Posted in: DC Universe, TV | Tagged: barry allen, cw, entertainment, flash, Harrison Wells, television, The Thinker

Flash Season 4: Where Is This Season Speeding Off To?

Published Sun, 22 Oct 2017 10:31:50 -0500

It's hard to tell what a new season is going to look like based off of the season premiere. Most of the time they use the first episode to clean up any cliffhangers and set the show back to status quo. This was always prevalent on X-Files where the season finales showed us hard evidence and Dana Scully was amazed only to have the genie put back in the bottle with the next season premiere and Scully return to being skeptical. But with the second episodes now in, we can look at what may be in store this season of the Arrowverse.

Going into this season of the Flash, the producers talked about wanting to get back some of the levity of the first season. Part of why it worked is that they had the Man in the Yellow Suit story building slowly in the background, but mostly the series dealt with the villain of the week formula that many new shows start with. With a character like the Flash, he has so many great villains that fans want to see, it made a lot of sense to do that. And they quickly built up the live-action rogues gallery. Later seasons had the big bad guy jump in early and Barry had to deal with the knowledge he wasn't fast enough to beat them.

What we learned in the second episode is that there are twelve metas that The Thinker needs for whatever plan he has. He has the first, Kilg%re, locked up in Iron Heights prison exactly where he wants him. I'm guessing that this is going to be the status quo for a while. New metas being introduced on a regular basis with a couple episode stepping away from that formula. Next week looks like the character of Hazard may be the next one. But then when Breacher comes to town, that might be outside of the Thinker's plan. We will likely be well into the second half of the season before Barry and the team are certain there even is a big bad for the season. The bigger focus will likely be where these metas are coming from.

Outside of the main story, the overall them so far seems to be relationships and communications. Barry and Iris couldn't communicate. Gypsy didn't let Cisco know how important their date was. Caitlin is obviously keeping secrets from the rest of the team. This may be why the character of Ralph Dibney is bring brought in. He's an outside but as a detective he is extremely observant and may force some of the issues to the surface by not having been in the mix for the last three years.

The biggest piece of the puzzle we're missing to see how this season is going to go is Harrison Wells. Each season has had a different Harrison Wells… evil Eobard Thawne in season 1, Earth-2 Harry obsessed with saving his daughter in season 2 and the fun loving, not so brilliant H.R. in season 3. Harry is supposed to be back next week with news that will get him a chilly reception. What is that news and will he be the Wells of the season? There was word that Tom Cavanagh would be playing yet another different version this season, but I think that might be referring to the character he will be playing in the Crisis on Earth-X crossover and not the one he'll be most of the season… unless that one comes back to Earth-1 at the end.

The fun thing to do going into the rest of the season would be to scour old Flash comics looking for slightly obscure villains who might be part of the Thinker's dirty dozen.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!