TV REVIEWS: FTN Reviews The Flash Season 5 Episode 11: Seeing Red

After a soft return last week, Flash went right back to work with the Cicada storyline, and “Seeing Red” (which actually was the name of an Arrow episode in Season 2) was a very solid return for Cicada, and advanced the storyline in some surprising ways.

First off, having a CCPD officer working with Cicada and that nurse was very compelling. As Cecil noted, that was the same officer who was mind controlled by the MetaTech a few episodes earlier, so it actually was a nice nudge to that and a good motivation for wanting the metas dead instead of just having a “random” officer do it. And if those three want the metas all dead, you have to wonder how many others might be up to help Cicada’s cause.

As for Cicada himself, while his actor didn’t have a lot of speaking lines, the presence of Cicada throughout the episode was very intimidating. Him going on a killing spree was very compelling, and really dialed in the fact that he’s a serial killer and he really wants every single meta dead. Him arriving at the warehouse was chilling, as was his line to Flash about “helping him”. And him crippling Nora, and sending Barry into a rage was a great subplot.

Having Cecil come up with the idea of Meta Witness Protection was inspired, and a fun nod to “Rogue Air” back in Season 1 (with nearly the same result!). Cecil has been very fun in this season, and I’m glad her role isn’t being diminished now that she’s not pregnant anymore.

Seeing all the metas together was a nice reminder that many more people were affected by the Particle Accelerator explosion, and having Norvok reveal that he was a good guy before all this happened enforced that some of these metas honestly got a raw deal, making “The Cure” storyline all the more important.

I’m not sure I liked the “Killer Frost sabotaging the cure” storyline very much, especially since Caitlin fought very hard to make sure the cure did start after Killer Frost destroyed one of the machines. I get that she wants to protect Caitlin, but it should’ve been clear to her that she wasn’t going to take the cure.

Meanwhile, Sherloque is getting closer to figuring out what’s going on with Nora. But you have to wonder just how important the storyline itself is going to be. Will be the one to reveal that Reverse Flash is behind it? Or, will he find out at the same time as the others? I hope we get more resolution with this storyline soon.

I do admit that the idea of healing Cicada’s daughter to make him stop is brilliant! I don’t think it’ll go as planned, but it’s a fun substitute to “killing him” or whatever else they were planning.

In the end, “Seeing Red” was a good episode that reinforced why Cicada is a threat, and gave a fun new way to try and stop him, I hope they really see it through.