Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) went on the hunt for a villain in tonight’s episode, and uncovered some interesting ties to The Flash‘s first season along the way.
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Spoilers for tonight’s episode of The Flash, “Therefore I Am”, below!
Tonight’s episode saw Barry investigating Clifford DeVoe (Neil Sandliands), insistent that he was operating as The Thinker. As the episode went on, DeVoe went above and beyond to assert his innocence — making Barry even more paranoid in the process.
Along the way, fans got quite a few callbacks and references to the earliest days of The Flash, particularly Season One. This isn’t the first time that Season Four has done this, with the premiere episode including a surprising number of callbacks. But let’s break this week’s down.
Coffee Mug
One of the episode’s biggest parallels to Season 1 wasn’t in a plot point, but in a certain object.
Barry visited DeVoe at his college, attempting to garner some sort of information from him. In the process, Barry discreetly stole a coffee mug from DeVoe’s desk, as a way to test his DNA for the metahuman gene.
While it’s under a completely different context, this is sure to remind some fans of one of Season One’s biggest running jokes. Joe tested Barry’s powers by dropping a coffee mug on the floor. The mug shattered onto the floor, prompting both Barry and Iris to call out Barry’s love for the mug.
The Suspect Board
Another object from the show’s early days made a return appearance: Barry’s suspect board.
As fans will remember, Barry kept a detailed map of information about his mother’s murder hidden in his CSI office. The board came up quite a few times throughout the years, until he eventually took it down in the beginning of this season.
In a way, this symbolizes just how much Barry cares about DeVoe’s case, setting us up for a pretty interesting conflict in the back half of this season.
The Particle Accelerator
Perhaps the biggest reference was to the show’s pilot episode, and, in particular, the events that set the series in motion.
After Clifford and Marlize DeVoe first made plans to develop the Thinking Cap, they realized they needed a profound source of energy to properly activate it. They quickly uncovered an easy outlet for that to happen: Harrison Wells’ particle accelerator.
The show then showed Wells (or well, Eobard Thawne impersonating Wells) giving his speech at the S.T.A.R. Labs unveiling. The events from the pilot then unfolded, with Iris’ laptop getting stolen and Barry chasing the thief outside of the building.
Afterwards, Wells took questions from the crowd, and got one from Marlize. Wells recognized her and Clifford, and essentially called them out for doubting the accelerator.
They exited S.T.A.R. Labs, as the particle accelerator was about to go off. Once it did, Clifford put on his Thinking Cap, and was struck by lightning in the process.
As the episode went on, these effects started to manifest in a few complicated ways. Clifford got the ability to essentially have unlimited knowledge, but at the cost of the movement of his legs.
Surveillance
As Barry grew more paranoid about DeVoe, another Season One trope made its way to the surface.
As fans will remember, the Samuroid helmet that the team acquired in the season premiere was secretly monitoring S.T.A.R. Labs. Barry discovered the camera midway through the episode, only furthering his argument that DeVoe was up to no good. In the episode’s end, DeVoe’s spying got even more profound, with him having some sort of camera in Barry and Iris’ apartment as well.
In a way, this felt a little like a callback to Thawne’s strategy in Season One. In the tail end of that season, Barry, Cisco, and Caitlin realized that Thawne had been spying on all of them, thanks to cameras placed throughout Central City.
Before You Go
The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on The CW.
[Embed id=52450]CW’s The Flash (TVShow: cws-the-flash)[/Embed]
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