As if ripped straight from the pages of The New 52’s Issue of Flash #28, this week’s “Things You Can’t Outrun” cements CW’s The Flash as a solid comic book show that comic book readers have been waiting for, as Barry has to deal with a similar predicament seen in the source material.
Warning: Spoilers follow!
In this episode, and that issue, The Flash is filled with a toxic gas villain who wishes to take revenge upon people who have wronged him. There are obvious textual differences between book and box, but you can see that the creative team are sticking to the source with loyalty. This has been noted too by the fans whose voices have been heard, as it was announced on October 21st that The Flash has been commissioned for an entire season by CW.
This week’s episode was stronger than the previous in some regards, even though there are problems with the formula of fighting a different metahuman each week. I can see this being repetitive though hope to be proven wrong. The danger this week came from Barry’s difficulty in controlling our gassy villain Mist.
“Things You Can’t Outrun” really fleshed out the character relationship between Barry and his adopted father, Joe West (Jesse L. Martin), and the audience really got to understand their strong bond. It was important for us to see Barry save his life, as it developed and made sense of their understanding of one another, as Joe is slowly becoming more comfortable with using Barry as a weapon against crime in Central City.
However, this third episode of The Flash exceeds last week’s for another reason. The flashback scene of when the S.T.A.R Lab’s particle accelerator broke down and the crew had to fix it. In order to fix it, one of their members Ronnie Raymond (Robbie Amell) had to sacrifice himself, and considering we did not actually see him die onscreen, in the comic book world, that probably means we’ll see his face sometime in the future.
The emotions captured through the flashback scenes were quite powerful and extremely well done. The grief felt by Raymond’s widow, Caitlin Snow (Danielle Panabaker), is portrayed wonderfully and is shared with the audience.
For the non-comic book readers, this season is going to have some shocking character revelations that I would advise staying away from (i.e. don’t Google their names), but no matter your print expertise, this season should deliver in its evident competence of portraying its core comic book lore.
“Things You Can’t Outrun” certainly stressed some much needed character development into The Flash, demonstrating just how well superheroes can be depicted on the small screen in what will only hopefully be an improving season episode to episode by the end of its twenty-three in total.
8/10
George Driscoll
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Catch The Flash on Tuesdays at 8pm, only on Sky 1 in the UK.
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