TV REVIEW: The Flash Kicks into High Gear With “The Trap”

By Justin Carter

Well, things are certainly kicking into gear now.

Despite its speedster title, the past pair of Flash episodes have felt a little slow. Thankfully, “The Trap” addresses most of the issues that have been plaguing the show since its return in January, and most importantly, we’re finally going to be dealing with Gorilla Grodd next week!

Things pick up immediately with last week’s stinger. Barry, Caitlin, and Cisco don’t have any time to be shocked that Wells is the Reverse-Flash when they come across his AI companion, Gideon. Through her, we learn that Barry creates her sometime in the future, and that he disappears in 2024 while fighting the Reverse-Flash. There are plenty of Easter eggs to look at from the holo paper (I’ll get into that in the notes, but look at who else is said to be with Barry in that fight aside from the Green Arrow). The most important thing to Barry is that the article is written by one Iris West-Allen.

Yes, there’s confirmation Barry and Iris will end up together at some point in the future. But this being a CW show, this comes just minutes before we see that Eddie plans on proposing to Iris. Joe, of course, says no because he knows that Iris is in love with Barry and just doesn’t entirely know it yet. That he goes all overprotective for his adult daughter is a discussion for another time, but it feels weird that the show has moments like these, and wants me to get aboard the WestAllen ship when it’s not doing anything with Eddie to “justify” this potential relationship besides putting him in between a rock and a hard place. It’s hard to really want Barry and Iris to be endgame like the show hopes I do when there’s nothing objectively wrong with Eddie; it’s not like he’s cheating on her or abusing her, and he’s only lying because Joe is basically pulling rank. When he gets captured by Wells at the end, I felt a bit relieved that he could be far away from Barry and Joe’s BS.

With Gideon’s information lining up with Cisco’s memories from the past timeline bleeding over, the only solution now is to get Wells to confess. Cisco’s memories are uncovered through a pair of what basically amount to Inception goggles; the science of this sounds wonky, but it’s fun to watch Carlos Valdes get so excited about his dream self wearing a shirt that he thought was lost to the laundry and having Joe giggle like a little kid at it. For the past few episodes, Cisco has been the show’s MVP. Watching him talk with Wells before he got killed the first time was tense, and watching it a second time is even more so. Team Flash has a plan to trap Wells once he confesses, but Wells gets the jump on them again. He’s planned everything from the episode’s beginning, and used Hannibal Bates from last week to take Joe’s bullets in his stride. That reveal was actually surprising, because I was convinced it would end up being a speed clone and not the bad guy they just captured an episode ago. All of this, combined with Iris finally learning that Barry is the Flash and the team determined to take down Wells, makes for a tense final 10 minutes. With three episodes left, the endgame is coming, and the speedsters are going to go to war.

Additional Notes:

Future Iris’ article confirms many things: Hawkgirl will be around (she’ll be one of the four protagonists in the Flash/Arrow spinoff), as will the Atom. Joe will still be alive, thankfully.

Another week, another Flash ability learned. Our Scarlet Speedster now knows how to create tornadoes using his hands!

Eddie: “This whole thing…it’s been about me?” Wells: “Not a chance.” Getting dissed by your descendant has to be a new level of burn.

Next week: Gorrilla. Grodd.