TV REVIEW: Death and Major Revelations in The Flash “Out of Time”

By Justin Carter

Holy crap. Who would have thought that after being gone for a month, The Flash would return with an episode like this, leading to two very big things.

Way back in the Flash pilot, there was a one-off villain by the name of Clyde Mardon with the ability to control the weather. In the nine months prior to Joe putting Clyde down, Clyde and his brother Mark took off in a plane just moments before the particle accelerator went off. In a rather clunky bit of exposition, Wells explains that the dark matter affected them both in the same way and gave them the same power over weather. Problem is, Mark is alive and out for Joe’s blood.

Liam McIntyre returns as the elder Mardon brother. He’s more memorable as the Weather Wizard than Chad Rook was in the pilot. He genuinely feels terrifying because he gets bolder and bolder in his attacks against Joe, going so far as to just walk into the police station and zap him with lightning. Joe’s intense desire to catch Mark by himself isn’t fueled by stubbornness, it’s fueled by fear of anyone else getting hurt. It goes without saying that Jesse Martin nails these moments perfectly. When Mark finally does kidnap him and unleashes a hurricane on Central City, Martin’s look is one of pain and grief, delivered in just the right way.

Running parallel to this story is Cisco’s desire to get answers for the murder of Barry’s mother and the Reverse Flash. All of this leads to the big moment in the final minutes of the episode: Wells reveals himself to Cisco as Eobard Thawne, a “distant relative” of Eddie’s. He’s been stuck in the “present” time for the past 15 years and was able to be in both places as himself and the Reverse-Flash in the winter finale via a speed mirage. He did indeed kill Nora, albeit by accident while trying to kill Barry. He’s spent this whole time teaching Barry to bring him to full speed in order to kill him and return to his own time. You’d think that this would be the point where Wells threatens Cisco to keep him quiet, but he’s not leaving anything to chance, even with Cisco offering to help. So he kills him in cold blood and walks away. Their confrontation was tense the moment Wells walks through the door. Showing the two of them watching old Buster Keaton movies made Wells’ confession that he thought of Cisco as a son all the more tragic.

Cisco’s death is tragic, but it’s overshadowed by the big reveal of Barry running back in time. This was briefly hinted earlier in the episode when he saw a mirage of himself, but now everything comes full circle and he finds himself back in the past, moments before he starts tracking down Mark in the beginning of the episode. Normally, revelations in the final minutes of an episode are reserved for the season finale. Thankfully, there’s more episodes of Flash coming. Unfortunately, that means that all of these threads–the hurricane, Cisco’s death, Iris learning Barry’s identity, the time travel–won’t be resolved for another six days. And even then, not all of them.

Additional Notes

This past weekend at PaleyFest, a little boy recited the entire Flash opening from memory. It may be the most adorable thing ever.