The Flash S5E7 Recap
The Flash is back for a nice relaxing Thanksgiving episode about the many relationships between fathers and daughters. You explore more of the Barry/Nora relationship, Cicada and his child, and Weather Wizard and his over dramatic daughter that somehow got powers too. This episode was emotional, exciting, and carries the overall quality that season 5 has been putting out.
"O, Come All Ye Faithful" begins with Barry butchering a pie with Caitlin, and Nora finally putting the final nail in her relationship with Iris. They're happy, Barry's happy, life is good, but after Barry is hit by lightning and dies Nora freaks out and has trouble reviving him. This traumatic experience brings up Nora's complicated feelings of Barry "leaving her" in the future and the episode rolls along with Nora finally standing up to her dad and questioning why he does what he does. This leads to some really good scenes where Barry confronts her with his ideals and how he justifies being there for everyone, to save everyone.
Another twist in the Cicada case is that this episode flashes back to his origin story. We learn that his daughter is really his niece (unless that was mentioned earlier and I forgot), his sister was killed in a meta-human accident, he wasn't a good role model nor did he like his niece in the beginning, and finally the episode ends with a scary scene at the pier where the satellite fell on everyone. It's a great way to flesh out the villain and creates a few twists while allowing us to understand his motivation for hating metas.
Thirdly, we come to the other father-daughter relationship of this show which deals with Weather Wizard and his Rita Repulsa knock-off of a daughter Joss aka Weather Witch. What starts off as a typical "I turned villain to save my dad" storyline is quickly revealed that she wants to kill her dad. It puts an interesting relationship to this villain of the week and contrasts nicely with Cicada's. One is a good parent whom is doing everything for his girl while the other is a bad parent whom abandoned his family and doesn't show much care for his daughter.
In between these emotional story threads we have action and Sherloque. Sadly no Ralph this week. The action is very well done and Weather Witch ends the final fight in a very interesting way that we haven't seen used on The Flash to date. It's balanced quite nicely with the character work being done this episode. Sherloque on the other hand is the comedic relief, which sometimes works, where he doesn't understand Thanksgiving. The joke being he converted two lovers of this holiday, Cisco and Caitlin, into non-believers and Debbie downers. But, he redeems himself in the end when it's revealed that he has footage of Cicada meeting his niece at the hospital, and thus team Flash now knows the identity of the meta-human killer.
This was a big episode that dealt with personal fears of certain characters and inevitably brought everyone closer together. Nora is still the best part of the show and when she's at odds with her dad it's great. When it's dealing with Cicada's backstory, it's great. When it's dealing with Weather Witch...the episode is okay. Overall this has been yet another great week for The Flash and we're one step closer toward Cicada's final showdown while also reinforcing the consequences of last season's finale.
Key Points:
- Nora has daddy issues
- Cicada's backstory - what happened to his niece and his motivation
- Nora comes to accept Barry's "recklessness"
- Sherloque finds Cicada's identity
What did you think of this week's episode? Do you think the Cicada storyline will be resolved by the mid-season finale?
