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The Flash Recap – Season 1, Episode 18: All Star Team Up

By Nick Tylwalk

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Once upon a time, the Flash teamed up with the Arrow. Tonight, we’re going to see a different pairing of DC super heroes, and the Fastest Man Alive is going to be the more experienced partner.

Oh, and TV fans should definitely recognize the villain in this one. Let’s see what’s got Central City buzzing in the episode of The Flash called “All Star Team Up.”

Not-So-Fast Recap: The Flash is helping Joe West and Eddie Thawne deal with a wave of robberies and other, more petty crimes as only he can. That means helping the cops round up the crooks and make more room for them in the police cars. After foiling one last burglary, Flash wonders if the criminals haven’t heard of him.

We shift to Hudson University, where a female doctor is leaving the robotics lab at night. As she starts her car, she is suddenly swarmed by bees who emerge from her vehicle’s vents. The police find her the next day, covered in insect bites. Joe suggests getting S.T.A.R. Labs to help, but Barry doesn’t want to do that because of his suspicions of Harrison Wells. In fact, he wants to tell Cisco Ramon and Caitlin Snow about their Reverse-Flash theory, though his surrogate dad disagrees.

Speaking of Cisco, he isn’t too thrilled to hear Barry and Harrison say it could have been the work of a metahuman who controls bees and can increase their toxicity. A familiar voice suddenly joins the debate, and it’s the one belonging to Felicity Smoak. Why is she there? Just wait a minute and everyone will see. Look up there. Is that a bird? No, it’s a plane. Nope, it’s Felicity’s boyfriend, who makes a shaky landing before introducing himself as Ray.

Barry tries to warn his friend that it’s not a good time, but she insists that Ray needs help with the suit — after plenty of accidental sexual innuendo, which prompts Wells to say that there are now two people who talk that way. Sensing that Barry is still nervous, Felicity offers to go get coffee with him, though both of them are watched carefully by Harrison.

At the police station, Iris West asks Eddie if he’s working with the Flash since he was able to stop so many crimes in one night. He lies to her, which makes him feel bad enough that he tells Joe he can’t continue doing it. He also asks when his vote as Iris’ boyfriend will count more than Joe’s for being her father, to which he’s told in no uncertain terms that it’ll happen once he is Iris’ husband.

The scene shifts to Jitters, where Felicity wonders if the brooding has followed her to Central City. Eddie shows up looking for Barry, who tells him that Felicity knows he’s the Flash too. Everyone seems to know but Iris, Eddie points out. To break the tension, Felicity proposes dinner with the whole group. Neat idea. Can’t see it going well.

Not that things are going any smoother for Cisco. As he attempts to help Ray with his Atom suit, he gets a strange flashback to his own death — strange, because it never really happened in this timeline thanks to Barry’s monkeying with the past. Everyone gets a call about another bee attack at a company called Folston Tech, and while the Flash finds the victim already dead, the bees come from the man’s mouth and attack the Flash. Barry asks Cisco for directions out but quickly ends up confused and surrounded, and Joe rolls up on the scene just in time to find the Flash stung repeatedly and going into cardiac arrest.

The defibrillator in the Flash suit saves Barry, but gets fried in the process (possible plot point alert). He wants to know why Cisco’s directions were incorrect, and the lame reply is that the building schematics were out of date. Nevertheless, Barry gets a clean bill of health from Caitlin and wants to stick to the original dinner plans, though Caitlin and Cisco wonder why they weren’t invited.

It turns out that Ray bought out an entire fancy restaurant for the meal. Cisco spends the time visiting Joe, but he gets another vision of Reverse-Flash, and the conversation doesn’t go well anyway since both men are hiding things from each other.

Still, the dinner is going even worse. Iris makes an issue of Eddie’s lack of openness, and when Ray turns the talk to Harrison, Barry freaks out and begs off to get some fresh air. Felicity follows him and offers that she sympathizes with messed up situations, naming all the current events from Arrow. He tells her what he suspects about Wells and his feelings that he might not be able to trust Caitlin and Cisco either. Meanwhile, Iris is upset enough that she leaves, Barry gets called away, and Eddie leaves too.

Barry gets to S.T.A.R. Labs just in time to save Wells from a bee that evaded Caitlin and Cisco’s hilariously overpowered efforts to kill it. Upon discovery, we learn that the bee is actually a tiny robot. And hey everyone, it’s TV’s Emily Kinney who appears to be behind it all!

When everyone is done admiring the tech in the bee, they find both victims used to work at Mercury Labs. That means Harrison’s old friend Tina McGee, who Barry, Joe and Harrison go visit. The woman played by Kinney is named Brie Larvan, and McGee said she used to work on experimental robotic bees for agricultural purposes but then figured she could make more money weaponizing them for the military instead. Since McGee fired Larvan once she found out, the cops figure she might end up a target, but she declines their offer of protection.

Felicity gives Barry a pep talk, explaining that she helped Oliver before she knew he was the Arrow even though he was lying to her because she knew he had a good heart. It’s a lesson she hopes Barry can apply to his decision about whether or not to trust his science buddies. When he returns home, he finds Iris there, saying she was moving back to the West residence. She asks Barry if Eddie was cheating on her, but he replies that Eddie is likely just keeping his work to himself to keep Iris out of the darkness of police life.

Alas, evil never rests, and the swarm is headed for Mercury Labs. In a pun that would make even Cisco wince, Larvan broadcasts her voice and asks if she can buzz herself in. Get it? Okay, I’ll stop.

Kindred spirits Cisco and Ray dub their new enemy the Bug-Eyed Bandit. A plan of action is discussed, and since the defibrillator in the Flash suit is broken (plot point landed!), it’s decided that he will go after the Bandit while the Atom suit can keep Ray safe while he protects McGee. As the Atom leads the bees on a merry chase, Flash confronts Larvan, only to find that she’s got a backup swarm at her lair. Sensible.

They are robots, though, and Felicity tries hacking them to gain control. She and Brie battle by keyboard, while Atom follows Cisco’s advice to lead his swarm into the water. That shorts them out but also affects the suit, and Ray is barely able to fly it back into the back of the S.T.A.R. Labs van. Felicity wins the hacker war and metaphorically drops the mic. Someone should check to see if the bees are all gone, because there’s one left, and it’s going for Ray. Cisco gets stung by jumping in the way, but Flash is able to save him by using his powers to jump-start his friend’s heart.

Tina finds Barry to apologize, but he uses the opportunity to ask about what happened between her and Wells. McGee says that they used to be close, but after the night his girlfriend died, it was like he became a completely different person. Because he … oh. That’s right. Only we know that for now.

Before they leave, Ray tells Barry that the solution to the Atom power supply was to “go smaller.” Heh. Barry thanks Felicity for her advice.

Iris finds Eddie and reveals that she talked to Barry. She accepts the explanation she got, but she gives Eddie an ultimatum anyway. As she passes Barry on her way out, you can tell he knows something happened.

As always, there’s one final scene. Caitlin and Cisco think they are meeting Barry to go to karaoke night, but they find him and Joe with stern looks on their faces. Barry shows them his boards with everything he knows about his mom’s murder and everything he has compiled on Wells. Caitlin doesn’t understand, and she’s extremely skeptical when told about the theory that Harrison and the Reverse-Flash are the same man. She looks to Cisco for support, but he blurts out that he’s been having nightmares about Wells as the Reverse-Flash — and that Wells kills him. I hate having nightmares about timelines that got wiped out by time travel!

Favorite Moment: Plenty of good one-liners in this one, mostly by Felicity. Tough to pick a favorite, but I’ll go with her saying that being with Ray is “like dating Barry in Oliver’s body.” Right after that, she makes Caitlin swear not to repeat that to anyone.

Final Thought: As fun as it was having Ray drop by, this episode felt like it derailed the pacing of the back half of the season just a tad. Maybe an Atom guest appearance would have been better in the lighter first half of the season, but Ray hadn’t invented the suit yet, so … yeah. Not bad by any means, but there were better episodes in the weeks leading to this one, and likely more to follow as well.

Next: Previously, on The Flash: our recap of Tricksters

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