After a goodbye to Cisco (that I’m still bitter about BUT he will be back for the season finale!) it was going to be interesting seeing what happened next and “Masquerade”…did…things.
Let’s get the nerd stuff out of the way. Psycho Pirate was supposed to be in Crisis on Infinite Earths due to his connection to the event from the comics, but it didn’t happen. So they kinda/sorta brought him in here…and yet totally different. Because despite invoking the name of the second man to wear the mantle in Roger Hayden…they just decided to go and make the mask itself the bad guy…which is not canon at all.
Parts of it were right, technically, like the mask needing to “feed”, but it most definitely wasn’t a mask used by Gilgamesh or other people in time and history. So for it to be used this way was…honestly a letdown.
Speaking of letdowns, let’s talk Chester. I can honestly say I haven’t liked him since he arrived as the black hole guy (the power, not the group) and when he came to be in Team Flash I was like, “Why…?” And now he’s replaced Cisco and of COURSE the first episode post-break-up is him “failing to live up to the expectations” and “not doing things like Cisco would do” and so on and I’m again like, “Why…?” Seriously, we’re seven seasons in, they couldn’t have come up with a more complex thing than “I’m not Cisco because I barely know you people”? What was that? He’s been with them longer than that, and he knew Cisco enough to and be his tag-team partner but apparently he “didn’t know the others at all”? What???
The real tragedy here was that this whole thing covered up the much better storyline in Cecil fighting her past. Apparently, she had a mental break in her past and had never recovered from it. Naturally, the mask used that to take over her mind and she had to fight back to break free alongside Barry who got trapped with her.
This could’ve been a very powerful storyline about mental health, and accepting that it’s ok to not be okay at times. Cecil is a great character and I wish they had focused more on the story and struggle to overcome rather than the “horror-movie” elements and such. Especially since it got “fixed” in a very comic-book way via her saying one line and being “ok again”.
Joe finding out more about Kramer is interesting, but at this point I’m not sure anything can save her character, especially since (not shockingly at all) she’s more than likely a corrupt person! But how this ties into her wanting to end all metas is beyond me right now. But whatever.
Oh, if you wanting me to talk about the “Barry/Iris” scene? NOPE!!!
Also, Sue’s return was nice, but whether she will add anything post-Ralph remains to be seen.
In the end, “Masquerade” played too much with one storyline and not enough in the other, and outside of that and the misuse of a classic DC Comics character…it could’ve been handled a lot better.
Todd Black
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!
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