After taking a week off so we could all watch the series finale of America, The Flash is back with an episode that had a lot going on. Wally gets a step closer to having his dreams of superspeed come true. Caitlin continues to deal with what to do about her newfound ice powers. Joe tries to have a social life. And a new villain, Shade, terrorizes Central City. With all of that happening, why did this episode feel so…slight?
Let’s start with the episode’s titular villain. The Shade was a villain of Flashes Jay Garrick and Barry Allen back in the Golden and Silver Age before he was reinvented by James Robinson and Tony Harris as a member of the Starman supporting cast. An ageless, morally ambiguous mentor figure to Jack Knight, The Shade developed a fierce fan following. I did not come to read and appreciate Starman until after the series had ended, but as I binged through the 82 issues plus tie-ins and miniseries, The Shade definitely made an impression on me as a deeply nuanced and fascinating character.
It’s a pity, then, that the ‘Shade’ who appears here is just a guy who can turn into a shadow.
More accurately, as HR (still struggling to prove himself to the team after being exposed as a fraud last episode) puts it when describing the Shade from his earth, he can vibrate so quickly that he ends up looking like a shadow. That…really doesn’t make any sense. Wouldn’t he just look like a blur? Basically yes, that is what he looks like – a black blur. I guess that constitutes a shadow. Anyway. Shade appears in exactly two scenes in this episode: in the first, he kills a stockbroker; in the second, he is defeated. Vastly underwhelming, to say the least. There’s no rhyme or reason to what Shade does in this episode. The person he killed wasn’t targeted for any reason, he was just a random guy. Likewise, when he strikes at movie night in the park, it’s random happenstance that our heroes happen to be there. Shade, it seems, just wants to watch the world burn. After Shade is defeated (by bright lights and some handy power dampening cuffs), the gang surmises that he was just a distraction from something else that Alchemy has up his sleeve, and therein lies the greatest disappointment. The show could have picked any d-list Flash villain to fill that role – Big Sir comes to mind as a more than viable option – but instead it went with a dumbed-down version of a beloved character. It’s easy to imagine The Shade, as he existed in the comics, being a season-long foil for The Flash and co. It’s a missed opportunity to throw him away as they did this week.
Of course there were more important matters to attend to this week, as one of our leads wants superpowers while the other is trying to figure out how to get rid of hers. The ongoing saga of Caitlin Snow and her name-appropriate ice powers continues, with Caitlin finally telling someone what’s going on. Unfortunately the person she tells is Cisco, which goes…okay. He has experience developing powers so he knows what it’s like, but when she asks him to ‘vibe’ her future to see if she becomes Killer Frost (as she did on an alternate Earth last season), he lies to her about the results and says he couldn’t see anything. In fact what he saw was himself – in full Vibe gear – fighting a Killer Frost-ed Caitlin.
Cisco’s not a total monster, and he’s supportive and promises her that they’ll figure out a way to help her, he’s also not so great at the whole ‘respecting other people’s wishes’ thing, and after confessing his lie to Caitlin in literally their next scene together, he basically forces her to tell the rest of the team what’s going on by bringing it up in front of everyone. What’s even more galling about the whole thing is that, later in the episode, Caitlin apologizes to Cisco for the way she acted. This is totally backwards: he’s the one who should be apologizing to her for outing her secret to her friends. We’re left again with a promise from Cisco to help Caitlin figure things out, but if you wanted to take a guess as to why Caitlin would ever turn evil and fight her best friend, his actions in this episode and her submissive reaction to them would be a pretty good start.
On the flip side of this is Wally West. He’s been having vivid dreams about having superspeed and fighting crime as Kid Flash, echoes of the Flashpoint timeline that Barry erased in the season opener. Barry and Joe rightly connect this to what Frankie Kane experienced before Alchemy gave her her powers, and they’re worried about what might happen to Wally if he follows suit. The gang at STAR Labs runs some tests on Wally and everything appears to be fine, and there’s some tension between Wally and Joe (who is adamant about not wanting Wally to have powers) over some lingering father-son issues. Just as those are resolved and Wally resigns himself to not having speed, he starts having painful seizures and visions of less pleasant Flashpoint memories: ones in which he dies at the hands of Edward Clarriss.
Fearing that Alchemy will try to come after Wally or otherwise take control of him, Wally agrees to be locked up in the Pipeline for safe keeping. While in his cell, Wally is contacted telepathically by Alchemy, who tells Wally that it’s time for him to take back his true destiny. A brief escape attempt ensues, and Iris ends up knocking out Wally with one punch, so even if he does get powers he should still probably take some fighting lessons from Oliver Queen before suiting up. Cisco and Caitlin determine that if Wally has any more seizures he could suffer permanent brain damage (also probably try not to get punched in the face by your sister so often), so the gang reluctantly agree to let Wally act as bait for Alchemy.
Backed up by The Flash and a group of CCPD officers that Joe has gathered, they head to the abandoned warehouse where Alchemy has been hiding out. Alchemy has been waiting for Wally, who approaches the man and his Philosopher’s Stone cautiously. With Alchemy’s guard down, The Flash and the CCPD bust into the room. The CCPD easily dispatch with Alchemy’s trio of hooded acolytes, while The Flash has some issues fighting Alchemy, who keeps blasting him with the Stone. A laser blast from Joe West puts Alchemy down and knocks the Stone across the room toward Wally, who eyes it.
As the police prepare to cuff Alchemy, Wally picks up the Philosopher’s Stone and becomes encased in some sort of a cocoon. At that same moment, a silver streak tears through the warehouse, knocking the CCPD around at speeds that only Barry can see. Alchemy and his goons escape while The Flash takes off in pursuit of the streak, ultimately finding himself pinned to the ceiling by an enormous silver hand. Barry finds himself face-to-face with a silver monster, a cross between Sauron from Lord of the Rings and a Bay-verse Transformer. The creature identifies himself as ‘Savitar, the god of speed.’ Cliffhanger!
The episode definitely ended with a bang, but the preceding hour that led up to it were sort of all over the place. Ultimately I think the slightness I mentioned before comes from the fact that, for all of the moving parts in this episode, it still doesn’t really feel like we went anywhere. The introduction of Savitar was intriguing, but the preceding 40 minutes didn’t ultimately add up to much. Shade was a waste of a villain. Wally ends the episode with a meeting with Alchemy that’s been a foregone conclusion nearly since the season’s beginning.Caitlin’s story moved forward more than it has, but still largely, as with most other things in the episode, through the implication of things to come. There’s big stuff going on with Caitlin and Cisco, and from the preview for next week’s episode it looks like that’ll be front and center very soon. Here’s hoping we get there sooner rather than later.