Tonight’s episode of The Flash moved the ball down the field in a big way, with Wally seemingly on the cusp of getting powers (as a result of a Faustian pact with season-long big bad Alchemy), as well as the first face-to-face meeting between The Flash and Savitar.
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Caitlin’s story also progressed, and we got a first look at both hers and Cisco’s costumes as they will apparently appear once the two have settled into costumed identities.
And along the way, yeah, there were a few things you might have noticed if you’re a comic book fan, or just really attentive to detail.
So…what did we see? What did we miss?
Read on, and comment below.
The Flash airs Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.
SHADE
Tonight on The Flash, audiences got their first look at a villain who hadn’t previously been announced (although most everybody assumed he was coming): Shade.
There are a number of characters in DC’s pantheon who have gone by the name of Shade, so here’s a little primer on the one you’re seeing tonight.
Richard Swift was first introduced in 1942’s The Flash #33. Created by Gardner Fox and Hal Sharp, Shade battled The Flash and other members of the Justice Society for years.
Depicted as a thief with a cane who could manipulate shadows, Shade was ultimately reinvented in the ’90s as a friend and mentor to Jack Knight, the post-Zero Hour Starman, whose father he had battled.
After becoming a major player in James Robinson’s acclaimed run on Starman, Shade was given his own miniseries at the start of The New 52 — one that acknowledged events that took place in that pre-Flashpoint series.
Will we ever get there with this version of the character? It’s hard to say. With Pied Piper, for instance, his rehabilitation has happened largely off-screen, so that he syncs up with his comic book destiny but they don’t have to pay the actor or dedicate valuable screen time (it’s already a pretty big ensemble) to seeing it happen.
Something similar could theoretically happen with The Shade, although in the comics more than anything it was age that mellowed the character — suggesting that he’s got many years of crime ahead of him.
That said, it wasn’t until Starman came along that Shade leveled up from a fairly interchangeable villain-of-the-month to an unforgettable character, and since we’ve seen other allusions to Robinson’s Starman in The Flash and its tie-in comics, they may be keen to explore that territory eventually.
VIBE AND KILLER FROST
In Cisco’s “vibe,” he saw himself in full-on Vibe outfit, fighting with Caitlin who, by this point in the story, has apparently evolved into Killer Frost.
The fact that those actors appear in costume isn’t much of a surprise: the suits (albeit small, and on a hanger) appeared in the background of a recent featurette on the making of the show.
Still, this is the first time we’ve seen them fully suited up in the Earth-1 versions of their costumes (assuming that’s what we’re seeing), which seems worth a mention.
THE SHINING
Stephen King’s novel (and the movie based on it) was all over this episode.
The movie date that Joe was going on was The Shining, Stanley Kubrich’s beloved adaptation of the King book. The story centers on a writer who, stranded in a remote location, starts to crack when he has no connections to the outside world.
(That, of course, could be read as subtext for H.R. Wells.)
There’s also the fact that at one point in the episode, in spite of the fact that it’s well-established he doesn’t much care for the movie, Cisco is wearing a t-shirt on which a cat is re-enacting the famous “Here’s Johnny” scene from The Shining (see above).
HELBINGS
Todd and Aaron Helbing are the head writers for The Flash, making the designation of H.R. Wells’s Earth-19 currency as “a Helbing” a nice wink and a nod to the writing staff.
PROUD SPONSORS
Considering how tiny the logos were and the fact that it got next to no screen time, it seems worth mentioning that the Horror Movie Nights in the Park are sponsored by DC Universe businesses Big Belly Burger — which originated in the Superman comics of the ’80s — and Jitters, where Iris worked for the first season of The Flash.
