The Flash S05 EP12 spoiler review

(Guess you could say this is the "Dream team," get it?)

Last night Flash premiered what I thought was a very strong episode with a lot of easter eggs to get excited about, as well as a possible tease of a future big bad...here is my review of the 12th episode of Flash's season 5, "Memorabilia."
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The episode opened with a nice scene of the team ice skating, which was a great change of pace and we got to see them acting like regular people for once rather than constantly delving into the superhero business. We also got Ralph's story about his mother's ex-boyfriend, the Zamboni driver, and thankfully Ralph stuck around for most of the episode after that.

The secondary storyline of the episode followed Ralph and Cisco as the former dragged along the latter to a bar where supposedly a man knew about the whereabouts of Cicada. It quickly was revealed though that the "Cicada" in question was actually a band called, "Sickada," and Cisco promptly made to leave once he realized Ralph had brought him there on singles night. The stretchy man's ploy to have some fun with Cisco ended up in a direction that pushed the story along, rather than acting as a distraction for an episode. Cisco met the bartender, a girl named Kamilla, and by talking to her figured out the solution to getting further into his meta-cure experiments; and evidently seems to have found a potential love interest in the process. It was a fun side plot that gave Ralph and Cisco both something to do, helped push Cisco's story forward, and potentially added a new secondary character for us to explore later on. Seems like Flash has mastered the act of introducing a seemingly meaningless side plot, only for it to end up pushing the story along in the end.

The main brunt of the episode focused around Barry's plan to wake up Grace in an attempt to appeal to Orlin's heart. Sherloque (who hilariously had a partner named Watson on his world) had a "memory machine" delivered from his dimension that would allow the team to enter Grace's mind and wake her up from her coma, similar to how Barry woke up Ralph after Thinker had taken over his body. The thorn in the plan turned out to be that when you go in pairs, as Sherloque highly recommended, you may see the other person's memories as well as the mind you are entering. This lead Nora, who wanted to keep her involvement with Thawne a secret, going in by herself and quickly becoming trapped. Barry and Iris followed after her, became trapped as well; however, they found that they had entered Nora's memories rather than Grace's.

Both worlds were very interesting to see, as Nora watched Grace relive her memories with her uncle Orlin, leading up to the last memory Grace had: Orlin declaring that he would kill every meta. Turns out that she has been listening in her coma the entire time, and sides with her father against the metas, including Nora. It was a great turn of events I didn't see coming, as I thought Grace would be horrified by her uncle being a serial killer, but instead she hates metas just as he does. It certainly throws a stick in their road to using Grace to stop Cicada, and Grace's mind conjured up a version of Cicada to hunt down Nora.

Meanwhile, in Nora's memories, Barry and Iris find themselves in the Flash museum which I LOVED seeing and have wanted to see in full since the show started. All of the Flash memorabilia from cups, to toys, to comics was a lot of fun to see, especially the comic book of the classic Cicada cover. We also got to see a bit more of the Hall of Villains, who Barry comically exclaimed, "These guys get their own wing?"Here, they saw the stand for Cicada, complete with a recording by Captain Singh who explained how Cicada was never caught and has a body kill of upwards around 150 folks. Then the recording went on to say that Cicada killed more people than Zoom and RED DEATH. That mention is giving me flashbacks to how season 3 mentioned Devoe several times, so may Red Death be the next big bad the show will tackle? I hope so, because while the backstory of being a version of Batman who killed Barry will definitely be retconned, Red Death was still a killer character and one I want to see on the show. Nora's mind conjured up its own defense mechanism against the "invaders", and Barry and Iris found themselves on the run from the Reverse-Flash, who Sherloque later found a curious choice for Nora's mind.

With Caitlin's help, the team discovered that they had to expose fake memories in order to reveal the portals of exit. For Barry and Iris, they had to expose that Nora's memory of being scolded by her mother wasn't true, just a mad little girl's false remembering after losing her father. For Nora, she exposed that the perfect home with piles of pancakes and cookies was not real. The three escaped, leaving behind Grace who clearly did not want to side with them, but it was also revealed that the Cicada that had been hunting Nora within Grace's mind wasn't Orlin, but seemingly an older version of Grace. Could that be an indication that the Cicada of the future, the one that Singh mentions has being seemingly immortal for being around so long, is no longer Orlin but Grace who has taken up the mantle? That would make for a very interesting twist, and I hope that is the route they head.

With this episode's plan down the drain, Barry turns to Cisco for their next course of action, which he declares is using the meta-cure on Cicada. In the end, Nora's secret was kept, and Team Flash has decided upon a new plan that I'm very excited to see them use. From the mention of the meta-cure I've wanted them to try it on Cicada; however, with the show only being on episode 12 there will likely be a major hiccup in the plan because it is too soon for Cicada to be defeated, and they surely won't milk the meta-cure plan for another 10 episodes. Could Nora or Barry lose their powers to the cure? This episode I felt also added a lot to Grace's character, as she is no longer an innocent little girl and a one note character, she is now a bitter hater of metahumans and sides with her uncle, making her a wild card for Team Flash to handle. Overall it was a great episode that I really enjoyed, especially the hint of Red Death's introduction to the show, and I can't wait for next week!