TV REVIEWS: FTN Reviews The Flash Season 04 Episode 22: Think Fast

The Enlightenment is here, and now the whole world will revert to what it once was before the age of technology. “Think Fast” did a lot of things tonight, but as the penultimate episode of the season, it didn’t deliver enough to make me excited for the finale. Especially since the main plot felt like a midseason storyline, not a lead-up to the finale one.

Duvoe broke into Argus to obtain Fallout as the final piece of his Enlightenment scheme…a battery strong enough to power his satellite. Now, this is was one of the coolest scenes in Duvoe’s tenure as a villain, as he got to use a lot of his powers to take out a bunch of Argus agents, including some we haven’t seen him use in a while, it was really cool. And it also showed just how callous he became with Marlize now gone from his life.

Eventually (with some help from a queezy Diggle), Team Flash found out about the plan, and had 12 hours to stop him. But, to do so, they would have to save six hostages. Barry couldn’t do it alone, so he had to bring both Cisco and Caitlin into Flashtime to try and figure out a way to make it work.

Now, on one hand, it was cool seeing Flashtime come back, and it was cool that they “found out” a way to extend its power to Cisco and Caitlin. And I also appreciate that they couldn’t figure out how to “work” in Flashtime right off the bat. But, the whole, “We need to work together to stop Duvoe!” story point just didn’t work. Yes, I loved Cisco’s admittance that this whole situation was as much his fault as anyone elses, but Barry is still afraid of losing people when if they fail they’re going to lose the whole world? Timing, not good.

Furthermore, while I liked that a childhood event was apparently the reason that Caitlin couldn’t bring back Killer Frost, the idea that she had been there the whole time is a bit…well…wrong. Forget the Particle Accelerator for a minute, if it was brought forth by a stressful situation, then any number of events after that car crash could’ve triggered it. Including, oh, I don’t know. Losing Ronnie…TWICE!!!

Meanwhile, Iris and Harry had a fun subplot revolving finding Marlize, but for different reasons. While I can’t wait for Harry to get smart again, it is cool to see how his loss of intelligence makes him smart in other areas, like how he knew that Marlize left Duvoe because she didn’t want to give up on the world. All the while, Iris saw her as the woman who helped put Barry in jail and stabbed her in the chest. So she deserved to be locked up. It was good to see Iris coming to a more realized conclusion about what to do, and asking Marlize to help them. I look forward to seeing how she does so.

Then there’s Cecil, did we really need to see her powers manifest even more RIGHT BEFORE the season finale? If this doesn’t lead to something big, I’m going to be disappointed.

Speaking of which, Barry destroying that one satellite made me wonder, “Did they really think destroying one satellite was going to change anything?” The Thinker has been ahead of them the whole time, he even predicted Barry using Flashtime. Did they really think he wouldn’t have a backup plan? And oh, what a backup plan it was, using Gideon to active and power the Enlightenment.

On its merits, “Think Fast” had a lot of cool elements and storylines, but it just didn’t add up to a successful leadup to the finale. I’m really wondering if the season finale will deliver, because as of right now, there is no clear way Team Flash can beat The Thinker.