert this particular crisis, right? Except nope, the cure doesn't work for Ramsey, and he goes batshit insane... until he discovers that his metahuman blood-controlling abilities can cure him, but only if he drains blood from dead or dying people... and best of all, if they're in a state of fear. It's kind of over the top, but I'm not sure how much of it is actually true in the situation and how much of it is just Ramsey being a crazy mofo.

The episode's climax ends up with Ramsey going on a rampage in a hospital, killing a bunch of patients and doctors before finally culminating with him killing the doctor who failed to cure his mother. We get a neat stand-off between Ramsey against Barry and Killer Frost, and it's pretty heartbreaking to see just how much Barry's insistence that saving this random life is going to be worth it end up with Ramsey essentially becoming a supervillain. Some neat visuals in this scene, my favourite being the blood zombies crawling and gnawing behind Killer Frost's wall of ice. Ramsey's gone off the deep end at this point, ranting about how he's going to beat death itself and how his powers will mean everlasting life and whatnot. The episode ends with a bit of a downer with Ramsey revealing his identity as one of the more unhinged metahumans Team Flash has had to deal with, and it's... it's pretty neat buildup for the Ramsey storyline, I suppose, which will continue to run through the next couple of episodes. I think what makes Ramsey so much more effective as a villain is how organic his psychosis is built up, and most importantly, how he interacts with a couple members of our main cast. I didn't care much for him in his first couple of appearances, but his actor's certainly growing on me!

Oh, and speaking of the Crisis tie-in... Nash Wells is apparently on the trail of the Monitor (a Monitor?) and with Cisco's thing-a-ma-gig, it leads him to... a sewer in Central City. Because apparently CW's Monitor has something hidden behind a giant metal wall in the sewers or whatever?

Overall, though, a pretty solid episode. There's a sense of how a lot of these episodes are just biding time until we get to the Crisis, but honestly, I'm enjoying the "Flash has to train his buddies" storyline as well as Ramsey Rosso as a villain. Pretty neat stuff.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Swan Moon, the Dominator's home planet, is mentioned as the source of the plot device. It's a hilariously corny name for the homeworld of a race of alien invaders, and it's actually accurate to the comics!
• Killer Frost briefly talks about life "Post-Crisis", a term used by fans and DC comics itslef to refer to the state of the comics and mythology before and after the original Crisis on Infinite Earths. 
• Ralph dismisses the Sue Dearbon case by off-handedly noting that "it's not like we're going to get married". Sue Dearbon, of course, is Ralph's comic-book wife.