The Flash season 8, episode 18 review: The Man in the Yellow Tie

“Did you see that?! I just hit 300 meters per second!” Spoilers for The Flash season 8, episode 18 follow.

The Flash begins to train Meena in controlling her new powers, but he quickly learns something dark about these new powers, unbeknownst to Meena.

Meanwhile, an old friend visits Reverse-Flash in prison.

Here’s everything that went down in The Flash season 8, episode 18 “The Man in the Yellow Tie”.

Training in The Flash season 8

We start the episode out with Barry, who begins training Meena to control her speed. This really sets up a type of episode that “The Man in the Yellow Tie” doesn’t end up becoming. It suggests that we were going to spend most of the episode with Flash and Meena, trying to figure out these new powers and building up Meena’s character before something inevitably bad happens. However, this sadly isn’t the case here as it feels like there’s been about two episodes of plot shoved into the final scene of last episode and the first scene of this episode.

As it turns out, in a twist, Eobard Thawne has made his way back into the present. But it’s not just any Thawne. It’s the original Thawne. And he has amnesia. Thus, instead of being about Meena and her journey, this episode becomes about Thawne, both the original and the one in prison on Lian Yu. At the very least though, the show is having fun with how crazy the comics are with how many different versions of Thawne that are running around the timestreams and why he’ll never just disappear like everyone thinks he will every time he’s defeated.

Barry obviously doesn’t trust this Thawne and freaks out at all of the possibilities as to what he’s planning. And as it turns out, this distrust is founded as Meena, accidentally, becomes the new Reverse-Flash and it has nothing to do with any Thawne machinations. In fact, this changed, amnesiac Thawne begs for Flash to save Meena because he loves her, which no other Thawne would feasibly think of. It’s a nice twist for the character.

However, the problem with Meena becoming this new Reverse-Flash is that we’ve known Meena for four or five scenes before she turns, so it’s hard to actually feel anything or feel attached in any way toward her forced turn to villainy. Anything that the audience feels is not for her, but rather for because of Thawne’s desperation. It would’ve been much more powerful if we had known Meena better before her turn and eventual “come to the light” moment.

Really, this storyline should’ve been the main focus of the season instead of the Deathstorm story. The bones of this is very good, but the show just doesn’t have enough time to make it as strong as it needs to be.

New powers

In what’s an afterthought of this episode, Cecile has now developed new powers where, instead of simply sensing the emotions around her, she can manipulate emotions from one person onto another. Frankly, it’s a power that comes out of nowhere are there’s nothing done about it in this episode. No real explanation or exploration. It’s just there for three scenes and forgotten about.

At this point, it just feels like, 95% of the time, the writer’s room doesn’t know what to do with anyone other than Barry. Simply giving Cecile new powers with no set-up or any real pay-off just adds to that feeling.

Lantern

The other big portion of this episode comes when Arrow‘s John Diggle (David Ramsey) visits Thawne for help in opening the box containing what is assumed to be a Green Lantern ring. Here’s the thing though, the way the box was in the finale of Arrow, it felt like it was just for a tease rather than anything else. So, now that the box is one of the weirdest explanations as to why a Green Lantern ring chose John, the story becomes way more complicated than it needs to be. But even then, we don’t even get an answer as to if it was actually a Green Lantern ring or not because of the anti-climactic decision for John to not put on the ring.

Seriously, John opens the box and this episode turns into 2001: A Space Odyssey and it comes out of nowhere. And this then causes John throws the cube away in such an anti-climactic way. The Arrowverse has been building him up as a Green Lantern for years, and this is the culmination of that? It’s disappointing as hell. David Ramsey still gives a great performance though. But overall, the Diggle portion of this episode just falls flat, especially if you weren’t invested in Arrow, and possibly even moreso if you were.

Despite some decent ideas in this episode of The Flash, a lot of it falls flat because of the lack of time dedicated to certain characters.

The Flash season 8 airs new episodes on The CW each Wednesday at 8:00 p.m. ET.

What did you think of The Flash season 8, episode 18? Let us know in the comments below!