The Flash S06E10 Review: DC's Who's Who

The Flash, Season 6, Episode 10: Marathon

I'm slowly catching up to the CW shows, but I actually watched multiple episodes of The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow prior to doing these binge-reviews. And the very first episode we start off post-Crisis is "Marathon", and I do think that it's pretty brilliant for Flash to actually have a simple villain-of-the-half season to beat up in the first eight episodes with the whole Bloodwork arc. Compare that to how Supergirl is very clumsily trying to basically do a reboot of their Leviathan storyline while also ignoring-and-also-acknowledging the events of the pre-Crisis storyline of this season, and I do like that we're basically starting fresh with a new season.

Like all of its sister shows, The Flash starts off with a huge rant about how things have changed after Oliver Queen merged all the Earths into a single Earth-Prime, and I think The Flash might be the only show that actually acknowledges the sheer amount of people that are lost during the merger. I mean, sure, everyone from Supergirl and Black Lightning made it into Earth-Prime okay, but what about all of the alternate-universe doppelgangers? Cisco brings it up, and we do get Harry Wells and Jesse Quick cited as some of the potential 'casualties' of the Earth-Prime merge, but at the same time, the writers are gleefully making use of the Crisis on Infinite Earths to basically rewrite and reboot many of the villains that... might not have been handled the best. Remember that terrible excuse of a Mirror Master a couple seasons back? Yeah, apparently he's basically shoved aside and we're pretending he either retired or no longer exists, because there's a new Mirror Master in town in Eva McCulloch, who is shaping up to be the big bad of the rest of this season.

Also, from what I'm getting with Cisco's talk about making a "Who's Who" guide, apparently while the broad strokes of previous seasons might be the same, a lot of the specifics regarding the minor characters might be different. I'm not sure how far they'll go, but at the very least, we're getting a reboot of Mirror Master and Dr. Light. Remember Earth-2 Linda Park, and how that version of Dr. Light is basically only good for an "evil doppelganger, shock!" one-note episode? Yeah. 

Anyway, my feelings about the Flash's tie-in with Crisis on Infinite Earths is still the same with that of Arrow. Crisis was supposed to be the big culmination of one of the biggest cliffhangers in the history of The Flash, with the red skies and Barry disappearing and stuff, and last year Eobard Thawne promises to show up 'next Crisis', and it's been the huge thing that has wrapped around our cast for the first half of this season and a not-insignificant portion of the previous one, and it's... it still basically amounts to other people doing the huge sacrifice instead of Barry.

This episode, though, at least gives us one last great tie-in to Crisis, and arguably a far more emotional goodbye to Oliver Queen than the actual final episode of Arrow. John Diggle pops over from Arrow to give Barry the last parting gift from Oliver -- the original Green Arrow mask, the same mask that, half a decade ago, Barry Allen himself told Oliver to wear to protect the people he loved. Throughout the episode Barry is basically obsessed and convinced that there's some message beyond the grave from Oliver, some last unfinished mission, some last enemy that Oliver never managed to defeat prior to his death, and Barry is basically convinced that due to some microscopic Batman-esque detail on the mask, someone is clearly utilizing Mirakuru to do what Deathstroke did... and it's not until they actually hit a dead end that Diggle manages to act all parental and mentor-like to Barry, telling him that, well, sometimes you just really have to let go. It's a great moment for Diggle, doing what he does best for Team Oliver, being the grounded, more down-to-earth member, as he reminds Barry Allen that, hey, Crisis is over, he doesn't have to zoom-zoom through all of his unfinished businesses anymore, and gives the sage advice that "life's a marathon, not a sprint".

Meanwhile, Iris and "Team Citizen" go up on an investigation spree on the newest big bad, McCulloch Industries, eventually going down a rabbit hole of a conspiracy theory and cover-ups and whatnot as they end up uncovering the name of the new metahuman organization that's menacing Central City -- Black Hole. They also become the target of the newest Dr. Light, Kimiyo Hoshi, who has this cool light-disintegration gun powered by her metahuman abilities. Iris is insanely hell-bent on exposing Black Hole in what's essentially a day, but ultimately she bit off more than she could chew, ends up putting herself and the unpowered Team Citizen in danger, and it's Papa Joe that ends up taking Diggle's place and telling Iris the same thing that Diggle tells Barry about taking things slow. Although, granted, Iris was kind of being dumb throughout at least the second half of the episode, being unnecessarily hostile when interviewing Joseph Carver. Kara Danvers could teach her a thing or two about not antagonizing a potential member of a secret assassin organization.

While some superhero intervention did basically cause Iris to get a bit of a 'win' against Black Hole, forcing the investigation to go on... but Iris snooping around ends up with her seemingly abducted by someone in a mirror. Well, that at least is interesting.

As usual, there are a bunch of C-plots running around, with Cisco (sans powers again now?) taking yet another sabbatical from the show to go around and do a bit of a recording session for all of the new metahumans to compile a brand-new DC's Who's Who, after a bit of a personal guilt-trip regarding how he gave up his powers and how he could've used them prior to the Crisis and whatnot. There's also some mystery about Nash, who carries a photo around with him and an alternate-universe Allegra, who's pretty obviously his daughter or something.

Ultimately, this is more of a taste of things to come, putting things in order about the whole Crisis stuff, giving us some great character bits with Barry, Iris and Cisco respectively growing a little bit more in this episode, and a pretty cool buildup to this season's villains. We'll see if Flash keeps this relatively decently strong streak for the episodes to come.

(Depending on how I feel, Flash, Supergirl and Batwoman episodes will be alternating on single-episode and dual-episode reviews.)


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• McCulloch Technologies, of course, is a reference to Evan McCulloch, better known to DC fans as the second and most prominent Mirror Master. CW's version of this character is a gender-lifted version called Eva McCulloch.
• Dr. Light, a.k.a. Kimiyo Hoshi, is based on the second Dr. Light in the comics. The comic book version of Kimiyo Hoshi was a superhero, however (a deliberate contrast to the first Dr. Light), and comics' Kimiyo Hoshi was transformed into the new Dr. Light by the Monitor during the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths in order to give the superheroes an edge against the Anti-Monitor.
• Black Hole is a terrorist organization that faced off against the Flash, led by Gorilla Grodd, that attempted to research and exploit the Speed Force, appearing in the pages of the 2016 Flash run.  
• Sterling Brooks is a recurring, once-a-season robber that has spent his past two appearances being beaten up by the Elongated Man. I didn't even realize he was a recurring character!
• "Who's Who" is actually the title of a DC comics character profile book first released in 1985, which would coincide with the release of the comic-book equivalent of Crisis on Infinite Earths.
• Barry and Diggle returns back to Slade's prison bunker in Lian Yu, and Oliver being there happened in season 3. Mirakuru, Slade's superhuman-steroid-drug that was instrumental in the second season, is also brought up multiple times. 
• Metropolis, Superman's stomping grounds, is mentioned by Diggle -- after all, Supergirl's Earth has been merged into Earth-Prime!
• Also as part of the merger with Superigirl, Obsidian Tech, a huge player in that show's current season, is also mentioned.
• Cisco mentions a bunch of older villains -- Edencorp, the Top, Rainbow Raider and Magenta. Glimpsed in his Who's Who binder, among others, include Abra Kadabra, Amunet Black, Block, Bug-Eyed Bandit, The Dominators, Girder, Gorilla Grodd, King Shark, Mist, Pied Piper, Trickster, Ultraviolet, Weather Witch and Weather Wizard. Due to the reflection from the binder's pages, though, there are some names I couldn't make out. 
• Cisco Ramon's chalkboards (which is a 'Version 52', because of course it's 52) is a massive plethora of Easter Eggs. The Arrowverse Wiki has a far better and more comprehensive list, but here's a list of some fun Easter Eggs:
• The new Earth-Prime map contains Arrowverse locations Star City (Green Arrow's city), National City (Supergirl's city), Fortress of Solitude (Supergirl/Superman's base), Gotham City (Batwoman's city), Central City (Flash's city), Metropolis (Superman's city), Freeland (Black Lightning's city), Zambesi (Amaya's country), Lian Yu (Oliver's island), Nanda Parbat (Ra's al Ghul's base), Corto Maltese (Malcolm Merlyn's island), Markovia (featured in Black Lightning) and Gorilla City (previously in Earth-2).
• It also contains Happy Harbor (base of the first Justice League base in the comics), Santa Prisca (Bane's prison island in the comics), San Monte (a very minor country visited in Action Comics #2), Qurac (a fictional middle-eastern country heavily featured in Suicide Squad comics), Kasnia (a different fictional middle-eastern country originating from the DCAU), Dinosaur Island (an island with dinosaurs featured in WWII comics), Tinasha (Batwing's base of operations in the comics) and Kooey Kooey Island (a sentient island from the pages of Justice League International)
• There's also a comprehensive timeline of the events of Earth-Prime, which is basically a massive mush of all of the events that have happened, chronologically, in Arrow, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl, Black Lightning and Batwoman. One of the more notable changes is the fact that the Earth-2 villains in season 2 got their powers from a singularity instead, and the Earth-X Nazis are retconned to be time-traveling Nazis.