DJ Watches: The Flash Season Three: Episode Four: The New Rogues
We begin this adventure in Central City…in the past, during the last heist of one Mr. Leonard Snart, or rather, it’s aftermath, immediately before the fateful accident at STAR Labs. We find Sam Scudder and his lady friend, Rosalind Dillon, enjoying their new found ill gotten wealth and their machinations to immediately begin enjoying themselves with it, of which the future Captain Cold does not approve. As things tend to go with criminals arguing, they resolve this disagreement with attempts to murder one another, an wouldn’t you know it, the explosion at the lab happens at just the right time to cause Scudder to fall backwards into a mirror and seemingly vanish, much to Snart’s apathy and Rosalind’s distress. Three years later, as the building is being prepped for demolition, the not-so-disappeared Sam Scudder returns from a broken shard of the mirror, and makes it clear he wants Snart, unaware of his demise in some other show on this network.
Meanwhile, at the Hall of Labs Named After Interstellar Entities, with Harry prepping to return back to Earth 2, Cisco and Caitlyn both muse that it would be a shame to lose his input to the team once more, to which the displaced Wells suggests that there are an infinite number of Earths out there, so…why not just find another Harrison Wells? Never mind that both Wells that the team has met at this point has betrayed them at least once, the future Vibe and future-will-not-at-all-be-Killer-Frost seem to mostly agree. As a result, Harry formulates an equation that only he should be able to solve, and beams it out to the multiverse, and await a response. In his own quest to have a team, the newly returned Scudder shows his mastery of mirrors by tracking down Rosalind in Iron Heights, who also has gained a meta power of causing people to become disoriented and lose their sense of balance. Of course, they begin a crime spree, traveling through mirrors to rob everyone blind and causing people lose their balance and be unable to face them, as if they were experiencing……a sense of being spun around a lot. While all this I happening, Barry and Detective West are finding it awkward that the speedster is now officially dating Iris, while somehow not pointing out it’s because they’re basically adoptive siblings at this point and this is all kinda creepy, but I guess we probably shouldn’t spell it out like that because this is the CW, and young love and drama and all that.
Fortunately for them, Barry and Jessie get wind of Scudder and Dillon’s crime spree, and confront the newly christened Mirror Master and Verti – erm, Top. Things don’t go well, and Jessie Quick bites off more then she can chew, as Rosalind causes her to lose her balance and plummet from the building, forcing Barry to stop giving chase and save her. The distraction serves as enough of an opening as Mirror Master is able to then trap Barry in a mirror installation that’s in the plaza for….art I guess? Skipping over how the team was able to pick up and haul a giant slab of concrete with a mirror on it back to the lab, the team ponders how to get Flash out of the mirror, but at least figures out how to communicate with the poor guy. Taking a break from looking through the potential Wells candidates to bring to Earth 1, they re-focus on their attention to building a new freeze gun to get Barry out of the mirror via techno babble, and address that Harry is suddenly not-so-eager to be replaced on the team, though one can hardly blame him given the nature of the handful of responses they’ve received.
Pushing that aside, they try the new freeze gun, but it doesn’t work, figuring that it just isn’t getting things cold enough, with Caitlyn focused throughout the discussion for no good reason. Still, when Harry and Cisco walk off to try and get the gun to go colder, Caitlyn oddly enough creeps behind the mirror, out of sight, and sneakily uses her poorly hidden cold powers on the mirror. It does the trick, and Barry is able to escape, and still somehow doesn’t think to look behind the slab to find Caitlyn. Anyway, it’s just in time, as Mirror Master and Top are at it again, and they notice that he wants revenge on Leonard Snart. Taking advantage of this, Barry uses a holographic projection of Captain Cold to lure Scudder into a funhouse, and using his brains and speed, traps Mirror Master in a circle of mirrors, which keeps him from escaping. Jessie, for her part, has learned her lesson and manages to deal with Top, disabling her as well.
So the day is saved, Barry, Joe, and Iris manage to get over the awkwardness of the relationship, the bad guys go to super jail, and Harry and Jessie bid a farewell to Earth 1, but not before greeting the new Hipster Wells. Everything is turning out just fine.
Well, Caitlyn’s got some issues with her plumbing being a little too cold, and she’s finding some lighter colored strands of hair on her head, as well as not quite loving a new shade of lipstick she recently acquired, but I’m sure that’s nothing.
So, a decent enough episode, not quite attached to the main Alchemy plotline but still furthers little story lines in the season. Jessie has very quickly caught onto this whole superhero thing, other then using her real first name as her identity anyway, and some decent character development all around, notably from the Wests and Barry as well as Harry revealing a bit more of his insecurities. Mirror Master and Top were okay though they don’t have the same impact and lasting impression as Captain Cold and Heatwave, and honestly, even through the show seems to have forgotten about them, Weather Wizard and some of the “other” rogues from past seasons are still more memorable, but I suppose we’ll see.
Tom Cavanaugh deserves special recognition for his portrayal of the multiple Harrison Wells, from the Western version to the Mime version, though I also can’t help but frown on the Hipster version that was chosen. It’s fin, but he seems to be trying to hard – in universe, that is – though the next episode preview seems like that’s the point. Also getting more curious about the state of Killer Frost in Earth 1 – it would be easy to assume that it’s all due to Alchemy’s shenanigans, but at the same time, it seems to imply this was just a thing occurring or a decent chunk of time before Barry he showed up, so I’m intrigued. I don’t know if it’d be better for her to straight up go bad, or be a “good” Killer Frost yet.
Honestly, it was a decent show, but there’s nothing else super amazing about it either. Just a decent “filler” that still manages to keep the plot threads going, even if only in minor ways. I just hope this stays strong and keeps going, especially with what’s being implied from the various writers and producers about the upcoming season. Nothing fantastic, but strong and good enough. As for other shows where “good enough” would be an improvement, well, we’ll have to wait and see.