The Flash: Season 1, Episode 16: Rogue Time
The first thing I questioned when I first saw the advertisements of this show was the look of the costume. If this was supposed to be taking place in the same world as “Arrow,” it seemed strange. that was until they obviously made an obvious switch in collective style for the show. Watching the first season of Arrow as opposed to the current, you can see the very clever and subtle changes. This is becoming more of a shared universe for superheroes and less of a dark and gritty retelling.
Although they have changed the silliness of the Flash’s characters for them to be a bit more believable. This time they even went as far as introducing the Golden Glider. We were all pretty sure she was coming, but her introduction was handled very well. Her “in it for the thrill” personality mixes well with Captain Cold’s cool calculating demeanor and Heat Wave’s constantly burning temper. Poor Cisco can’t win in either timeline, even though this time was much better.
Speaking of which, I am an enormous fan of time travel stories. It’s interesting that they have decided to reveal the nature of the Speed Force as time manipulation before even referring to it as the Speed Force. I’m sure this is something that Harrison Wells/Eobard Thane/Reverse Flash knows already, but they’ll explain it later. Hopefully they’ll go as far as to point it out during the teased “Crisis” in the future. If they adapt the “Crisis on Infinite Earth,” that’ll be an extremely bold move, especially since the rest of the DC heroes haven’t been introduced.
Of course Dr. Wells warned him about manipulating the time stream. It’s amazing that they managed to show real consequences for his actions. Putting the Weather Wizard away caused another problem that was close to home, the Rogues appeared, to the result of Cold learning Barry’s identity. The parley between the two at the end was fantastic, we might even see a glimpse of Flashpoint’s Citizen Cold in the future.
The only thing that didn’t make sense was the fact that Flash left Cold in the woods instead of bringing him back to his team to explain the deal. For all he knows, Mick and Lisa have already slaughtered the people they were robbing. Also Lisa’s gold gun… What? You mean to tell me Cisco is capable of creating a machine that can transmute things to gold? Why the hell is this his first time doing that? Why isn’t he at least billionaire? They’re going to have to get deeper into that later, because it was kind of silly.
Cisco is a pretty fun character that does a good job keeping the sometimes tense atmosphere light. Showing more of his background and family life was a good move. Snart using his brother as his weakness showed just how much he would do to protect the people he loves.
I also liked how he got hit with the “Groundhog Day” effect, in that we wasn’t able to capture the same magic with Iris as in the other time line, but he still lost Linda. Don’t play with the time stream! A lesson I’m sure will stick with Barry and come into play in the future.
Jonathan Thomas Jones is a speculative fiction author and founder of geekhavenreviews.com. He has been passionate about all things geek for his entire life. See more about him at jonathanthomasjones.com and follow him on twitter @jtgloryjones.
