S08.E09: Phantoms

[Trini]

Barry and Team Flash get closer to figuring out the Fire Meta but no closer to finding him; meanwhile Iris, needing a distraction, follows a story to Coast City.

Stefan Pleszczynski directed the episode written by Jeff Hersh.

Airdate: 3/30/2022

 

 

 

[scarynikki12]

Iris and Sue taking work trips to Coast City. Didn't hate it.

I'm actually impressed that I saw as much of the episode as I did since Nashville has thunderstorms rolling in with serious wind which messed with my antenna's signal.

The girl they talked to in Coast City looks a lot like what's her name who played Aria on Pretty Little Liars.

I'm not entirely sure what was going on with Barry's side thanks to signal issues but I hope it was good. 

[shantown]

Leave it to this show to find yet another way to keep Barry and Iris separate. WTF. It's Savitar or it's a mirror-verse or it's weird grief fire. They are bending over backwards to keep those two apart.

Wasn't a fan of the whole "my family saved helped save me" mushfest from Chester, and then he and Allegra making googly eyes at each other. It reeks of "pair the spares" and just seems unnecessary. 

Loved Iris and Sue playing good cop-bad cop on a case. That was about the only part of the episode I enjoyed.

[Terrafamilia]

Apparently, cell-phones in the Arrowverse have all the hardware necessary to become dark matter detectors. All they need is the right software installed.

Hey Chester, ♫ Let it Go, Let it Go...♫

[Trini]

I'll have to re-watch because I had some distractions; the A-plot was intriguing but iffy. Barry was barely in it; no one said this was actually going to be a Chester-centric plot.

So not only is this a type of fire meta, but it ALSO 'feeds' on grief, AND can manifest your memories?? I feel like they're making it weirder than it needs to be. (I've got other thoughts on this, but they're based on spoilers.)

Great - Cecile is back to hanging around STAR Labs for no reason, and mindreading for exposition again.

I did really like the Iris plot with Sue; great to see her be able to talk with a friend. But - UGH - "don't tell Barry" about losing time?? She should have already told Barry. This is dumb, and I bet that he still won't know by next episode. This 'time sickness' has been going on for two seasons, and while I do want answers, I feel like they're not going to be good or satisfying once they finally get around to it, so ... yeah.

4 hours ago, Terrafamilia said:

Apparently, cell-phones in the Arrowverse have all the hardware necessary to become dark matter detectors. All they need is the right software installed.

I'm pretending that it's actually the all-powerfull STAR Lab satellites that actually do the detecting, but the data is translated with the app.

[cambridgeguy]

5 hours ago, Trini said:

Great - Cecile is back to hanging around STAR Labs for no reason, and mindreading for exposition again.

I guess her little stand about not reading potential clients last episode doesn't apply to friends and family. 

Given that Barry has leveled up (drink!) he could have just sped over to Iris's fancy hotel room to chat in person.  Video chat is for the normals, Barry!

[Diapason Untuned]

10 hours ago, Trini said:

I did really like the Iris plot with Sue; great to see her be able to talk with a friend. But - UGH - "don't tell Barry" about losing time?? She should have already told Barry. This is dumb, and I bet that he still won't know by next episode. This 'time sickness' has been going on for two seasons, and while I do want answers, I feel like they're not going to be good or satisfying once they finally get around to it, so ... yeah.

I thought Barry already knew about the time sickness, it was just her losing time recently she didn't tell him about? 

It is dumb, but people in real life have been known to keep potential medial stuff secret until they have concrete evidence so as not to worry them.

 

Quote

I'm pretending that it's actually the all-powerfull STAR Lab satellites that actually do the detecting, but the data is translated with the app.

Same.

[shantown]

5 hours ago, cambridgeguy said:

Given that Barry has leveled up (drink!) he could have just sped over to Iris's fancy hotel room to chat in person.  Video chat is for the normals, Barry!

I did notice Barry no longer needs to do his "gust of wind and skid to a stop" entrance and exit anymore. He just slightly vibrates to disappear then reappear. Must be a cheaper effect?

[tennisgurl]

How has Iris still not told Barry about her losing time? He's her husband, shouldn't he be the first person she tells? Way before she tells her weird time "son" to check up on her? Even beyond him being her husband and partner who would want to know what's happening in her life, they have had things like this happen before, why is she not telling the team so that they can start doing research? Be prepared for something weird happening? This is so contrived, I do not buy that Iris would make such dumb choices like this, you can really feel the hand of the author here.

So our next villain is a giant sentient goop of cold fire that feeds on sadness? No one let it get near Barry, if it starts trying to reenact all of his traumatizing events and taking the forms of his dead friends and family, we'll be here all week. Its different at least, more interesting than a meta serial killer, but it seems a bit ridiculous, even by this shows standards. Remember the last time we gave sentience to an anthropomorphic concept? She started wearing eye liner, almost killed everyone, and it was the dumbest thing this show has done in ages. Do we really want to deal with that again? 

I am glad that they tried to give Chester more meaty material, but this didn't work for me as well as I wanted it to. Why would he even think that this was his dad? What kind of leap is that? I can guess that the fire and burned bodies made him think of his dads death, which makes sense, but why did he think that it was his dads vengeful spirit? That was before it even looked like him, the whole plot was just so weird. Plus, we just had an episode about Chester's dad angst, and it was much better, and last week we had a much better episode about Barry's grief for his father. Its too much of the same thing, plus it seemed to be partially an excuse to have him and Allegra make heart eyes at each other, moving forward a relationship I do not care about at all. They just have negative chemistry with each other, its kind of amazing. Especially when they keep denying us good Iris/Barry content.

It was nice seeing Sue again, and her story with Iris was quite a bit better than the sadness goo, even if I do not much care for the new meta. How in the world has she not heard of the Flash? Was she just being obstinate, or do they really just keep to themselves on the west coast? Wait until they hear about the aliens! 

[Terrafamilia]

2 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

How has Iris still not told Barry about her losing time? He's her husband, shouldn't he be the first person she tells? Way before she tells her weird time "son" to check up on her? Even beyond him being her husband and partner who would want to know what's happening in her life, they have had things like this happen before, why is she not telling the team so that they can start doing research? Be prepared for something weird happening? This is so contrived, I do not buy that Iris would make such dumb choices like this, you can really feel the hand of the author here.

Barry would insist she get checked out by Caitlin and we know that's not likely to happen. 😞

[Lantern7]

Watching Superman & Lois and a world dealing with no Superman (long story), I wondered why they there wasn't a musical number set to "We Don't Talk About Kara." On The Flash? "We Don't Talk About Ralph." Maybe I missed a reference . . .

Meh episode. Grant Gustin does a good job this week, and he does a great job in real life not getting arrested. Well, not lately.

As painful as it was watching Chester deal with the idea of his father haunting him, Brandon McKnight brought the manpain. Nice touch showing "what if" scenes of him showing his dad around STAR Labs.

Tinya? Whatever. Aside for having a decades-old canon, I don't get why she's here, or why Iris and Sue wanted to help through stalking her.

[thuganomics85]

I kind of love how half-assed they were about trying to make the normal sets and locations look different during the Coast City scenes.  Jitters was literally the exact same expect a few tropical plants to spice things up (and only one guest and barista in the entire building.  I know a lot of it is probably due to COVID restrictions in real life, but wow, that place can not be making a profit!)

So, they not only found a way to keep Iris and Barry a part for a bit, but they're making Iris keep the fact that she has "time sickness" from Barry, which is just lame and doesn't strike me to be in character for her.  But, hey, she's using this time to take a vacation and try to help an annoying teen meta runaway find her birth mother, which totally sounds thrilling.  At least it will hopefully continue to involve Sue, because Sue is the best!

Meta serial killer is actually a black goo of fire that feeds on sadness or something, so with the way things are now, that's going to be a big problem!  It's intended victim today was Chester and it helped unearth more of his dad issues again.  Nothing against Brandon McKnight who I think is doing the best with what he is given, but I never warmed up to the character and I just found all of his stuff kind of dull.  And then throw in more awkwardness with him and Allegra and I'm yearning for the early seasons where the "will they, won't they?" stuff with Barry and Iris could get kind of silly, but at least the characters had chemistry.

I can understand not knowing what meta are, but I really find it hard to believe that teenager never heard of The Flash.  Come on, now!

[Diapason Untuned]

11 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

I can understand not knowing what meta are, but I really find it hard to believe that teenager never heard of The Flash.  Come on, now!

To be fair, Barry normally confines his activities to Central City, unlike Clark. I could understand why someone living in another city might not have heard of him, depending on how much they watch the news.

[legaleagle53]

There's another reason that Tinya wouldn't necessarily know about the Flash, if she's who I think she is based on the comics (spoiler-tagged just in case):

Spoiler

In the comics, she's from the year 3022 AND from another dimension, so most of our superheroes (including the Flash) would be completely unknown to her.

 

Edited April 2, 2022 by legaleagle53

[Primal Slayer]

This whle Iris-time sickness thing is...tiring. It only pops up when they want to address it instead of sprinkling things in there. They should've had her forget things this entire time.

Why does Allegra think that meta-humans don't move? Her asking Sue how there are meta humans in Coast City was so weird. There is nothing in Particle Accelerator metas that would keep them in Central City, in fact I dont know why more don't move out considering that Flash is pretty localized. We've been playing with actual meta humans since S3 of Arrow...the fact that the Arrowverse has ignored it this long is pretty amazing. If this woman isnt a PA-Meta then how does she have dark matter?

Is Iris's company ONLY focusing on metahumans? This whole thing is just weird. Why does she think that this random meta...out of ALL THE METAs that she's encountered can be or should be a superhero?