Continuing on with the ‘meta of the week’ structure that we are quite big fans of, this week The Flash didn’t even have a whiff of the new speedster about it, and showcased new powers we havent’ come across before. Somebody who can manipulate mirrored surfaces, Mirror Master (Grey Damon), and his partner in crime Top (Ashley Rickards) who seems to make things a bit spinny (like a spinning top…). They’re your generic bad guys, and best thing about them is that their three years earlier flashback brings back Wentworth Miller’s Leonard Snart/Captain Cold, who is always welcome!
Mirror Master traps Barry (Grant Gustin) in a mirror with his powers, and in order to get him out the team have to get the mirror to absolute zero, but they struggle to achieve it (yeah, we’re not really sure we followed the science there either, but it’s not called science fiction for nothing). Cue Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker) secretly touching the mirror and freezing it to get Barry out. The more they develop Caitlin’s powers the more excited we are to see which direction they take her in. Will she be Killer Frost? Or will she be a bad guy.
Elsewhere, and the light-hearted relief of the episode comes in the form of Caitlin, Cisco (Carlos Valdes) and Harrison Wells (Tom Cavanagh) sending out a message to the other Earths to find a new Wells to come and take the place of Dad!Wells (we’re going to keep going with this) so he and Jesse can go home. It’s the best part of the episode, mostly for seeing Cavanagh act out several variants of Wells. If this season saw him changing every few episodes to have a different personality we wouldn’t have a problem with it.
The eventual Wells they settle on is a bit of a, well, hipster. For lack of a better word. He’s wearing a ‘vest’ and bowler hat and he’s unlike any other Wells we have seen before. He only really comes in at the very end, so we’re looking forward to episode five to see what the situation is. We’re going to miss Dad!Wells though. He was on top form this week, Dadding all over the place with Jesse (Violette Beane) out helping Flash save the day as Jesse Quick.
Jesse and Wally (Keiynan Lonsdale) get closer, and it’s the sort of ‘teen romance’ the show didn’t really need. Of course, the main romantic outing this week came in the shape of Barry and Iris (Candice Patton) who have seemingly found their feet as a couple. There’s a couple of bumps along the way in the form of Barry and adoptive dad Joe (Jesse L Martin) finding it awkward if any sort of PDA occurs. It ends with Joe suggesting maybe it was time for Barry to fly the nest again, what with Joe now having Wally to fill the empty space that Barry came back home to fill in the first place. Joe also gets a hint of a love interest in Cecile (Danielle Nicolet) and it reminds us that he deserves to be the happiest man to balance out all the good that he does.
Once again, The Flash is stronger when it is concentrating on its character moments rather than the meta of the week, and the bad guys are ultimately forgettable (apart from the moment of Chilly Cait and the brief return of Snart), but its moments of fun deliver.
