THE FLASH Season 4 Episode 20 Review: Therefore She Is

Having a love life is hard if you’re a super, as nearly every superhero adaptation ever made has delighted in pointing out. While Barry and Iris’s continue to maintain their “gold standard” status, not every couple is so lucky, as we saw twice-over this week with both a heroic and a villainous couple falling prey to the curse of a supers’ romance. First off, we have Cisco and Cynthia who, after an embarrassingly on-the- nose subplot about not being able to use their powers together because they were out of sync, decided to call it quits due to long-distance. While living in different dimensions would undoubtedly cause its fair share of relationship headaches, this feels like a very awkward moment for a break up. Despite ostensibly being together for the whole of Season Four, we as an audience have only seen the pair interact as a couple in two prior episodes. Even during Cynthia’s long absences from the show, Cisco never really mentioned her or alluded to their relationship status; there certainly wasn’t any prior sign that they were having serious issues commuting until it suddenly became relevant to the plot because of Breacher’s job offer. 

 Which begs the question-- why even bring the two together if they were going to fizzle out so quickly? Almost the exact same plotline played out earlier this season with Wally and Jesse, another couple who broke up before getting the chance to be truly together. Thankfully, this second time around was a little more organic; the break-up taking up a whole episode rather than an opening scene meant that Carlos Valdes and Jessica Camacho both had the chance to really act their hearts out and wring every drop of angst they could from their goodbye. But even so, you can’t help but scratch your head how willing THE FLASH is to immediately write off people and relationships it spends seasons developing, seemingly on the turn of a dime. 

Not that this is the case for every character on the show! Lately Marlize DeVoe has had almost the exact opposite problem, what with the agonizingly slow death of her and Clifford’s marriage dragging on week after week. That fact that she not only got to leave but steal back the technology she made for the Thinker was satisfying to watch. Although, given what he learned this week about the Thinker’s true endgame, his continued use of any tech seems a little odd. I can’t say his vow to wipe out all modern advancements makes sense or fits with what we’ve seen previously, but at this point I’m just happy he actually has a concrete motive, silly though it may be. I’m not sure how many more vaguely sinister allusions to the Enlightenment I could have taken. 

With DeVoe’s masterplan cleared up, the biggest question mark left is undoubtedly Jessica Parker Kennedy’s “Mystery Girl”. The purple and gold speedster lightning we saw in the episode tag seems to visually confirm that she’s the daughter of Barry and Iris, but there’s still no real hint as to why she came to this time period or what her goals are. It’s hard to imagine how time travel, along with other balls still in the air like Caitlin’s Killer Frost woes and Harry’s degenerative disease, will come together to form a coherent storyline for the season. At times it feels like every character is off in their own little corner, without ever having their journey factor into the main plot, although matters have improved recently with Cecile’s pregnancy telepathy at long last finding its way into the main plot after being treated mostly as a prop for comedic relief. Still, time travel has been a key element of the show from the beginning, and while Barry’s hesitance to use it after Flashpoint is understandable, it feels like the right time for it finally to come back into focus.

Written by Kaitlin Roberts, THE FLASH Beat Writer

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