The Trickster returned on last night’s The Flash! Mark Hamill’s lively villain provided a very welcome sense of fun. Unfortunately, the Trickster also served as a reminder of how lackluster most of this season has been. As I watched him light up the screen, I couldn’t help wondering why every episode hasn’t had an entertaining villain. Even within this episode, he was weighed down by the much blander Captain Cold and Weather Wizard. What is season two’s aversion to fun?
This episode ended up with Joe’s son Wally West showing up at his door. It is very exciting to have Wally around and I’m hoping the character will breathe new life into the show when it returns for the second half of the season.
The relationship between Barry and Patty continued on in this episode. It seems like the show has them kiss a lot to make up for a lack of real chemistry. The plot about Patty not opening up to Barry about her past was somewhat interesting, but definitely didn’t help sell me on the couple.
Speaking of relationships, this episode also gave us Jay and Caitlin kissing under the mistletoe. That couple has a little more chemistry, but it also feels like they threw a new love interest at Caitlin in lieu of having her grieve Ronnie properly. Maybe they didn’t want to be redundant with season one, when she thought Ronnie was dead and clearly wasn’t ready to move on, but her new relationship still feels rushed.
In the end, it was revealed that Zoom has asked Harry to help him with his plan to steal Barry’s speed force. In and of itself, this is a fairly simple and by-the-book plotline, but Harry has turned out to be a pretty interesting character and the execution of this could be interesting.
