The Flash S05 EP16 spoiler review

(Looks like the last time we'll be seeing Dwyer in this outfit)

I've been thinking recently that the Flash was due for something big to happen, something that would shake up the current storyline and make us guess about where the series was heading next. The fight against Cicada had started to reach a point where I was wondering where they would go with it, since the season finale couldn't be just another showdown with him trying to stop the killer from killing another metahuman. That would be too simple; however, the show has certainly switched things up a bit by the end of this episode, and I have no idea what's coming.
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First off, Ralph has been absent for two episodes now without a mention. What the heck? This show I guess has too many characters right now for all of them to appear, but they could at least mention him leaving for the day, or have him stand in the background. There has been some major stuff happening, and he just hasn't been around.Team Flash is currently composed of Barry, Cisco, Caitlin, Sherloque, Ralph, Nora, Joe, and Cecil. While there have been more than eight in the past, it still feels like not every character can get their due in.

Moving onto the actual episode and its storyline, it all focused around Barry's efforts to convince Cicada to take the cure. While I still think theyre a bit daft for not just injecting him, I liked that they focused it around Barry's ability to bring out the good in people while referencing several times in the past that he had done so, as well as times it hadn't worked such as with Savitar. The episode began with Thawne (only has 19 minutes left on his timer) and Nora looking at a newspaper detailing the final confrontation between Flash and Cicada, with the photo tipping Nora off that once a new acid meta appeared (Dubbed Acid Master by Cisco, even z-list comic characters are getting live action debuts thanks to this show) that confrontation had come. The acid he spewed matched a puddle of acid seen in the future newspaper's photograph, and Nora proceeded to prepare Barry for what he would say to Cicada. It almost felt like the show was winking at itself with how often Barry gives speeches and pep talks, but it worked. At first, Barry's talk with Cicada did no go over so well and Killer Frost had to help him, but after a conversation with Joe in which he told Barry to speak to Cicada as himself and not the Flash, Barry confronted Cicada one more time. As a father, Barry spoke to Cicada and informed him that Grace had begun to develop meta human powers, and that she shouldn't live in a world where people like her are being hunted. Barry revealed his face and expressed how much he loved his own daughter, and Cicada finally lowered his weapon and agreed to the cure.

It felt like an earned victory, and one that stuck as the team put Cicada under in order to surgical suture his chest wound once the cure had been injected. Without an issue, the cure was injected and Orlin Dwyer became just an ordinary man, Cicada no more, and Flash actually defeated their big bad of the year!...But the fight didn't end there. Within moments, a Cicada look a like broke into Star Labs, easily defeated all of the team, and stole away with Orlin's still unconscious body. It was a devastating defeat for the team, a shocking encounter, and for the viewer's things only became more confusing when it revealed that the woman dressed as Cicada was an older version of Grace who proclaimed that she had been looking for her uncle for a while.

The Flash definitely shook a lot of things up in this episode, most of all being that they defeated their big bad several episodes before the end of the season. It leaves the rest of the season up for debate on how things will turn out, and how exactly an elder version of Grace is running about. We saw this version of her manifest within her own mind in an earlier episode, but it seems to have become reality and possibly it has something to do with Grace's newly acquired powers? We'll have to wait until next week to find out for sure but for now, Team Flash has a whole new threat that appears bigger than Cicada ever was. I'm very curious to see how the season plays out now, because it is no longer a plot about saving metahumans from Cicada, they now have to discover who the new Cicada is and what she is up to.