Team Flash comes up with another cockamamie plan that involves running through the timeline in order find a way to take down Cicada.
Previously on THE FLASH…
Two years ago, ARROW hit its 100th episode smack dab in the middle of the INVASION crossover, the first real big gathering of the ARROWVERSE crew to battle a cosmic threat. The story was crafted to give a nod to the show’s history while still being a part of the greater arc that was being told throughout the four shows.
The timing for this year’s crossover works out a little bit better for THE FLASH, as the series’ 100th episode hits the week before the big crossover. But that doesn’t mean the show doesn’t manage to look back at what has come before to build on the overall story of the season. Plus, the episode was directed by Tom Cavanagh, Harrison/Harry/Sherloque Wells himself. Of course, the various iterations of Wells play a big part in the season’s eighth chapter.
With Cicada now at the forefront of everyone’s attention, Team Flash debates how best to neutralize his dark matter dagger to take the villain down – with a little bit of a debate on naming conventions for the potential McGuffin, a Flash tradition, of course. But it’s Nora who comes up with the plan: go through the past and gather objects related to the dark matter to make Cicada’s dagger irrelevant. After Iris convinces Barry to let Nora go along to collect the items, the father-daughter speedsters are off on a tour of The Flash’s greatest hits: taking down Savitar, stealing items from Eobard Thawne, getting Thawne-as-Wells to fix some things while an unconscious Barry from the past lays in his lair and, finally, going back to the particle accelerator explosion that gave Barry his powers.
It’s a nice history lesson for new viewers and I think it works a lot better than the route ARROW took for it’s 100th episode milestone, as it gives a much better look to the trials to come for Team Flash. Chief among them: Can Nora really be trusted? Sherloque Wells spends the episode postulating over the secret code in Nora’s journal, using figures Cisco has seen once before – when Barry escaped his SPEED FORCE prison at the start of season 4. When Sherloque confronts Nora about, she claims to have created the code herself, which adds to the mystery of what she’s up to. And, to end the episode, she takes a trip to 2049 and tells a shadowy figure that they need to talk. That figure turns out to be a blond-haired Wells! What does it all mean?
We’re certainly not going to find out next week, since the show kicks off the ELSEWORLDS crossover on Sunday, but I’m sure we’ll get to it quickly enough!