My early feelings this season about The Flash being in a Sophomore slump have quickly vanquished with these past few episodes. This week’s solid episode, “Enter Zoom,†provided a perfect mix of humor, characterization and of course action.
We’ll skip right to the main sequence in this week’s episode, and that’s Zoom’s brutal battle with The Flash. The show runners did an outstanding job of bringing Zoom to the screen, and he is downright terrifying. From his burned suit, to his deep menacing voice and to his ability to clearly outmatch The Flash, Zoom might just exceed The Reverse Flash.
When they do summon Zoom from Earth 2, with a fair bit of comedic trickery along the way, we get one of the most intense sequences of the series thus far. The Flash throws lightning at Zoom, but Zoom simply catches it and hurls it back. This is the first time the Flash team was absolutely stunned and unable to figure out what to do next. But since Zoom is clearly fast, The Flash thought it best to even the playing field by fighting him in the air. This all makes sense because their terminal velocity will be equal. Not only did that not work, at all, but Zoom then went around and taunted Central city locations while holding a near dead Flash.
It’s quite interesting that he didn’t just kill The Flash right then and there, considering his goal is to be the only speedster. It really allows us to see into his psyche that he doesn’t want to just kill The Flash. He wants to humiliate him and completely destroy everything about him, in a way, destroy his legacy. Zoom is clearly more of a ruling with an iron fist type of guy, which brings us to the question of the century. Who is Zoom?
Theories are running wild, but the fact that Zoom is trying to take out people close to Barry leads me to believe that it can only be a number of people. The following from Earth 2 seem to be possibilities: Barry, Cisco, Caitlin, Joe and the one I am leaning on, Barry’s father. While I highly doubt it would Cisco or Caitlin, I still have Earth 2 Caitlin being pegged as Killer Frost.
Another big revelation in this episode was that Wells’ daughter is being held captive by Zoom. Of course, the way we get to this point was pretty funny. After some convincing from Caitlin, Cisco made various attempts to touch Wells to vibe off of him, but Wells knew exactly what he was up to. The first couple of times didn’t work, but the last try did. When they break the news at the hospital, there’s a sense of sadness across everyone’s faces, especially Joe’s.
Joe has always been unable to completely trust Wells from Earth 2, but the knowledge that Wells might be doing this solely to save his daughter completely changes things. Of all people, Joe may be the most affected because of Iris and Barry. The way that Wells would do anything for his daughter is exactly what Joe has already done for Barry. The scene really emphasizes that, while Wells may be pretty shady, his reasoning is more or less pure.
The final part of this episode was Barry furthering his relationship with Patty, but the elephant in the room is Joe and Barry keeping her from getting knee deep in the meta human business. This big secret clearly takes a toll on their relationship, but they do later get things figured out. However, I don’t understand the reasoning behind them keeping the Flash’s secret from her. Earlier in the episode, Barry revealed himself as The Flash to Linda Park to convince her to hilariously act as Dr. Light to spawn Zoom, but for some reason they don’t trust Patty? I’m sure the exercise would be that they don’t want her to get caught in the crossfire, but I highly doubt her not knowing the details about Zoom makes her any safer.
My main qualm with this episode was more so what was missing, than what was actually there. King Shark made a grand reveal last episode and is simply absent here. The same goes for Grodd, who is making a return in the next episode. It’s strange to think that they are within arms reach but skip a handful of episodes from their reveals.
