Tonight was The Flash‘s midseason finale and while it answered a few questions about The Thinker’s endgame, the episode left us with a massive cliffhanger about Barry Allen’s future and a lot more questions.
Spoilers ahead for the midseason finale of The Flash‘s fourth season, “Don’t Run,” below!
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In the episode, Clifford DeVoe/The Thinker (Neil Sandilands) kidnapped Barry Allen/The Flash (Grant Gustin,) but it wasn’t his body or his speed that DeVoe was after. Barry managed to escape, and DeVoe ended up using the technology in his chair to put his consciousness into the mind of a very unlucky bus meta, Dominic Lanse, in a scene that many fans compared to the movie Get Out. DeVoe then used his own, lifeless body to frame Barry for murder, which is where the episode — which also saw Caitlin Snow/Killer Frost (Danielle Panabaker) get kidnapped by Amunet (Katee Sackhoff) — ended.
But even with all of these developments packed into the hour, as we go into the winter hiatus there are still some questions we will be trying to resolve before the show returns in January.
Is the botched West-Allen wedding causing problems for Iris?
We’ve already speculated that “Crisis on Earth-X” may have hinted at problems ahead for Barry and Iris (Candice Patton,) and tonight that seemed to be becoming reality. Iris seemed upset and off her game the entire episode, starting with when she commented to Barry that Oliver and Felicity getting married during their wedding wasn’t exactly on the wedding registry. Being upset about how the wedding played out is understandable, but things went from bad to worse. The Thinker kidnapped Barry. Caitlin was kidnapped by Amunet. Iris doesn’t seem to be getting a break, and with Barry being framed for murder, we have to ask if this is all somehow connected.
So, what was the point of kidnapping Barry?
When we first discovered that DeVoe’s mind was literally eating his body alive with its need for energy, it was easy to assume that The Thinker’s abnormal interest in Barry was because he wanted his body to power his brain. Turns out, that was not the case. DeVoe ended up taking a different meta’s body, and while getting Barry out of the way (via framing him for murder) so that he can’t interfere with The Thinker’s ultimate plan makes sense, why go to the trouble of kidnapping him in the first place? If he wanted Barry to think he was dead, and therefore free of the threat, there are other ways of doing that, and while one could argue that he wanted The Flash out of the way so that Caitlin could save his future new body, that’s kind of a weak plan.
How many specialty cubes are there in the multiverse?
Earlier this season, Jesse Quick (Violet Beane) sent Wally (Keiynan Lonsdale) a “break up cube” to end their relationship, even though it malfunctioned and Harry (Tom Cavanagh) had to deliver the message. Tonight, Gypsy (Jessica Camacho) sent Cisco (Carlos Valdes) a similar cube, but as Cisco found out rather embarrassingly, it wasn’t a break up cube. This one had far more intimate goals.
But if there are break up cubes and intimate cubes, how many other kinds of cubes are there in the multiverse? Do people send congratulations cubes for happy events? Do process servers use “you’ve been served” cubes? Or maybe in other parts of the multiverse they serve a purpose similar to Hogwarts letters in Harry Potter, informing people that they’ve been accepted to university. Whatever the possible options are, we’d like to know how many there are and when we’ll be getting them on Earth-1.
When will Ralph get a real purpose on Team Flash?
While it’s been nice to see Elongated Man depicted in live-action on The Flash, watching Ralph (Hartley Sawyer) sort of bumble around aimlessly without any real connection to the rest of Team Flash or even a purpose as a hero has been difficult. Even tonight, Cisco and Harry didn’t really want Caitlin to invite Ralph to the holiday get-together, and then when Ralph went ahead of everyone and decorated the West house as a gift to his “friends,” it was actually kind of sad considering that no one on the team really treats him as one. With Ralph having so much potential as a hero and a teammate, we can’t help but wonder when we’ll see him really get a place on the team.
How did the police know about DeVoe’s murder if his body was in Barry’s apartment?
This is the one we’ll be puzzling all the way until the midseason premiere. Tonight, right as Barry found DeVoe’s body on the floor of his loft, the police were banging at his door, calling out that they were there to arrest him for the murder of Clifford DeVoe. Now, while the police being called with a tip that something had happened in the apartment would make sense. But how did they know that DeVoe was dead, that he had been murdered, and that Barry Allen killed him if DeVoe’s body presumably hadn’t been discovered by anyone but Barry right then? Wouldn’t the police need some sort of evidence to come arrest Barry for a crime they have no way of proving even happened at that point? We’d really like to know what events transpired that lead to the cops breaking down Barry’s door before they had even found a body.
Hopefully, we’ll get some answers when The Flash returns on January 16, 2018.
The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on The CW.
