Now it finally feels like season two of The Flash has begun! With the season premiere not impressing me much, Flash of Two Worlds did a great job at setting up the direction for this season. We get introduced to a few new characters, see some exciting action and we even got to see Barry learn a new power! Sit back and relax while reading this zoom-in because it’s way more positive than last weeks. Well… kind of.
1. Boo hoo my name is Barry Allen and I’m the most nontrusting man alive. I get it. I get what the writers are trying to do with Barry’s character this season. He put his trust in Harrison Wells and got betrayed, tricked and lied to the whole time and now we isn’t going to let that happen again. I’m not sure if it’s the writing or poor direction towards Grant Gustin but I’m not buying Barry’s act the way the writers are wanting me to buy it. I felt like he was way too harsh towards Jay Garrick (who’s obviously a sweet heart) and in the end was way too easy to win over. I do get that maybe I’m biased to the fact that I know Jay is a good guy, but I really hope they stop with this pessimistic nontrusting Barry and give us happy go lucky Barry again.
2. Gosh darn it Patty Pivot is swell! I’m being serious though when I say that Shantel VanSanten is incredibly charming in her new role. Sure I get that her character will probably be nothing but smiles for just this episode, but I really hope they keep her uplifting personality for the rest of the season. I really liked how they explained why she wanted to join Joe’s Metahuman Task Force which also linked her to the Weather Wizard brothers. While I guess I believe her strong drive to be on the task force, I have a hard time believing that a double or triple major with science degrees would become a street level cop. I guess the degrees came before her father died, and the drive to become a cop came after. That’s what I came up with that eases my mind on her character. Overall I’m excited to see what they’ll do with Patty and how she’ll grow. Also The Flash needs a hot and heavy romance like that of Olicity.
3. Professor Stein is gaining my admiration more and more since he’s taken over Dr. Wells’ role as the smart older guy in S.T.A.R. Labs. This episode did a solid job explaining the multiverse and the two Earths as well as set up the ’52’ portals from other worlds that will need closing. I’m not sure if they just threw 52 in there as a wink to the comic fans, or if there will really be one portal for each of the 52 worlds in the multiverse. Stein was fun to listen to as he explained the theories and his interest in Cisco‘s problems made me start to like the guy… then they gave him a freaking heart attack or something! Why? I get that Stein is supposed to be in Legends of Tomorrow but I’m starting to like him being in The Flash! I will dislike this show a bit if they get rid of Stein just so he can be in LoT.
4. ZOOM! Or as he’s called in the comics, ahem, Professor Zoom! We got not one but two appearances of Zoom in this episode. I’m not talking about a blur with blue lightning, I’m talking about a blurry guy in a dark grey Flash suit with blue lightning. This was actually really exciting, as well as promising for the rest of the season and my hopes to see Gorilla Grodd become the true big bad. If they’re showing Zoom so early in this season, I’m hoping that he’ll be a first half season focus and not the antagonist the whole season. Zoom, while blurry, kind of looks almost like a Black Lantern Flash with the kind of slits in his mask where the mouth should be. Zoom’s eyes didn’t glow either, so they’re trying to differ Zoom to Reverse Flash as much as they can, but the fact that Zoom tried to vibrate his hand into Jay Garrick‘s chest didn’t help in that department. I was worried when CW started using all of this blue lightning for Zoom that we were going to be getting The Blue Flash from the comics, but I don’t think that now… kind of. I’m going to guess that they mixed Zoom and The Blue Flash into one character. My prediction is that Zoom will end up being Barry Allen from another world. While I don’t have much evidence for it yet, nor a motive, I just think that’s going to happen. Stay tuned and comment “LOL U WER RONG!” in 6 months if I get it wrong.
5. Anyone getting the Vibe that Cisco’s story is about to get really awesome? See what I did there? If so, you’ll know that Cisco now has powers! While they haven’t done anything too exciting with them yet, they’ve given him a slight bit of extra-cognitive powers that let him see things that have happened in the past, including the time Harrison Wells killed him. This power was crucial to the team finding Patty when she got captured by Sand Demon which was a bit “deus ex machina” for this episode, but knowing Cisco is gaining super powers makes this okay. I hope they don’t draw his ascension out for too long this season. I also loved that in almost every scene that Cisco was in that didn’t include a mind meltdown, he nailed the delivery of his comedic dialog. I hope they continue to balance funny Cisco with super Cisco the way they did in this episode.
6. So Sand Demon huh? I bet a lot of people out there were thinking… Isn’t that the guy from Spider-Man 3? Yea. Pretty much, just the DC version of the guy without the sweet backstory of trying to help his daughter. In terms of CGI Sand Demon was a huge improvement from last week’s villain of the week Atom Smasher. While his evil plans weren’t really the best, I liked that they picked this villain as an excuse to teach Barry his bad ass new lightning throwing powers. While that’s great, I think they should have made a bigger deal about Barry having to actually straight up kill Sand Demon in this episode, causing him to turn into a poor CGI ceramic man to be shattered into a few dozen chunks… reminds me of that time Captain Cold killed a guy in a theater the exact same way. Oh well I guess it’s okay when the person shattering is a bad guy! Maybe they took a broom and a dust pan and swept him up and put him in a cell for a later day. I hope so!
7. The final scene in this episode was actually extremely fun. We actually see Earth-2 in it’s strange kind of futuristic 1950’s cityscape with it’s golden trains and people dressed like they are on the set of Mad Men. Speaking of mad men, Earth-2 Harrison Wells appears. Why? Who knows. I kind of wish they would give us a few episodes without Wells appearing at this point. Since this Wells is the Earth-2 Wells and not the Wells that got body snatched by Eobard Thawne, I don’t see what the big deal is. I guess it’s just that he exists there for future use.
So this episode really kicked the season off for me. With the subplots becoming more clear with Jay teaching Barry his moves, Joe’s ex-wife showing up in the end of the episode, and a cool scene showing The Green Arrow‘s broadcast on a television showing the immediate parallels of the CWU. With the explanation of the two worlds out of the way and the introduction to all of the dimensional portals all over Central City, I’m excited to see the doors open with a lot of possibilities for this second season of The Flash. This week in the battle between The Flash and Arrow, I crown The Flash as the winner! For my revier of Arrow – The Candidate click here!