Post — Aaron Ngo

Major Spoilers are included in this episode review. Please Read with Caution.

This episode gave us a lot to work with in terms of plot and characters. We’re getting more answers about Nora’s feud with Iris, the history of Cicada, and more character dynamics with Ralph and Sherloque Wells. Cisco Ramon disappeared in this episode. I missed him.

Turns out the Enlightenment created “meta-tech”. Technology infused with dark matter. Cicada’s dagger is classified as one and so is a smart phone owned by the villain of the week, Spencer Young. She is a blogger, like Iris, and uses her tech to create “fake stories”. Basically, whoever reads her headlines falls under her mind control.

The “meta-tech” is how she’s able to get a head of these stories… because she is creating these horrific disasters. Nora thinks Spencer’s cute, but Iris is not having it, which blows up in both of their faces. Nora reveals that Iris will put a power-dampening chip inside her sometime after Barry disappears in the Crisis. She didn’t even know she had powers until six months ago.

Candice Patton is doing a wonderful job of playing heartbroken and confused. She has no idea why she’d do something like that to her own daughter, but Barry assures her that she made the right decision, even if she doesn’t know the reason behind it. This is huge emotional fallout on both sides, as neither are purely right or wrong.

Nora decides to move out after Barry takes Iris’ side on the issue and goes to stay with Joe until further notice. I know there is more to explore on the matter, and I hope we do discover Future Iris’ reasoning for doing this to her daughter. I don’t know how Nora will recover from such a betrayal.

Ralph is treated like a real human being in this episode. I like his character dynamic with Sherloque Wells and how they investigated together the entire time. It got them to the conclusion that Cicada is ill and that’s the reason he makes that noise through the mask.

Caitlin’s story with her father took a backseat in this episode. She was present for technical support, but it looks like we’ll get back to her father in the following episode.

How they’re handling Cicada is interesting. The show is already trying to humanize him without us actually meeting him yet. All his scenes outside of Cicada are centered around his illness and / or his daughter.

Let’s see what happens in the next episode. I think Iris West-Allen is performing much better compared to the previous seasons. The dynamic of Barry and Nora is severed, but hopefully the West-Allen Family can bounce back from this.

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