The team doubles their efforts to track down the mysterious Thinker, with Harry Wells bringing in some friends to help. But in the meantime, Ralph Dibny proves to be a challenging superhero student.
As you can likely garner from the title, those friends that Harry brings along for help are his multiverse doppelgangers! With the team having little to no luck so far on figuring out which DeVoe out of thousands is their adversary, four geniuses seem like better than one.
Let’s get this out of the way at the top. The scenes where Harry interacts with his other selves is as fun and amazing as it sounds. We have Earth-12 Wells, who looks like a German Andy Warhol and authored “Everything is Meaningless, So Why Did I Buy This Book?” Earth 47 Wells is a billionaire inventor, publishing tycoon and general champion of free speech. He’s basically a pervier, southern Tony Stark. And from the post-apocalyptic Earth 22, we have Wells 2.0, a cyborg Australian Wells who’s basically in Mad Max. As expected, Tom Cavanagh squeezes a ton of enjoyment out of trying on all these different takes of the same person.
Of course, given how strong personalities they all are, the Council of Wells (good naming, Cisco!) can’t get along to even figure out a methodology for searching, especially with Wells 2.0 violent tendencies and Rich Wells’ amorous breaks. After some words of wisdom from Cisco though, Harry manages to break the ice with the other Wells and they start working together.
While this storyline is fantastic, the training of Ralph Dibny has mixed results. That’s not just true of the actual training, but also of the story. The duo faces a forgettable meta who is stealing artifacts from her Native American tribe and killing anyone who gets in her way. She has the ability to bring objects to life, but only if they are shaped like animals or people.
While Barry is about protecting the innocent, Ralph just wants to catch the bad guys. Their differing perspectives are explored well, especially when a fight with the meta goes sideways and a utility pole injures a girl due to Ralph’s focus on the villain. But the writers focus in on the conflict between Barry and Ralph so much that they didn’t make a good baddie to complete the plot. It goes as expected. Ralph feels guilty when the girl gets hurt, Barry gives him a pep talk and Ralph makes the right call next time. Even the meta bringing a T-Rex skeleton to life brings only a small spark of life to the proceedings.
Far more intriguing though is the ending. The Council of Wells succeeds, figuring out DeVoe’s first name (Clifford), and where he lives. Joe and Barry go to confront him, only to discover that he is a seemingly-ordinary, elderly man in a wheelchair. This doesn’t look like the mastermind we’ve seen in past episodes. It looks like the Thinker is still ahead of our heroes.
Show Notes:
- In a pretty funny opening, Barry and Ralph are confronted by a mugger. He shoots at Ralph and the bullet bounces off his stretchy self, back into the thief’s leg! As Barry takes him to the hospital, Ralph steals his gun. Like I said, training is a work in progress.
- Apparently, Killer Frost one time decided to go to Burning Man. Can we please see that episode?!
- I get that Ralph is skeevy, but naming women by their measurements is too far, making him seem like a full-on creep.
- The best part of the T-Rex? Ralph dropping Jurassic Park references left and right. He tells Barry not to move as their vision is based on movement. Uhh, Ralph? That T-Rex skeleton doesn’t have eyes!
The Super Cinco
- – Harry Wells – Not only do we get the joy of witnessing The Council of Wells interact, but all four of them put their differences (or similarities?) aside to find out who DeVoe is and where he lives! This is a big step forward for our heroes this early in the season.
- – Barry Allen – Despite some rough patches, he never gives up on his training of Ralph Dibny. Having gone through his own mistakes and bad calls, Barry offers up wisdom that helps the Elongated Man become a proper hero. And he catches our baddie meta of the week.
- – Cisco Ramon / Vibe – At first, The Council of Wells shoos him away, so they can put their genius intellect to work. But after the first attempt ends poorly, he helps our Harry realize that he needs to like himself in order to get along with his other versions. It’s sappy but it works!
- – Ralph Dibny – For his first real meta case, Ralph remains obsessed over catching the villain, with little regard for those around him. But after a girl is hurt and Barry gives him some advice, he saves a security guard from the skeleton T-Rex by wrapping his body around its jaw.
- – Clifford DeVoe / The Thinker – We get our first scene of The Thinker’s overconfidence, as he doesn’t believe that the team will figure out his identity. For once, he’s mistaken. But with Joe and Barry knocking at his door, he disguises himself as an ordinary citizen. Can he pull this act off?