The Flash - 'Rogue Air' and 'Fast Enough'

One of these things is not like the others...

Team Flash finally locate Eddie and Reverse-Flash under Star Labs itself, but are distracted from a capture when Wells/Thawne releases Peek-a-Boo (seriously, I was sure that I misremembered that name.) This in turn leads to Barry's realisation that with the particle accelerator charging up and no means of stopping it, the metahumans imprisoned in the Pipeline - the Mist, Deathbolt*, Weather Wizard and Rainbow Raider - are doomed if he doesn't move them. The Excellent Plan that Can Not Fail(TM) is to transport them in a power dampening truck (MacGuyvered in a day by Cisco from a power booster in Wells' wheelchair, despite also complaining that he doesn't get future tech) with Captain Cold as his backup. Funnily enough, this goes wrong, and Snart and his sister break out the bad guys, but keep them from murderising Team Flash, in order to garner favours all around.

I'm also nerd enough to be delighted to see the Reverse Flash
rocking the super-compressed suit-in-a-ring.

I am pleased to see that this episode finally confronted the fact that Team Flash is operating a completely illegal and unregulated prison. In particular, Joe is clearly unhappy about it and points out that shipping them to Oliver Queen's island prison for metahumans is going from 'one illegal black site to another.' When it all goes wrong, Barry admits he was trying to be the tough call guy like Oliver, and it was good to see Joe affirming that the difference between the two is that Barry isn't the tough call guy; he never has been.

Hey hey, the gang's all here (apart from Atom, Canary, Red
Arrow... Okay, whatever, it's kinda awesome.)

In what is practically a stinger to the main episode, Barry calls on Firestorm and the Arrow to team up with him and lay an epic hurting on the Reverse Flash. It's an excellent fight scene, and emphasises the ensemble feeling both of the show on its own and of the shared universe of Arrow and The Flash. It gives a real sense that there is more going on away from Starling and Central Cities; that the shows inhabit two corners of a big world. Similarly, there's a fun teaser when they try to fly the metahumans out of the old Ferris Air strip, which was closed down when one of their test pilots disappeared.

This episode is mad keen on its ensemble shots.

The Flash completes its first season, and its first arc, in 'Fast Enough'. The Reverse Flash is in captivity, but his machinations continue as he makes Barry an offer that he can't refuse: Enable him to return to his own time and the same act will give Barry the ability to go back in time and save his mother, creating a new timeline in which he grew up with both of his parents.

Once again, the show leans on the strength of its ensemble, and even this momentous decision is not all about Barry. Joe tells him to go for it, but we can see it cutting him apart inside, and Barry is a thoughtful enough hero to realise that getting his mother back means losing his second father. Of course he goes for it in the end, but there's a catch; in going back he creates a wormhole that Thawne can travel through, but if he isn't back in time, it will collapse into a singularity and destroy the planet. They also have to build Thawne a time machine.

Science ensemble!

Barry makes the jump back in time, but sees his older self warn him not to interfere, leaving nothing for him to do except comfort his mother as she dies, then go back through the wormhole to punch Reverse Flash in the face. Once again, Thawne hands him a smack down sandwich, but then Eddie makes a bold throw and shoots himself in the heart (in this world a ticket to a lingering death with time to bid farewell to loved ones, as we also see with Nora Allen's cardiac stabbing,) thus severing the bloodline which would create Eobard Thawne 134 years in the future.

And here's where I start to feel short-changed by this resolution. Thawne is born in 2145, but refers to the people he kills as having 'been dead for centuries'. He also apparently fought Barry in the unthinkably far-flung future of 2024 before they came back in time, 121 years before his time. That he disintegrates without ever giving us a chance to find out why he hated the Flash, why he apparently came back in time to fight him in his own time, feels like a gip.

Are we just supposed to accept this? To take this disappointment without the slightest hint of an ongoing arc that might explain...

All right; this round goes to you, The Flash.

Oh, and then the wormhole collapses anyway and we end with Barry plunging into a black hole to try and 'unspin' it (which I'm pretty sure is not how black holes work.

So, that was the first season of The Flash, which overcame its villain of the week beginnings to build a strong arc, even if it did take a little too long to confront the darkness of the Pipeline. I'm looking forward to next season, and wondering how they're going to take Caitlin from happily married to Ronnie (and if the Professor is a Rabbi, does that mean that Firestorm can conduct weddings?) to Killer Snow without derailing both characters, and whether Green Lantern and Jay Garrick will make an appearance.

* Who confused the hell out of me, since I haven't been keeping up with Arrow.