“The Flash” starts to dive deeper and more directly into its story and villain with a decent episode titled, “The Mask of the Red Death, Part 1”.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Story
This episode follows Barry being captured by Red Death and learning more about her plans. Red Death shows up as Ryan Wilder at the West-Allen house seeking Iris’ help. We learn through her conversations with Iris that she is from another timeline and created her own artificial speed in her suit to mimic The Flash of her time. She wants to use Barry as a power source for her cosmic treadmill, so she can return to her timeline. Chillblaine puts together Red Death’s cosmic treadmill but eventually realizes the error of his ways and destroys it when Barry is running on it leading Barry to temporarily be drained of his speed. Given Mark’s betrayal again, Red Death’s rogues gang up on him and seemingly kill him. After Red Death’s plan is foiled she decides that she will take over Barry’s earth instead.
The Good
This episode was actually pretty interesting and did a good job of not dragging out Red Death’s story. We learned more about her character, motivation, and powers. It was also worth noting that she quoted both Kevin Conroy and Michael Keaton’s versions of Batman with iconic lines such as “I am vengeance. I am the knight.” and “You wanna get nuts? Lets get nuts!”
Although Chillblaine’s character is unbearable, his dynamic with Barry is so interesting. Once again we see another tense scene between the two and although it was a little trophy, there was something so captivating about it.
Iris using common sense and actually being able to figure out that this is not her Ryan Wilder gave the character some points and feel useful for once. It was cool how they tied the story of Iris and Red Death in to change the dynamic in the story.
Joe and Cecile’s daughter, Jenna, is actually shown for once in the show actually proving she does exist and her presence influenced Joe’s decision on whether to move out of Central city or not.
One cool cameo was bringing back Roy Bivolo/Rainbow Raider. The character is best known from season one in “The Flash” and “Arrow” crossover episode. While the character did not do much, it was nice to see an old face from such an iconic episode of the first season.
The Bad
“The Flash” goes 2/2 on cringy endings involving Red Death. Red Death throws a temper tantrum after she is defeated and unfortunately the acting comes off as horrible. Her character definitely has some more depth but scenes like this make her feel like such a generic villain.
Speaking of Ryan Wilder, it was mentioned that she was missing in a previous episode and we still have not found out what happened to this version of Batwoman. We will see if they decide to skip over that bit of info or not.
Every time Khione comes on screen and decides to chime into the conversation, her character comes off as annoying and unnecessary. I am still not over the fact that Caitlin was essentially killed off and there is absolutely no justification for it or reaction from Team Flash.
Review
Overall this episode was pretty good and definitely kept my attention. Although there are the cringey or generic scenes here and there, it does not take away from the fact that this was a decent episode that got straight to the point. Episode four is 7/10.