The Flash: Season1, Episode 19: Who is Harrison Wells?
The Everyman has always been a pretty interesting character. He’s not as powerful a shapeshifter as Marvel’s Mystique, but limits make powers better to me. In the comics, he has to eat a small portion of any organic matter before turning into it, but here he has to simply touch people. He’s clever and a decent fighter (he certainly kicked Eddie’s a**), but he’s not even close to being smart enough to get past Team Flash. His plot for framing Eddie was a good one and makes me wonder how it would’ve turned out if Joe and Cisco were around. He pretty much copied everyone but Doctor Wells, who immediately recognized him as a fake.
Dr. Harrison Wells A.K.A. Eobard Thawne A.K.A. Reverse Flash is the real star now. Everyone knows his secret now, but he doesn’t know they know. After his little talk with Joe though, it seems as though he may at least suspect something. Barry has been acting weird for a while now and he has definitely noticed. Not only is he a genius, but he’s from so far in the future that he’s quite literally always several steps ahead of everyone. I’m sure he’s going to catch on before they get to him, especially since they’ve found his secret room. He and Gideon have to have some kind of special future security system right?
What made me love this episode is how much they are keeping the lines of communication open between Flash and Arrow. They’re not overdoing it either. They’re utilizing their resources brilliantly by building relationships between secondary characters. Last week we saw the Atom team up with both heroes in fun ways. This week Joe and Cisco traveled to Starling City and met with Quentin and Laurel Lance.
Captain Lance helped them figure out the mystery of Harrison Wells and Laurel is going to probably be a much better hero because of Cisco. The new Canary Cry collar seems like it will be awesome. Hopefully she’ll become a much better fighter under Nyssa and stop sucking and pretty much just getting in the way all the time.
The real gold was the interaction between Captain Lance and Detective West. Joe was struggling with lying to Iris and Lance made him realize how much of a mistake that could be. Conversely, Joe reminded Lance of how much he loves Laurel and that he can get over their problems. That might even result in him leaving Oliver alone or at least taking it easy from now on. Both shows look like they’ve been impacted in treating ways from this episode and that’s what makes this connection great. I hope Warner Bros realizes what they have on their hands here and continue to make it grow into something better.
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.
