THE FLASH “The Girl With the Red Lightning” Review

The Flash — “The Girl with The Red Lightning” — Image Number: FLA521b_0428b.jpg — Pictured (L-R): Grant Gustin as Barry Allen, Jessica Parker Kennedy as Nora and Candice Patton as Iris West – Allen — Photo: Jeff Weddell/The CW

THE FLASH “THE GIRL WITH THE RED LIGHTNING” REVIEW

BY JUSTIN CARTER

The penultimate episode of The Flash is appropriately fast paced, as if the show is trying to burn through its lingering threads before the big finale next week. We’ve got ourselves Team Flash vs. Cicada II, round two; the metahuman cure; Nora’s family issues, and Thawne’s grand plan revealed, sort of. And how does it all do? Not bad, honestly.

Cicada II plans to use the tech she’s been stealing the last run of episodes to wipe out all the metahumans in the country with her dagger, so Team Flash decides to take a two pronged approach: cure every metahuman in Central City while ensuring she won’t get a conduit that’ll complete her makeshift bomb. Nora wants to use the connection she and Cicada still have to track her down, but Barry and Iris are against it because the shared anger taps her into the Negative Speed Force. Thankfully instead of endless arguing, Nora gets through to her parents when she reminds them that they’ve raised her to be a hero. In one of the more interesting scenes of this episode, she stands alone in the same trap Team Flash used to trap Thawne in season 1. Red lightning shoots off all around her as she and Cicada talk in their shared mindspace, with Nora keeping her cool while Cicada lashes out at everything around her.

At CCPD, meanwhile, Joe is put in charge of the cure effort once the town’s meta population shows up at the station all looking to avoid getting murdered. This leads to maybe the most that Joe has had to do in a very long time, with him getting anxiety over everyone’s fear and paranoia getting the best of him until Cecile calms him down and reminds him of how good he is at stressful situations. It honestly feels like the show testing the waters for promoting Joe to police chief, which would be a good fit for him and allow Jesse Martin to stay connected to the cast while accommodating any other issues that crop up, as was the case earlier this season.

As Team Flash pursues Cicada II, Ralph puts on his detective hat and tries to figure out how it all fits together with Thawne on death row. Even though the team is understandably stretched thin, he’s still trying to solve the mystery as it all hits the fan, only to realize after she’s defeated that she never had her dagger until she showed up in 2019. Part of Thawne’s contraption in the future as he’s about to die is her dagger, and eliminating it in the present likely means he’ll have his speed in the future. But of course, Ralph only pieces it all together just seconds before the episode ends, leading us to what’s sure to be an interesting finale.

Additional Notes

• Farewell, Rene Adler, whisked away to another Earth and weirdly chill about the whole thing. (Then again, when you can move metal with your mind, nothing’s a stretch.)
• There are a lot more meta people remaining in Central City than I would’ve thought after the team sent a bunch out of the city earlier the season.
• Not that it matters in the grand scheme, but I’m real curious to know what Thawne was charged with in 2049, because it feels like the answer is everything, and yet…
• Next week: finale time!