The Flash S05 EP03 Spoiler Review

(Cisco on the run from a serial killer)

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There is a lot to unpack with this week's episode! More exploration of Caitiln's story, the battle with Cicada, the introduction of a new Wells, and Ralph finally using his powers for the first time this season! That isn't the whole of it, so lets quickly dive in!

The episode opens with the child version of Nora visiting the Flash Museum in the future, which was awesome to finally see on the show if only for a glimpse! There were lots a great easter eggs to spot, such as Thinker's chair, Weather Wizard's wand, the iron mask that Zolomon kept on Jay Garrick, as well as costumes for Zoom, Trickster, and Savitar. On a short tangent, I just want to mention that it would be the perfect cliffhanger for Nora to return to the future at the end of the season and visit the museum only to find a new villain cataloged that wasn't there previously and that villain would be the villain for season 6! Back on track, Nora explains how no one was every able to catch Cicada and he was still on the run decades in the future, which leads into the introduction of our new wells.

Nora reached out for the smartest detective in the multiverse and they got Sherloque Wells, who I was honestly expecting to dislike and he would be a cliche copy of Sherlock Holmes, but I was actually pleasantry surprised with him and didn't find him to bothersome. He lead the team to David Hersch, a terrorist bomber, and Barry and Nora quickly apprehended him. Case closed, Cicada has been defeated...or so they thought.

After Hersch's capture, Cicada appeared in Joe's home and began to torture him in order to draw out Vibe. Sherloque argues that he has solved the Cicada case over 30 times before and each time it was David Hersch, which revealed that the detective hadn't truly done anything to help them which promptly put him in debt with the team after having spent all the money they paid him for the case. Nora's tampering with time had caused Cicada to show up much earlier in history than he was supposed to, and then it turned out that Cicada was now an entirely different person too! In the comics Cicada is David Hersch as well, so it was a fun twist for the show to employ, and gave some weight to Nora for her to carry since the mess with Cicada is her fault.

While Joe refused to call out Vibe, knowing that it was what Cicada wanted, Cecile panicked after being found by the serial killer and called him. What followed next was a frightening and tense scene of Cicada tackling Cisco back into his own breach and the two of them ending up in an empty forest. A depowered Cisco was on the run, and Cicada was closing in around him. Sherloque proved his worth by helping decipher where Cisco was, and Barry arrived just in time to have his powers siphoned as well and to be beaten to a pulp. Nora's lesson from Barry about thinking before she acts came back and instead of blindly running into the fight she thought through her actions and after hurling lightning inot the villain she tossed Cisco one of the pipeline's energy cells that Wells has previously used to fake his death (trying to skip out of paying his debt to the team). Cisco hurtled the makeshift bomb at the villain who easily deflected it back, and it appeared that Cisco had been blown apart by the bomb. Satisfied, and suspiciously bleeding, Cicada flew off into the night, and with him gone it was revealed that Nora had helped Cisco fake his death to trick Cicada.

On the side story of the episode, we got Ralph using his powers for the first time this season to stop a sunburned gunman from robbing a store in the hilarious form of a giant pear, then he and Caitlin worked to uncover more of her father's mystery. Confronting her mother did nothing to help, but the pair broke into her mother's laboratory later on and found a file about her father. Caitiln discovered a chart of fake elements she and her father made when she was little, and then discovered a suicide note from him. Ralph felt bad for pushing into her finding a suicide note, but she assured him she was happy to finally have closure...but then deciphered a hidden message in the seemingly garbled notes of her father using the fake elemental chart that told her: "Come find me", while a shadowy figure watched through the STAR labs cameras. Whoo! Her story keeps getting better and better, I'm really happy with this direction they're taking her and that the story isn't moving at a snails pace!

The Vibe has been announced dead to the city in order to keep Cicada from coming back after Cisco, and we get one last scene with Cicada sans costume where he visits his comatose daughter in the hospital. The nurse seems wise to his actions, asking to see a pulsing wound on his chest, and "Orlan" (what the nurse calls him) insists he has to finish what he started while longingly looking over his daughter. 

The episode had one more banger to end on as Nora was packing up to move in with her parents. Sherloque is now staying in the lounge and the two encountered one another, leading to Wells asking her if someone else pushed her to come to the past and meet her father. He quickly disregards it, but the look on her face is too suspicious to be disregarded, and it seems someone truly did push her to come to the past. The questions is only who?

Flash's season 5 continues to move fast with its stories, with Cicada already on the frontline, Caitlin discovering more and more about her father every week, and Sherloque wells already making a splash with his questioning of Nora's motives. Every week brings something new to the table and doesn't feel like fodder or filler, and I can easily expect some new revelation to be unearthed week after week! It makes for exciting storytelling, a fun watch, and a continuously awesome season of the Flash!