The Flash - 'Magenta'

"You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."

So, Supergirl looked at prejudice against immigrants this week, and now The Flash is going to take a swing at that diciest of topics: mental illness.

Frankie Kane is a troubled girl with an abusive foster father and, as it turns out, a tendency for her eyes to glow and metal objects to hit people who have hurt her. But before we look into this, date night.

Iris and Barry have their first date, which Iris insists be Flash free, because Barry is cool as he is. The date sucks, and has to be called off when a rift opens in the basement of STAR Labs, disgorging Harry Wells and his daughter Jesse, who now possesses a Speed Force connection. While Jesse undergoes tests in the Speed Lab, Harry quickly deduces - mostly from Barry's unfamiliarity with the Lab - that he's messed around with causality again, but he's more concerned with getting people to talk Jesse out of superheroing. Wally, meanwhile, is bummed out that he still hasn't got his Speed, despite the same dark matter kick Jesse got, and even tries to stand in traffic to kickstart the process.

"You're not wrong, Julian; you're just an asshole."

Back to Frankie. She is brought in to the precinct and shows signs of having blacked out during the attack. Barry notes that it is common for foster kids to suppress unpleasant memories, but Julian swipes her water glass and tests for an unidentified element that he found in the various skin husks. He finds it, and concludes that she is a metahuman, and tips off Barry that she got her powers from Alchemy. Julian proceeds to harrangue Frankie until she loses control, trying to crush him and throwing cops around to distract the Flash.

Team Flash discover that Frankie has a history of dissociative disorder, and we see as she confronts Alchemy that there is a villainous personality - Magenta - which wants to be free of Frankie. It was Magenta who made the deal with Alchemy to this end, although as with the Rival, Alchemy pushes for Magenta to do her own dirty work and achieve her own apotheosis. Now, this is of course part and parcel of a history of very dubious discussion of dissociative personality disorders in superhero fiction, but it's not handled badly. Frankie's condition is linked to abuse in the foster care system, and there's more than a hint that Magenta is the villainous Flashpoint version of her personality manifesting via Alchemy's timeline transference, perhaps taking advantage of the existing disorder.

D'aww.

The team consider that Alchemy may be restoring powers that existed in the Flashpoint, which is a cue for Harry to snark, although again he's distracted by the fact that his relationship with Jesse is disintegrating. It's Caitlin who suggests that perhaps it's time to support her, instead of protecting her, and when Barry confronts Magenta he gives Jesse his blessing to help. She takes the weight from Barry, literally, by maintaining a wind tunnel to stop Magenta dropping a boat on a hospital to kill her foster father, while Barry... talks.

He appeals to Frankie and talks her out of the dissociative fugue which gives the Magenta personality its foothold, and the team pretty unilaterally agree to let her slip away rather than handing her over to the police. Thus, all is made right, except that when she mentions the dreams which preceded Alchemy's offer, Wally looks like this rings a bell, so maybe it's not just that he doesn't have Speed, but that he's been dreaming of the world where he did. If so, maybe he'll be the next to make a deal, which could be a mistake, as Barry and Joe discover when they see footage of Clariss being murdered by an invisible force at Iron Heights.

So, yeah; as a superhero show talking about mental illness, and especially dissociative disorder, this could have been a lot worse. I approve of Team Flash not just punching the problem, and of Barry's realisation that setting the Flash aside means leaving a piece of himself at home for his dates, and that it is thus never going to work. Also, hurrah for Harry sticking around for a while to point out how bad Barry's plans are. We need this.