The Flash Recap: Cold Comfort

Matt Webb Mitovich

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This week on The Flash, Barry told the rest of the team the truth — in pieces — about the coming Crisis, while also having his first face-off with this fall’s Big Bad.

This week I come not to so much recap Episode 3 but opine that it was frankly a letdown following such a strong start to “Graphic Novel No. 1” (aka the episodes preceding the “Crisis” crossover event). It just seemed odd to come out of this season’s dramatically rich and emotion-laden first two episodes with such a lighter outing, and not really dig into the team’s reaction to inevitably losing their leader.

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Also, there was zero discovery/realization that Earth-Two was erased from existence on Arrow, though perhaps The Flash at this instant is running “behind,” time-wise?

Following last week’s episode, in which Barry got a glimpse at the incredibly tragic Crisis and came to terms with the only way to avoid it, I was expecting this week to delve into how Cisco, Caitlin et al process the heartbreaking news — and all of it. Instead, the focus was on how Killer Frost — a character who, yes, has been around a while, but whom we only recently started spending quality time with — was coping (or not) with the prospect of her newly inhabited “life” coming to an abrupt end on Dec. 10.

This week’s only significant storyline found Barry, with a restless Frost acting as his “meta consultant,” investigating the attack at Dr. Ramsey Rosso’s lab — and the renowned hematologist’s realization that old friend Caitlin has a meta alter. Ramsey offered to help Barry track down Romero (as in Night of the Living Dead?), the undead goon who had become jacked up on and addicted to dark matter, but Barry soon enough discovered that Ramsey was angling to steal STAR Labs’ dark matter for his own, curative purposes. In a refreshing twist, Ramsey, when confronted, did not “flip a switch” and go full villain on Barry. Instead, he copped to his deception and agreed to play nice. But by episode’s end, after seeing how he could “interact” with the dark matter-infused blood inside Romero (who later messily exploded from an “OD”), Ramsey realized that the goo itself could prove life-extending. And he ingested some by reaching out to a blob of it, and it reached back, before “crawling” into his skin.

Elsewhere this week, Allegra came to Iris with a snap of a Wells in the vicinity of a break-in. Iris took the cub reporter’s scoop and followed up on it herself (given her unique connection to the assorted Wellses). With Cisco in tow, Iris tracked down the new doppelganger, whose full name is Harrison “Nash” Wells. He shares that he in our Central City to seek out a rare substance called Eternium — and after giving Iris and Cisco the slip, he realizes there is a cache of it down in the sewer above which Iris first found him. Iris, meanwhile, was called out by Allegra for stealing her scoop, and the two agreed to communicate better and fully.

What did you think of the episode “Dead Man Running,” Mama Dibny’s backstory included?

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