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Please Keep In Mind That This Article Contains Potential Spoilers For “The Girl With The Red Lightning” and Events That Occurred Prior
At this point I feel like I’m going to start sounding like a broken record. Everything about this episode fell flat—like most things have this season. If there’s one thing to truly take away from this week’s installment, it’s just how terrible of a villain Cicada 2 (and the whole Cicada thing in general) is.
I couldn’t care less about Gracie. I have been given no reason to. I have no real idea what motivates her bland endless rage. There is not a single layer of depth to be seen for the character. The fact that she has been posed as the big season finale threat is ridiculous. Watching her performance is painful as well. She’s taking a generic villain act, and somehow making it harder to watch. Not even a “connection” to Nora helped explore her any further. They did nothing of importance with it.
Nora having a moment with her mother. Photo courtesy of FlickeringMyth.com.
To bring the attention off the Cicada plot, I’ll focus my complaints on another character: Joe West. Not only did his storyline feel like an awkward filler piece (one that has no business being in the penultimate episode), but it also felt completely out of character. Since when does he lean so heavily on the Captain? Since when does he feel uncomfortable doing his job in such a manner (which we’ve seen him do throughout the show)? It just made no sense, and didn’t click. Most of this blame rests squarely on the writer’s shoulders, as the character of Joe West is still in plenty good condition.
Sherloque got to lead another side plot as he tried to protect his love. This didn’t work either. While I care about them just a little more than Cisco and his significant other, we did only spend a single episode with the both of them. At least Ralph got to be one of the smarter characters in this episode, as he was the only one thinking about thought Thawne. Sadly, even that Thawne twist missed the mark for me. I mean, did it not look super silly that Thawne simply has Cicada’s dagger haphazardly bagged to his chest? It just came off as a lazy attempt by the writer’s to connect the two storylines.
The Flash and XS ready to take down Weather Witch. Photo courtesy of FlickeringMyth.com.
“The Girl With Red Lightning” just went to show how season five has developed into one of the worst seasons in the show’s line-up—right down there with DeVoe. Cicada is an extremely boring and stale villain, and their focus only continues to bring the show down. The entire Cicada threat should have been done by the mid season finale, as gears then shifted to Thawne (and maybe another threat entirely). But, it would seem that this is the hand we were dealt.
Bonus Notes:
- So all of these Metas in the city (which you think we would have met a few more of them right?) are eagerly just giving up their powers forever? Didn’t have much to say about Barry/Iris/Nora. There really wasn’t much to add besides them going through all of the same boring Cicada notes again.
You can catch new episodes of The Flash when they air on The CW network every Tuesday at 8pm EST
