THE FLASH “Luck Be a Lady” Review

Pictured (L-R): Grant Gustin as Barry Allen and Sugar Lyn Beard as Becky/Hazard. Photo: Katie Yu/The CW

THE FLASH “LUCK BE A LADY” REVIEW

BY JUSTIN CARTER

Last week’s Flash saw the introduction of a new plot line for a dozen new Metas in a scheme orchestrated by the Thinker. That storyline continues  this week with the debut of Becky Sharpe, a woman plagued by bad luck prior to gaining her powers as Barry emerged from the Speed Force. (As the Thinker intones about her MySpace page, she believes she’s incredibly cursed.) With that kind of heavy foreshadowing, it comes as no surprise that her powers grant her good luck, but at the cost of everyone else’s. 

This in turn earns her the nickname of “Hazard,” and not “Jinx,” a villain many may remember from the Teen Titans cartoon and who I thought she would turn out to be, based on the previews. Coincidentally, everyone else is going through a string of bad luck of their own — Barry and Iris are experiencing pre-wedding woes, and Joe’s house is in need of some costly repairs. Cisco and Caitlin are left completely unscathed from all this madness, though Wally gets dumped by Jesse in the worst way possible.

Naturally, Hazard isn’t willing to just give up her good luck streak, and that’s when the episode gives up all pretense and becomes what’s basically an extended pre-death sequence of Final Destination. With her powers growing the luckier she gets—and of course she’s at a casino as this all goes down—the rest of the city suffers. If I’m being honest, the amount of bad luck gets very close to crossing the line into overkill with the inclusion of the particle accelerator almost exploding and a goose being sucked into a plane turbine.  It all wraps up neatly in the end, but at the same time, we can’t help but agree with Harry that this is all a bit ridiculous.

The return of Tom Cavanaugh’s Harry is a welcome one, helped by an entrance that sees him awkwardly attempting to recount everything Jesse wrote in her breakup message. There’s a lot more playful banter between him and Cisco that is just funny enough to keep their interactions lively without the two of them devolving into slapping each other with their hands. Even though the reasoning behind bringing him back into the fold is a little contrived—he made a team for Jesse on Earth-2, but she and the others soon voted him off—it’s nice to see him hanging around with Team Flash and being his old cranky self. As Hazard’s presence proves, they definitely need him, both because of his cool head, and because they’re family. 

Speaking of family, the decision to get rid of Wally doesn’t really sit right with me. The decision for him to find his place in the world upon Barry’s return is a valid one for sure. But the show never really dealt with this up to then; we never got to actually see what it was like for him to have to step up and then deal with being knocked back down to second tier. If anything, his leaving just feels like the show flat out admitting that they don’t know what to do with him and knocking him off the board because it’s convenient. 

“Luck Be a Lady” is another solid episode in a consistent string, but its closing moments keep it from getting the three cherries, to borrow Hazard’s final act of luck. 

Additional Notes

• Thinker is using the head of Samuroid to spy on Team Flash, which feels like a season one move for the Team. They’re aware that someone was controlling it, so why wouldn’t they take it apart and study it?
• At the end of the episode, Joe learns that Cecile is pregnant, and his blank face is a weird note to close out on. 
• Who the hell uses MySpace in 2017 when you’ve got Facebook and Twitter around to do your moping? C’mon, Becky. 
• During all the bad luck, Iris decides to get married right after a funeral, in a move that’s Always Sunny shades of hilariously awful. 
• Next week: the Elongated Man! And body horror is sure to follow!