The Flash is always good for fun pop culture references, and tonight they dropped another Marvel Comics one.
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Spoilers for tonight’s episode of The Flash, “Therefore I Am,” below.
In tonight’s episode, Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) is almost desperate to find out who Clifford DeVoe really is, and what he’s up to. He, Joe, and Harry pay the DeVoes a visit. Barry goes and questions the harmless-seeming professor at the university. Barry even steals DeVoe’s coffee mug and attempts to get some sort of evidence that DeVoe is a meta, going so far as to have Cisco (Carlos Valdes) vibe the mug for clues. All roads lead to, well, nothing, which causes the team to start to think Barry has come a little unglued.
Iris (Candice Patton) asks Barry for a word, and asks him why he can’t just accept that Clifford DeVoe is probably a harmless man in a wheelchair. Barry’s answer? DeVoe has his “Spidey sense” tingling something fierce. Spidey sense is, of course, a reference to the Marvel Comics hero Spider-Man and his ability to sense imminent danger in a kind of “sixth sense” type feeling.
Barry saying that his own personal Spidey sense was tingling because of DeVoe is just the latest Marvel Comics reference on The Flash this season. Two weeks ago, on “Girls Night Out,” Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards) remarked that Caitlin and Killer Frost had a Hulk/Bruce Banner relationship. Specifically, Felicity said, “Ooh! You’re like The Incredible Hulk!”
But clever dialogue isn’t the only way The Flash has referenced Marvel Comics this season. Last week’s Council of Wells, which featured Earth-2 Wells with his counterparts from Earth-12, Earth-22, and Earth-47 (with a cameo by a Gandalf-inspired Wells) may itself have been a hilarious riff on The Council of Reeds, a concept introduced during Jonathan Hickman’s run on The Fantastic Four comics.
As for how effective Barry’s Spidey sense is, we already know that DeVoe is The Thinker and has been manipulating them all season. Now it’s only a matter of time to see what the super intelligent villain’s next move is.
The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on The CW.
