Wednesday, October 22, 2014

The Flash got poisoned after Firestorm got born and Harrison Wells is a very bad man

Barry got poisoned by "The Mist" who is now trapped in their fancy
prison for meta-humans built from the ashes of a state-of-the-art particle
accelerator. Convenient that one of those was just lying around.
We are three weeks into The Flash on the CW, and it has shattered the CW's ratings records as the most watched series premiere in the network's history. I'm not surprised that it has now been given a full-season order (yay!). Honestly, the trifecta of Flash, Arrow, and Gotham (Fox) is a renaissance for cinematic quality genre TV, and I'm really loving it.

So where are we exactly with The Flash? Well, by the end of the third episode Barry Allen is finally growing comfortable with his powers. He can save someone behind Iris's back while she's on the phone arguing with her boyfriend and be back in time to see if she wants to go get something to eat (even though they already had dinner and a huge bowl of buttered popcorn--what I wouldn't give for that kind of metabolism?)

Barry's world emerged from the first episode as fully realized. It's the objective of what so many of us strive for in our writing, because who hasn't been told at some point or another by an agent that you need to start in the middle of the action and you only have fifteen seconds to grab the attention of your reader (or maybe that's just something literary agents say). Anyway, all of you writers out there know what I mean, and all of you writers know just how hard that is to pull off.

So we have Barry now grown comfortable in his role as the Red Streak. We have Iris who is the obsessive stalker of "The Red Streak" and falling into the role that makes Lois Lane such an interesting character. We have Cisco and Caitlin Snow playing scientists that support Team Flash, and Harrison Wells as (from what I can tell) the ultimate villain of the first season, Reverse Flash or Professor Zoom. This hasn't been confirmed by anyone. It's just what I think.

From little things that Wells has dropped in dialogue, I know he's at least two-hundred years old, has been to the future, knows a hell of a lot about Barry Allen and engineered the accident that created him. Wells also isn't shy about killing people (lots of people if you consider all the meta-humans his experiment created). My guess is that Barry's whole life has been a manipulation by Wells. What I can't piece together is what does he get out of it?

Perhaps Zoom wasn't trying to kill Barry's mother but instead, murder Barry the kid in the pilot episode. Barry stopped that from happening by rescuing his kid self and Zoom took his rage out on Barry's mom? Does that sound plausible? So that would mean that (in the pilot) when we see red and yellow streaking around, the red is in fact Barry from the future trying to stop Professor Zoom from completing his objective, which then leads to Barry's mom being murdered and Barry's dad going to jail for it. That one scene is like a huge time paradox that blows my mind. Because Barry stopped him from completing his objective, Zoom has to create Flash in order to satisfy paradox.

Are you lost yet?
And for Flash fanatics like me, there was another Easter egg planted: we got to see the birth of one part of Firestorm. Ronnie Raymond (in a flashback), who is Caitlin's dead boyfriend, got trapped inside the particle accelerator and had a moment very reminiscent of Dr. Manhattan from The Watchmen. Firestorm (in case you don't know) is also known as "The Nuclear Man." He has the ability to rearrange the atomic and subatomic structure of inorganic matter. In other words, more special effects are incoming. I don't know about you, but when I watch comic book shows, I like to see special effects.

So in conclusion, in last night's episode the Flash got poisoned after Firestorm got born and Harrison Wells is a very bad man. Ayep, and now I'm ready for next week's episode. Hopefully, I will start getting some answers.

12 comments:

  1. Crap, haven't watched it yet! (Taped it because we watched something else last night.) Well, I know what to expect now...

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  2. Without the Flash would there be a Reverse Flash? Maybe that's why he killed Barry's mom.

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  3. I thought I had CW, but we tried to tune in and our reception can't get it. Looks like another wait-for-it-on-Netflix-and-watch-all-at-once shows for us. :)

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  4. It's not in the top level of TV entertainment, but I confess that I am enjoying it. I think it helps that I know nothing about the story so it's all unraveling for me for the first time.

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  5. Flash is crazy amazing. I'm just pissed that The Tomorrow People got cancelled. I mean they kept Beauty and the Beast that bombed in the rating. Seriously TTP hit a million viewers and B&B didn't.

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  6. Wait, Wells is 200 years old? I missed that.

    I don't know if Wells was trying to kill Barry. Why would he then be trying to sort of help him now? That makes no sense to me.

    And I just knew that Ronnie wasn't necessarily dead. I can so see him coming back in some other form.

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  7. Liz: Think of this: The Reverse Flash is from the 25th century and he idolized the Flash so much that he recreated the conditions that gave the Flash his powers on himself. The reason he might have tried to kill Barry as a kid would be to prevent himself from going insane. But when he failed and killed his mom, he had to make sure that the Flash became the Flash or he would never get the inspiration to become Reverse Flash.

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  8. You make Flash sound so great I should probably succumb to temptation and watch it, or at least the pilot. Damn, just too many good shows on TV now!

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  9. Flash is getting better. I'm not familiar with the comic, though. We've been enjoying Gotham.

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  10. Firestorm was always one of my favorite heroes. This makes me actually think I might watch The Flash.

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  11. Maybe Wells is another future Flash who went back in time to make himself a better hero? Dunno. But I'm so glad that I listened to you and started watching this show.

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  12. The still working on finishing The Rifters. Hoping to get some time this week. Can't wait to read The Initiates!

    Love the obsidian rocks. Wow.

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