The Flash 'Power Outage' Review: Who Turned the Lights Out?
Reading time: 3 minutes
This week’s episode of The Flash features a new metahuman known as Blackout, we thought he was pretty dumb. Here’s what we thought about the rest of the episode:
SPOILERS BELOW
Final destination.
The hour opens with a group of friends watching Well’s science experiment go horribly horribly wrong. Not all of these people survive the experience.
Barry faces two threats in this episode without powers.
Barry is officially using The Flash moniker now in the opening sequence. Way to go champ, you got your name! In Barry’s initial confrontation with Blackout he loses his powers. Allen is having the problem of not being sure of himself without the speed of The Flash. This a major theme permeating throughout the hour, that isn’t given a definitive answer. There is also another random threat at the police station. The team at the laboratory attempts to juice up Barry’s powers with various tactics. In order too survive Blackout, Woodward is released from his cage underneath the S.T.A.R. Labs prison. He ends up slaying Tony, which is fine. Take a look at last week’s review for a mode in-depth analysis about our thoughts on that character, but the short version is: Woodward is lame. The show is having some problems setting up intriguing rogues weekly.
William Tockman underwhelms.
There is also the surprise appearance of William Tockman a.k.a. Clock King in this episode. He is sort of wandering around the police station attempting to look all sorts of menacing at the first half of the hour. Clock King’s silly tricks are fun to watch, but predictable. While he is menacing, Robert Knepper does not have enough depth in his performance to keep from making the character shallow. Eddie finds himself at Death’s door via Tockman's hands. Poor Eddie now has to deal with all that pain. Hopefully he can make it to the next episode and get the subplot that he deserves.
Joe is hiding something.
The episode begins in a way that most Flash episodes probably will, Barry investigates the first cause of danger from the metahuman with the police. For now, it seems that Joe is trying to keep his moment with the Reverse Flash a secret from Allen. No Joe!
Wells shows his true color: yellow.
Wells makes another return to his ‘log,’ he notes that Allen has now developed a reliance on his powers to perform everyday tasks. So now we know that Harrison's layer can also function as a weird journal type mechanism. There is a cut too Barry using his speed. Wells requests for more research on Barry’s moveset. He seems interested in moving his abilities as far as they can possibly go. This makes Wells really upset from the get-go. It almost seems like Wells planted Blackout to control his speed.
Seriously Wells we are onto you!
This episode is making significant headway towards whatever Wells could possibly be doing. The villain is confirmed to be setting up some kind of preordained future that doesn’t seem to involve whatever Wells has gotten himself into. The group is horrified when he revealed to be the one that let Woodward go free. This creates some tension between Allen and Wells for the very first time. Harrison runs off several of the names that have been caught up in the Particle Accelerator explosion. Of course, he rattles off a few old favorites like Ralph Dibny.
Watch it Barry.
This episode of The Flash got the ball rolling on Harrison’s exploration into villainy in the eyes of Barry himself. The latter part of this season is going to make this show extremely bleak, and I for one am all for it. Barry better watch his back. Another good, but not great episode of The Flash that lacked an interesting main villain.
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