THE FLASH “Marathon” Review

The Flash — “Marathon” — Pictured (L-R): Grant Gustin as Barry Allen and Candice Patton as Iris West – Allen — Photo: Katie Yu/The CW

The Flash “Marathon” Review

By Justin Carter 

The Crisis is over; Arrow has drawn its last arrow, and every hero we care about is on one Earth now. While the various Arrowverse shows have been dealing with the fallout in ways that are still being examined, The Flash has maybe the easiest grasp on what it wants to do with the second part of its season. 

As Cisco so neatly explains at the start, Oliver creating a single Earth has created some problems for Team Flash; specifically that several of their villains are now back with soft reboots and deadlier edges. We get our first glimpse of this with the debut of a new-ish Doctor Light. You may recall that Light was in this show back in season two as the Earth-2 version of Linda Park, but here she’s an assassin using a high powered rifle with herself as the ammo. Iris learns this the hard way as she and Team Citizen start publicly taking the fight to an organization named Black Hole. 

In the comics, Black Hole recently debuted as a shadowy cabal of evil scientists, but here they’ve been collecting metahumans to deploy as soldiers and killing machines. It’s all solid stuff here for Iris and her crew, since Candice Patton has long proven herself capable of making just about any scenario captivating if given the space to actually do so. It’s also nice to see actual journalism being done in a show where people stretch long and throw lightning. And with Iris having gone into the mirror dimension after being yanked in there by the new Mirror Master (?) at the end, it seems the fun with her is just beginning. 

Elsewhere, the other members of Team Flash are either on standby to help Iris or having to adjust to the new status quo. For Cisco, he’s losing his mind trying to make sense of Oliver recreating the new universe, going so far as to catalog Team Flash’s villains. Now without his Vibe powers yet again, Cisco sets off on a road trip to take account of everything that’s changed post-Crisis. It’s supposedly done for practical reasons and he’s set to come back some weeks later, but hopefully this does make things clearer for those watching. He likely won’t show up in the other shows taking notes, but it’s still appreciated how the episode subtly provides a timeline of the Arrowverse’s history and a map of the United States with all the universe’s major cities added in. 

Meanwhile, Barry and Diggle head to Lian Yu when Barry thinks the domino mask he originally gave Oliver was some kind of clue, but it turns out to be…just a mask. It’s all about the two men dealing with the fact that their friend is dead and having to slow down and accept there’s no trick to anything. It’s nice, but hopefully now that everyone has settled with the new world, we can get right to Team Flash vs. Black Hole in all earnest starting next week. 

Additional Notes 

• New intro! I like it. 
• Cisco’s not the only one going away for awhile; Caitlin’s going away later in the season because Danielle Panabaker is pregnant. 
• Allegra is Nash’s daughter, or at least a version of her. 
• Some things to clear up: yes, the multiverse is being rebuilt, but the Earth-Prime characters don’t know this, and they may not until they need to.