Iris West, ace reporter, chasing after a story and Barry Allen racing to her side after the most epic trust fall ever. It felt like a classic Flash moment ripped straight from the comics and it’s truly a testament to how dedicated the show is to recapturing the tone of the comics that they can slide in great bits like that without even having them be the focus of the episode.
Of course, it didn’t take long after that for the main plot get going as Golden Glider soon appeared to ask Team Flash to help her save her brother from their father. One of the recurring problems in THE FLASH is that its villains are often underdeveloped and forgettable, so it was a refreshing change to take a closer look into the family history and motivations of the Rogues.
Wentworth Miller is always enjoyably hammy as Captain Cold, but in this episode he was able to show a more subdued and conflicted side of Snart. It’ll be interesting to see where the character goes in LEGENDS OF TOMORROW, but one hopes we’ll still be seeing plenty of him on THE FLASH. It’d be a shame for the show to finally flesh out a villain besides Reverse Flash only to ship him off to a spinoff. And there’s plenty of dramatic material just waiting to be milked out of Barry and Snart’s tenuous "fr-enemy" dynamic.
Then there was the more vulnerable and heroic side from the other Snart sibling, Golden Glider, especially during her interactions with Cisco. While the two of them have had some sly flirty moments in the past, in this episode Cisco and Lisa were able to form a genuine bond as she opened up about her troubled childhood and even placed her very life in Cisco’s hands. It was a little odd there was no fallout from Cisco’s near breakdown last episode, but there’s no denying it’s fun to watch him and Lisa together and their goodbye kiss was a very sweet moment for the episode to close on.
Barry and Patty, this episode’s other budding romance, fared less. Patty’s been a welcome addition to supporting cast, but she works better as a member of the meta task force than as Barry’s love interest. She lacks the easy chemistry with Barry she has with Joe and the two characters are so similar it feels more like a person and their echo than two people having an actual conversation. If the show really wants to move forward with a Barry/Patty romance, it’s going to need more of a dynamic beyond two people parroting each other.
Joe, meanwhile, was dealing with his ex-wife’s Francine’s sudden reappearance and new desire to meet with their daughter; in spite of the fact Iris believes her to be dead. I was worried as soon as it was revealed Joe had yet again been lying to Iris that we’d see a repeat of last season where the secret is obnoxiously dragged on and on, but happily it only takes Joe to the end of the episode to come clean to Iris. In that way, it was almost a chance for Joe and Barry (who gives Joe the encouragement he needs to talk to his daughter) to show how much they’ve grown after a season of lying and keeping Iris in the dark. Jesse L. Martin and Candice Patton give predictably strong performances, and their revelation scene is one of the episode’s emotional high points. While it’s hard to see how the West family subplot fits into the larger season arc, hopefully it'll become clearer after Iris and Francine finally meet in the upcoming episodes.
The cliffhanger ending with Professor Stein seizing and activating his Firestorm powers feels a bit repetitive after seeing the same thing happen last week (it might have been better to have come up with a different excuse for keeping him out of the action this episode and save the surprise), but it’s still exciting to see them diving into the Firestorm plot line so soon. And he’s not the only one we’ll see back in action now that Earth-2’s Wells has made through the portal. It’s only a matter of time before he has a confrontation with Barry.
Here’s hoping it’s sooner rather than later.
Written by Kaitlin Roberts, THE FLASH Beat Writer