“Other than that, Team Flash, how was dinner?”
Title: “Invincible”
Director: Jesse Warn
Writers: Brooke Roberts and David Kob
Grant Gustin as Barry Allen / The Flash
Danielle Panabaker as Caitlin Snow
Carlos Valdes as Cisco Ramon
Candice Patton as Iris West
Keiynan Lonsdale as Wally West
Tom Cavanagh as Dr. Harrison Wells
Jesse L. Martin as Joe West
Katie Cassidy as Black Siren
Teddy Sears as Hunter Zolomon / Zoom
Violett Beane as Jesse Wells
Amanda Pays as Dr. Christina McGee
John Wesley Shipp as Henry Allen
Patrick Sabongui as Captain David Singh
Tony Todd as the Voice of Zoom
Premise
Barry, with his powers returned and confidence boosted, fights an army of metahumans, but may meet his match in the Black Siren. Meanwhile, Team Flash grows as the show teases its two new maybe-speedsters, Cisco has dark visions, and a celebratory dinner gets ruined by an earth-shattering vision and a key character’s apparent death.
High Point
I enjoyed seeing Katie Cassidy back as an evil, camp version of her late Arrow character.
Low Point
The show has a strong element of Silver Age comic book, so I’ll try to ignore the Team’s ability to develop and construct amazing technology (and outfits) in minutes. I’m more concerned about the show doing things that should happen every day in this universe—the superfast Flash taking out metahumans like shooting gallery ducks, and a sufficiently smart person quickly discerning Barry’s secret identity—and then ignoring those things the rest of the time. When do the rules of the real world apply here?
And shouldn’t a “metapocalypse” be scarier?
The Scores:
Originality: 2/6 The promised big battle fizzled into a typical Flash episode…
Story: 4/6 …with a twist ending that makes some amends. Zoom’s big plan verges on making sense.
Effects: 5/6 The episode had some impressive effects, which the budget allows them to use only briefly.
Acting: 5/6
Emotional Response: 4/6 The ending had some shock value; most of the episode was predictable.
Production: 5/6
Overall: 4/6
In total, “Invincible” receives 29/42
I felt the episode was fairly strong, but finale seems a bit WTF with a race? Not sure what’s up with that.
My only real problem with this episode, aside from the death at the end, was that Barry didn’t just run once Black Siren attacked him. He should have easily avoided that attack.
I thought about that– obviously, he can outrun sound– but I went with, he was taken by surprise, which still happens a fair bit to Barry, and is often necessary if they want to avoid every conflict with a non-speedster from being completely one-sided.
Since Canary’s superpowers were from a gadget created by Cisco, and Black Siren seemed to be wearing the same sort of thing, why didn’t they take it off of her when they locked her up?
So far, Cisco has invented:
A gun that can freeze lasers
A handheld flamethrower
A gun that encases things in solid gold
A choker that amplifies the wearer’s voice to crippling levels
Several others that didn’t end up in the hands of supervillains
Seems like at least 3 of those would be super handy right now.
Also, does the West family _ever_ make it through dinner without a supervillain interrupting? I’d just start going to Subway or something.
It’s possible that Black Siren’s powers are of a different nature. This happens all the time in DC’s alternate-verses.
Comic book tech, like the super-science imagined by conspiracy theorists, often gets used in a one-off fashion, and has no other effect on society. This makes less than no sense, but is a part of the genre. So, yes, we should be seeing that tech at work, and Cisco, at this point, should be the CWDC version of Tony Stark, a multibillionaire with his own line of personal superweapons.
Barry was there for his mom’s murder like, several times. In fact, he told himself not to prevent it.
He should’ve maybe shared that with Zoom at some point.