(WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD FOR SEASON 5 EPISODE 12 OF THE FLASH!)
Do you remember when you were younger, and you did something that you didn't want your parents to find out about? You kept doing whatever you could to cover it up, but it just kept getting harder and harder. Maybe you got caught, maybe you didn't. Well, it almost caught up to Nora in this week's episode of The Flash.
Team Flash finds a way to enter Grace's memories to help wake her from her coma. They're hoping that this will help them get through to Cicada and stop him from his metahuman killing spree. Problem is, this could allow them to see the memories of anyone that goes in. Nora doesn't want her secret out, so she goes in alone hoping to get Grace out quickly. How do you think that worked out?
Photo: Shane Harvey/The CW -- © 2019 The CW Network, LLC. All rights reserved
Nora is now trapped, and now, Barry and Iris have to go in after her. It really seemed like Nora had turned a corner in these last couple of episodes, as far as not making any careless mistakes. This was a reminder that she's still young, inexperienced and fear can make you do some crazy things. Nora does find Grace, but has no way to know how she is going to get out. It doesn't seem like Grace wants to get out either, so that's another problem that will just get worse as the episode goes on. In their quest to save Nora, Barry and Iris actually end up in HER memories. That does a couple of things for us, the fans. First, it lets us finally get a look at The Flash museum! Talk about easter egg overload! You'll have to pause the episode several times to try to catch them all. We also get to learn that Cicada returns at some point after The Flash vanishes and continues a reign of terror (we'll get back to this in a minute.) Fans of some recent issues of DC Comics will also recognize a name that spawned from the Dark Multiverse, and that's Red Death. For those who don't know, it's basically and evil Batman with the powers of the a speedster. Yeah...that's very bad. Sounds like that might be another fight for another day.
Photo: The CW -- © 2019 The CW Network, LLC. All rights reserved
Of course, Sherloque and Caitlin find a way to get everyone out of the memories that they are trapped in, but this is where things get messy. Grace turns bad, and in a hurry. She's been listening to everything since her coma, and she thinks that Team Flash is trying to hurt her uncle. So now SHE is trying to kill Nora in these memories, all grown up as Cicada herself. This explains a lot, but it also begs the question as to whether or not these actions actually create a future Cicada and the one that terrorizes the future. On the softer side, we get to see that Iris wasn't such a bad mom after all and Nora's depiction was just that of an angry and scared little girl. FINALLY Iris gets to have one weight lifted off of her shoulders. She's already dealing with trying to start her own paper, which writes the article about her husband going missing in a Crisis event. At least now she knows that she is not a terrible mother to her future daughter. I really think this could be a turning point for Iris, and help put her focus back on helping the team and moving forward with things that are important to her career as well. Iris is strong enough to handle quite a bit, but this was clearly weighing on her and keeping her distracted.
Photo: The CW -- © 2019 The CW Network, LLC. All rights reserved
Obviously, everyone gets out safely, but they're all looking for answers as to why Nora did what she did. Sherloque bails her out, but we know he has been suspicious of her for a while now. Now he has the information that Reverse Flash was Nora's defense mechanism in her own mind. It will be very interesting to see what he does once he has connected all of the dots. Then we also find out that Nora is using Thawne to help her stop Cicada in the past. So even we don't know everything regarding that motive, but that is a piece of information that we did not have before. It still remains to be seen how everyone will react when they find out what Nora is up to, and it looks like that may come sooner rather than later. Then we get the cliffhanger of Barry wanting to use the metahuman cure on Cicada once it is complete. Remember what Cisco and Caitlin agreed to? Not to force it on anyone? This may end up causing the biggest rift in Team Flash yet, and I'm not sure I am prepared for that yet.
Here's a few more quick things for this week's episode:
- We finally got to see a "guy's night out" with Ralph and Cisco. Granted, Cisco thought they were following a lead and wasn't happy about it at first, but he eventually came around. This was yet another step forward for Ralph though, who has grown an incredible amount this season. He's not quite as off the wall as he was when he first joined the team, and I'll admit that I miss that. Seeing him this way does give me hope for Nora as we go along, since Barry was largely responsible for Ralph becoming the man he is today.
- Something else happens during their night out. Cisco has a breakthrough on how to create the metahuman cure and it happens while he's chatting with the bartender. Turns out she is a photographer, and she did quite a good job at bringing Cisco out of the shell that she's been in lately. Hey Kamilla, I think the Central City Citizen is hiring.
Photo: Shane Harvey/The CW -- © 2019 The CW Network, LLC. All rights reserved
The Flash has done very well this season of balancing several stories at once, and keeping them all interesting at the same time. They don't seem like tangents, or that I'm being pulled unnecessarily away from the bigger picture. Things have been a bit heavy lately though, so I do hope we get to lighten things up a bit before the big showdown with Cicada. Still, the emotional moments in the West-Allen family have been nice too and, despite her sometimes frustrating mistakes, Nora is a very enjoyable character to watch. Parker Kennedy has been doing a fantastic job, and I'm not sure that I've said that enough. Will Nora break the news to her parents about Thawne before Sherloque uncovers the truth? Will we see Thawne in the current timeline? Will Grace wake up or will she stay on the path we saw in this week's episode? Was Red Death just a name drop or a sign of things to come?
What did you think of this week's episode?
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