THE FLASH “Abra Kadabra” Review

By Justin Carter

 
Abra Kadabra

The biggest question hanging over this season of The Flash concerns the identity of Savitar. Each season-long villain for the Scarlet Speedster has had an accompanying air of mystery, and so far, the show hasn’t broken that streak with their even more CG-than-usual baddie. The previews for this week’s episode hinted that we would finally pull back the curtain on Savitar’s identity, and it turns out that…yeah, that totally didn’t happen.

Instead, what we’ve got is a bait and switch, more than fitting for our villain of the week. Our baddie is one Abra Kadabra, a metahuman from the 64th century with powers that basically make him a magician, even though they’re tech based. His presence is already noticeable after he kills a pair of guards while robbing from a tech company, but it’s Gypsy’s appearance that shakes things up, along with the knowledge that ol’ Abra claims to know the identity of Savitar himself. All he wants in return is to be let go and away from Gypsy’s wrath, who’s still holding a grudge after he killed her partner years ago while screwing around in Earth-19.

Gypsy’s appearance this week is definitely her at her most unpleasant. Her thirst for vengeance means that she’s just rude to everyone that she comes across, and while there’s no doubt that she’ll show up again by season’s end, it’ll be a bit harder to justify why Cisco would want to be with her, let alone the rest of the team needing her help. And for whatever it’s worth, Joe was in the right in pursuing any option to save his daughter. Joe’s always been out of his depth when it comes to the superpowered parts of his world, but this is a new level of hopelessness that was always going to come at some point in the season once he learned of his daughter’s impending doom.

And speaking of impending doom, Caitlin’s back as Killer Frost by episode’s end. It’s not as shocking as it could be, given that the show already made a note of her return, and it also doesn’t help that her relationship troubles of the week with Julian pretty much gave it away. For the show to suggest she would die from being impaled during Kadabra’s escape from STAR Labs is pretty silly, since they hinted extremely hard that she’d need to use her ice powers before she helped Julian operate on her. (It also doesn’t help that she’s gone evil like, three times in a single season, so now the novelty has worn off.)

Kadabra, for what it’s worth, is fine in the episode. He’s played by David Dastmalchian, who you’ll probably remember as one of Joker’s goons in The Dark Knight and also as Scott’s friend Kurt in Ant-Man. With his bleached hair and silly goatee, he looks smug enough to want Team Flash to put him behind bars at least, and the effects for his powers are pretty cool. His attempt to escape the city via his DIY time machine is a fun sequence, since it requires both Flash and Kid Flash to work with Vibe and Gypsy to chase him throughout town. It’s just a shame that he’s been carted off to his death at Earth-19 by episode’s end, given that with more time, he could’ve filled in the snark filled gap that Wentworth Miller’s Captain Cold left when he migrated to another show.

With Kadabra being yet another baddie from the future and not having delivered on his promise of dropping Savitar’s real name, Barry decides that the best way to figure out how to save Iris is to travel to the future himself. As far as plans go, it’s not an entirely bad one, but we also won’t see how that goes for him for another four weeks. Hopefully he’ll find out who Savitar is as well, because the mystery is getting old.

Additional Notes

• HR was absent from the episode until the very end, as he spent the last two days having relations with a lovely woman named Rhonda. But Cisco wasn’t worried, or at least that’s what he’ll tell you.
• If the whole Iris thing doesn’t work out, Barry should still go to Hamilton in July, because well…it’s Hamilton, man.
• While listing off baddies who’ve caused Barry trouble in the past, Kadabra mentions a guy named DeVoe, leading many to think he’s the Thinker, and will be the season four baddie. Given that Arrow name dropped Damien Dahrk before revealing him as the villain for their season, it’s likely that’s the case again.
• So, how about that Justice League trailer?
• Flash returns on April 25, with a Barry that has the most emo hairstyle to ever exist. See ya then!