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TV REVIEWS: FTN Reviews The Flash Season 5 Episode 10: The Flash & The Furious

January 16th, 2019 by Todd Black Comments

After a month long hiatus, and Elseworlds firmly in the rearview mirror, it’s time for The Flash to come back and give the answers to the mystery that was Eobard Thawne. For the midseason finale cliffhanger was that Nora was working with Thawne, seemingly to help save her father from his future. And to its credit, “The Flash & The Furious” did set up an interesting dynamic between Thawne and Nora.

Turns out, Thawne is going to die in a very short amount of time…well…his time anyway. Presumably from a death penalty in the future. And desperate to make good for once in his life he teams up with Nora to save Barry from dying in the Crisis that we saw earlier in the season via the newspaper. Tom Cavanaugh delivered another riveting performance as Thawne. This time as a weary and repentful Thawn that wants nothing more than to have his legacy mean something, even if only a few people know it. And while there is always suspicion to be had with a guy like Thawne, you have to wonder if he really is turning over a new leaf at the last minute. Literally.

Sadly, Nora’s emotional roller coaster of a ride after finding out the truth about what he did to Barry’s mom led to many eye-rolling scenarios. I get that Nora is naive at times and is still very much a child, but her ignoring both Cecil (who has mind-reading powers!!!) and her mother just because she was “sure” that bad guys don’t change was very unfortunate. The chat she had with Barry about Snart was good, as it showed Barry’s mature yet hopeful nature, but the rest could’ve been dealt with better.

The same goes for a brand new subplot with “The Cure’ now being in play. I like the idea of a cure being a thing to stop Cicada, but then they went full X-Men and had Cisco realize that they could cure ALL metahumans. Again, parts of this were fine, like how Cisco wanted to be normal so he could have a family and not have them worry about him being a hero. But the way he talked about curing everyone was rather fanatical, and not like Cisco at all. Plus, he of all people should know that if a cure is put into the mix, some villain will try and get it and use it against the Flash.

A big surprise though was the villains-of-the-week with the returning Weather Witch and the new Silver Ghost. Having Silver Ghost be a disgruntled scapegoat wanting to make her impact on the world was compelling, especially since she’s going to assemble her own Rogues group. The plight of Weather Witch was nice too, because she was very generic on her first outing. But here? It was different. Granted, she did run away with Silver Ghost, but that actually is compelling, and the two will no doubt be back.

In the end, “The Flash & The Furious” was good, and a fun return for the series. Cicada is coming back next week, and they’ll have to make his own return good to keep things rolling.

4 out of 5 nerds

Todd Black is reader of comics, a watch of TV (a LOT of TV), and a writer of many different mediums. He's written teleplays, fan-fictions, and currently writes a comic book called Guardians (guardians-comic.com). He dreams of working at Nintendo, writing a SHAZAM! TV series, and working on Guardians for a very long time!