THE FLASH - Season 5.16

THE FLASH – Season 5, EP. 16:  “Failure Is An Orphan”

With the cure ready to go, The Monarch of Motion and his team concoct a plan to subdue Cicada in order for him to take it, but Killer Frost is willing to lend a hand in nabbing the villain. Nora isn’t too keen on the plan, and has worries.  Meanwhile, Joe eases back into his police work.

We start in 2049 as Eobard is going through his timeline chart.  Nora lets him know the cure is done.  Eobard shows her an article that depicts Flash and Cicada’s last battle.  He shows her that the time is fracturing, and that a new timeline is trying to break through, and thus it can cause a problem.  Nora is panicked.

At STAR Labs, Iris is on the phone talking to someone when Barry shows up with a form she needed.  They then head into the lab, where Barry and Iris see Nora hammering down on the team on trying to find Cicada.  They all look at her parents, seeing that they raised a monster.  Barry and Iris then do what they can to lure Nora out of the lab and over to Jitters.  Once there, they show Nora a surprise:  an XS drink.  Barry teases that next there could be an XS doll, XS comic books, etc., and Iris says there’s time for them to do a lot of things on their bucket list.  Nora grabs her Mom’s phone, and sees the list and laughs, but Barry gets a call, and it’s a metahuman attack at the Cental City University.  They race over and find a guy drinking some kind of chemical compound.  He attacks them, and he has acid powers, melting the wall between them.  Flash races around the guy, and uses a powder to douse the guy’s powers, but it doesn’t work, as he uses his powers again.  He manages to fire off another shot, and escapes as Flash and XS head back into the room, to see the puddle he left behind.  Nora recognizes it, and tells her dad that this is the day they beat Cicada.

Joe is at the police station getting back into the flow of the job, going over the files on Cicada that he missed while he was gone.  Cecile comes in, and catches him up.  They both obtain information about missing medication from the hospital, and figure out that Dr. Veronica Ambres is the one helping Orlen and looking after Grace.  They decide to pay her a visit together.

Nora tells the team about the picture from the news article from her time, and she says that during the final battle between her dad and Cicada, but she noticed the same acid burns.  It turns out that this acid meta is now Cicada’s next victim.  They begin the search for this Acid Master, before Cicada get to him. If this works, it means the crisis is over, and everyone moves on…which bugs Iris.  She catches up to Nora, and says that if things work out, she’ll be going home the next day.  Nora says yes, and just as Iris wants to ask her to stay, Nora says that she’s got to help her dad figure out what to say to Cicada.

Cecile and Joe go to the hospital to interview Dr. Ambres about the missing medications.  Cecile tries to work out a code to find out whether or not she is lying.  Joe goes with his gut, and gets whatever info they can.  But it’s not enough.  Cecile is upset with him about the plan, and Joe says he went with his gut.  Cecile goes with hers, and says they shouldn’t work on this case together.

Barry and Nora go over the things he said to Cold, Magenta, and Killer Frost to change their minds, hoping that he can use some of those same words to get through to Cicada, but he said those situations are different.  Cicada hasn’t a care whether or not he lives or dies.  She still feels he’ll know what to say.

Back at the Lab, Sherloque is still going over Nora’s journal entries, when Cisco and Caitlin walk in.  They discuss how to find the right words for Barry to say to Cicada for when they meet.  We then see Cicada chasing Acid Master, but he’s picked up by Flash, and put in the pipeline.  Caitlin then takes the place of Acid Master and blasts Cicdada when he gets close.  He’s about to confront her, when she breaches out, and Barry confronts him.  He tries to appeal to Cicada, but it doesn’t work.  Cicada hits him, and Caitlin then rushes to his rescue, and Cicada takes off.

Back at the lab, they keep trying to figure out how they can get Cicada.  Nora is desperate.  She’s desperate to figure things out.  Barry feels frustrated as well, and heads to the lab to try and figure out a way to stop him. 

At the CCPD, Barry is trying to figure out what to do, when Joe walks in.  They both commiserate on their troubles.  Barry with Cicada, and Joe with working with Cecile.  Joe appeals to Barry to be more like himself and NOT the Flash, whereas Barry tells Joe to be more open to Cecile and use her gifts to make them his. 

At the lab, Iris bumps in to Nora again, who is trying to figure out the right words her dad can say to Cicada.  Iris wants her to take a break, but Nora calls her out about wanting this break because it’s on her mom’s bucket list.  Iris tells her that once this is over, that Nora will go home as she is, as if time doesn’t pass at all, whereas Iris won’t see her as an adult for decades.  Iris then drops the subject and leaves.

At the CCPD, Joe and Cecile talk, and patch things up.  They decide to work together, and Joe had Dr. Ambres brought in.  They managed to find out that Ambres hatred of metahumans comes from the fact that her fiance’ was killed by metahumans.  They tell her that they can help Dwyer, but they need to know where he is. She informs them that she can contact him. She also reveals to them that Grace is a metahuman.

Back at STAR Labs, the team discusses what they need to do in order to trap Cicada.  But Barry says he’s going to go at it as Barry Allen.  Iris is in the break room working on a story, as Nora shows up.  She apologizes to her mom about not paying attention to the one thing she REALLY came to do---be with her parents.  She says she can’t guarantee what all they can do in the time left, but the fact that they’ll spend as much time as possible with each other will be more of a priority.  They hug it out as Barry walks in, having heard the whole conversation.  He tells them that he’s going to appeal to Cicada as Barry Allen, and not the Flash.

At Dwyer’s hideout, a storage facility, Flash runs into Cicada, and does his best to appeal to him.  He informs Cicada that Grace is a meta, which he did not know.  He asks Dwyer if he wants to keep killing, showing her a world of fear, and perhaps killing her too.  Dwyer says he’d never to do that.  Barry offers the cure to him AND Grace.  Dwyer asks why he should trust Flash.  But Barry unmasks and says he’s a father too…and he’d to anything to protect his daughter and give her a better life.

At STAR Labs, Cicada arrives with Flash, and they tell him, the agreement is that he gets the cure first, then Grace.  He says that if it fails, they will all die.  And he wants Ambres to perform the surgery.  They get him into the OR, and go to work.  The cure is injected.  Joe says that after he’s done, Dwyer is going to jail. 

They are finishing up with Dwyer when Sherloque and Nora talk about how she found out about how she knew which meta Cicada was going after.  Cecile comes in, looking forward to having this over and done with.  Ambres is stitching Dwyer up, when the power goes out.  They’re trying to figure out what’s going on, when a figure crashes through the window.  It’s Grace as Cicada!

The Grace version of Cicada attacks, and takes down Cecile, Nora, and Sherloque.  Cicada is heading towards the Lab, and Ambres isn’t done patching up Dwyer yet.  However, Killer Frost freezes the wound long enough for Ambres to get Dwyer out of there.  The Team then goes off to attack Cicada and stop her.  Cicada blasts everyone down, and brings down the lab.  Cicada then catches up to Dr. Ambres, and stabs her with Dwyer’s knife.

As the team recovers from the attack, Dwyer is gone, and Caitlin tells them that Dr. Ambers is dead.  They don’t know who that was, but Sherloque knows it’s worse.

At their home, Cicada looks over Dwyer, checking his wound.  It’s still frozen.  Cicada unmasks, revealing it to be an older Grace.  She says she missed her Uncle Orlen.

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We got a tiny bit more action in this episode, but it really was more of a "hit you in the feels" kind of show.  Emotions were running high in this episode, and Team Flash's desperation to stop a madman was on full display.

Learning the full name of Dr. Veronica Ambres, and her motivations behind metahumans finally was good,.  Her fiance' being killed by one has been her deep dark secret, and why she helped Orlen all this time.  But, learning she kept the secret from Orlen about Grace being a metahuman led to her eventual downfall.  Was not expecting her to die, but her sacrifice made the Cicada plot even more tragic.  

Giving props to Barry this week for being able to find a way to appeal to Cicada's humanity....by telling Orlen about being a father himself...and showing him that he understands the plight of a parent when their children are in peril.  He also did a good job on giving Joe a pep talk on how to work with Cecile, and her powers.  Joe is a prideful man, but as he said...even HE won't make the same mistake twice.  And when grilling Dr. Ambres, they did find out they work well as a team.

Iris' sadness was also on display this week.  Knowing that this situation is almost at an end is bittersweet for Iris---who feels she hasn't had enough time getting to know her daughter, even though, if history stays on the same path, she will be THE only parent Nora knows in the future.  Nora, fighting so desperately to save her father from disappearing and stopping Cicada, forgot that ONE of her primary reasons for travelling back in time was to spend time WITH her parents.  She knows she's on borrowed time in this situation, so she needs to make up for it.

How many "Oooh, soooo CLOSE!" moments did we have with Sherloque about ready to expose Nora's secret?  It's going to come out....and I feel it's going to be sooner than later.

This was the 2nd week we had NO Ralph Dibny on the show.  He must be keeping busy with his PI business.

Okay...I think we ALLL knew that the OTHER Cicada was Grace...all grown up.  We knew that from Nora being in Grace's head.  Now...THIS Cicada seems to come from the future, unless it's just an adult figment of Grace's powers that she has now.  More will be explained, no doubt, in future episodes.  But my ONE crank on this show was this:  Having been in Grace's memories...WHY didn't NORA know that was Grace---unless she forgot?  It's the one thing that bugged me about the episode.

Outside of that, another solid installment of our Scarlet Speedster, with the story gaining a little more steam down the track.  

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Until next week...keep on running.