The Flash "Revenge of the Rogues" Review/Thoughts

The Flash is back everyone! After a brief month-long midseason hiatus, Barry and the S.T.A.R. Labs crew returned tonight to find that the ice-flinging Leonard Snart has teamed up with the fire-obsessed Mick Rory. One is a cool and collected strategist while the other is a hot-head who is quick to jump the gun. Sounds like every show ever that features a tidy roommate and a sloppy roommate who are forced to live together, and at times tonight it, it kind of felt that way.

Episode Description: Captain Cold and Heatwave team up to wreak havoc around Central City in an attempt to draw the Flash into battle. Meanwhile, Barry decides that dedicating his spare time to getting faster is more important than protecting his city from the dangers at hand.

High Points: 

• Barry's intense drone training session almost causes Harrison Wells to blow his disabled persona (also the drone training session itself was really cool)
• Barry's encounter with the Reverse Flash has clearly left him shaken up which will serve as a good obstacle for The Flash to overcome and will ultimately lead to more character growth over the second half of the season
• Barry flexes his latest speed-based power: Super Speedy Speed Reading
• "The Scarlett Speedster!" - Captain Cold 
• Cisco's freeze-gun proof shields 
• The fight between the Flash and the Rogues (are we going to see Eddie warm up to the Flash more? Will this effect any Eobard Thawne related transformations in the future?)
• I couldn't help but notice that when Barry and Harrison Wells met up briefly at S.T.A.R. Labs right before they found out about Caitlin, the music during that scene was strangely ominous. It made the whole scene feel like the whole relationship between them was very uncertain and I enjoyed that. 
• Dr. Martin Stein was mentioned as being a part of the whole F.I.R.E.S.T.O.R.M. project meaning that Firestorm's second half is probably very much already in play
• Not to mention that the man Caitlin met up with to talk about F.I.R.E.S.T.O.R.M. was none other than Jason Rusch (The Firestorm who comes after Ronnie Raymond)
• Captain Cold's sister making a cliffhanger appearance (Lisa Snart, a.k.a. Golden Glider)

Low Points:

• I couldn't help but notice that whenever Barry shows up to the crime scene nowadays, they no longer show his thought process via little side calculations and observations. Not that it takes anything away from the show by taking it out, I just found it cool during the first two episodes. 
• "Wait...SCUBA is an acronym!" -Barry Allen. (Of all the ways they could have figured out Firestorm was an acronym, happening to say SCUBA moments before should not have been the one they went with)
• Scumbag Joe West: "I'll give you two some time alone". *Sits down on the couch three feet away* 

Just remember folks, if you don't know what a word means then it is probably just a long-ass acronym for something...

Verdict: After a humbling encounter with the Reverse Flash during the midseason finale, we return to Central City to find a Barry Allen that is clearly torn up about both not being the fastest man alive, and having let the man who murdered his mother get away. The Reverse Flash is in no way the focus of this episode, but I do like to see that the encounter had a long lasting effect on Barry, and I look forward to see how he deals with it in the near future. Tonight the villain spotlight was on the Rogues, Captain Cold and Heatwave. Dominic Purcell showed us his Mick Rory for the first real time tonight given that we don't count the 3 seconds we saw of him during the cliffhanger to "Going Rogue" episode earlier this season. Unfortunately I was not overly impressed, but I also think I have an explanation. Now I understand that Mick Rory and Leonard Snart are pretty opposite personalities to begin, and in some circumstances have even been considered adversaries, but I felt like they were trying really hard to emphasize how completely opposite the two characters were. Earlier in the season Captain Cold had been established as calm, calculated and clever. Here they tried to establish Heatwave as the opposite of that, and at times he almost seemed too simple-minded compared to Cold. However, maybe I just got a bad first impression of him too. I will have to see what I feel when I see Heatwave and the Rogues return again, presumably with Golden Glider on their roster next time. Lisa Snart has been know to be romantically connected to Mirror Master, which could potentially hint at his membership in the Rogues. There have also been storylines where Lisa is killed, which then causes Captain Cold to seek vengeance, so that route becomes a very possible option as well by throwing hr into the mix. This episode also spent some time on the Firestorm part of the storyline, as Caitlin digs deeper into what happened to her ex-fiancee. Basically what we got tonight were two big names: Jason Rusch and Martin Stein. Jason Rusch is the man who becomes Firestorm after Ronnie and Martin Stein is the man essentially acts as Firestorm's voice of reason. The original Firestorm arose during the fusion of Ronnie Raymond and Martin Stein but the end result was essentially Ronnie as Firestorm with the wisdom and insight of Dr. Stein ringing around in his head. In fact, Jason Rusch's comment to Caitlin about nobody having seen the good doctor in awhile leads me to think that he is already a voice inside Ronnie's head. All in all there were a lot of name drops this week, another strong showing by Captain Cold and his ever-growing group of Rogues, and a dozen more reasons to keep tuning in each week to watch The Flash. This week's episode scores an 8.0 out of 10. 

Thanks for reading the review! Got anything weighing on your mind after this week's episode? Think you know who will round out the Rogues' roster? Sound off in the comments or on twitter @Caped_Informers. Be sure to check back on the blog regularly for reviews of other comic book shows like Arrow which returns tomorrow, as well as other comic book news and analyses. The Flash returns same time next week with "The Sound and the Fury".