A person’s greatest fear and the courage to face and fight through it are the main focus for Team Flash in season seven episode five of The CW’s The Flash.
The episode begins with Barry (Grant Gustin) figuring out a way to track the giant meta monster who appeared at the end of last week’s episode, a monster who’s able to absorb energy and lightning from the Speed Force. Just as Iris (Candice Patton) is trying to get Barry to take a break and get some rest, Cisco (Carlos Valdes) walks in with Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker) and Frost (also Danielle Panabaker) still separated and living as two different people. Barry thinks he’s seeing double and Frost collects on a bet with Cisco that Barry and Iris would be freaked out.
Later that night, Cecile (Danielle Nicolet) is working at home when she hears a voice and then sees a dark figure with glowing eyes taunting her. She screams and Joe (Jesse L. Martin) comes into the room to calm her down. Joe tells her everything’s all right and no one’s in the house. Cecile tells Joe the image looked and felt so real.
The next day at S.T.A.R. Labs, Caitlin and Frost explain to Cisco, Barry, and Iris how the separation happened. It seems with Frost’s powers a molecule went into overdrive to heal her when Mirror Master blasted her with a gun a few weeks ago. Frost’s healing powers forced her out and into her own body. Caitlin wants to start working right away to find a way to merge her and Frost back together, fearing the longer they wait the harder it might get.
The group’s conversation is interrupted by multiple colored lights appearing on the ceiling of S.T.A.R. Labs. A woman appears and begins to fall. Barry uses his super-speed to race over and catch her. The woman looks just like Barry’s mother, Nora (Michelle Harrison). Caitlin tends to her in the medical bay, and it is the new Speed Force in the form of Nora. Caitlin and Cisco come to realize that Nora was attacked by the giant monster which Cisco nicknames Fuerza.
Iris visits Joe at the CCPD to talk about some of the details on a bank robbery when the Governor’s overseer Kristen Kramer (Carmen Moore) shows up to introduce herself. Iris immediately gets a bad vibe from her and excuses herself.
Over at S.T.A.R. Labs, Cisco’s finished prepping the Firestorm Matrix and begins to charge it. Caitlin realized they could use it and, combined with her and Frost’s DNA and molecules, they can put her and Frost back together again. Frost walks in and when she hears this she doesn’t seem happy. She thinks Caitlin must be happier without her always talking to her in her head, but Cisco tells Frost that Caitlin seems eager to rejoin with her. As he walks out, Frost glares at the Matrix.
Cecile shows up at S.T.A.R. Labs to talk to Caitlin about what she experienced but ends up talking to Barry about it. She tells Barry it felt like pure fear. An alert goes off and Barry sees a bank robbery in progress. He speeds off to stop it.
Barry shows up and spots two guards screaming and shooting up in the sky. They run off and The Flash sees a new meta, Psych (Ennis Esmer), who was using his powers to make the guards hallucinate and see a giant Godzilla-like creature roaring at them. The Flash speeds meta power-reducing cuffs on Psych but he just shakes them off and uses his powers to make Barry first see Thawne and then see Savitar who spears The Flash with a metal rod. The Flash collapses in the street bleeding from the wound he received in his hallucination.
A little while later at S.T.A.R. Labs Barry’s wound is almost healed due to his speed healing and he tells the team about his hallucination and how real it felt. The team realizes that Psych and Fuerza must be linked because both seem to be immune to Barry’s Speed Force powers. Barry and Caitlin come up with the idea of using the tech they used against Gorilla Grodd to protect them from Psych’s powers of hallucinations.
At the CCPD, Iris returns with a background check on Kramer. She warns Joe she has a bad feeling in her gut about Kramer and he should look into her. Joe agrees to take a look.
At S.T.A.R. Labs, Caitlin discovers the Firestorm Matrix device has been broken and knows Frost did it. Frost confesses and yells at Caitlin in front of Cisco that she doesn’t want to rejoin her. Caitlin, feeling hurt and rejected, walks off telling Frost to give her a call when she figures out what she wants. A very uncomfortable silence between Cisco and Frost is broken by an alert of another attack by Psych at a bank.
At the bank, The Flash speeds the terror-frozen employees out and returns with Cisco – in Vibe gear – and Frost. Psych tells The Flash he doesn’t like his friends and that their “flimsy” power dampeners won’t stop him. He then hits all three with hallucinations.
Frost sees herself in power cuffs being arrested by Joe for her crimes against the city. She pleads with him, declaring she’s one of the good guys but Joe won’t listen. She asks who turned her in and Joe tells her someone who knows everything she’s done. She asks, “Was it Mark?!” (Wait, who the heck is Mark and what is he to Frost?!!) Joe answers no and reveals it was Caitlin. Shocked and deeply hurt, Frost freezes and repeats, “How could she?!”
Cisco sees something horrible (which isn’t shown to the audience) and whispers, “No…no is this how it all ends?!”
In his hallucination, The Flash sees everyone he loves – Cisco, Iris, Joe, Caitlin, and Nora aka The Speed Force – lying in rubble, dead.
“Sweet nightmares, people,” says Psych as he leaves the three heroes horrified by their visions.
Later at S.T.A.R. Labs, Caitlin is still monitoring Speed Force Nora and informs the recovering Barry and Cisco that Psych elevates fear levels making them freeze. Cisco and Barry realize that Psych isn’t interested in money but in creating chaos by using fear.
Caitlin goes looking for Frost and finds her trying unsuccessfully to fix the Firestorm Matrix. The two talk and Frost admits she wants to be in her own body living her own life and not sharing a body with Caitlin. Caitlin tells Frost she was hurt because her greatest fear is that she would lose her, and Frost says she doesn’t want to lose her either and tells her about her hallucination with Caitlin turning her in. Caitlin says she would never do that and they agree to live together and be like sisters.
Barry and Cecile talk about Psych’s powers and Barry gets an idea for Cecile to use her telekinetic powers in DeVoe’s chair to stop Psych from infecting all of Central City with fear. Cecile’s initially reluctant but agrees to give it a try.
Psych creates a large fear wave that does start causing Central City to have nightmares but The Flash speeds into it with Cisco talking in his ear about staying strong and defeating Psych with his courage. It works and Cecile uses her powers and blasts through, defeating the fear wave and Psych who seems to vanish.
Later at S.T.A.R. Labs, Barry tells the team that when he hit Psych with lightning it seemed to stay with him. Barry reacts in pain to the same power that hurt the Speed Force and tells Caitlin to open the cryo-pod so he can go in it. The Speed Force comes out and tells Cisco, Caitlin, and Cecile that Psych and Fuerza are cosmic beings like her. She confirms they’re the ones who attacked her.
At the CCPD, Kramer visits Joe who indicates he knows her background and wants to know why she’s really in Central City. She explains she’s on special assignment from the Governor to arrest and bring to justice the meta known as Killer Frost.
The Flash Season 7 Episode 5 Review:
Impressive special effects and the strong performances by Danielle Nicolet and Danielle Panabaker elevate what could have been just another run-of-the-mill episode of The Flash. To be honest, the villain of the week, Psych, was rather ridiculous-looking and seemed to be a weak cousin to Freddy Krueger of the A Nightmare on Elm Street films. What made the episode very entertaining and moving was how Nicolet showed just how truly terrified Cecile is of losing control of her powers and how she faced her fear and became the one to stop Psych.
Danielle Panabaker also added heartache to the episode by exposing Frost’s biggest fear since coming into her own as a hero which is being betrayed by Caitlin who she loves like a sister.
Now that Team Flash knows that Fuerza and Psych are entities created by the same power as the Speed Force, the question is how do they stop them?
GRADE: B
- The Flash Season 6 Episode 19 Recap and Review: “Success is Assured” Finale
- The Flash Season 7 Episode 1 “All’s Wells That Ends Wells” Recap
- The Flash Season 7 Episode 2 “The Speed of Thought” Recap
- The Flash Season 7 Episode 3 “Mother” Recap
- The Flash Season 7 Episode 4 “Central City Strong” Recap
- The Flash Season 7 Episode 6 “The One With the Nineties” Recap
- The Flash Season 7 Episode 7 “Growing Pains” Recap
- The Flash Season 7 Episode 8 “The People V. Killer Frost” Recap
