TV Recap: The Flash – Ep. 22 – Rogue Air

So … how in the world can ‘The Flash’ top this episode with next week’s season finale? Hard to see how we can do any better than a Justice League team-up against The Reverse Flash, Captain Cold making a major power play with The Rogues and a Green Lantern reference (!). We’ve finally got a new best episode of the season folks.

Wells is still on the loose and Team Flash is getting antsy trying to track him down and find him (and Eddie). Team Flash finally figures out that Wells has been hiding in plain sight — underneath STAR Labs. Wells frees Peek-a-Boo from the STAR containment prison and outraces Barry yet again. Iris saves Caitlin from Peek-a-Boo proving why it’s so vital that STAR Labs has no locks on the front door. In the distance, Joe hears Eddie asking for help and all of Team Flash is reunited.

But it’s not so happy for everyone as Eddie got the massive spoiler from Wells that Iris is going to marry Barry and takes back his proposal. Eddie alerts them that Wells was talking about a tube, which Cisco figures will restart the particle accelerator presumably allowing Wells to get back to the future. How in the world did Cisco miss that movie reference? When Wells’ device is ready it could wipe out everything in its radius including the imprisoned meta-humans.

One of the more encouraging aspects of this episode was Barry was making decisions and not being so reliant on his sidekicks even when it puts him at odds with Joe. Barry asserted himself well figuring they could hold the prisoners on Lien Yu along with Arrow’s other dangerous villains. He wasn’t able to get in touch with Oliver though as he’s in Nanda Parbat. If this were a comic book, we’d have a little asterisk saying this episode takes place before the events in Arrow Ep. 22. I love the connectivity of the CW DC universe!

With Oliver absent and the District Attorney advising Joe not to get anywhere involved with the smuggling of prisoners, Barry’s out of good options so he goes to his only bad one — asking Captain Cold to help transport the five prisoners to Ferris Airport.  I liked this setup as it puts Cold directly in contact with more potential allies to join his Rogues. For now, just his sister, Lisa, is helping provided Barry remove every trace of Cold’s existence from all worldwide databases. Joe thinks this is a terrible idea and Barry really should have waited until after Cold completed the job before honoring his side of the deal.

Lisa resumes flirting with Cisco and says she wants a name and he comes up with Golden Glider, which she likes. I’d still prefer for her to not just be another gun-toting Rogue, but with Heat Wave absent it’s not as noticeable this week. Team Flash rounds the villains (Deathbolt, Weather Wizard, Rainbow Raider, The Mist and Peek-a-Boo if you lost count) in a truck with an energy dampener.

Cold remarks the airport is deserted and Flash says this Ferris Air has been shut down after one of their test pilots disappeared. We need Hal Jordan/Green Lantern to show up so bad next season it’s not even funny. I’ll even accept watered down laser ring version if we can make him a series regular.

Before the Argus jet arrives to take the prisoners to Lien Yu, the energy dampener starts to conk out and The Rogues attack. All season I’ve been awaiting a Rogue team up so this was a nice appetizer to a real Rogues vs. Flash battle. Peek-a-Boo escapes right away as Flash battles Mist away with his tornado arm trick, but Weather Wizard and Deathbolt combine attacks to put Flash down as Rainbow Raider sics Caitlin on Cisco. Captain Cold freezes Deathbolt — since he owed him money — but lets Weather Wizard and Rainbow Raider escape so they owe him and will join his Rogues. That’s a welcome bit of comic continuity since of the apprehended meta-humans, only Weather Wizard and Rainbow Raider were official Rogues.

Cold comes to Flash to gloat about putting one over on him saying he is a bad guy and Barry shouldn’t have trusted his word. Man has a point. He lets Barry live though so Flash will owe him one later. Joe checks in on Barry who admits he thought he could handle it like Oliver does in another well done tie-in to Barry’s experiences with Arrow. Joe says that’s not the kind of hero The Flash is and that’s what makes him different from the Arrow.

Iris tries one more time to make things work out with Eddie, but he admits he always knew Iris loved Barry. Eddie’s next line ‘I thought I could love you enough to change things’ was a killer and he asks her ‘If you really do love me, you’ll let this end.’ Yikes, Eddie brought the raw emotion this week. Iris agrees, but Barry is a bit busy to get excited about being the rebound boyfriend.

The particle accelerator has come online and Wells is sauntering up to tap into it when Barry blocks his path and this time he’s not alone as he’s got Firestorm and Arrow with him. Wells assures them they need more people and we get a great shot of him triggering his Reverse Flash costume from his ring to kick off our big showdown.

Even if the fight lasted all episode it wouldn’t have been enough for me as RF uses his experience to overcome the numbers disadvantage. While Barry races to save Firestorm from an RF attack, Arrow manages to hit him with a special arrow designed by Ray Palmer (Atom is represented in the Justice League battle after all). That slows RF down enough for Arrow to fight him at normal speed for a moment. Flash rejoins the battle and suckers him into an attack from Firestorm and another super-arrow from Arrow. Barry exclaims he finally got him as Arrow mentions he might need a favor (for more on Oliver’s favor, watch tomorrow’s season finale of ‘Arrow’) as he and Firestorm head off.

This was the satisfying epic Flash episode that’s been in the works all season and it delivered big time. Next week seems like it will be more of an epilogue than a season finale, but Barry’s plans to go back into time sounds like the makings of a perfect disaster. What did you think?