THE FLASH - Season 5.8

REVIEW:  THE FLASH - SEASON 5, EP. 8: "What's Past Is Prologue"




For the 100th episode of our favorite Scarlet Speedster, and being the midseason finale, they sure left us with A LOT to ponder on as we move to the Elseworlds Crossover Event, and into the hiatus.  We had some cameos by some of our villains of the past, and finally, some more truth as to what Nora's REALLY been up to....and I gotta tell ya....it's NOT good!

This week’s installment of the Scarlet Speedster sees Sherloque and Ralph pulling a stakeout on Orlen,  getting all the lowdown on the man.  Keeping track of his activities.  They report their findings to the rest of the team, and Barry wants to go an take him down, but Sherloque it’s not possible to do that since he sucks their powers away.  They all try to figure out how to counteract Cicada’s weapon, and Nora finally comes up with the idea of making one.  As they continue to discuss what materials they need, Nora suggests the past.  They come up with the Speed Force Transmmiter, Savitar’s suit, and the Particle Accelerator.  Barry worries about messing with the timeline.  Nora says that if they obtain these objects, it won’t mess with the timeline.  If they put the objects near the hospital where no one can find it, they should be fine. 

Barry volunteers to go, but wants Nora to stay behind.  Nora pleads her case, in making sure she has her Dad’s back.  Barry flat out refuses.  All Nora wants to do is correct her mistakes.  Barry says no.  He asks Iris if he should take her, and Iris says yes.  Let her help.  Barry reluctantly agrees.

The team go over critical events for each piece of material, and then they let Barry know.  Just as Cisco is looking for something, Wells pops up, having stolen Nora’s notebook.  He asks Cisco where exactly he saw the writing before.  Cisco recognizes it as the same writing that Barry wrote when he came out of the Speed Force. 

Barry gets Nora, and reminds her to stay on task, and don’t deviate.  She agrees, and off they go into the timeline.  Ralph blares Huey Lewis (because he just HAD to!), and then asks what they should do next.  The team tells him they wait…because they’ll come back close to the same moment they left.  Time travel is crazy, Cisco notes.

Barry and Nora arrive in the recent past, where she sees Savitar for the first time.  They go to grab a piece of his suit.  Meanwhile, a TIme Wraith is following them. Barry notices it, and leads it away from Nora…who grabs the piece she needed.  However, she spots Iris shooting “Barry” and is taken aback a little. However, she speeds off, and catches up to Barry, and they time hop.  They arrive a little further in the past to where Zoom injected himself.  Barry tells Nora to stay back, and goes to get the gun.  But he can’t find it.  Nora hears her parents from the past in the background talking.  She spies on them.  Barry accidently bumps into Wells from Earth 2.  He’s frustrated for not finding Jessie, and is about to break the very thing Barry needs, and Barry stops him, gives him a way to find Jessie, and gets the piece needed.  However, as he and Nora are about to zip back into the time stream, they’re spotted by Zoom.

Zoom notices Nora as another speedster.  He gives chase into the timestream.  He almost catches Barry and Nora, when the Time Wraith nabs him….Barry and Nora arrive 3 years back.  The piece they needed is broke.  Barry is frustrated, because he can’t fix it.  Nora says that he can ask Wells from this time period to fix it, but Barry says that is Eobard Thawne.  They meet Eobard, who is delighted to see Barry.  He figures out that Nora is Barry’s daughter, but he says “Dawn”, and Nora replies, “Nora”.  Barry asks Thawne to fix the piece that was broke.  Thawne asks why…and Nora lets out Cicada.  Thawne starts working on the piece.  Thawne and Barry bicker back and forth, and when Thawne asks who’s idea this was, Barry said Nora, which gave Thawne pause.  He fixes the piece necessary, and he goes off to play his role.  Barry urges Nora that it’s time to go, and he’s off.  Nora hesitates, looking at Thawne, as he waves to her from the security camera…and then she’s off.

Barry and Nora enter the Particle Accelerator.  As Wells begins to initiate the Particle Accelerator, he hesitates.  He goes down the hall to find Nora and Barry…he senses their presence.  Cisco and Caitlin ask if he’s okay.  Thawne asks Caitlin to run the numbers one last time.  Barry and Nora are hiding in the secret room.  Barry boots up Gideon, and wants to calibrate everything for the Particle Accelerator.  As he’s talking to her, Nora sees the Reverse Flash suit.  Barry shouts at her, and tells her about why he hates the Reverse Flash so much.  He tells the story about how Thawne murdered his Mother.  She figures out the reason WHY he didn’t want her along, was that he wanted to protect her from all the pain and misery he went through.  She says she doesn’t want protection, she just wants to know her Dad.  They take off to plant the dark matter weapon at the hospital, as time falls into place as normal for them.  They race back to current time, and the team asks if the weapon is where it’s at.  They say yes, and now they’re ready to go after Cicada.

We see Orlen at the hospital with Grace.  They have eyes on him.  Barry draws Cicada out.  Barry tells Cicada he doesn’t have to do this, but Cicada doesn’t relent, he plans on killing all metahumans to save Grace.  But Barry says he’s a metahuman too.  Cicada says he plans on joining them after they’re all dead.  All 4 of them.  Nora, Ralph, Caitlin, and Nora step out.  The battle begins, and they manage to get Cicada’s weapon away from him.  Barry gets a few shots in to take him down.  Cicso vibes his knife into space, and they feel they finally stopped him.  But he recalls the knife from space and takes out the team.  Just as he is about to end all of them, Caitlin becomes Killer Frost, and knocks him back against a van.  She’s unaffected by the knife!  He’s a bit surprised, and takes off.

At STAR Labs, they can’t find Cicada anywhere, but they’re gonna keep tabs on Grace.  Nora takes off, and bumps into Sherloque.  She asks if he’s seen her notebook, which he says he’s spotted her.  He asks her about the language in it, and she says it’s a time language.  He calls her clever, and after she leaves, he starts typing on the computer.  The message that pops up is “The Timeline Is Malleable”.  She sees the secret room opened.  We flashback to a time when Barry’s parents we’re still alive.  She watches them, and then Barry shows up.  She asks if he thinks about changing things, he says “all the time”.  She then says “let’s go” and takes off, calling Barry an “old man”.  Barry laughs and takes off after her.

We’re back in current time where Nora is in the secret room, having Gideon enter another journal entry.  When Gideon asks that if there was a message Nora wanted to send, Nora said she’d deliver it herself.  We see her head back home to 2049, where she heads to Iron Heights, and tells the prisoner that they need to talk.  We see Eobard Thawne come forward, and agree that they do. 

We also get the same teaser from Earth 90 to set up Elseworlds.

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Okay...we have A LOT of ground to cover with this episode, so let's get to it:

For one:  With the plan to stop Cicada being thrown down, and having accomplished everything they needed to do in order to put said plan into action, it was kind of a disappointment that this arc didn't, in some way, come to an end.  If this plan was foolproof, why didn't it work?  He should've finally been defeated.  However, he gets away, and lives to kill another metahuman another day.  But NOW he knows Cisco's alive, and there's no doubt, this will increase Cicada's resolve to end ALL metahumans.  We DO know that, because of what Barry said about Cicada himself being a metahuman, that Cicada plans on taking his OWN life once he completes his mission.  The other thing that comes to mind is the fact that Dr. Ambers is absent from this episode, and what of Grace?  I feel that she'll wake up and try to appeal to Orlen's good nature to stop him from killing anybody.  So, I'm HOPING the writer's have something more up their sleeve to resolve the story with Cicada...because I feel HE is NOT this "Big Bad" of this season.  

As we all know, Cicada can drain the powers of the main members of the Team:  Flash, Vibe, Elongated Man, and even Nora.  But we find out this episode that he CAN'T effect Caitlin!  Killer Frost coming back at the right time saved the day, and showed us that because HER powers didn't come from the Particle Accelerator, that SHE is immune to Cicada's power.  That's going to come in handy down the road when they square off with him again.  So, maybe we'll finally get some serious Killer Frost action before this season is said and done---not counting the Crossover.  

Sherloque.  He's a crafty little bastard, isn't he?  There's more to him than meets the eye....but I feel he knows more than what he lets on.  While it's great seeing him and Ralph combine investigative forces (they make quite a pair), he's also been aaaaaalllll up in Nora's business.  And to snoop around and find her book, seeing the writing in it, gets his deductive skills working overtime.  First, showing the book to Cisco, and having Cisco verify the writing as the same as what Barry was scrolling after returning from the Speed Force.  Him calling her on it, and watching her squirm her way out of totally giving away what she's writing in it, just arouses his curiosity more.  He also goes to doing more research, trying to uncover the mystery.

Having Barry face his past again, it's a brutal reminder of the hardships Barry has gone through as The Flash to get to where he's at---and they're reminders he DIDN'T want to share with Nora.  Having to look at Savitar, to face Zoom again, and to uncomfortably deal with Eobard Thawne one more time brought back memories for us, but harsh ones for him.  But I DID like his interaction with Eobard---confident, unafraid, and to the point.  It WAS interesting to note that Eobard referred to Nora as "Dawn" (which is the name of Barry & Iris' daughter in the comics).  Which also poses an interesting question:  Was Nora's name originally Dawn BEFORE Flashpoint, and Barry's mucking around with THAT caused her name to change?  And Eobard mentioned something about ANOTHER kid---which would be Dawn's twin Don (hence, in the comics, they were known as the Tornado Twins).  Again, I press the issue of Flashpoint eliminating him altogether, or was he killed in the future?  Something Nora does not bring up, hence it could be the original timeline.  

Nora.  My, my, my, my, my....we FINALLY get to see what SHE has been up to behind the scenes.  Now, don't get me wrong...Nora is NOT a supervillain---but a misguided and easily manipulated young lady who longs to see her Father.  But this episode finally gives us insight as to WHAT she was writing in her journal.  We also get those moments in this episode where she can't help but see more of what's going on----such as finding out Iris was the one who shot Savitar, seeing Iris comforting Barry during the time of Zoom, and having the fascination with the Reverse Flash suit.  Things she did NOT get to learn from the Flash Museum.  Things that, apparently, she wasn't told by Iris.  This was why Barry was insistent that she stick to the plan, and not stray---because he felt she couldn't handle what happened...and to that matter...she might have the urge to change it.  It was a sad and tender moment to see her travel to the past to see the grandparents she'd never get to meet:  Henry & her namesake.  Her being able to communicate with Gideon didn't seem as a shock...pretty much expected, since Gideon is around in her time, so it seemed natural for her to be working with the AI.  

While I said she's not a supervillain, there have been many theories about her working with Eobard Thawne.  Well...I know some will feel justified in feeling they're RIGHT...but I don't see that as the case.  I feel that Eobard (who's looking rather ragged in 2049), has been manipulating Nora in order to get revenge on Barry, and alter the timeline.  One of the things in the notebook that was translated was "Time is malleable"...meaning that you can bend time to your will...something, no doubt, Eobard has been teaching Nora.  All Nora wants is to spend time with her Dad....but I fear she is going to learn a VERY hard lesson down the road once she realizes she's been played, and it may be too late because whatever she's doing, will put this master plan by Eobard into motion.  Will Barry and Iris find out before it's too late?  Or is this the genesis of the "Crisis" where Barry disappears?  

Joke of the night:  Ralph just couldn't help himself with the Huey Lewis song from Back to the Future, could he?  I SOOOO love that this show isn't afraid to drop pop culture references...

Either way, we will have MUCH to talk about, speculate about, and project our theories about where Team Flash goes from here.  Our brains are going to be wracked with timelines and alternate realities the next week before we take a break, so be prepared for your brain to go into overdrive.

That's gonna do it for me, but a quick note:  This show will air on SUNDAY instead of Tuesday, as this show switches with Supergirl.  Then, the show is off until mid-January.  So the Elseworlds blog will happen next week....then I'll be back here in mid-January to start it all up again, and begin the next arc.

A quick shout out to my friend Jocelyn, who's YouTube page, Jocelyn RP, has reached 1000 subscribers!  Head over there to the channel, and look her up, you'll be glad you did!  Congrats, girl!  You earned it!  For a quick link...go here:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBvUpMcZiuEvQq6giR-T_wg

Okay guys....thanks for checking out the page, and subscribing and PLEASE leave comments!  I'd appreciate it!  Would love to hear from ya!  

Until next week....keep on running!