As we prepare for what looks like will be an intense season finale, this week’s The Flash brings together several elements that have been established in the show’s first season, including returning villains such as Captain Cold, Golden Glider, and Weather Wizard, while also featuring the Amell cousins, Arrow’s Stephen Amell and The Flash’s recurring Robbie Amell, for the first time ever on screen together.
Even though this series offers plenty of juicy meat for comic book enthusiasts everywhere pretty much on a weekly basis, “Rogue Air” went a step higher. We get a sort of assembly of Rogues (1.0.) with all the villains that had been trapped in the pipeline, and while we didn’t get any further character development on characters like Peek-A-Boo, The Mist, and Rainbow Raider, the show did succeed in giving us a little new taste of Liam McIntyre’s Weather Wizard. But, obviously, the best developed and used Rogue was Wentworth Miller as Captain Cold. Imagine if Miller’s character on Prison Break had gone the evil route; this would essentially be it, as I keep seeing Michael Scofield in his performance, just in a villainous way that I don’t mind at all.
This episode of The Flash cleverly sets Snart up for his transition over to the Arrow/Flash spin-off series, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow by him having Barry erase his record. Barry having to turn to Snart for help felt so classic to some of the recent comics. I was honestly expecting to see Heat Wave in this episode as well, since The Flash could have set up both characters for the spin-off, but maybe Season 2 will somehow establish Heat Wave’s transition as well. While Peyton Lists’ Golden Glider is pure fun, I’m still having a hard time grasping this character completely because she is on the edge of both being an interesting villain, but at the same time somewhat cheesy. Season 2 will probably be a better place to flesh her out, especially if her brother is going to be less in the series due to Legends.
The relationship that we always knew would come to an end finally did last night,as Eddie, after being saved by Team Flash, breaks up with Iris both because of what he knows will happen in the future and the connection he sees between Barry and her in the present. Even though we knew that it was going to end with a break-up, I was surprisingly not bothered by the very little drama that was caused in their scenes. In fact, this was a very good and calm break-up, and you know that it can only happen in television when you hear words like “good” and “calm” in the same sentence as “break-up.” Hopefully, this break-up won’t be the main reason if/why Eddie turns evil later down in the series. There needs to be better motivations in his character development from wanting to become an antagonist than just “You stole my woman, Barry!”
One of the most anticipated parts of this episode was easily the first ever scene featuring both the Amell cousins in the DC TV Universe. While it was a lot shorter than I expected, it was fun to, first of all, see an Oliver that wasn’t all League of Assassin-ed (aside from his attire). However, it does bring up some questions regarding the timeline of both shows, which will hopefully be explained in Arrow‘s season finale tonight, in which Grant Gustin’s The Flash will guest star. Firestorm has never looked as good as he did last night as the fiery effects felt a lot smoother this time around. While I doubt Harrison is completely out of the game, it was neat to see the three of them bring him down for at least a temporary defeat. If there was one flaw that this episode had, it was definitely the feeling of being over-packed. There were times where you felt that there was way too much going on in an episode that was the last one before the season finale. However, the writers managed to make it work for most part, because in the end, this was an insanely fun episode that moved the story forward.
You can’t go wrong with two Amells and several Rogue members, as this was a great penultimate episode of The Flash‘s first season, and while “Rogue Air” didn’t 100% set up the season finale, at least not as well I usually like with my TV shows, it was an incredibly solid hour all on its own.
Don’t miss the epic season one finale of The Flash titled “Fast Enough” next Tuesday, May 19, 8/7c on The CW.
[Photo via The CW]
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