Jessie Robertson reviews the eighteenth episode of The Flash season 4…
So, DeVoe comes back with a vengeance this week and it puts Team Flash in a bigger bind than they were before, as hard as that is to believe.
Flash doesn’t make us wait after the tag scene last week when Harry seemed to be turning a bit dark, using Thawne’s old secret room and Gideon at his disposal. Joe conveniently notices Harry is acting weird and obsessed with his thinking cap and he steps into try and prevent anything bad happening when Harry snaps on his own friends. This too, figured into DeVoe’s plans when he reforms himself at the end, and pulls all the dark matter Harry promised not to use when the helmet fried on him. This is an interesting plot but I liked that I could draw distinct differences between Harry and Thawne and it just felt too close to the marker with this scenario. Maybe it will straighten itself out again.
The big moment this week is the moment Ralph has been dreading for a while; he actually did get killed by DeVoe after a brilliant bit of writing where all episode long, Ralph promised himself he would kill DeVoe and even fought Barry for the chance to do it. But, when the time came, he didn’t put him down; instead cuffing him in a pretty darn good character moment; as well as his death scene , telling Barry you’ve already changed my life. I also loved the bit about Ralph telling DeVoe big whoop every villain I come across is smarter than me, and none of them have taken me down yet. Except this time. I’m not putting Ralph in his grave just yet; I believe there may be a way back for the bus metas at the end of all this.
I want to also comment on the big fight scenes this week; besides the strange flaw in that when Barry and team were trapped in DeVoe’s lab, can’t he just run back? I mean, the guy lives in town, or I could be missing something? But, Joe taking on that Samuroid, and Iris, damn, Iris was a complete badass tonight stepping up and just outsmarting Marlize and taking that sword stab, man. I loved the callback to their tense scene at the courthouse earlier in the season as well. This episode was firing pretty well tonight and when Ralph held Caitlin and just said “Melt” and her Frost personal went away, crazy, crazy stuff.
All these cool moments make an episode they do not but they certainly do the comic book stuff correctly tonight, the cool fight scenes using powers and such. At this point, I can’t even remember what all powers DeVoe has and I think 12 bus metas may have been too many for the casual viewer to keep up with.
Rating: 7.5/10
Jessie Robertson
