06th Jan2015

‘The Flash 1×09: The Man in the Yellow Suit’ Review

by ApolloXL5

Written by Todd Helbing, Aaron Helbing | Directed by Ralph Hemecker

The-Flash-109

PLOT:

The Man in the Yellow Suit finally reveals himself to Barry, with the younger Speedster unable to defeat him. Meanwhile Ronnie shows himself to Caitlin, who desperately tries to find a way to help him.

VERDICT:

So the Reverse-Flash finally reveals himself to the City and our hero in this festive episode of the fledgling series, thoroughly beating the young Speedster not once but twice. He is certainly handled very well and his identity is still up in the air (despite the big reveal at the episode’s climax, which could be a red-herring, but I will get into that later). But this episode had more in it’s runtime than just the battle of the Speedsters, and it was a good mid-season finale.

So first of all we get all the Christmas related stuff out of the way, with the characters giving each other presents and holiday cheer (though Wells doesn’t share it due to his personal accident having taken place just before the holiday as Cisco tells Barry). And when I saw in the episode synopsis that Eddie had a big question for Iris (I hoped it was not a marriage proposal), luckily it was just the Cop just wanting her to move in with him.

Cisco and Caitlin had a good story in this with the latter coming across Ronnie (in his Firestorm persona), which led to her bringing her friend into a plan to try and help her lost fiancée. We also got a very touching scene where she reveals a wish she had about seeing him one last time and what she would give up in return for it (Danielle Pananaker really does a great job in showing her distress at seeing what he has become). Barry gets more than a few emotional talks with just about everyone, starting with his Dad (after his first defeat by Reverse Flash) which was also a very touching and emotional scene as his Father tells him that he must stop letting his misguided guilt over what happened to him and his mother rule his life.

This then leads to the Speedster revealing his feelings to a surprised Iris (with Candice Patton doing really well with saying nothing at all), you could see that she was lost for words and taken aback by his confession. Now I have said before that I don’t think they have much chemistry, but both actors did a good job of selling this scene to us.

We also get another heart to heart between Barry and Joe (which is always good to watch as the pair have a very believable Father/Son dynamic) as the former does not blame his foster-Father for keeping his previous encounter with the Man in Yellow a secret.

But the biggest draw of this episode was the Reverse-Flash and this was by no means a disappointment as the action scenes between him and Barry were excellent to watch, especially the fight in the sports-stadium. You could see just how outmatched the Flash was to his adversary, who was definitely toying with him throughout their fight while also adding more mystery to himself with talk of their fight going on for a long time.

While their fight at the Stadium was definitely the highlight, their second fight was also fun to watch as it carried on from a very tense and suspenseful scene where Wells, Joe and Eddie capture the Reverse-Flash in a force-field. But this did not last long as their enemy then managed to pull the Professor into the trap and proceed to beat him close to death, only for the older West to open it up and allow for the big-bad to escape (but not before killing all the cops in the room, leaving only Joe and Eddie alive). And then Barry arrived and got defeated once more, only for Ronnie to appear and save him before flying off (which looked really cool and I would have loved to see Diggle’s reaction to that).

Now the episode gave us two further revelations, the first being during the final Christmas scene between Barry, his friends and family as Cisco tells Joe about what he saw during the battle of the Speedsters and how it looked similar to what Barry said he saw when his Mother was murdered (could it have been that future Barry had gone back to stop Reverse-Flash, like in the comics).

The final reveal is that Wells is actually the Reverse-Flash as he has the costume (and he even did the voice), but considering how well the series did of concealing the Professor’s true role a murky secret so far, I am not sure about that. I right now think that he simply has ties to the series big-bad, as there was also evidence pointing to him not being the man in yellow. Not only was he there when they trapped the speedster (he even got a severe beating), but I was surprised to see that the Reverse-Flash went to great lengths not to kill Eddie (comic-fans will know that Eddie s is also a Reverse-Flash called Professor Zoom, so perhaps this version will become him further down the line as time-travel does play a part in this series).

Overall this was a very good mid-season finale that help to set up the remainder of this season’s run and gave us some strong revelations and action as well as more questions for the future.

****½  4.5/5

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