What a massively amazing opening for a scene of The Flash, and what an odd, setback of a completion. Truly, has there ever been a scene, for this show, however in the whole Arrowverse, that finished so suddenly? Ralph acknowledging past the point of no return what Thawne's arrangement is and yelling for Barry not to utilize the mirror firearm on the blade would have been sensational had it not played on screen like somebody altered the finish of the scene with an ax. I sat there and gazed at my screen for a minute thinking about whether there had been a blunder.

In any case, at that point when you consider everything that was packed into "The Girl With the Red Lightning" it bodes well why they wouldn't have the additional a few seconds it would take to really end that shot appropriately. In a season that has positively endeavored to do excessively, "The Girl With the Red Lightning" feels like the most overstuffed hour of the period. It could have been a sufficient hour of The Flash, however like "Denounced any kind of authority" it's another case of how the show is currently excessively far along to beat its before slip-ups, and even the great minutes are hauled somewhere near the heaviness of 20 past scenes of stumbles.

In a vacuum, the stuff that works, truly works. The future Thawne stuff has for some time been the most convincing component of the period, and that plays perfectly in the scene's opening minutes. The death penalty is, let's be honest, messed up, and the way that it hasn't been dispensed with even 30 years later on is a bit of irritating. In any case, inclining toward it with a savage gatekeeper "prodding" a detainee with the methods for their execution is a truly uncommon brand of dick. Furthermore, at the time, the possibility that they're really utilizing Thawne's negative speed power to kill him is sufficiently intriguing, despite the fact that the moment you stop to consider it you need to ponder what the genuine rationale is. And after that the majority of that is passed up scene's end, with a "look how cunning this is" plan of utilizing the negative speed power to charge Cicada's dagger...which Thawne has been wearing this whole time under his vest as an approach to hose his forces. At the end of the day, wrecking the knife in the past would free Thawne later on. Or on the other hand something.

No doubt. Nah.

This season has comprised of the group unfit to stand up to Cicada(s) every step of the way on account of "reasons" and every encounter since the second 50% of the period has started to feel increasingly more like an overwhelmed computer game manager battle. The way that Cicada's arrangement comprises totally of unlimited babble like "supercharging" the atomizer utilizing the knife controlled by dull issue makes it feel considerably increasingly like somebody simply gathering different catalysts. I've invested enough energy in these surveys grumbling about what a monotonous foe Cicada has ended up being, however the majority of that is featured to a definitive degree in this scene, regardless of whether it's her exaggerating "frenzy" in Nora's musings or the unsuitably arranged and taped climactic battle inside CCPD (complete with maybe the single most exceedingly awful battle scene this show has ever put on screen with Killer Frost and Cicada).

Yet, regardless of that, also that on the off chance that I need to hear one more "we're your folks" discourse to Nora I will go heat up my head, I think I have at long last pinpointed what has recently sat amiss with me for a lot of this season: the metahuman fix. When all is said in done, the fix has dependably felt unusual. To be perfectly honest, I'm never OK with discuss "fixes" for forces wherever they come up, particularly in X-Men stories. On the off chance that a change is at the DNA level, and particularly if it's something that has a physical sign, such fixes are regularly appeared "moment" fixes. Would an Angel type character with wings and empty bones suddenly...drop his wings and develop extra bone thickness? Anyway, what I'm stating is, the possibility that you can "fix" something that has changed your general existence on a cell level is moronic regardless of who does it.

Be that as it may, here on The Flash? It feels ESPECIALLY strange. Characters who we have scarcely found in months and realize essentially nothing about who are all of a sudden having soul seeking "I would prefer not to change my identity, my forces are a piece of me" minutes rings amazingly, unthinkably empty. Likewise, something that I've generally felt the Arrowverse (and heck, the DC Universe as a rule) does well is the possibility that metahumans are extraordinary. You once in a while catch wind of ones who are totally typical and living covertly. Here, we have many "normal" people with incredibly minor meta powers appearing at CCPD in dread for their lives. This isn't simply X-Men stuff, it's extremely essential, low-level X-Men stuff, and it undermines the general metahuman folklore in the whole Arrowverse.

But these are still larger, season long concerns. Within the episode itself, there's still too much going on. Nora's big moment (and finally, FINALLY earning the trust of her parents) is great, but could have and should have been done a minimum of two episodes earlier. The mirror gun is great, but feels strangely out of place, as if it dropped in here from a future season of the show to remind us of what is to come. Joe's self-doubt followed by his "rousing" speech to the room full of metas both felt extraordinarily shoehorned in, and I'm not sure where that came from or what it was meant to accomplish. When you can't get me to feel something warm when Jesse L. Martin is doing what Joe West does best, you're doing it all wrong. This, and Cecile's "recapping to the audience why they love a character they have spent over a hundred episodes with" was time better spent elsewhere. Where that would be, I couldn't tell you, but elsewhere nonetheless.

The moment that showed the most promise in the entire episode, Ralph's wondering about what the timeline could look like if things had gone a little differently, is woefully underexplored. It sets up that ridiculous cut to the ending, but nothing more. Unless they're planning on doing some kind of serious timeline reset in the season finale (which would be a mistake), this is the kind of thing that would have been far better introduced around midseason. It's fascinating, but frustratingly dismissed before it can become anything.

And so it all comes back to that big Thawne reveal. I'm not going to say anything else until we see how that season finale plays, but right now it looks like they took the most ridiculous, roundabout way possible to getting us to that moment. Hopefully there's redemption next week.

Flash Facts!
- Cisco...kind of makes a Stan Lee quote with his "true believers" line. Please note that Stan Lee had nothing to do with a single character who has ever appeared anywhere in the Arrowverse.

 Here's a Flash Fact for ya...this show needs to embrace the concept of a shorter season or ditch the big bad entirely because tedium like Cicada and Thinker ain't gonna cut it next year.