Barry Allen and Team Flash are back for Season Two which kicked off last night, picking up right where we left off – kind of. After last season ended with the cliff hanger of the fastest man alive racing into the swirling singularity, I was little surprised where we picked up in Season 2.
SPOILERS AHEAD
The show starts off with a dream like sequence, where Barry is being showered with praise by all of his friends and family, including Eddie and Dr. Wells. It’s when we cut to the reality of Barry in Star Labs alone, that we realize all is not well. It’s been six months since The Flash saved Central City from the singularity and things have changed. Barry, still wracked with guilt from Eddie’s death, has gone solo. Pushing everyone away from him, Team Flash is no more. However, the city loves The Flash more than ever and ‘Flash Day’ is quickly approaching. We find out that Cisco is now working with Joe on the police’s Meta Task Force and Caitlin has gone out on her own to work at Mercury Labs while Iris still mourns Eddie.
It isn’t long until Team Flash is needed again as Atom Smasher, a villain that can absorb radiation and grow larger, comes to kill The Flash. Even as Barry tries to keep everyone away for their own safety, the team comes back together to help. It’s here that we find out that Ronnie had sacrificed himself that day with the singularity and Barry blames himself in classic superhero form.
Barry is also faced with a message from Dr. Wells that he refuses to watch. It’s not until Caitlin helps him realize that other people’s decisions aren’t his fault that she convinces him to watch the video. On it, Wells confesses to the murder of Nora Allen, exonerating Barry’s father.
With his father’s name cleared, Team Flash comes together to defeat Atom Smasher, in a less than thrilling conflict. He does, however, utter the season’s villains name before dying – Zoom. Barry’s dad throws him a curveball and chooses to leave Central City, much to Barry’s dismay. As he returns to the new and improved Star Labs, a mysterious stranger, Jay Garrick (who we knew was coming, but still!) appears to warn them of impending doom.
It’s a strong return for The Flash as it explores a lot of emotional topics as well as doing a pretty great job of setting up the dimension jumping season. With the inclusion of Jay Garrick, the first implications of Zoom and the promise of even more interdimensional drama, the premiere set the tone for the next few months.
What the episode seriously lacked was a good villain to really up the stakes. At no point did I feel that Atom Smasher would be a real threat, nor did I feel at any point that the team wouldn’t get back together to defeat him. If anything, I feel the writers focused more on setting up the season than they did writing a top notch episode.
They spent a lot of time exploring Barry’s character and the reasons why he makes such a good hero which made for a solid re-establishing point with Barry to get us hooked back on the speedster. It also grounded us in who matters to Barry and why, and how much the city really means to him. This is going to be important as we get deeper into the interdimensional storylines that will bring dead characters back to life, show us alternate time lines and test Barry and his team to the limit.
There was a shot that also showcased the potential for Cisco’s powers to be further unlocked as he had a bizarre flash of an image that I didn’t quite understand when we first met the Atom Smasher. The show has done this a couple of times before that has lead to some pretty spectacular reveals, so I look forward to this as we go forward.
With Tom Cavanagh staying on as a series regular, the video that Barry watched seemed to eliminate the idea that Wells would be somehow brought back to life after the death of Reverse Flash. It appears now that he will instead be brought back as an alternate Wells, which would fit nicely into the father figure that Barry lost when Thawne revealed himself. Speaking of father figures, it was pretty awful of the writers to have Henry leave after all those years in prison. I mean, they could have left him around Central City for the occasional guest star at least! I understand that his purpose in the show has run its course and keeping him on was probably not financially viable, but the fact that he literally didn’t even wait for his welcome home party to be over before leaving was pretty rough.
On another note, with Barry going rogue after the death of someone close like Arrow has already done in a previous season, I couldn’t help but feel that the writers rooms of Arrow and The Flash could use a little more space in between them. They are very distinctly their own shows, but with overlap already happening, a little distance couldn’t hurt.
Overall, I think the return of The Flash was a solid start to the season. What it lacked certainly paled in comparison to what it brought to the table with some strong emotional punches and a certain finality of putting the past behind them and moving forward. With a lot of the heavy lifting done story wise, I’m excited for next week to see what dangers will befall Barry and Team Flash.
P.S. As a side note, as deep and lengthy as the list of villains is for The Flash, they sure do have a lot of AWFUL names.