S08.E11: Resurrection

[Trini]

Barry and Chester may have found a way to stop the "Black Flame" from hurting anyone else meanwhile Caitlin decides to handle a situation on her own, possibly putting more innocent lives in danger.

Greg Beeman directed the episode written by Emily Palizzi.

Airdate: 4/13/2022

 

 

[scarynikki12]

It's raining again tonight so we'll see if I have a signal the entire hour.

They need to slowly, and with small words, explain to me how Iris losing time means objects disappear. 

Signal's still working halfway through but I couldn't be less interested in this Ronnie story. 

They did play that Progressive commercial where they go to the movies. I love those.

The storm picked up so the signal's getting wonky. Looks like Barry's battling Lord Voldemort. Warner has the rights to both franchises so weirder things could happen.

Ok I think they all agreed to play D&D? 

Signal's good now just in time for Sue to arrive at the apartment with Iris going missing news. Guess the storm was bored by the episode too.

So Caitlin's refusal to consider that the fire was anything other than Ronnie trying to get back to her left her open for massive manipulation and now the fire's leveled up (oh why not) into....did it say Deathstorm? 

[shantown]

Laughed out loud at "I'm not Ronnie, I. AM. DEATH STORM." and it's this cartoony flame monster with a cartoony flame grin. 

Must suck to be wrong, hey Caitlin?

[cambridgeguy]

So does Sue not have anyone's number?  Maybe call Barry immediately instead of spending hours traveling to deliver the bad news in person?  On the plus side, Iris is lucky the Citizen runs itself since she'll probably be away for a bit and acting boss Allegra spends all of her time in Star Labs.  Who knew running a paper was such an easy job?  I just hope CP is paid per episode - getting full pay for an afternoon's work is a good deal.

And as stupid of a name as it is, Deathstorm is from the comics.  Plus the Earth-2 version of Ronnie also called himself Deathstorm.

[Primal Slayer]

Decent Caitlin episode. Of course like in classic Caitlin fashion, she gets screwed over in the love department lol. They just REALLY want to ensure that she ends this show single and pining after Ronnie for another 8 years don't they? 

I was expecting that Deathstorm would be E2 Ronnie but...guess not. Just something that was caused by the Crisis? But the design was good, though in true Flash fashion it looks like it'll be fully CGI when they could easily make most of him practical before adding the flames. 

I wonder how many times Cecile and collapse in pain talking about how she's feeling X,Y,Z's intense emotions? And this deathcloud was able to fool her...love it. 

Not sure how Sue is such a great spy but she cant pick up the phone and tell Barry what happened. You know he's only ever at Star Labs...could've googled their number. 

[Frozendiva]

I had some sound issues and didn't catch the name at the end.

Where is Timelord-like Iris sending all these people and devices?

Caitlin needs a friend to protect her from her own good ideas. She didn't think that the Fire Creature would pretend to be Ronnie to manipulate her? Prey on her own grief?

Waiting to see where some of the clothes come from (since the show is shot in Canada, some Canadian shops make the list).

[tennisgurl]

I think we learned a lot of important lessons this week. Don't trust creepy evil magic fire, if all your friends say that an idea is stupid, maybe the idea is stupid, stay inside with a cup of soup when your sick with time sickness instead of trying to fix the life of bratty meta teens, always have your friends number in case his wife disappears into the ether, all important life lessons. 

I know that for ages we all laughed about what a doofus Barry could be, but the last few seasons he comes across as one of the only people around with any sense half the time, which is good for our heroes character growth, but probably also says something about the people he's surrounded by. I am glad that they brought Ronnie back in some way and it was a decent idea for a Caitlin episode, especially as she has had to share her episodes with Frost for so long, but its hard to not be annoyed with her. I get sympathize with her grief and desperation to see Ronnie, but she already knows that this thing can mimic people and use your memories of lost loved ones, she really should have been more suspicious from the first second, even if it was apparently stalking her. When all of your friends, including an empath and several super scientists, are all telling you not to do a thing, and the only person supporting you is your alternate self who's biggest contribution to the team is keeping everyone's drinks cold during barbeques, maybe its time to rethink some things. Caitlin was also weirdly nonplused about several casual acquaintances of hers dying because of their proximity to her, you would think that she would be just a tiny bit more distressed that several people, including people she knew enough to immediately recognize, had all been horribly killed. I guess she was distracted by Ronnie being back, but still, that should be a bit more of a big deal. 

Then when she went back to check on Ronnie, girl put two and two together. "Ronnie, my dead husband I just brought back on mysterious circumstances, did you hear that creepy voice coming from your direction or notice that ominous blinking lights that lead directly to you as you star out the window in a calmly creepy fashion?" Caitlin really is one of the dumbest smart people around. 

Blackest Night huh Allegra? Oh yeah, I see you show. I have wanted them to do a Blackest Night crossover for ages, I think I would have wanted that one before Crisis, but I still think one could be cool, we certainly have enough dead characters around to keep things interesting. 

[Quark]

Decent episode. Nice seeing Ronnie again.

The reason why Sue didn't call Barry is because Iris "timed" her phone and it disappeared.

[thuganomics85]

I know it was recently announced that Jesse L. Martin was no longer going to be a regular next season, but with them finding another way to have Iris "disappear" again, I'm starting to wonder if Candice Patton really wants to stick around for much longer.  Of course, maybe I'll be wrong and they'll already find a way to save Iris next episode.  Did love that Sue apparently decided to dramatically reveal all of it to Barry in person.  Even if Iris destroyed her phone, I have to imagine Sue could have found some way to get a hold of his or someone else's number if she wanted to.

Good see Ronnie/Robbie Amell again, although it was amusing trying to make him look younger in the flashbacks (he obviously still looks great, but he definitely seems to have lost the babyface he use to have.)  But, of course, he wasn't the "real" Ronnie anymore and despite all of the warnings from Barry and Cecile, Caitlin brings him back and he's now "Deathstorm" and is clearly going to cause more grief for everyone involved.  Really should have at least prepared a contingency plan, Caitlin, incase this all went to hell.  Bonus points for already ending things with Marcus, despite having what looked like a good thing going.  Yep, this was her episode!

Normally I would say that it would be stretch for someone to finally get onto Chester for apparently live-streaming his inventions for the world to see, but if we're being honest, it's not like the gang has really been all that concerned about stuff like that.  But them deciding to bring this up randomly makes me wonder if they're setting something up here.

[Trini]

On 4/13/2022 at 9:03 PM, shantown said:

Laughed out loud at "I'm not Ronnie, I. AM. DEATH STORM." and it's this cartoony flame monster with a cartoony flame grin. 

I mean - I get that they're not going to have Robbie Amell for the rest of this arc; but I feel like it would have worked better with an actor in a suit with CGI enhancement. It just seems a bit unnecessary for Deathstorm to be completely animated.

On 4/16/2022 at 1:15 AM, thuganomics85 said:

Normally I would say that it would be stretch for someone to finally get onto Chester for apparently live-streaming his inventions for the world to see, but if we're being honest, it's not like the gang has really been all that concerned about stuff like that.  But them deciding to bring this up randomly makes me wonder if they're setting something up here.

There was no reason for that random-ish D-plot; so yes, I'm assuming this leads up to the next villain. Can we stop having Team Flash create villains, please??

Edited April 17, 2022 by Trini
aargh - dropped words

[Trini]

It's just nonsensical that Iris' plot is so disconnected from Barry (and everything else in general). They've been treating this as a C-plot since last season, but it really needs to be the A-plot with Barry and Iris together. The lead character's wife is fracturing time and disappearing people, why is this not his story too?

It also doesn't help that Barry hasn't even been an integral part of most of the A-plots post-Armageddon.

In eight seasons, Robbie/Ronnie is still one of Danielle P's best scene partners. It was nice seeing Ronnie again, but he and Danielle weren't quite pulling off younger versions of their characters. That understandable, but what really was throwing me off was how Danielle was obviously wearing 'hide the baby bump' outfits throughout the episode.

I admit I'm not really a Caitlin fan, but they keep doing her dirty with these storylines connected to her love life. They brought on Marcus just for them to be boring and break up, and then used her dead husband to bring in yet another villain. Then her and Frost backstabbing the Team (again) and being wrong. I really thought they might be giving Caitlin some type of happy ending exit when I heard that Ronnie would be back.

I can see how Caitlin would believe it, but it didn't make sense that everyone else also just went along with the Black Fire being Ronnie. And it was just weird since the only other person there who (kinda) knew Ronnie was Barry, and he was rightfully skeptical. Ugh - I knew something was wrong when everyone was apologizing at the end.

On 4/14/2022 at 2:25 PM, tennisgurl said:

Caitlin was also weirdly nonplused about ...

I think that this is more an acting issue.  😬  She also barely had reactions to her breakup with Marcus and the present day 'Ronnie' revelations. Danielle's slightly better as Frost because she can be broader, but I thought she only stepped it up for this Caitlin A-plot when she was in scenes with Robbie.

On to the B-plot: Iris disappeared a person and then gets disappeared herself(!!), and also Sue somehow can't find any phones or phone numbers -- What is even happening here?? It's just really dumb and obvious how they're bending over backwards to keep this Iris plot isolated from everything else.  And then they have Frost, etc. bring up "if it was Iris you'd do anything..." to Barry, when Barry has done nothing so far to help this 'Time Sickness' which has still not been explained. It doesn't make sense that he's not involved in this arc. Of course now that he found out Iris is missing, you'd think they'd be some forward momentum, but I'm pretty sure they'll have him busy with Deathstorm instead; and who knows how long that will take.

On a positive note; I did really like Sue being a supportive friend to Iris.

[Lantern7]

Meant to post about the episode. Forgot that the series is off tomorrow (April 20), but I'll get this out of my head now.

Caitlin: You guys, the menacing black flame that's been killing people? It's Ronnie. Ronnie's alive, and we have to bring him back.

Barry: We can't. Cecile had an enounter with it, and it was a horror show. We have to get rid of it.

Caitlin: But Ronnie-!

Barry: Look, do you think Cecile likes making that face where she looks like she witnessed a gangland murder? Of course not.

Cecile: To be fair, it only feels like I do that all the time.

Barry: I'm sorry, Caitlin. I'm so sorry, but none of us are going to help you.

Frost: (stands behind Barry, makes "OK" gesture and winks at Caitlin)

Even with the revelation that Deathstorm (I know . . . it's a great name to read, but it sounds so stupid when said out loud) snowed Caitlin and looks to be the Big Bad for the rest of the season . . . meh. And the whole Iris/Tinya thing is also underwhelming. To be honest, I got more out of Chester and Allegra debating on how much information people should be given. On the other hand, I just had to look up Allegra's name. Not good.