Catching Up With The Flash: Season 1 Midseason Review And Primer

For a show about the adventures of the Fastest Man Alive, The Flash sure seemed to take its sweet old time getting through its winter break and returning to new episodes.

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Maybe that’s because the series got off to such a great start, bringing fans a lighter tone than Arrow but still making the stakes serious (and yes, since it’s a show on The CW, there’s a romance subplot too). Comics aficionados got all the DC references they could handle; many more than Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, in fact.

As we head back into new episodes tonight, this is an appropriate time to take a look back at all of the major players on The Flash, what they’ve gone through to this point and what might lie ahead.

Ready? We might as well start with the Scarlet Speedster himself:

Barry Allen / The Flash

Since he’s the main character and all, it’s only right that he had the most eventful half-season. He established his super hero identity as the Flash with a little help from Oliver Queen, wisely discarding “the Streak” as a possible code name. Barry has confided in his surrogate father Joe West, who has guarded his secret so far while pledging to help get to the bottom of his mom’s mysterious murder.

Unfortunately, the Flash ran into the Reverse-Flash during the midseason finale and felt pretty guilty about being so overmatched. Barry now seems more determined than ever to explore the upper limits of his super-speed — something that actually suits Harrison Wells’ purposes, whatever they might be. He also got a few more lessons in life as a super hero during his team-up with the Arrow.

Oh, and his love life is kind of a mess. Even though Iris West seems pretty happy dating Detective Eddie Thawne, Barry was convinced to spill his heart out about his love for her. That situation is bound to get explored even more before the end of the season.

One thing we know will happen soon (tonight, actually) is that the public will become aware of the Flash, who so far has been an urban legend like Batman is often said to be to citizens of Gotham City. We’ll have to see how that affects Barry’s approach to heroics going forward.

Harrison Wells / Reverse-Flash

It sure looked like Wells wasn’t the Flash’s greatest enemy when we saw them in the same place at the same time during the midseason finale. Yet by the end of the episode, things changed in a hurry when we saw him assembling the yellow costume in his future room, and actor Tom Cavanagh has since confirmed it’s him in the suit.

That doesn’t answer most of the basic questions surrounding this man, including such things like:

• Why does he need to push the Flash instead of just using his own super-speed to accomplish … whatever he’s trying to accomplish?
• Why did he have to kill Barry’s mom?
• How did he get to the present from the future?
• How did he manage to fight himself?

The iceberg of mystery goes much deeper than that. Suffice it to say, we can expect that the enigma of Wells is only going to unfold slowly over the rest of the season.

The S.T.A.R. Labs Crew (Caitlin Snow and Cisco Ramon)

Still no powers for these two, making it likely that if they end up as Vibe and Killer Frost, like in the comics, it won’t be due to the particle accelerator mishap. Cisco is mostly comic relief as well as the main gadgeteer, though his invention of the cold gun that Captain Cold uses is likely to continue biting our heroes in the rear.

As for Caitlin, she had a somewhat traumatic reunion with her presumed dead fiancée Ronnie Raymond, who emerged from the fateful accelerator incident as Firestorm. He told Caitlin and the others not to seek him out, but Wells promised to try to help him (for his own ends, one would think), and we know he’ll be showing up again pretty soon.

The Rogues

A bunch of Flash’s most familiar foes have made their way into the show already, including Captain Cold, Heat Wave, Captain Boomerang, Weather Wizard and even a new take on Rainbow Raider. Some are deceased, others held in the Pipeline at S.T.A.R. Labs, and still others are still at large.

Cold and Heat Wave are going to show up tonight, so they might not still be on the lam for long. A new version of Weather Wizard is coming soon, along with Pied Piper and Peek-A-Boo. Will circumstances ever force the bad guys to come together as a group? Stay tuned.

Let’s finish up with some quick hits on the rest of the regulars:

• Iris West seems to be torn right now, as Barry dropped the love bomb on her last time out. She seems happy with Eddie, but it might not stay that way forever.
• Speaking of Eddie, he is off the suspect list for turning into Reverse-Flash. He and his task force have been trying to stop the Flash, but he’s also seen the Fastest Man Alive save lives, which could change his turn.
• As noted above, Joe West has been a stalwart ally for Barry while continuing to hand out life advice.

I don’t know about you, but going through all that made me even more excited to get back to fresh episodes. The countdown is on to 8 pm tonight!

Next: See the official synopsis for episode 10, Revenge of the Rogues