The Flash 2.18 “Versus Zoom”

 Following the increase of Barry’s speed, The Flash now has decided that it would be a good time to open the breach between worlds in order to call the Reverse Flash through. However, as expected, things don’t turn out like that and as a result, Caitlin gets captured by the evil Jay Garrick, who has taken Barry’s speed and used it for his own. This was very much the episode where the bad guy explains all of his nefarious evil plans to the hero, only this time, we’re going to have to wait a bit for the hero to recover. For now, The Flash has left us with an interesting proposition going towards the season finale: How does Barry get his speed back?

I’ve been annoyed by the multitude of hiatuses that this show has been going on lately, which is something that tends to happen a fair bit with CW shows outside of The 100; The Originals, Arrow, and The Vampire Diaries all also suffer from this problem. Thankfully, in this case it makes the episode all the more enjoyable when the series returns, as it looks like we’re certainly into the endgame of the season now. Time will tell whether there’ll be a resolution to the Zoom plot this season or not, but it looks as though it’s headed that way.

We got to see a bit more about Hunter Zolomon this episode and learnt the differences between him and Barry. Barry had the benefit of a family to raise him, but unfortunately Hunter Zolomon didn’t have that, and as a result, he lacked the belief that kept him grounded. This was very much a film that put family first, balancing with the slightly darker tone that this episode had this week. Any episode where Zoom shows up is expected to take a darker turn, and this one was no exception.

Barry’s best efforts to work with the tachyon device to meet and exceed Zoom’s speed limits seemed for a while that everything was going the way of The Flash and his team at STAR Labs. For too long they’ve been put on the back foot and I started to wonder whether they’d actually stop Zoom this episode and a greater villain would be revealed as this season’s ‘big bad’. However, just because Zoom may have not had everything his own way this time didn’t stop him from make him a devastating effort that showed once again that Barry’s overconfidence is his downfall. He thinks he can beat Zoom, but he’s wrong. It was the same flaw that allowed him to believe that he could have a chance at fooling the Eobard Thawne disguised as Wells into thinking that he was the younger Barry, and as a result, everything went spectacularly sideways when Zoom played a more proactive role. Teddy Sears never quite impressed enough as the normal Jay Garrick but he seems to be having loads of fun as the sinister Zoom, and a more than credible threat so far has presented itself in this episode. It’s certainly interesting.

Then the episode backfired in its strongest moment. I was kind of expecting the group to come up with a sort of Plan B, given that they should be used to last-minute twists by now, and they know that Zoom is more than capable of manipulating them. Surely, a counter strategy should have even been discussed? This was pretty much one of the few problems that I had with the episode that was otherwise a really entertaining one. There was plenty of good stuff here and it was great seeing Barry go toe-to-toe with Zoom at last, but now he’s back to Square One. Only now, he’s even further back than Square One; so far back that I don’t think the show has ever given us an underdog story as tantalizing as this. One thing’s certain: The Flash certainly knows how to keep us coming back for more episodes, no matter the quality of the ending.

The Flash returns next week on Tuesday at 8pm on The CW.