What is ‘Trial of The Flash’?

With The Flash headed toward a major storyline from the comics, let’s look at what it’s about.

For those who have either been drunk or been living under a rock for the past three weeks, The Flash went for a midseason break on December 5 with the episode ‘Don’t Run’ and will not be returning to our small screens and video streams until January 16.

The next episode called ‘The Trial of The Flash’ will be its midseason opener for the latter part of Season Four and it is this very title, which a lot of fans have been itching and waiting to be tackled since ‘Flashpoint’ last year.

For those who do not know, the subsequent episode of this current season, the ‘Trial of The Flash’ is a reference to a 24 issue long arc of the same name by Cary Bates and Carmine Infantino starting with The Flash Vol.1 #323-#350.

As for the storyline in the comics, it involves The Flash (Barry Allen) going on trial for killing the Reverse–Flash (Eobard Thawne) during a fight. Reverse–Flash had killed Allen’s first wife, Iris West, some time back and after he prepared to marry his latest fiance, Fiona Webb, Thawne was attempting to kill her as well.

In the upcoming episode, the plot–points are somewhat quite similar, the circumstances and perpetrator revolving the basis of this storyline are different with The Thinker (Clifford DeVoe) being the core antagonist and center of Allen’s consequence rather than Reverse-Flash and Allen being forced to reveal he is The Flash, whereas in the comics, its vice-versa it is his civilian identity under threat of being revealed to the public.

For a brief recap, DeVoe (Neil Sandilands) abducted Barry (Grant Gustin) after his marriage to Iris (Candice Patton) while the newlywed couple were Christmas shopping, and taken Barry to his lair and placed him in a speedster–prison. Barry as The Flash escaped and monetarily defeated The Thinker after both teleported over the city and he accidentally damaged the hover chair with the mechanical arms, causing The Thinker to plunge into the bay.

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Though The Thinker actually survived, he managed to transfer his consciousness into a meta–human host called Dominic Lanse (Kendrick Sampson) with the help of his wife, Marlize (Kim Engelbrecht). The Thinker gained the upper hand by framing Barry for murder leaving his frail body at the Allen household. The Thinker, who gained the new ability of telepathy and using his victim’s new body reunited with Marlize and showed Barry there truly is no happy ending.