Hey, there’s a premiere episode!
The Flash has definitely become comfortable in its formula of “villain of the week mingled with some minor overarching plot progression.” While this works for the most part in “Flash of Two Worlds”, it does showcase that this season is going to need to throw some serious monkey wrenches into our expectations if the show doesn’t want to succumb to predictable sameness.
For example, this week’s villain, Sand Demon, was incredibly weak. When the disposable villain is so thinly sketched, it brings down a whole chunk of the episode. The only bit of fun came from Joe pulling in the Earth-1 version of Sand Demon and thinking it was the Earth-2 version.
That’s where the fun of this episode explodes: the Multiverse has finally been introduced to the DC world. This gives The Flash a whole lot of leeway in terms of letting things get utterly bananas. Whether or not this is how the movies will eventually tie-in to the TV series remains to be seen (the mention of fifty-two breaches into Earth-2 brings to mind the fifty-two universes present in the current DC Comics), but even if it doesn’t there’s still a lot of parallel universe fun to be had.
For example, we’ve got our first look at the mysterious Zoom. As far as visual cues go, he seems to be taking a page out of the Black Flash‘s book. There’s no doubt in my mind that Zoom is Eddie Thawne. Who else could it be? Unless it’s a totally new character, the safe money is on Eddie. We also got Earth-2 Harrison Wells (squee!), proving that this show knows what an incredible asset Tom Cavanaugh was and found a way to bring him back. I’m very interested to see how he’ll factor into the grand scheme of things, especially since it looks like Earth-2 is going to be the driving force of this season’s comic book-y drama.
And with that, we have Jay Garrick thrown into the mix. It makes sense to replace Barry’s mentor figure with another speedster, and while Teddy Sears didn’t do anything to blow me away, it looks like he and Grant Gustin have some good chemistry going on. I hope Jay will stay around for most of the season.
The other new player in the cast is Shantel VanSanten as Patty Spivot. Patty is obviously set to be Barry’s new love interest (the Monty Python quoting could share space in both the “Favorite moment” and “Unfavorite moment” section), and they’ve got some dorky sparks flying, but if things follow the comic book story, I wouldn’t get too attached to Patty. Still, I like her confidence and I’m looking forward to her and Joe butting heads and working together.
Finally, we have Cisco starting to go meta-human. Of course the show has to play the “don’t tell anybody!” card because drama, but I hope this is one secret that doesn’t stay hidden for too long. Cisco’s reasoning (“Wells gave me these powers and he was evil. I might turn evil!”) is pretty thin.
I know the premiere had to play a little clean-up, but I wish this had been our real kickoff to the season. We’ve set up our source of baddies (dimension breaches), our new antagonist (Zoom), introduced some new members to the team (Jay and Patty), and even gotten a new twist with the presence of Earth-2. With a few more episodes under its belt, I think season two of The Flash will be well on its way to replicating the lighthearted fun of its initial run.
Favorite moment: There were certainly a fair amount to pick from, but my dork-o-meter went into the red zone (or more appropriately the Green zone) when the name Woodrue came up. If The Flash is our backdoor into a new iteration of Swamp Thing, I will kiss Greg Berlanti on the mouth.
Unfavorite moment: More of a general complaint about Jay Garrick not having the Speed Force. I have to assume that he’s going to pop up again later in the season and he better be running right alongside Barry.
Next Week: Family of Rogues
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