Of course, Black Siren, Laurel Lance’s Earth-2 doppelganger and Zoom’s new right hand, was capable of causing enough destruction for several armies, which left Barry with plenty to keep him occupied. A lot of fans, including myself, were excited to see Luarel make an appearance in some shape or form after her character’s untimely death in Arrow, but in the end her presence was rather over-hyped. Katie Cassidy’s a strong actress and delivered a fine performance, but she wasn’t given much material to work with. Her role could have easily been filled by any of the other villains of the week THE FLASH has had; unlike with Killer Frost and Reverb, there wasn’t any interaction that packed an extra punch because it was a version of Laurel, likely because Laurel never had much interaction with any of Team Flash. In the end, her appearance was more of a fun Easter Egg than a key plot point.
While Black Siren was the only one of Zoom’s henchmen seen up close, we did get brief “reappearances” of Killer Frost and Reverb when Caitlin and Cisco went undercover. Truthfully, I was rather disappointed the two hadn’t miraculously been faking their deaths the whole time, considering all the unexplored character potential they had, but it was fun seeing Caitlin and Cisco try to do their best evil impressions, and the levity helped keep the episode from becoming total gloom and doom. And the situation actually led to Cisco unlocking a new ability; given how almost all of his new powers seem to emerge when he’s backed into a corner, it will be interesting to see if Cisco continues to do more field missions in the future. While Cisco’s often the most valuable “behind the scenes” member of the team, it seems like the hands-on approach is the only way he’s capable of expanding his increasingly useful superpowers.
In the midst of all this chaos, Wally’s lingering guilt over being captured by Zoom finally came to head as he began acting as a small-time vigilante of sorts by chasing after crooks in a touching attempt to prove both to himself and the Flash that he was “worth being saved.” It was pretty impressive that he was able to accomplish so much seemingly without any powers; at this point, I suspect the show is intending to use Wally and Jesse activating their speed as a hook in the finale to lead into the next season, in a similar manner to how Cisco learned of his powers in last season’s finale. In any event, the fact that Barry clearly approves of Wally’s heroics, to the point of even contradicting Joe, whose opinions Barry normally takes as gospel, seems to be laying the foundation for Barry to take him on as a partner sometime in the near future.
In contrast with Wally’s angst-driven need for redemption, Barry this week was, as Cisco aptly put it, “walking on sunshine” after his time in the Speed Force. In some ways this response does like an understandable reaction to finding out the fundamental forces of the universe are on your side, but Barry acting so confident and happy-go- lucky also had the unfortunate side effect of making it extremely obvious his newly returned father Henry wasn’t going to make it to the end of the episode. But in spite of being a rather predictable twist, the scene was still quite emotional; John Wesley Shipps and Grant Gustin have always had excellent chemistry, and their last moment together was a wonderful example of how tender and selfless their father-son relationship often was.
One thing that didn’t quite gel in this scene however was Zoom’s new obsession with proving Barry is just like him, which is apparently what drove him to kill Henry. It doesn’t seem to tie in at all with what we know about his motivations, but then again, there is still quite a lot with regards to Zoom that we’re in the dark about. Even if all the loose ends get addressed next week, it may very well be too little too late the character; having a character be mysterious is a fine way to draw audiences in, but unlike with the Reverse-Flash, there doesn’t seem to be enough meat to Zoom’s character to keep viewers interested. Consequently, even though the stakes at the end of this season are lot higher than they were at the end of last season’s, the conflict feels a lot less epic, simply because Zoom has been more of a looming shadow than an actual presence in the show. Even Zoom doing something like killing Barry’s father feels more like a random attack by a stranger rather than something that came out of a heated conflict between the two arch-foes.
While the finale promises to be quite the spectacle what with the implosion of Earth-2 and possibly other dimensions, the sheer impersonal nature of the Barry vs. Zoom fight makes it hard to hope we’ll get some substance to go with all this style.
Written by Kaitlin Roberts, THE FLASH Beat Writer -- Click here to read Kaitlin's posts
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