SOME SPOILERS AHEAD.
This was such a filler episode and it felt like one in which the writers tried to make it look like it had something to do with the overall narrative of the season. In reality, it didn’t. The way that the writers tried to that was by teasing not only Team Flash, but the audience, with the possibility that they would learn the identity of Savitar from this week’s villain, Abra Kadabra. Absolutely nothing that happened in this episode drove the main plot of the season forward. It’s just in there to pad the number of episodes.
Instead, what we got was an episode about a random villain stealing tech from basically every tech company in Central City in order to build a time machine and return to his own time; the 64th century. Aside from Team Flash trying to thwart his efforts, he had to contend with Gypsy who was hellbent on capturing him so that he could be put to death, because he killed her partner three years ago. Not only was Gypsy a threat to Abra Kadabra’s efforts, she was also a threat to Team Flash’s plans to use him to find out the identity of Savitar.
I get that the writers were probably trying to show how evil Abra Kadabra was by having him kill the security guards at the beginning of the episode, but it was kind of unnecessary. Which I guess means it worked. But later on when he robbed Kord Industries there were no casualties. Another thing that bothered me about the character was the fact that he couldn’t get out of the meta prison. If memory serves, those were specifically designed to imprison metas by suppressing their powers. None of the “tricks” that he performed were because of meta powers. So why did it work on him? With his advanced nano-technology that enabled him to produce water out of thin air and teleport, there was no way that he could have broken out?
I thought that he was playing with them and would eventually break out, but that wasn’t the case. It was kind of confusing. He did escape, however, when Joe set him free in exchange for Savitar’s identity. A proposition that Abra Kadabra had already made to Team Flash and one that Barry and Iris agreed they wouldn’t do; they didn’t want to let a murderous criminal go free just to save her life. Joe’s decision to free Abra Kadabra ends disastrously when Gypsy interrupts their conversation and he runs to escape, throwing a bomb at Joe, Julian and Caitlin as they pursue him. Caitlin ends up impaled and with shrapnel in her abdomen.
I understand why Joe did what he did and I don’t blame him for it at all. I also don’t blame Gypsy for blowing up at Joe and chewing him out for what he did. She made some very valid points in her argument. But then Cisco had to intervene with this weird moral compass that the Flarrow-verse writers seem to have by getting upset with Gypsy for being upset with Joe. What Joe did had terrible consequences. Yes, we understand why he did it, but that doesn’t make it any less of a bad decision.
He did pretty much the same thing earlier in the episode when he seemingly couldn’t see why Caitlin’s stealing of the philosopher’s stone was a terrible thing to do and why Julian was still upset with her about it. Again, we understood why she did it but that didn’t make her actions any less of a bad decision that put everyone else at serious risk. Speaking of the tiff between Caitlin and Julian, their relationship was mended by Julian performing surgery on her to remove the shrapnel from her body. A surgery which, for some unfathomable reason, Iris – the least qualified of the team to do so – was assisting in and appeared far easier than Caitlin made it out to seem.
With the last piece needed for his time machine stolen from Star Labs, it was only then that Cisco realised that that was what Abra Kadabra was doing with the tech he stole; building a time machine (and the exact same one that Cisco had built for Eobard Thawne in season one at that). Given that Cisco built the thing, you’d think that he would have noticed that was what he was doing a lot sooner. But I digress.
Once the machine was completed, Team Flash and Gypsy capture Abra Kadabra right as he is going to escape through a worm hole. Before he’s taken to Earth-19 with Gypsy, Barry takes a moment to appeal to his humanity, begging him to reveal to them who Savitar is. Abra, of course, doesn’t (it’s a filler episode, they’re not going to find out) and instead takes pleasure in being able to save Iris but refusing to do so. Barry then decides to travel to the future to get the information that he needs to defeat Savitar.
Since a big part of this season was Barry dealing with the fallout from his creation of Flashpoint and learning that he should not and cannot use time travel to fix everything…you’d think that he wouldn’t now choose to use time travel to fix this problem. Arguably travelling to the future isn’t as bad as travelling to and changing the past, but Barry is still changing the timeline. Changing the timeline is what lead to this entire mess.
When Caitlin starts seizing, Julian removes her power suppressing necklace so that she can heal. It works, but unfortunately she turns into Killer Frost in the process. Am I the only one that thinks that Julian had enough time to put back on the necklace? Perhaps he was so caught up in his joy that she was alive that he didn’t think of that.
Random thoughts:
- Team Flash should have been vibing the future to check on their progress a long time ago.
- What Cisco lacks in smoothness he makes up for with charm.
- The time vault is popping up a lot lately.
- Wally: “We can’t let him get past us.” Well DUH!
- I thought you learned your lesson about time travel Barry!
The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8 PM on The CW.
