‘The Flash’ Episode 1.22 “Rogue Air” (9 out of 10) Starring Grant Gustin, Candice Patton, Rick Cosnett, Danielle Panabaker, Carlos Valdes, Tom Cavanaugh, and Jesse L. Martin. Guest starring Wentworth Miller, Robbie Amell, Stephen Amell, Liam McIntyre, Paul Anthony, Anthony Carrigan, Doug Jones, Peyton List, Britne Oldford. First broadcast May 12, 2015.
Sometime it really hits the particle accelerator, you know? That’s what happens in “Rogue Air,” the kind of high stakes all-in episode that I’ve been hoping would end this first season of “The Flash.” This season has had Barry Allen find his share of allies in the S.T.A.R. Labs team, but also in other heroes, like Firestorm, Arrow, and Atom. When Reverse Flash finishes his adjustments to the particle accelerator and brings it back online, the S.T.A.R. Labs crew has less than a day to find something to do with the five criminals they’ve got locked up in the “pipeline”…or let them all die. With the other villains either escaped or set free or killed over the course of the season, it’s somewhat surprising that there are only five villains in the pipeline, but I like the ones that are there: Peekaboo, Deathbolt, Rainbow Raider, Weather Wizard, and the Mist. It’s enough to keep Barry busy.
This creates a crisis not just for Barry, but for Detective West. Always uneasy about the vigilante justice they’ve been handing out…but knowing that local prison Iron Heights wouldn’t be able to keep a metahuman on ice. What’s a cop to do? The need to do something else with the super criminals brings that uneasiness to a head. The solution Barry proposes is moving the five criminals to Lian Yu, the island where Oliver Queen has his own version of “Arkham Asylum” — a place to store super baddies. More a vault/prison than an asylum, but still. A lockup. But they’ve got to get the prisoners to the airport on the other side of Central City to get them to the island. Barry asks West to arrange a police escort…and West gives it a shot. He goes to the D.A. and tentatively, hypothetically brings the subject up…and she makes clear that he’d lose his job, his badge, and end up in Iron Heights himself. So…Plan B.
It’s enough to keep Barry busy
Plan B is pretty damn crazy. Plan B should not be tried. Plan B shows us just how desparate Barry is to save the lives of five superpowered criminals who want him dead. Plan B…means asking Captain Cold for help. Remember, several episodes back, the Flash and Captain Cold struck a devil’s bargain of sorts. Cold stops killing, Flash lets him…have his fun. Morally problematic, and this scenario–asking the villain to help move a set of villains–just deepens that quagmire.
This episode got everything right. Against a darkening backdrop that has Reverse Flash proving to Flash and his allies just how powerful, just how ahead of the game he is, we have this other crisis boiling over. How much can one scarlet speedster take? I’ve loved every episode with Captain Cold–Wentworth Miller is chewing the scenery, but in a more sly, more clever way than we usually get from comic book villains. He’s developing into an antihero, and when he proves that no, duh, he can’t be trusted, it’s both delightful and disappointing. The interplay between Cold and his sister (finally getting her moniker “Golden Glider” from Cisco) and Team Flash is perfect. The amount of villainy afoot? Perfect. The final ten minutes of the episode? Perfect. Everything that this series is getting right, from the themes to the shared universe with “Arrow”…is on display here. They even threw in that they were at the Ferris Air hangar–a Green Lantern reference–and mentioned that “since that test pilot disappeared, it’s been empty.” So Hal Jordan is somewhere out there. Hells yes.
I was surprised at how little Reverse Flash was in this episode, but his presence is always there, looming. With the particle accelerator charged up and ready to fire in time for the season finale–what’s going to happen? Another explosion of metahumans? Reverse Flash’s return to the distant future? More time travel? Next week is the final episode of this season, and I’m on the edge of my seat. Plus the couch. And a few ottomans. Barry Allen is at the breaking point–a perfect cliff to hang from.