The Flash S1x16 “Rogue Time”

WARNING! SPOILERS!

Despite an otherwise average episode, the last ten-fifteen minutes of Out of Time were among the best that The Flash had given us all season. There were so many revelations, surprises, twists and turns that I loved every second of those minutes, and of course, in typical time-travel fashion, most if it was undone this week when Barry found himself back in time.

Let’s look back at the revelations that we saw last week though, just in case you’ve forgotten. We had Iris confess her love to Barry, the death of Cisco, Dr. Wells’ revelation as Eobard Thawne and as if things weren’t already hectic enough, a massive tidal wave caused by the Weather Wizard sweeping down on Central City. Of course, the episode after that would never live up to the one before that, and perhaps we’d set our expectations a bit too high. It almost makes you wonder what the point was in giving us all those revelations if they were to be undone within the opening fifteen minutes of the episode, especially as I would have liked to see a longer period in that alternate timeline, and what the consequences would have been. However, we didn’t get to see that here, with Rogue Time being very different from what we got in Out of Time.

Despite this, Rogue Time still proved to be an enjoyable episode of The Flash even at the same time, partially underwhelming, with the return of Heat Wave and Captain Cold. We also got to see Cold’s sister, Lisa Snart, this week, played by Peyton List, who CW fans will probably recognize from the promising but unfortunately underwhelming The Tomorrow People. It was good to see her here though, as her addition was handled well, even if the inclusion of a Gold Gun wasn’t The Flash’s smartest moments, to say the least.

One thing that I felt was very cool about the Rogues this week was the starting of an apparent understanding between Captain Cold and The Flash, where they almost have now developed a growing degree of mutual respect, especially now that he knows his identity, and it’ll be very interesting to see how this thread continues to develop and progress over the course of the remaining episodes in this season.

The weakest part of the series so far has been the Eddie/Iris/Barry/Linda romance plot that hasn’t really been as interesting as it should have, and I’ve been pointing that out pretty much every single week. However, as Barry, now believing that Iris felt something for him, dumped Linda to ask Iris out, you couldn’t help but feel like the emotional element of this week’s episode was handled better than anticipated, and when that didn’t go down too well, the excuse that Caitlin made that Barry was still feeling some after-effects from the Lightning strike was a nice touch that worked.

Cisco also had a good week this time out after his death was undone with timeline reversal. The family party and the hostage situation was handled well, but the biggest moment here was the speech that Dr. Wells gave him in the exact same position where he killed him in Out of Time. It was something that could have gone a similar way, but made a welcoming change even if it was a slight let down on the foreshadowing made by Wells concerning the fact that if the time-stream gets tampered with, something worse will happen in the future, despite Barry’s objections that nothing could be worse than a Tidal Wave.

I guess The Flash is playing the long haul though with that, and it’ll be interesting to see where it takes us from here. Next week we have Mark Hamill, who needs no introduction, and it’ll be very interesting to see what he brings to the show. Can’t wait.