DJ Watches: The Flash Season Three: Episode Two: Paradox
So! You’ve created a parallel universe where everything is slightly different and mostly happy,, and all is well in the world, You’ve got a great life, two living parents, a budding relationship with the woman of your dreams, and a superhero in the city who’s not you. Things couldn’t be better…you’d say, except everything starts to fall apart. All the not-so-great things that were also changed that you were trying to ignore start to not be so easy to pretend doesn’t happen, and ultimately, everyone starts becoming miserable as things go sideways. Being the responsible hero, you undo the things you’ve done and set things right, for better or for worse……except the universe likes to make damn well sure you learned a lesson, so the normal life you’ve returned to is in fact also a little different from before, but in ways that some might call more dire and significant. Just another day in the life of The Flash.
We begin this episode with Barry having a heart to heart with Felicity over on Arrow Central City, trying to explain the repercussions of his actions to someone he trusts but still a little more far removed from his usual circle of friends, while also giving the audience the rundown of what he’s noticed. Besides Iris and Detective West’s relationship going bad – as a result of the former not forgiving the latter as quickly from last season’s mother drama – we also discover that Cisco’s elder brother Dante has died due to drunk driver and is notably colder to Barry, there’s a meta-human specialist at Central City PD who’s been working antagonistically with the CSI for the last year, and……Diggle, also from Arrow, has a son instead of a daughter.
Huh.
Anyway, Ms. Smoak tries to pep Barry up and he convinces himself that he can fix all of this, and while doubtful, he gives it a shot. Meanwhile, the mysterious plague doctor looking character, known as Alchemy, has been tracking down people who have weird visions of another life, one where they have powers, including the guy we met last time, The Rival. At the same time, all these strange, shed human skins are appearing all over Central City, which has both the smug and very British Julian Albert and Team Flash puzzled. Eventually, whilst a terribly planned forced reconciliation dinner Barry set up to try and make everything like it was before, Flash encounters The Rival, completely taken aback by both his appearance in this universe and his memories of Flashpoint. Quick running fight later and Barry decides, screw it, I’m going back and trying to fix all this again.
‘Cept Jay Garrick has something to say about that. Shoving him out of the Speedforce to halt his time travel, the other Flash, alongside acknowledging that he looks just like Barry’s Dad, points out that this is just how time travel works, using a cup as an example – sure, if you break a cup you can glue it back together, but it’s never going to be back to exactly how you remember it. With this knowledge, Barry finally accepts the moral that the episode is trying to teach him and comes clean to the rest of the team that he’s at least partially responsible for their current predicaments, and it goes about as well as one might imagine, with Cisco taking it particularly hard. It turns out, he’s upset at Barry since he had been refusing to go back in time to stop the car accident that took Dante’s life, and naturally, learning that Barry did do such a thing for his own family, despite it all going horribly wrong, rubs him the wrong way.
With some accidental help from Julian back at the CCPD and his case file on one of the husks, Barry tracks The Rival down to the refinery where in the other world he and Kid Flash took him on, except this time, the handicap match is against his favor, as Alchemy is there as well. While he is soundly getting ganged up on and beaten, the gang back at STAR Labs figure that they can’t blame Barry for everything, with Iris and Joe coming to terms and beginning to mend fences. Just in time too, as the alarms sound and they finally notice that Barry is in trouble. This time around, The Rival is the one handing Flash his butt all over the refinery, and just when we get to the point where Rival struck the finishing blow on Kid Flash, Cisco comes in to save the day, with his prototype gauntlets he’d been working on to focus his vibration powers. With the assist, Flash makes short work of the other speedster but Alchemy slips away.
And so, the team sits around STAR Labs later, discussing what to do with the newly dubbed Doctor Alchemy, and pondering if it means that anyone else who had powers over in the Flashpoint universe would now have it here – after all, there were four previous human husks in the city prior, which could bode poorly. Plague doctor man also mentioned he was preparing the city for “something,” which sounds like the sort of thing we’ll wait all season for. Still, Iris and Joe are on the mend, Cisco is getting close to his old self and holds no more ill will towards Barry, and everyone is getting pretty close to normal, though I guess Dig’s daughter has been wiped out of existence…..brutal. Ah well, all’s well that ends well.
Caitlyn seems to be feeling a little chillier then usual, though that’s probably nothing.
So the second episode of the season brings the bigger changes that I was hoping we’d have gotten in the first episode – well done writers. While the changes still aren’t as dire as they were, they definitely hit home significantly more, and something tells me the two that we saw wrapped up with a neat bow are there to throw us off from more changes we’ll discover, such as Caitlyn’s little surprise at the end of the episode. Iris holding a grudge longer then in the original universe is believable enough, though the quick reconciliation is odd in light of that, though honestly, if it keeps us from having long winded angst drama scenes between her and her Dad throughout the season, I’m okay with it being brushed off just fine. Interested in seeing how Slytherine Julian Albert will work in the show, as the one guy who doesn’t like Barry but isn’t an Antagonist. I’m actually a bit surprised that one of the side effects of the time travel in either this or the first episode wasn’t Eddie still being alive, but I suppose jerking the audience around on the Barry/Iris relationship was already wearing way too thin. Unlike other CW shows, they at least didn’t drag it out even longer then it was and are content to drop it, it seems. I also have to wonder if Sara with her own time travel shenanigans over on Legends of Tomorrow is exempt from the memory alterations, so when she comes back home to visit and expect to see Diggle with little Sara be more then a little surprised at the kid being little John instead.
(Doctor) Alchemy hasn’t started running fast yet, so for now I’m curious about how similar his power is to Cisco in that he seems to be able to “remind” other people of events from alternate timelines, and can give them their powers and memories back in full. Barry’s conversation with the real Jay was also a nice touch, and a good way to nail the ramifications of his time traveling from someone who really knows. I wonder if The Rival is toast by the end of the episode here, or if he was just dragged away and saved for later use, though I guess there are going to be plenty of Speedsters this season if the next episode preview is any indication. Looks like we’ll be getting Cisco in the Vibe costume sooner rather then later, and I am looking forward to that, partially out of morbid curiosity since the Vibe outfit I’m thinking of is right up there with the disco Nightwing costume from the early days. I’m sure they won’t do that, but I could see them slipping it in as a rejected costume idea. And of course, I have to wonder if they’re going to turn Caitlyn straight up heel, which would be horrifying and also kinda great since they’re inching back to Killer Frost, or if she’ll be a heroic version of the character. Maybe something in-between where she won’t be an antagonist but feels she can’t stay around (at first) and be off alone for a bit before inevitably coming back into the fold.
Still not a bad episode at all, some of that CG in the race fight was a little suspect, but it was at worst typical for TV budget visuals though even then it still usually looked better, and as I pointed out, this was more what I was expecting out of Flashpoint. Decent momentum, now just to see if Ollie can step it up over on Arrow.