The Flash "Fallout" Review/Thoughts

Tonight on The Flash we received an unprecedented amount of dynamic-duo action. I am talking old-school superhero team ups, unlikely partnerships and, dare I say it, a long-awaited villainous collaboration.

Episode Description: After an explosion separates Ronnie and Dr. Stein, General Eiling returns to Central City in search of the key to unlocking F.I.R.E.S.T.O.R.M.'s weapon-grade potential. Meanwhile, Barry makes a key realization about the night his mother was murdered.

High Points:

• Episode picks up immediately after the events of "The Nuclear Man" (and with an immediate resolution to last week's dilemmas as well)
• Joe shares his crime scene notes with Barry thus opening up a much anticipated time-travel conversation!
• The ensuing time travel conversations (It's happening! It is really truly happening!)
• You know how people joke about twins being able to feel each other's pain and emotions? That is no joking matter for Ronnie and Dr. Wells
• I actually really enjoyed all of the gadgets that Eiling brought to fight Barry with (the kinetic-energy seeking shrapnel, the acid missiles, etc.) They create newer obstacles for Barry and also made Eiling a more formidable and unpredictable foe
• Everyone seems to be conducting their own personal investigations nowadays. First we get Joe looking into Harrison Wells and now we are getting Iris and Mason Bridge snooping around S.T.A.R. Labs.
• The way Ronnie communicated with a captive Dr. Stein was some Black-Quilled, Hogwarts-Level shit
• We got some sweet, consensual body fusing between Ronnie and Dr. Stein to get our first glimpse at a fully-functioning Firestorm (The aforementioned unlikely partnership)
• We then get a brief Firestorm/Flash team-up to finish off Eiling and the army for the episode (The aforementioned superhero team up)
• The episode ends with The Reverse Flash unmasking himself to reveal that he is in fact Harrison Wells, while simultaneously delivering Eiling to an angry Gorilla Grodd!!

Christian sent this my way about a week ago and it ended up being immediately relevant. Good show sir!

Low Points:

• Iris seems to be the only person in Central City at this point who has zero idea that Barry is the Flash. Even Barry's dad put two and two together and the man lives behind bars.. I don't dislike this as much as a plot point as much as I dislike it because Iris's character is just starting to seem really air-headed at this point. At least she is slowly starting to piece things together with Firestorm..
• I thought it was a little strange how both Ronnie and Dr. Stein were both suddenly prepared to immediately leave their loved ones so they could figure out their Firestorm powers. It was a split-second decision but there was no going back after that
• As amazing as it was to finally see Harrison Wells take off his mask and reveal it truly was him in the Yellow Suit, it brings my constant speculating on the subject to a halt, and for that I shed a single tear

It was fun dreaming up an infinite number of possibilities while it lasted

Verdict: We got ourselves a real humdinger of an episode on our hands here. Where do we even begin the conversation? How about with the cold hard fact that Barry Allen is going to time-travel and it is shaping up to look like some Flashpoint level shit. Of course we have been hit constantly with time travel implications throughout the course of the season but this marked the first time that the S.T.A.R. Labs gang gathered around and had a full-on conversation about it. Everyone is now aware that Barry is eventually going to become fast enough to break through the time barrier, including Barry himself. Plus he is now motivated to not only go back in time, but also to save his mother. If Barry succeeds in doing this we can expect to see some interesting alternate timeline action and I think we may have already been given the indicator that Barry initially succeeds. I am talking about the newspaper headline that we saw in Harrison Well's secret back room back at the beginning of the season. It was dated for April 25, 2024 and it read "Flash Missing: Vanishes in Crisis". Could this be the supposed end result of an alternate timeline? It is definitely starting to look that way. Unfortunately we probably can't expect an alternate universe similar to one detailed in Flashpoint, mostly because we can't possibly expect to get big names like Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Thomas Wayne Batman dropped on us out of nowhere. However, it wouldn't be out of the question to assume that the Arrow gang would be affected by an alternate timeline. Either way a time-travel storyline is on its way and the a whole new world of possibilities and is opening up. In other words, I now have something new to obsessively speculate about.

#cantstopwontstop

On top of all this time-travel talk, we finally got to see some legitimate Firestorm action as Dr. Stein and Ronnie combined willingly to take on Eiling. Plus after their successful merging, the decided to go learn how to use their powers meaning that we are definitely going to be seeing more of this version of Firestorm later on down the line. Could The Flash be making its way into the spin-off generating business that Arrow has made itself? I couldn't help but notice they name dropped "Coast City" during the episode, a.k.a. home of Hal Jordan. If I remember correctly, on Arrow they started just by acknowledging Central City was there before they introduced us to Barry Allen a season later. I'm just saying, the parallels are worth looking into. And to round out the episode we get another amazing cliffhanger sequence, where the Reverse Flash delivers General Eiling to Grodd in his underground/sewer lair. Now I thought we were just going to get Grodd waved in front of our faces this season so he could be the big bad next season, but now we are getting a clear partnership between Wells and Grodd?! We knew that there was a connection between these two characters from previous episodes, but a team-up this soon? The show never fails to give us something to look forward to and I love it! I just hope they are able to follow up in future seasons because right now this is looking like a tough act to follow. Also did Grodd kill Eiling or did he take him somewhere? Part of me hopes Eiling is just locked away somewhere in Grodd's layer because if he is dead we will never have the possibility of Eiling eventually becoming The General. Perhaps Grodd will do tests on Eiling like Eiling used to do to him? Just another potential outcomes out the 100 that this show cranks out every week. From time-travel to speedster-gorilla team-ups to even more untold potential, this episode scores a 9.0 out of 10.

Thanks for checking out the review. What are your thoughts on the Reverse Flash/Gorilla Grodd partnership? Would you watch a spin-off about the wacky misadventures of Ronnie Raymond and Dr. Stein? Let us know in the comments or on twitter @Caped_Informers. Also be sure to check back regularly for more show reviews, movie reviews and other articles relevant to the comic book universe. The Flash is unfortunately going on a month-long hiatus but will return March 17th with their 15th episode.


In case the reference was missed: Let me be clear what I meant by the term "Black-Quilled, Hogwarts-Level shit":

This...This is what I meant