I have always enjoyed watching The Flash, even if some of the villains that are half-baked should have been multi-episode arcs versus one offs. Sadly, “The New Rogues†does so much well, but I wasn’t really a fan of how they treated their villains at all.
This week’s villains feature Mirror Master (Grey Damon) and Top (Ashley Rickards); the former being one of my favorite Flash villains. While not one of the most well-known villains, Mirror Master has such a unique feature set as a villain, something we haven’t seen for quite some time on The Flash recently. The duo being lovers also adds an extra dynamic to the very Bonnie-and-Clyde personas.
Mirror Master and Top are attempting to punish Leonard Snart since they blame him for what has happened to them. But, since Snart is long gone, they are satisfied with going after anyone that can stop them from ruling over Central City, and of course that just so happens to be The Flash.
Through various scenes, we get to see both of their powers, and I was honestly quite surprised at how much I enjoyed Top’s vertigo power. On the surface, it sounds pretty lame, but the effects they used to relay that to us was quite well done. As for Mirror Master, his powers weren’t bad per se, but I felt like they could have gone much further with them. The duo felt like run of the mill “villains of the week,†but assuming they are indeed The New Rogues, I have to imagine that, somehow, they are going to be part of more than just one episode.
By far the best and most impactful scene moving forward was when barry was stuck in the pane of glass. It was somewhat convincing, but it’s their attempt to get him out that is the big takeaway from the episode. The crew is attempting to freeze it enough with Snart’s old cold gun so Barry can vibrate through, but they can’t get it cold enough and are all called away to a meta alert, everyone except for Caitlin Snow that is. She uses her freezing powers and busts Barry out, and Wells is the only one that questions how he was able to get out. We get further teases that Caitlin is either A) The one from Earth-2 or B) her powers are slowly revealing themselves, and she is trying to suppress them. Her icy shower to end the episode solidified the fact that we are about to see some sort of Killer Frost sometime very soon!
The other large portion of this episode dealt with the Earth-2 citizens, Wells and Jesse. In a hilarious sequence of scenes, the team is trying to find a replacement for Wells since they are eventually going to have to go back to their Earth (which they do go to at the end of the episode). I love the fact that at first, Wells couldn’t care less about them since they are so goofy, that they don’t even almost measure up to himself, but when they find a steam punky version of himself, Wells gets a bit defensive. It’s a weird idea, simply sending out a signal to commandeer a “new†Wells, but it just goes to show how crucial he is to this team. That’s not even to mention that we’re certainly not going to say no to more Tom Cavanagh.
Having said that, I don’t really understand how they are so ‘Ok’ with simply pulling someone from a different Earth with zero vetting process. We have already seen the vast differences between Earth-1 and Earth-2, so I would assume they would realize that it may be a dangerous idea considering Caitlin and Cisco’s doppelgangers were evil to the core.
As for Jesse, she is getting her crash course just as Barry did when he was getting adjusted to his powers. It’s awesome to see the two working together, and her having to deal with the failure that comes with having a very loose grasp on her powers. Violett Beane does a great job of conveying the conflicting emotions of being a strong, young superhero. The fact that they use Wally as the emotional support for her was a clever way to flip the script from how Iris was there to help Barry.
It really wouldn’t be The Flash without some weird scenes, and those revolve around Barry and Iris’ relationship. I know, surprise surprise. Apparently Iris wants him to be more comfortable making out with her in front of Joe. Yeah, that’s just a tad weird. It’s just strange especially when you consider that Joe knows that Barry has had feelings for Iris for a long, long time. While the means getting there was, a bit ridiculous, the fact that this all culminated into Barry realizing that he should move out will definitely be a nice change and should help to alleviate that CW awkwardness.
