The Flash S1x15 “Out of Time”

WARNING! MAJOR SPOILERS!

Yes, it may have been a long wait for The Flash, but that was an excellent way to welcome the best superhero show on the CW back to our screens. Featuring the return of the Weather Wizard, what initially simply looked like another metahuman-of-the-week storyline quickly escalated, with those last 10-15 minutes arguably being the best that any comic book show has given us, ever. Yes, admittedly, most of that episode was fairly underwhelming, but the last quarter of the show clearly made up for it.

The metahuman-of-the-week here was the Weather Wizard, making his return from the pilot episode. However, in this case, this was a different Weather Wizard, with Liam McIntyre making his debut as the other Mardon brother, Mark. Unfortunately, much like the original, Clyde, there wasn’t much attention given to him even though the writers attempted to give some momentum to him as he carries a grudge about Joe West. This also itself presented another let down, as the climax shifted focus away from Jesse L. Martin’s character, preventing him from getting the screentime that really would have allowed for a good moment featuring his character.

The other disappointing part of this week’s episode came with the romance angle that fans of the series should know to expect by now. We’ve been stuck in this Linda/Barry/Iris/Eddie clash between what seems like an age already (even though it hasn’t been that long since Linda’s been introduced), and it just becomes tiresome. Arrow doesn’t handle the romance thing great either, and I really wish that these two shows should take a lesson from Season 2 of The 100 in regards to how they handle that (Fun fact: It may not be getting as much press as The Flash/Arrow, but personally, I enjoy The 100 more than both of these two shows, which is something that I’d never thought that I’d say back in Season 1). Yes, I know they’re completely different shows, but still. Sometimes less is more. This wasn’t perhaps helped by the fact that Iris continues to be apparently unable to make up her mind about Barry, seemingly changing her reaction to him every other episode. However, assuming that the reveal of him as The Flash sticks (with the potential for time to be rewritten in the next episode), there’ll be plenty of directions that the show could take from here. Would she turn against him for keeping the secret? Who knows? We’ll just have to wait until next week to find out.

The best parts of this week’s episode came in the last 10-15 mins of the show. Cisco got a big, big moment this week when he was effectively killed at the hands of Dr. Wells after finding out his secret. This was made all the more emotional by the fact that we’ve had time to get to know the team, especially with the interactions that Cisco and Wells shared over film at the beginning of the episode, that really laid the foundations for an excellent cliffhanger. Cisco hasn’t been the show’s greatest character, primarily being played for comic relief, but here he got a great moment to shine. If this had been his death, it would be a great way to go out on, but given that we a) Haven’t seen Cisco transform into Vibe yet, and b) Proved that Barry can time travel, nobody’s really in doubt that this will be the end of this character this early. The question is though, what state will he be in when the show picks up next week and how much will he have remembered? Regardless, this was an excellent scene between Carlos Valdes and Tom Cavangah, and it was great to see Cisco reacting as though he knew he wasn’t going to make it through. He didn’t underestimate Wells and he probably knew that his last-resort pleas of helping Wells were pretty much doomed.

So next week’s Rogue Time has the potential to be a very big episode indeed if handled correctly, featuring a return of Captain Cold and the introduction of his sister, played by Peyton List. It’ll be interesting to see where we go from here and how much everything is shaken up, and that’s partly why I’m so glad that it’s not a season finale, which it probably would have been in most other shows (Battlestar Galactica would have used this as their season opener), and we don’t have to spend all Summer waiting for a new episode. We do however, have to wait a week.

What did you think of this week’s episode? Are you happy to see The Flash back on TV? Leave a comment below.