Review 593: The Flash (Season 2)

More Earths means double trouble for Barry Allen.

Following the defeat of Barry Allen's (Grant Gustin) arch-nemesis Eobard Thawne (aka Reverse Flash), Team Flash quickly turned their attention to the singularity swirling high above Central City, which was last seen consuming everything in its path. Armed with the heart of a hero and the ability to move at super speeds, Barry charged into the eye of the singularity, but will he actually be able to save his city from impending doom?

 

Season 2 got off to a solid start as the writers explored the fallout of Season 1's jawdropping cliffhanger in the season premire The Man Who Saved Central City. In a surprise move, the episode picked up several months to the aftermarth of the wormhole where we saw a very different status quo for "Team Flash". We see that Barry has been neglecting his normal life.

Early on episodes such as "Family of Rogues" and "The Fury of Firestorm" were conceived with the obvious intent of setting up characters such as Leonard Snart/Captain Cold (Wentworth Miller), Martin Stein/Firestorm (Victor Garber) and his new partner Jefferson "Jax" Jackson (Attack the Block’s Franz Drameh) for their starring roles on Legends of Tomorrow. This made the season feel a tad unfocused at times   Following the crossover, Barry and co returned for a fun Christmas, mid-season finale in "Running to a Standstill" which featured a team-up between Mark Mardon/Weather Wizard (Liam McIntyre) and the Trickster (Mark Hamill).

One of the later standout episodes, Ep. 15: King Shark showed Barry going up against the titular villain of the week  putting the shows budget to good use. The episode also doubled as a crossover episode with John Diggle (David Ramsey) and Lyla Michaels (Audrey Marie Anderson) from Arrow.

 

The Runaway Dinosaur was particularly noteworthy episode for taking Barry inside the Speed Force. It continued to explore his guilt over his mother's death. The look of the episode was also visually pleasing, recycling sets and adding lense flare bright lighting gave the Speed Force an ethereal look which was fitting considering it's another dimension. Ultimately, Barry learns that he can't let his tragedy define him, he has to accept it and move on.    

Season 2 is noteworthy for introducing the concept of the Multiverse into the Arrowverse. The revelation that the singularity at the end of Season 1 opened a portal to Earth-2 opened up a whole new playground for The Flash to play in. It was a bold and ambitious direction that resulted in a wealth of comedy and drama for Team Flash. Seeing Barry, Iris, Cisco, Caitlin and even Ronnie Raymond (Robbie Amell) and Linda Park (Marlese Jow) facing off against their Earth-2 doppelgängers was a delight.

 

No actor benefited more from the doppelganger concept than Tom Cavanagh playing the part of Harrison "Harry" Wells from Earth-2. Amazingly, showrunner Andrew Kreisberg and the writers found a way to bring back in a similar but slightly different role. Whereas Wells/Thawne was cold, calculating and manipulative. Harry Wells was cynical, agitated and bitter; though, like Thawne, he had a sardonic and egotistical demeanour. Harry, ultimately, is driven by nothing more or less than his desire to stop Zoom and rescue his daughter Jesse Wells (Violett Beane).

Grant Gustin was once again, a frequent highlight of the show as it explored Barry’s lingering guilt and heartbreak over briefly being reunited with his mother 

 

Additionally, Cisco Ramon (Carlos Valdes) and Caitlin Snow (Danielle Panabaker) had their own interesting character arcs this season. Cisco, as expected, served as a reliable source of comic relief and

On the other hand, Cisco came into his own as a hero this season, growing more familiar with his powers and taking on his Vibe mantle from the comics 

Another noteworthy addition to the cast was Wally West (Keiynan Lonsdale). He was a fine addition to the main cast but I'm not entirely sure what he brought to the table and looking back, it seemed like the writers just introduced him to set up his transformation into his Kid-Flash persona from the comics. In the long run, he did more for the family dynamic for between Barry, Joe & Iris than the Team Flash dynamic.

Throughout the first half of the season, Barry finds a new love interest in fellow CCPD officer Patty Spivot (Shantel Van Santen). Their relationship was held together thanks in no small part to the chemistry between Gustin and Van Santen and their awkward banter. Yet frustratingly, Joe insists on Barry keeping his secret identity from her seemingly completely forgetting what happened with Eddie and despite the fact that she's an officer on the anti-metahuman task force, seemed more than capable of handling herself and could be a valuable member of Team Flash. It's a pity that Patty was written out so abruptly after episode 11: The Reverse Flash Returns because she seemed to have so much potential as a recurring cast member of the show.

The main issue with this season was that too often, too many elements felt like a retread of Season 1, not least the big bad being another evil speedster. Even his (initial) plan didn't stray far from Thawne's plan in Season 1: making Barry faster to further his own personal agenda. A shaddy Harrison Wells who helps Team Flash as a cover for his secret agenda. Barry's mentor turning out to be an evil speedster. 

That clash between ambition and repetition had a very see-saw effect on the season. It felt like the writers wanted to dig into new ideas and try something new but, at the same time, were afraid to try stray too far from the formula of the first season even adhering to the whole metahuman of the week format only this time, instead of battling various metahuman villains spawned from the particle accelerator explosion, they confronted foes who crossed over from the parallel Earth-2 like Atom Smasher (Adam Copeland), Sand Demon (Kett Turton) and the aforementioned King Shark along with a guest appearance from Vandal Savage (Casper Crump) further solidified the show embracing the wider DC universe.

And then there's the issue of Hunter Zolomon/Zoom (Teddy Sears). Sears is a talented actor and is very well cast in the role, bringing the right amount of smarmy menace and gravitas required. Unfortunately, he just doesn't have the appeal of Eobard Thawne/Reverse-Flash from Season 1. Thawne was a devious and incredibly cunning mastermind and had a strong personal connection to Barry and was always ten steps ahead of him and his friends. Too often throughout the first half of the season he felt like a generic doomsday villain and his master plan was very inconsistant and seemed to change on a dime. One minute he wants to steal Barry's speed, the next he wants to conquerer Earths 1 & 2 and then he wants to destroy the multiverse.

During the later half of the season, the story becomes strangely attached to the idea of trying to make Zoom a dark mirror reflection of Barry. Both have childhoods defined by tragedy and would grow up to become speedsters. But whereas Barry was taken in by Joe and Iris, Hunter had no one. But maybe because like so many elements of this season, it felt like a retread of the Barry/Thawne dynamic and Zoom's backstory came late into the season with Ep. 18: Versus Zoom, those parallels didn't quite land as strongly as the writers hoped they would. It's tough to not compare how The Flash went from Reverse-Flash to Zoom to how Arrow escalated from Malcolm Merlyn to Slade Wilson and how different the latter was.

The fact that "Jay" was actually "Hunter"/Zoom all along is actually an insult, not just to the audiences intelligence but also to Team Flash's intelligence given that when he arrived they checked and doubled checked to make sure that he really was depowered and wasn't telling fibs. Additionally the fact that he was able to fool Team Flash for as long as he was able to was also infuriating and insulting because there never was any indication that he was a genius-level puppet master on the level of Thawne. The writers just didn't play it fair because there is no way the Zoom from the beginning of the season could have been the square jawed Hunter Zoloman we saw later. This baffling plot twist took what was basically a cartoon character and made him more of a mess.

 

Season 2 wasn't quite able to maintain the momentum the way Season 1 did. Too often it felt like the ongoing Zoom conflict hinged on Barry and Team Flash's stupidity just to keep the ongoing

 

Then we get to the season finale "The Race of His Life." Apart from a couple of major twists and a cool climactic racing scene between Barry and Zoom, it was not an ideal way to wrap up the season and wound up feeling underwhelming. Nor did Zoom's dastardly plan to destroy countless Earths hold much weight becuase by that point it felt like the writers finally settled on an Endgame for Zoom as opposed to revealing his plan much earlier and letting the tension simmer for a bit. The idea of two speedsters racing each other is a very splashy, silver-agey comic book idea but without strong or credible stakes to back it up, it didn't hold that much weight. 

 

To sum my thoughts on The Flash (Season 2), I'll quote IGN's summary: The Flash's second season met and occasionally even exceeded the heights of the first. But it was also a more uneven and ultimately more flawed than it deserved to be, 3.5/5.

The Anonymous Critic.