The Flash S:01 E:22

Episode Title: Rogue Air
Original Airdate: 5-12-15

As the show teases its way towards the climactic encounter between Eobord Thawne and Barry Allen it takes one final moment to inject a little bit of chaos into the mix as Barry and the team have to figure out a way to transport the five meta-humans contained in their particle accelerator slash prison before it comes back online and kills them all. It brings a whole different level of conflict than we would usually see in these types of shows and brings together a couple friends for a pretty epic fight to bring things to a close.

Whenever you’re dealing with a superhero that works outside of the law, there’s always going to be the question of whether or not what they are doing is really the right thing to do. Often, that dilemma involves whether or not to kill a super powered criminal that the regular justice system would never be able to contain on their own. But here, we have a system that is able to contain these meta-humans, but they still exist outside of the law. These people were never put through a fair trial, heck I don’t watch Arrow so seeing Deathbolt show up here was a complete surprise for me. It’s also pretty mind boggling that out of 22 episodes, and probably 18 or so meta-humans only 5 are in captivity. But the dilemma that Barry faces here is whether or not he should deal with and trust someone who is on the wrong side of the law even if it means that it will save lives. When Joe’s contacts in the police department aren’t of any help, Barry feels the only one he can call on is Captain Cold, a generally non-lethal but still dangerous rogue who will eventually turn around and become a hero next year but that’s not for a while yet. He goes out on a limb and puts his faith in Snart who ends up letting him down in the end. Although, another way to look at it is that he did the more humane thing by setting them free. At least if you ignore the fact that he seemingly killed Deathbolt and however many people were in the transport plane, but that’s a discussion for another time. The only other thing that confused me a bit is when he said that Barry also owes him a favor, but it seems to me that it should be the other way around since Snart didn’t live up to his end of the bargain, and Barry did his part by destroying all of Snart’s records.

This also has a fair amount of Iris and Eddie as I was right along with possibly every other viewer when I realized he was inside the particle accelerator. Even though he’s glad to be out, he’s very much a changed man from his time with Eobord. He’s been gone for at least a couple weeks which is enough time to develop Stockholm Syndrome and come around to Eobord’s way of thinking. Although the only part that we’re made aware of is that he knows Iris eventually marries Allen. It’s a tough moment to play off of as most of the audience likely wants Barry and Iris to be together, but they have set up Eddie to be a good guy. The way he turns a complete 180 hints that there might be more to what he knows than he’s letting on.

The real highlight of the episode that has been building up for what seems like ages is the climactic fight between Flash and the Reverse Flash, with a little help from Arrow and Firestorm, which incidentally is the first time that the two Amell cousins have acted alongside each other. It’s a brilliant scene that works so well with each hero playing his part the right way. There’s even a nice shout out to Ray Parker. My only minor complaint is that it doesn’t make logical sense that Eobord would still do the blurry face trick since everyone clearly knows his identity, other than to hide his face from the audience so they can use a stunt double without worrying that it’s not Tom Cavanagh’s face. Such an amazingly fun episode, even the interplay between Cisco and the newly named Golden Glider was a total blast to watch. And it ends in a great moment of victory that still leaves many questions unanswered for next week’s season finale.