Season 4 / Episode 9 / The CW
And you say C-City!
It’s like santa’s workshop up in S.T.A.R Labs for the midseason finale! Team Flash is out here decking the halls and bagging on Cisco’s tree decorating skills. The guys got jokes about kickin it with Killer Frost, behind Caitlin’s back. Dibney’s lack of a filter is a part-time problem, much to Caitlin’s surprise and saltiness. We get a little more DeVoe backstory, but his time to shine comes later this episode.
Honeymoon Hangover
Barry and Iris get to opening wedding gifts when she notices something about him. Iris presses Barry about not using his powers in Bali and during Christmas clean-up. He admits that he used to look for any excuse to speed through life, then tells her “I don’t have to run when I’m with you”. That shit was smooth as a Barry White track at 2am.
Central City Streets
DeVoe appears outta nowhere and blasts Barry with the ill energy blast. Hubby-mode kicks in and he runs Iris to safety then squares up with the cerebral assassin. Barry does his best Crouching Tiger, Hidden Flash impersonation as he glides across the side of a building on his way to puttin the beats on getting bodied…and quickly. He’s taken to DeVoe’s sanctuary and imprisoned in some super powerful invisible cell.
CC Jitters
Caitlin out in them barista streets sulking in Killer Frost is cooler than me tears. Harry stops by to cheer her up and makes a joke about Jitters’ ridiculous Killer Frost frappe/latte or whatever the hell it was. I bet the Starbucks fandom went wild with that one. I eye roll and digress. Amunet shows up in quite dramatic fashion. She blowing out windows and posing like Zoolander meets Charlie’s Angels. Harry ain’t never been a shook one and pulls out the toast, only to be crushed by the villainess and her Tony Stark arm. She slaps a power inhibiting bracelet on Caitlin before she can go full Frost savage mode and kidnaps her as our 2nd hero goes down.
The DeVoe Household
While in captivity Barry recaps all of his team’s Ls from season 4, in an attempt to get DeVoe’s next move out of him. It don’t work, cuz first Thinker, then Joe shows up at the DeVoe household. While the professor is gone, Barry asks Mrs. DeVoe why they want him, why she would help his evil ass. She lets him know marriage ain’t no game, dat shit for life. She basically says, “I ain’t no office secretary you simpleton, I’m really with the methodical and murderous shits so try me.” Upstairs, DeVoe toys with Joe West on some, “I”m oblivious to Barry’s his son’s wherabouts” frontin shit. He calls out Harry’s backup position, then shits on his choice of shooter vantage point in a blatant flex. The cherry on top was Clifford telling Joe to save his cell phone minutes and feel free to search the crib without a warrant. They find nothing, of course.
S.T.A.R. Labs
After shorting out their overworked tech, Harry keeps it real and tells Iris she ain’t leading right now. She got Cisco and Dibney at each other’s throats, cuz stress. The stress of looking for two of your closest friends and getting nowhere. He tells her that she has to choose. Save Barry or Caitlin. This ultimatum was a doozy and left Iris like:
Captured!
After a failed attempt to escape, Amunet tells Caitlin a pretty damn impressive backstory of a young stewardess who suffered thru hands-y pilots because her upbringing granted her limited options. The day the particle accelerator blew up, she got her powers and went back and made those pilots pay for their errors. She did this on her way to becoming the entrepreneur we’ve all grown to love or hate. And Caitlin is going to extract this piece of shrapnel out of her new friend Dominic’s neck or catch the real iron fist fade!
S.T.A.R. Labs
Iris finally makes the calls to turn off the Speed Force-detecting satellite and go after Caitlin, in her vulnerable state. She knows Barry The Flash can handle himself.
Meanwhile, Caitlin’s out here finessin the shit out of this operation! She rips that foreign object out with ease, then homie flatlines. Confusion ensues and she fakes CPR as they villains all get knocked out because Caitlin switched the gas lines to dump anesthesia into the dungeon surgery room.
Caitlin and Dominic bounce as Amunet begins to stir. Cisco and Dibney pull up n wreck. The Elastic Man blocks Amunet’s metallic projectiles saving Caitlin from a grave Hellraiser look, but not before Cisco drops the illest burn about Amunet’s Super Saiyan 3 mop!!
The Thinker Sanctuary
Barry decides to show DeVoe that his intellectual skills are not to be underestimated. The Thinker comes out to flex a little more but doesn’t see Barry because our boy vibrates in place so fast that he is invisible! He gets out of DeVoe’s trap and starts to shoot the fair one. Out of no fuckin where, DeVoe hits a button and his chair transports them both like 500 feet above the city.
The End?
DeVoe literally drags The Flash’s body through skyscrapers as glass and debris rain down on the city below! This dude dropping Flash down to the street level, pummeling him into moving cars and trucks. Ridiculous CGI make this all possible, and it is uber campy greatness. The Thinker goes for the tentacle finish and Flash vibrates his body so the electrocuting tentacle goes right through him and destroys the flying chair. The hilarious life saver mode that Cisco added to Barry’s suit keeps him from dying as DeVoe falls to his watery grave.
Barry is excited to just get back to normal. Caitlin invites Dominic over, cuz Team Flash is about taking in people who just went through some new traumatic shit. They all walk in and it’s another redemption story for Dibney. Him decorating the West household was cute and all but they better not get hung up on this asshole tendencies for the first half hour, mature for the last 10 minutes, thing. We get it.
The last 5 minutes of this mid-season finale were insane fire dawg. Randy Jackson approved. Barry runs back to the loft (das a fancy ballin ass apt) because an alarm has gone off. As he enters, he gets a call and it’s Dominic the telepath at the party!! I first thought, dammmmmn this dude already evil and working for DeVoe but little did I know!! This show pulls off arguably their best twist of all time by having DeVoe ditch all his physical ailments and body snatch Dominic!
AND THAT AIN’T EVEN THE HALF OF IT!!
This dude Dominic/Thinker dropped off DeVoe’s body (they have no use for it anymore) at Barry’s apt and plants a bloody knife at the scene. It’s looking gruesome for our boy Barry Allen, in this game he’s playing with the fastest mind in the world. And now DeVoe got them Reggie Bush at USC legs?! He got the body of a thoroughbred and mind of an advanced civilization!? Thinker 2.0 / Brainstorm is a new player in the game and I can’t wait to see how this all unfolds.
I say cot damn! I was crazy surprised at the switcheroo and cliffhanger bomb we just got dropped on us. Barry bout to stand trial?! The Thinker has been reincarnated into a young ting?! Well done Flash writers. Well done.
Flash Facts
- CC Jitters better have the ill insurance plan. They gotta call for repairs 24/7.
- Don’t know if this Dominic guy will be The Thinker fulltime or if he’ll have to hop back into a rejuvenating chair, but I do know this was one of the best moves they could’ve made.
- Got a few weeks to catch up on other shows as Flash takes its annual holiday hiatus. We’ll be back on January 16th for the 2nd half of Season 4.
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