The Flash has finally returned to our screens and as you might already know based on my posts on SFFWorld here, as well as on my blog where I covered the top five episodes from season one, I’m quite a fan of the show. It’s enjoyable fun that doesn’t require too much insight or analysis unlike Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D for example. With the return of Barry and team to our screens I was actually expecting to initially be treated to the Flashes struggles with the singularity and the potential for a multi-universe story line. Imagine my surprise when we were actually treated to the story and a character that was six months past that battle and one that was no longer a rumor but was in fact a fact for the citizens of Central City. The place he calls his home!
The Flash, perceived as a hero by the people of Central City due to his battle with the singularity (that was shown to us only in flashbacks) is not in fact the hero that everyone believes him to be – or perhaps he is, just not for the reason that everyone believes. While Flash was able to slow the singularity down, his speed was not sufficient to stop it. In reality the city was saved by the Firestorm – basically when Firestorm “came apart” (disassociated himself) in the midst of the singularity, it disrupted it and while Ronnie disappeared (seemingly dead – at least for now), the other half of the duo (Prof. Stein) was recovered. While the rest of the city has survived, the impact to our team was profound and the future that Barry now inhabits is one quite a bit more bleak than he would have earlier envisioned.
Barry himself has determined that the only way to keep everybody else safe, while continuing his battles, is to do it all by himself and he has become increasingly distant from the team. While he is successful it comes at a cost to his own soul, and in someways you can see the pain he’s carrying with the loss of Ronnie and the betrayal by Dr. Wells. Processing the scene of a murder at a power plant, he keeps to small talk with Detective Joe West (Jesse Martin) and quickly rushes off to process the evidence before the conversation can deepen. He tries to fill this void by repairing the damage caused due to the singularity during the night-time where he acts as a one-man construction crew, but this is hollow and when Iris tries to persuade him to attend the festivities the city is throwing in his honor as their savior, he refuses to attend as he doesn’t believe himself to be the hero that everyone thinks he is.
However when a new villain shows up in the midst of Flash day when Barry was about to be given the keys to the city he has a different struggle on his hands. This time the villain seems invulnerable to his speed and is superpowered in his own right where he is able to morph into a larger than life size person. With the ability to observe radiation he looks to be unstoppable and in Barry’s first and second encounters with him WWE’s Adam “Edge” Copeland – who portray’s Atom Smasher – manages to defeat Barry quite speedily (- sorry couldn’t resist!). The rest of the gang realizing that they cannot continue to let Barry function by himself step up to the plate and assist him in coming up with both a plan and a trap for the villain. This time they are able to stop him by overdosing him with radiation – in essence killing him. However Barry discovers that Atom Smasher was nothing more than a patsy and he’s working for Zoom – someone that promised to “take him home” (Earth 2 … are my hopes for a multi-universe storyline still alive?) if he killed the Flash.
We also had a visit (albeit virtual) by Dr. Wells who has given Barry a video taped confession where he admits to killing Barry’s mom enabling Barry’s dad to finally leave prison. Finally after 14 years Henry Allen (John Wesley Shipp) has been released and one of the key underlying plot points of Season One has been closed.
OK so with the brief recap done let’s do a quick run through of the positives and negatives at least in my eyes.
- Firstly skipping the whole singularity storyline and the possibilities inherent there. I can understand why they did it as in all honesty it could’ve gotten extremely complicated with multi universes and things along those lines however as a bit of a geek and comic book fan it’s something I would’ve dearly liked to see.
- Wells’ confession is actually I would say in character for the Dr. Wells we saw and something that does give closure to season one and the whole struggle to free Barry’s dad from jail.
- The way or what happened after he got out of jail just doesn’t work for me. Which father would just leave after being away from his son involuntarily for 14 years? It really just doesn’t work. I mean I understand he couldn’t be one of the return characters and have a home with Barry. Sure that doesn’t work either but perhaps keep them together for at least one or two episodes and then move him out something like that? Joe and Henry – Barry’s dads – had their own relationship and in less than 5 minutes it seems he’s completely out of the story? It almost would have been better if Wells had never made the confession and he’d remained in prison.
- The death of the Ronnie was for me unexpected but I know based on what we’ve already seen with the Legends of Tomorrow he will be back – or at least the character of Firestorm – so that removes quite a bit of the pain that I would otherwise feel.
- The death of Atom Smasher … wasn’t expecting this one either as he normally goes out of his way to capture the villains and this is the first time I’ve seen him deliberately kill one.
This show was darker than what I’m customarily used to from Flash, and while I didn’t like everything there was enough to keep me engaged. I hope that they don’t go too dark with the Flash as we’ve already got Arrow exploring those boundaries and its nice to have a “family” comic book show to share with the kids!
