THE FLASH “The Icicle Cometh” Review

The Flash — “The Icicle Cometh” Pictured (L-R): Danielle Panabaker as Caitlin Snow and Kyle Secor as Dr. Thomas Snow — Photo: Katie Yu/The CW

The Flash “The Icicle Cometh” Review

By Justin Carter

With Thanksgiving around the corner, it only makes sense that The Flash gets in on the festivities by concluding Caitlin’s search for her father Thomas. And because this is a superhero show, and every father not named Joe West is secretly an evil man, things take a decidedly darker turn.

Played by Kyle Secor, Thomas was sent to the North Pole in a black ops facility to get a cure for his ALS, which worked for both him and later Caitlin after he used cryogenic gene therapy. Along with the ice powers, Thomas got an evil personality of his own called Icicle that’s taken over his body and is duping Team Flash into cooking up a cure that can wipe the Thomas personality away for good. This all sounds frankly ridiculous — it’s never a great sign of plausibility when a character spells out how a villain disguised themselves as a pure hypothetical — but it is helped by Danielle Panabaker and Secor being very compelling as Caitlin and Thomas. The two have a nice rapport and Caitlin has deserved a real win for some time now. On the upside, she unlocked Killer Frost again after what turned out to be a Devoe-induced mental block, so at least there’s that.

Not to miss out on the family festivities, Iris and Nora get in some mother-daughter bonding while teaming up with Sherloque to find Cicada. It’s short, but it is great to see Nora actively working to try and bond with her mom now after over a month of her treating Iris like the plague. Plus, Iris tutors her on how to use her speed powers, which makes me hope all three members of the West-Allen family get to run together by season’s end.

Like the West-Allen ladies and Sherloque, there isn’t a lot to Ralph and Cecile’s team up for the week; they’re looking for Enlightenment victims that were taken care of by FEMA, but the guy running the area swindled people out of their money. Cecile and Ralph are funny together, I enjoyed seeing her intimidate him by pointing how she helped save the world last season while being incredibly pregnant, and I wouldn’t mind if they paired up together more now that Joe is off the table for a while.

Cicada is a strange villain to talk about because he’s simultaneously got everything about him laid out and is clearly being built up for more down the line. That the show is barreling ahead with his rise to power and showing that his reign of terror is still continuing as Team Flash searches for him is for the best, since he isn’t a speedster or super genius, his racking up a body count makes him worthy of being a group effort. I quite like that even he doesn’t seem to know what’s going on with him beyond getting stronger and that he’s winging his whole game plan. But I won’t deny that I’m interested to see what makes him tick in next week’s seemingly origin focused episode.

Additional Notes

• Sherloque mentioning his bowel movements was gross, but Nora’s disgusted face really was hilarious.

• Really hope Iris and Nora have a great handshake by the end of the season.

• Cisco’s pop culture references were coming a mile a minute, but I did enjoy “Snow Country for Old Men” and “Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman.”

• Hey, Victor Fries got a shout out. Wonder if he’ll be showing up soon.