Culture of Pop

The Flash Review: 2.5: The Darkness and the Light

On this week’s The Flash, Zoom sent an Earth 2 villain called Dr. Light, who happens to also be the Earth 2 version of Linda Park, to kill Barry. This basic format of a villain of the week via Zoom is a solid way to make up a season.

Jay tells Barry that Dr. Light is a thief but not a killer and Barry will be able to reason with her. However, because Zoom is so threatening, Dr. Light becomes convinced she won’t be able to live unless she either does what she was sent to do– kill Barry– or kills Linda so that she can live her life as the Earth 1 Linda. Harrison gets angry at Barry for thinking he could talk things out with Dr. Light instead of stopping her immediately.

This Harrison Wells obviously has some serious issues with metahumans. Back in his world, he created an app to detect metas. He specifically said it was so people could protect themselves against the harmful metas. In other words he’s encouraging profiling. He also hates Jay because he believes his power alone means he should be able to face Zoom and tells Barry that he can solve everything by being faster. I hope these strange bigoted behaviors are acknowledged, but since Barry also thinks it’s okay to lock people up as long as they’re metas, this might just be how the show is.

They’re really going for it making this season full of plot-heavy worldbuilding. This episode opens by setting up that Jay Garrick is enemies with the Earth 2 Harrison Wells, who feels that Jay isn’t doing enough to stop Zoom.

Now that Harrison is in Earth 1, everyone is freaked out. But, Barry is very insistent that everyone give him a chance. It’s weird to see him suddenly so trusting when he insisted on throwing Jay in a prison cell just to be safe. I know this Harrison Wells saved Barry’s life, but so did the last Harrison Wells. A lot.

This episode was a bland episode that was heavily weighed down by the exposition and had some major tonal issues because of the whacky date hijinx that seemed like it belonged in something like Lois & Clark.

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