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The Flash Season 4 Finale Recap: We Are the Flash

Published Wed, 23 May 2018 11:05:35 -0500

by Dan Wickline

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This article contains spoilers for The Flash season 4 finale, 'We Are the Flash'.

The season finale opens with Captain Singh (Patrick Sabongui) at Jitters ordering a coffee while calling Barry (Grant Gustin) to let him know that because of the blog Iris (Candice Patton) has been writing, the Mayor has decided Barry can go back to work. Then the sky turns purple, everything electronic stops working, and there is chaos in the streets.

At S.T.A.R. Labs the team is trying to get things back online when Iris brings Marlize (Kim Engelbrecht) in to help stop DeVoe (Neil Sandilands). At the same time Joe (Jesse L. Martin) and Cecile (Danielle Nicolet) arrive there because she is going into labor and the hospital is another three miles away. We learn that DeVoe figured Harry (Tom Cavanagh) would use dark matter to push himself mentally and was basically a guinea pig. And according to Marlize, DeVoe choose that combination of bus metas so that he would have the ability to stop any of Barry's friends as well, like Green Arrow, Supergirl, or the Legends.

Marlize's plan to stop DeVoe has Barry going into the Thinker's mind and trying to find the good left in him to take over and force the evil out. Cecile's psychic powers would help guide Barry and give him a way out — as long as she didn't give birth. Once inside, Barry first appears at the bus where the metas were created. He then tries to find the good DeVoe, starting at their house, but the place is emptied out. Harry uses the thinking cap one last time to suggest going to where Marlize and Clifford first met, and to Barry's surprise he finds Ralph Dibny (Hartley Sawyer). They are confronted by the Thinker, but Barry races them out of there and they go back to the college where they find the good DeVoe — but he's already been killed.

Meanwhile back in reality, Cecile's labor is moving along. The Thinker shows up at S.T.A.R. Labs to end it, but Marlize has put up a force field and teleports them to DeVoe's lair. She then moves the lair to a different pocket dimension each time DeVoe gets close.

Inside the mind, Barry figures out that it isn't the good in DeVoe they need to bring to the surface — it's Ralph. It's his body. But to do so they need to get Ralph through the dark matter breach, and DeVoe sends multiple versions of himself to stop them. He reads their minds to out-fight them, but Ralph suggests fighting "Dibny-style", which is without thinking. They fight off hundreds of DeVoes until finally Barry runs for the breach with Ralph hanging on like a cape.

Just as the real DeVoe appears in the lair and is about to kill Cecile, leaving Barry inside his brain and giving him Barry's connection to the Speed Force, Barry and Ralph come out. Ralph takes control of his body again, forcing DeVoe and the other metas out. Happily ever after has to wait, though, as Cecile's water breaks and Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker) is going to deliver the baby. While that is happening, the chair pops up in the lab with a hologram of DeVoe, thanks to Kilg%re's powers, saying he planned for everything. Marlize destroys the chair, but he increased the weight of the S.T.A.R. Lab satellite and it begins to rapidly descend towards Central City.

Ralph and Cisco (Carlos Valdes) help the people of the city, but it's up to Barry to stop the biggest piece, and he's going to do it with a supersonic punch — but Marlize thinks it will kill him. We see him speed up to the point of hitting it, then time reverses and begins again with a second speedster running with him and punching it as well, preventing Barry from dying. Now the day is saved.

Back at the lab, Marlize says goodbye and that she's going to use her tech to help people again. She also created something to help Harry, but it only brings back part of his intelligence. He is happy with it, however, and feels he has a balance. He wants to go back to Earth-2 to see Jesse (Violett Beane). They never discuss how at one point he was saying all the stuff Barry said when he came out of the Speed Force nor that he was writing in the same symbols. Barry tells Iris that he got help stopping the satellite from another speedster, but isn't sure who.

We end at Joe's house with everyone meeting Jenna Marie West and a surprise appearance of Wally West (Keiynan Lonsdale) to see his baby sister. Iris tells Barry that they're next to have a kid, and you can see fear in his eyes. Ironically there is a knock on the door and we see that it's the mysterious girl (Jessica Parker Kennedy), whom we've seen on and off all year. She just walks in and everyone recognizes her from when they saw her before. And Iris wants to know how she has her coat. The girl says Iris gave it to her and introduces herself as Nora West-Allen, Iris and Barry's daughter from the future — and that she's made a big mistake.

What we know coming out of the finale is that Nora Allen is going to be playing a role of some sort in the next season. Her mistake will likely tie into the big bad for the new season. Speculation has been that the new villain might be Cicada, the leader of a cult that uses crescent daggers to kill people and to bring people back from the dead. Cicada wants to kill everyone the Flash has saved, and with Nora's help Barry has just saved all of Central City from a satellite. But that's speculation at this point. There is a Nora Allen speedster in the comics, but she's part of Justice League Legacy and is called Cruise after her father Barry Allen and her mother Jessica Cruz. We'll have to see if this Nora is like her or more like Dawn Allen from the comics.

The Verdict

Having Ralph come back to life in the end isn't a big surprise, as fans seemed to really like his character and it felt like it was setup to bring him back. It's believed Hartley Sawyer will be a series regular next season. Saying goodbye to Wells just opens the door for a new version of Harrison Wells next season… and there will be a new version. And this one may not be as brilliant or maybe as helpful to the team. If that is the case, then they might occasionally ask Marlize for assistance.

But there are some big questions still going into next season, and Nora's mistake is only part of it. We still don't know what those symbols were or how Wells started writing them or saying the exact things that Barry was saying when he came out of the Speed Force. Lines like, "Nora shouldn't be here" and "This house is bichin" came true — it might be worth going through the dialogue from the season premiere again for more clues into season 5. At least it looks like Barry will have his job back in the new season.

And best line of the episode: DeVoe taunting Barry and saying, "No defeating the big bad this year."

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