I’d also like to give a special shout out to Carlos Valdes. Aside from Barry, Team Flash was trapped in a cage for two-thirds of the episode, which doesn’t exactly scream “entertaining.” But the scenes never felt dull or flat and that was largely due to Valdes’s performance. Between his always amusing one-liners, his creepy Solovar possession, and his heart-wrenching offer to sacrifice himself in order to stop Grodd, Cisco brought a real sense of humanity to a larger than life story.
Back on the main earth, things were much quieter, though no less emotional. Instead of hopelessly trying to compete with the spectacle of Gorilla City, the Earth-1 storyline was character-centric, wisely focusing instead on the budding romance between Wally and Jesse rather than giving us a token meta-baddie. Their relationship up until this point has been mostly cutesy puppy love, so it made for an interesting change of pace to see the two actually at odds with each other.
It does feel like they’re condensing the development of their relationship a bit to get Jesse to the point where she’d move earths to be with Wally, but Keiynan Lonsdale and Violett Beane have enough chemistry that it works. While I’d love to see Jesse become a full-time member of the team, it seems unlikely that the already crowded Team Flash would add another teammate at this point in the season. I wouldn’t be surprised if Savitar’s upcoming return throws a wrench in the whole plan.
In contrast with our resident speedster romance, Julian and Caitlin, the other main couple of the episode, ended up being pretty tedious to watch. There wasn’t any point to Julian’s presence on the rescue mission; all he seemed to do was act as Caitlin’s helicopter boyfriend and fret about her becoming Killer Frost. Julian’s character worked much better when he was Barry’s work fr-enemy and had a grudge against metas; since joining the team he simply hasn’t had anything to do. Turning him into Caitlin’s boyfriend of the season has made him a much more bland and generic character. Furthermore, Caitlin’s story lines tend to get swept up in whoever she’s dating, and I would hate for Killer Frost to become nothing more than an obstacle keeping her and Julian apart. The series has been building up to Killer Frost for quite a long time, and it deserves to be something that affects the entire team, not just Julian.
We still have another week of gorilla goodness left, and it looks like Grodd will be taking over the invasion force to Earth-1. Solovar, however, was notably left alive at the end of Part 1, even if he’s been taken down a peg or two. More speedster vs gorilla action is guaranteed, but could we also be getting some gorilla on gorilla fights? That certainly would be one way to up the spectacle.
Written by Kaitlin Roberts, THE FLASH Beat Writer -- Click to read Kaitlin's posts
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