Previously on THE FLASH…
As a villain, Cicada has been used pretty well so far this season. For the most part, he’s been a bogeyman, looming large over everyone. But when he does end up confronting Team Flash, it’s a big deal, and it usually doesn’t end well for anyone.
The Big Bad does some serious damage to the team this time around, when they confront him as he attacks some metavillains. Even without their powers – except for Killer Frost, who’s been immune to his dampening dagger – the team puts up a fight. Okay, it’s mostly because Killer Frost can still use her powers. But it’s not enough, as Cicada gets a hold of Nora and ends up breaking her back.
Watching his daughter get injured like that enrages Barry, and he sets his sights not just on capturing Cicada, but on killing him.
Even with vengeance on his mind, Barry still doesn’t want to see the other metas that Cicada is hunting killed, despite them all being bad guys. The team decides to round them all up and put them in federal witness protection. Even that is difficult, though, because there’s a mole within the Central City Police Department, feeding information about Metas to Cicada. The cop – who was taken over in NEWS FLASH – even gives him the location of the transfer to the Feds, which leads to our second confrontation with Team Flash.
With a dozen depowered Metas there with him, Flash sends them all away and decides to battle Cicada on his own. Well, he does get an assist from Killer Frost, who manages to negate the dampener dagger and give Flash the opportunity to kill Cicada. But, of course, he’s a hero and he can’t actually do that. Nora manages to finally heal up and give her dad enough pause before he hits the bad guy with more lightning. When Killer Frost uses up her powers, Cicada takes his dagger and runs away. And Elongated Man gets the other metas safely on the Feds’ helicopter.
Why, though, is Cecile calling in favors with the Feds when Barry could have put in a call to Diggle to get ARGUS in on this? I’m sure some of these guys could have been great additions to the new GHOST PROTOCOL that he enacted this week, no? Also, they probably would have been better prepared for someone like Cicada than regular federal agents would have been.
Killer Frost gets a lot of screen time this episode, as she’s also having a battle of wills with her alter ego Caitlin over the metahuman cure she and Cisco decided to work on last week. Frost keeps altering Caitlin’s work because she’s afraid of what might happen if Caitlin takes the cure. Thankfully, it’s Elongated Man to the rescue, again. Ralph helps Frost see that Caitlin loves having Killer Frost in her head and would never do anything to lose that. Which really should have been obvious, since they share a body/brain/whatever.
And once again, the most intriguing part of the episode is relegated to the C-plot, as Sherloque Wells continues to investigate Nora’s diary and her special time language. Iris tells him to back off, but it’s clearly going to come back and bite them at some point this season.
I really did enjoy this episode. Everyone put in some great performances, but I do have one thing that’s been bothering me all season. Chris Klein, the actor portraying Cicada, and his angry Dark Knight voice is just so ridiculous, and it seems to have gotten more so this time around. Sure, he was never the greatest actor, but this is just on another level.
Thankfully, it’s not bad enough to ruin my enjoyment of this episode – or the season overall. And once again, I’m back to really looking forward to what comes next.