The Flash, Season 1, Episode 22: Rogue Air
There aren't really many moments that blew me away in any media. I do indulge the occassional geeky giggle as awesome scenes play out, and that usually made my day. But this episode? This episode blew my mind several times, and again towards the end. I may have been overreacting somewhat, but I so love this show, and I admit that taking so long to review this particular episode is mainly because of just how much I love it. If I had to choose one moment from the series to chose as the most awesome, the short but undeniably glorious lineup of Arrow, Flash and Firestorm facing off against Reverse-Flash as all their individual powers light up, and the flurry of action that followed next, would definitely be on the top.
It is my favourite moment in this series, in cinematic superhero adaptations and probably one of my favourite scenes in fiction non-stop. I mean, yes, the Avengers had more characters, better comic accuracy (half the players involved here are wearing black), a bigger budget and possibly arguably better actors, but I didn't grow up with the Avengers or anything Marvel. And when I watched the Avengers, we know they're all going to show up and be a team. This? This was a gigantic surprise for me because I didn't spoil myself with trailers. I mean, I expected a climatic fight between Barry and Eobard next episode in the finale, not at the end of this one.
But no, the two face off, and suddenly Firestorm shows up, which is cool and unexpected on its own, but Arrow shows up too with that loud TWAAAAANG from his show's soundtrack, all poised together as a proto-Justice-League to bring Reverse-Flash down. And Reverse-Flash felt like a massive threat to the team in a way that Loki nor Ultron ever were because Reverse-Flash, being a superior metahuman compared to the Flash, is easily the most powerful among the four of them.
Shame that Ray Palmer can't show up because that would make it even more awesome, but he does contribute to the Reverse-Flash's downfall by making these nanites that inhibit Reverse-Flash's speed.
And the battle was quick and decisive, not pointlessly dragged out like it could easily have been. I mean, I want to see more of it, but having it just this impactful, added to the surprise that this climatic battle happened not on the final episode of the season but on the episode before it, are truly great storymaking choices. And the nanite arrows are a pretty great way to let Oliver be able to contribute to defeating Reverse-Flash because face it, he's pretty outmatched. The show does its best to let every member of the proto Justice League shne, with Firestorm's barrage of fireballs easily throwing Reverse-Flash around but he himself gets taken out by the whirling hand trick. And while you'd think a depowered Reverse-Flash wouldn't be much of a problem for Green Arrow to bring down, Eobard Thawne is a pretty great martial artist himself, going toe-to-toe with Oliver Queen and giving him a fair fight before regaining his speed.
And that makes him an even bigger threat. Not only is he faster and smarter than Barry Allen, even without his speed he's also a great martial artist while all Barry has going for him are boxing lessons from Eddie. Yeah, Barry's screwed.
But go down the Reverse-Flash does at the end of this episode, with the help of Green Arrow and Firestorm, and no scene can possibly make me as happy as the music buildup as the three heroes assemble, and their powers activate one by one -- Oliver notches an arrow, Barry's got the lightning in his eyeballs, Firestorm goes flame-on, while Eobard uses the god damned costume ring... it just strokes all the right parts for my geekness. The only way this could be better if Oliver shows up in his bright green costume, Firestorm gets his own yellow-red suit and Barry's costume is brighter red, but what can you do.
I could go on and on, but all this is just the last five minutes of the episode. The rest of it? Actually pretty fucking awesome too, I must say. This is absolutely the best example of the writers and everyone involved just pulling all the stops for an episode before the finale. Comparing it with its sister show, which just spends its time pulling the 'Oliver is TOTALLY evil' card while just setting players up for a finale, this episode is having none of that bullshit and actually tells a story of its own while still setting up for an explosive finale.
Because make no mistake -- we got the Justice League at the end of this episode, and while it may have less prominent members and rather crappy costumes compared to the big movie version coming out... whenever WB decides on their exact plans for the DC movie franchise... there's a big difference of knowing that you're going into a movie starring the JLA, and watching a TV series where these guys are built up as characters gradually, and suddenly showing up to team-up and take down this monster of a villain.
And the good guys aren't the only team-up this time around, because every single metahuman bad guy in Barry's little prison gang up on Team Flash. We'll get to the awesomeness of Captain Cold later on, but I am just here to say that seeing no less than five super-powered metahumans who each have been built up in their own personal episodes all break free and engage in a gigantic battle royale against the Flash is just glorious. Peekaboo, Weather Wizard, Rainbow Raider, Deathbolt, the Mist... they all return, broken free by Captain Cold and Golden Glider just to fuck around with the Flash. The only real one that's missing from this party is Heat Wave, but hey, can't have everything.
It's just awesome, and the scene where Deathbolt, Weather Wizard and the Mist are just shooting off their visually impressive special attacks are a wonder to behold. It's fast, yes, it goes pretty quickly, but it's still undoubtedly awesome.
Captain Cold returns and he is absolutely in tiptop condition with snarkiness, hamminess and outgambitting everyone, and is just being such a gigantic presence in every scene he shows up in. Definitely makes me like him a lot more, and this episode shows that he's not entirely honourable either. He's got his own crazy code of honour, but it operates in an odd way and it's absolutely a blast.
Let's break down this mammoth of an episode bit by bit. After Team Flash discovers that he's actually using the STAR Labs generator which itself is a pretty neat twist that makes sense since it fits with foreshadowing and everything, Reverse-Flash zips out, having done whatever he needs to do, while Barry wants to save the defeated metahumans in the STAR Labs basement before the activation of the particle accelerator kills them. Again, while naive, it's still pretty great to see superheroes who aren't being Punisher-clones. It's just refreshing to see. Naive, yes, but refreshing.
And I do like how Joe is strongly opposed against keeping the defeated metahumans in their own private basement prison. I mean, granted, there wasn't much they could do in Iron Heights Prison to keep these dudes locked up, but still, the moral implications of keeping these metahumans caged up is a nice thing to explore. Joe's little conversation with the DA is a nice little hint, perhaps, of future things to come? Seeing Peekaboo go from 'street thug' to 'psychopath' is a nice little subtle way to show that what Barry and company did to the metahumans they took down might not be the most ethical thing to do to them.
We've also got the Eddie situation kind of resolved in an anti-climatic way, with Eobard's future information thing basically breaking him and he breaks up with Iris and I honestly cannot give any less fucks because SUPERHERO SUPERVILLAIN RUMBLE FIGHT MATCH GO
Barry himself may be making a lot of stupid decisions in this episode, but on the other hand, I do like how he's trying to both emulate Oliver and trying to make decisions without Eobard-Wells. It is kind of a nice, subtle way to foreshadow Oliver's appearance later on in the episode without being completely anal and obvious, and also a line of thought that Barry's definitely going to explore. His little breakdown over just how angry he is that Eobard has been ahead of him all the time is absolutely well-done as well. It feels organic, and not ham-fisted either. All the talk about making morally questionable decisions to gain the upper hand and everything, only for it to bite him in the ass...
Granted, it's a bit of a broken Aesop since Barry has been a lot more effective than Oliver ever has been throughout season three. But still.
There's an odd lull in the main Reverse-Flash plot as he disappears from this episode at the beginning only to return at the end because the magic future machine needs time to charge -- do like, once more, Cisco being unable to do jack shit to future tech -- but that gave us Captain Cold and it's awesome. Captain Cold takes center stage as the nominal villain for the most part of the episode, basically presenting himself as 'the lesser evil' in the grand scheme of things, and ends up fucking Barry over. Cold does save Barry from Deathbolt, killing the poor personality-less fucker, but he's also managed to force Barry to owe him a favour for saving his life, as well as recruit both Weather Wizard and Rainbow Raider. The Mist and Peekaboo, while less pleasant people, will probably be on good terms with Cold after this as well. Plus he gets all his records wiped out to the dust as part of the deal. It's some nice little manipulation from Captain Cold, who, lest we forget, has no powers.
I do like the little complexity with Captain Cold. He doesn't like killing, but he won't hesitate to do so. He wants to rob things and generally likes the thrill, but won't move out of Central City just because he likes it there. He will cheat and steal and backstab, but he has some kind of twisted code of honour enough to keep him from letting Barry die.
We get some quality comedy when Cold kills Deathbolt and converses with the other future-Rogues, as well. Rainbow Raider making a 'oh, okay, that makes sense' shrug when Captain Cold says that he killed Deathbolt because he owed him money, Rainbow Raider saying a meek 'thank you' when Cold matter-of-fact-ly acts for one and the gloriously pissed off expression from Weather Wizard to Raider because he quickly submits to Captain Cold... yeah, we're hinting on big alliances coming between Captain Cold and the Weather Wizard, two of the primary members of the core Rogues team. Weather Wizard gets a fair amount of scenes showing him as relatively observant and calculating in between shouting as he summons lightning bolts and tornadoes, and I am looking forward for the inevitable team-up between Weather Wizard, Captain Cold and Heat Wave.
Mist also gets some great moments just channeling his inner psychopath, while Peekaboo gets a rather brutal scene beating down Caitlin. All the metahumans other than Deathbolt, who got a deadly dose of frostbite to the face, are on the loose, setting things up for season two.
One weaker point of this episode is the lack of explanation regarding Deathbolt, who probably caused quite a bit of fans who only watch Flash without watching Arrow to be confused at this one metahuman who showed up out of nowhere. What, Cisco just dropping a throwaway 'oh, Deathbolt, the dude Ray left at our doorstep last week' is too hard to work in? Jeez.
I guess the rest of Team Flash just being so accepting of Captain Cold and Golden Glider helping them is a bit stupid, and that's not to say of Barry's initial decision to ask Cold for help. But it made for absolutely entertaining television so it's something that I'm willing to look over and brush off with 'Barry is frustrated'.
And we also get quite a bit of homages to past events in the series as well as Easter Eggs for comic book readers. List form? Okay.
In-series continuity nods:
- Y'know, everyone who only showed up once or twice actually shows up again.
- Barry uses the tornado-arm trick that Wells taught him to put out a fire to defeat the Mist. Reverse-Flash uses that same trick with far greater power to blow away Firestorm later on.
- Cisco realizes that fluid floats anytime time travel is involved, so he brings along a soda.
- Joe reminds everyone that the original function of the Pipeline is to rehabilitate the evil metahumans.
- References to ARGUS, Captain Boomerang and the Lian Yu island.
- Oliver is in his League of Assassins outfit, so I guess he just took... some time off? Probably happened in between him joining in and Team Arrow's big assault on Nanda Parbat.
- Oliver asks Barry for a 'favour', setting up Barry's own guest star in Arrow's season three finale.
- Eobard-Wells needing to 'charge' his speed has been foreshadowed several times after the initial reveal. This episode shows that a future-machine in the wheelchair helps him do this and is why he's so much faster than Barry.
Comic book Easter-eggs:
- Captain Cold mentions that Ferris Air closed down because one of their pilots disappeared, an unmistakable reference to the Hal Jordan version of Green Lantern's origin story. Ferris Air itself has gotten a name-drop in one episode of Arrow near the climax. What is all this buildup?
- Lisa Snart gets her comic book codename, 'Golden Glider'.
- The two evil metahumans that Captain Cold talk to at the end are Weather Wizard, who is a core member of the Rogues in the comic, and Rainbow Raider, who is a reject from the comic-book version of the group.
- Eobard finally shows that he can launch his costume from his ring to swiftly change into it, just like the comic-book version of Barry Allen.
It's an explosive penultimate episode, and a massive explosion of action and characters before we get to more emotionally-charged stuff involving Barry and Eobard's rivalry and the whole talk about Barry's mother. With Reverse-Flash actually being taken out by a combination of Flash and Firestorm's metahuman brute force and Oliver shooting three doses of Ray's speed-negating arrows into his back, it's a surprising way to take out the main villain because in these things the final episode usually involves the main villain being in full strength and the hero needing to beat him down. Again, in addition to being really awesome, the Flash manages to break conventional boring ol' storyteling in favour for something far, far superior.
I just absolutely adore and love this episode. I just do.
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