THE FLASH Sees Yellow

Episode 109 “The Man in the Yellow Suit”

[Photos: Diyah Pera/The CW]

I have gone on the record — numerous times, mind you — complaining about the “ten hours earlier” or “2 days earlier” setup that follows a fairly significant action scene, whether it’s a fight sequence or a chase or a big suspenseful almost-about-to-reveal and then they go back in time to the beginning of the story.

This is, for me, lazy writing. I’ve never enjoyed these, and I almost quit watching the episode because of that. But no, dear reader, I pushed on. Mainly because of my obligation to deliver an insightful and well-reasoned recap and analysis to you, but also because The Flash is cool. And so is the show.

Moving forward from here, we have massive amounts of spoilerage, so you should consider yourself duly warned (even though you probably have seen more than half of this online already…). In this episode, we get a lot of reveals.

The Wests are trimming the tree and enjoying Grandma Esther’s egg nog, when a call comes in for West to meet with the District Attorney, conveniently leaving Barry and Iris to do their traditional gift exchange. Barry gives Iris a replica of her mother’s wedding band on a chain. It’s the first piece of the Barry-Iris Reveal for the hour, and it says a lot about Iris’ blindness to Barry’s feelings that she gets him a microscope.

Now, for all that everyone around Barry and Iris have noticed how Barry pines away for this girl, it’s pretty much Hand of the Writer territory where she doesn’t notice after living with the guy for so many years. I mean, at some point she’s got to pick up on it. Barry’s not that good a liar.

When Eddie shows up, we get the first piece of the Barry-Eddie-Iris bit, which starts to set up the long game with the love triangle between the three. And it’s going to be a bit cheesy, methinks. Because Eddie picks up on the jealousy, and even Eddie picks up on Barry’s feelings for Iris, even though she denies it. So when he invites her to move in… she’s fine. Barry won’t be.

And while Caitlin is at the mall to pick up a gift for Wells to cheer him up (because Christmas used to be his favorite time of year), good ol’ Ronnie Raymond shows up only to sneak around the corner and “flame on” in front of her. Uhm. What’s he up to?

Then over at Mercury Labs, a “blur” that looks like a man — yes, the yellow one — kills some guards, looks around the place, leaves. And this is the Barry-Joe Reveal, where Joe finally tells Barry that he’s known about Yellow Man for a while since he showed up, stole the files, and threatened Iris.

So, there are our setups. And it gets a little more hand-wavy from here.

First, the main part of the story: Team Flash using a Tachyon Thingie to lure the Reverse Flash into a trap. Let’s stipulate right now that having Amanda Pays reprise her role as Dr. Tina McGee was a classy move, even though she’s not too keen on helping and has to be blackmailed by Barry into cooperating. We get several clues from the Reverse Flash that indicate this has been going on for a while, the whole rivalry between him and Barry. It seems like this guy knows Barry from somewhere, and young Mr. Allen is trying to wrap his head around that fact along with the notion that Reverse Flash is quite possibly faster than he is.

[Prediction after seeing the teaser: Flash and Cisco will trick out that treadmill, and things will get a little … cosmic.]

More Hand of the Writer bits: Joe and Wells telling Barry he’s too emotionally involved to be at STAR Labs when they use a specially-designed force field to capture Reverse Flash. Barry’s right: he’s probably the only one who has any chance of stopping Reverse if the guy gets out of the trap, and Barry’s also got a vested interest in seeing this guy caught. Not only does it validate Barry’s testimony at the time of his mother’s murder, but it also gets his father out of prison. So sending Barry off to sulk is just a way to remove him so he can come in to save the day when things go south. Hand of the Writer.

We also get Barry’s confession to Iris. Not that he’s the Flash, but that he loves her. And this is after Iris asks Caitlin if there’s anything going on because Barry’s been acting weird of late, like he has a secret. Come on, Iris. You’re training to be a reporter. You know, like Lois Lane. Oh, wait…

Naturally, this is going to start us down a path of Eddie becoming a rival for Barry, which will extend to his eventual hatred of the Flash. He’ll probably end up resenting Joe for not letting him in on the secret of metahumans and the Flash’s identity. That’s going to come back to bite Joe, methinks. And when Eddie gets his first face-to-blurry-face with the Reverse Flash, he’s got a very valid question when he asks, “Why didn’t he kill me?” Well, it’s because you have kids to make first, Eddie…

This has led to some speculation about the possibility that there may be two Reverse Flash characters playing about in the timeline. And that’s still a possibility, but it seems unlikely at this stage. The reveal that Harrison Wells is the Reverse Flash (although we never see him put on the suit, but we do hear the voice) would lean us in the direction that Wells is the one who killed Nora Allen.

And then for Cisco to realize that each speedster has his own lightning color temperature, and that there may have been two speedsters in the Allen home that night, all point back toward Reverse Flash’s line that he and Barry have been at this a while. At some point, Barry starts time traveling.

[Prediction part 2: that cosmic treadmill thing? Yeah, that happens after Cisco tricks out the treadmill with tachyons from Tina McGee’s lab.]

Hand of the Writer 2nd comes with the Firestorm ex machina at the end of the episode. After Caitlin and Cisco go spelunking in the underground facilities at the mall, where Ronnie tells them “I’m not Ronnie” and to leave him be, he suddenly shows up at STAR Labs just in time to blast Reverse Flash and force a retreat. First, great coincidental timing. Second, how would Ronnie know which speedster is the bad guy? For all he knows, the yellow one is the good guy and he’s winning. So why blast him? It’s possible he saw red speedster on the ground, Caitlin and Cisco looking at said red speedster with concern, and put two and two together in about half a nanosecond, but remember Ronnie has got quite a bit of fuzzy going on in his head right now. That’s a lot to process. The scene works, but only because the actors sell it.

And I now believe a man on fire can fly.

So, now we have an actual for-real villain in our midst, with secrets to plumb. Barry has a new goal: becoming even faster so he can catch the Reverse Flash. Caitlin and Cisco will no doubt try to figure out how to help Ronnie, and perhaps somehow their investigation into the word “Firestorm” will lead them to Professor Martin Stein. And Wells will be working up his tachyon-enhanced speed suit for nefarious purposes. Unless he’s Hunter Zolomon, still, in which case it’ll be a little more complicated.

By the way, who’s ready for John Wesley Shipp, Amanda Pays, and Mark Hamill to be in the same room together?

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