The Flash has a new villain in town, dubbed “The Mist”! Check out Josh’s recap of Season 1 Episode 3, titled Things You Can’t Outrun, followed by both Josh’s and Violet’s thoughts about the episode!
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To see Josh’s thoughts on this week’s The Flash episode, Things You Can’t Outrun, click here to get directly there!
Episode Recap of The Flash, Season 1 Episode 3: Things You Can’t Outrun
The Flash this week begins with Barry and Iris discussing a movie, then moving on to talking about the “streak”, unknowing Barry’s involvement as the Flash. Barry gets a call from Cisco and Caitlin to stop a man in a shoot out with police. He takes care of it quick, and returns to Iris before she finishes a phone call with her boyfriend, Eddie.
Then a mobster like group is holding a meeting, but someone seemingly on the inside poisons the group with a mysterious green gas.
The next day, Barry heads to work, and Joe gives Barry the evidence about his mother’s death. Joe wants go through the evidence. They are interrupted by the deaths of the crime family we saw earlier. They head to the scene, and Barry figures it is poison. They can’t find a canister or anything, but Barry thinks it might be a more human intervention.
Taking this back to STAR Labs, the crew helps Barry figure out what is going on. Joe seems concerned about holding the meta-humans, and might need to come up with a “meta-human prison”. Cisco comes up with using the particle accelerator as a prison.
A flashback is then interjected, going back to the accelerator being turned on. After turning it on, they begin to see physics going awry, and alarms begin to sound. The flashback seemed to be from Caitlin’s perspective, as she remembers a man, named Ronnie, who was her fiance, and who also assisted with getting the accelerator online.
Meanwhile at home, Joe is working on examining the evidence regarding Barry’s mother. Iris gets a visit from Eddie, who is there to pick up Iris, but Joe is home and Iris is wanting to keep this relationship secret. His cover is that he actually came by to go with Joe to a crime scene to re-canvas. He isn’t happy about it.
In another flashback, the accelerator is collapsing, and we see Ronnie run into the accelerator to make a repair–but he only has two minutes to do so. Cisco had to lock him in, running out of time.
Caitlin, meanwhile, has run the analysis on the poison gas, and it turns out to be non-poisonous, but has two DNA markers. Barry hypothesizes that the gas is actually the person. We then witness another murder–one of a judge, that seemed to have worked a specific case our poisonous gas friend was involved with. Barry rushes to the scene to help, hearing about it on a police radio.
Barry is able to find our gasman, and confronts him. The man says that he has one more name, but Barry tries to stop him. He is unable to due to his gaseous properties, and Barry is then “gassed” himself.
Barry returns to STAR Labs and they try to extract some gas for testing. He wakes up, groggy, and the crew begins working on a method to stop the dubbed “The Mist”. Barry visits Joe, and tells him the update on “The Mist”. But the conversation turns to talking about Barry’s father. Barry considers breaking him out of jail, but Joe insists they have to work through the proper channels and tells Barry he has to do his best, and will not be able to save everyone.
Moving to Iris, she talks with Eddie, and it looks like she is going to tell Joe about him now to stop the sneaking around.
Barry talks with Caitlin, who is concerned about Barry disappearing, because it reminded her of Ronnie’s final moments. Having another flashback, Ronnie is unable escape, but he did his best to minimize the damage. The blast comes though, and hits him. Caitlin mourns his loss with Barry. Cisco interrupts, and they have identified the compound, and figure out that the person must be a deathrow victim, and turns out someone was being executed as the accelerator blew up. They figure out the Mist’s next target as well–Joe, the person in charge of investigating the crime the Mist was sentenced to death for.
Barry figures out that Joe went to Iron Heights Prison, and is visiting Barry’s dad. Joe tells him he knows that he is innocent. The poison gas hits the guard in the room though, and Joe seems to be in danger. Joe is infected, but Barry shows up, providing a cure. Barry’s dad also witnesses the power of Barry, but Barry is able to disguise himself by vibrating extremely fast.
Barry then confronts the Mist, and tries to figure out how to defeat him. Caitlin thinks keeping him busy will eventually tire him, causing him to have to solidify. The plan works, as the Mist becomes too tired to continue. The Mist becomes the first prisoner in the new meta-human prison.
Joe is taken to the hospital and Barry pays him a visit. Iris and Eddie show up, and Iris breaks the news. Joe seemed to already know, and Eddie steps out for Iris to talk with her father alone.
The episode ends with Professor Wells staring at Barry’s uniform. He has a flashback himself when Ronnie has managed to vent the explosion to save much of the city. At that time, he watches a video, and sees Barry turned into the flash. Another thing he saw coming.
Josh’s Thoughts: The Flash, Season 1 Episode 3: Things You Can’t Outrun
So this was an interesting villain. Doing some online research, there is a DC villain named “The Mist”, and his name is Kyle–so this had to be a nod towards that character. Prior to this episode I was not aware of this villain, but I think this is a great way for DC/Warner Brothers to introduce more obscure characters into their film and TV universes. There is so much lore in the DC universe, the writers of the show can simply keep pulling more and more random people from their “history” and introduce them in interesting ways. The nice thing about using more obscure characters, is you eliminate the problem of comic “purists” have a lot to quibble about when introducing these characters, and how it isn’t “like it is in the comics”. I would say 75% of the viewers of The Flash would not know enough about the Mist to pick his back-story apart.
Another nice thing about this episode is the progression regarding Barry’s dad. Joe seems set on helping Barry out with freeing his father, which gives Barry some side project to work on when he is not being a forensic scientist, or stopping the criminals the police are unable to. The thing is, consider how fast the Flash can move/process information, you think that case could be solved in record time! But I guess if the piece of evidence you need doesn’t exist, it wouldn’t matter how fast you looked.
I have to say, one of the things I couldn’t care less about in the show is the relationship between Eddie and Iris. It is so CW-fied, that I want to vomit when I see them on screen together. When they broke the “news” to Joe, I kind of wish he did have his gun on him. But I forgive the show, considering the rest of it is pretty on point.
The one question I have–Did Barry’s dad recognize him when he saved Joe? I was not able to determine this. When Barry bursts into the room, he seems to vibrate his face as a sort of disguise, but when Barry visits with him later, it seems like he might know about his powers. He never outright says he knows though, so that leaves me wondering. if anyone has opinions on this, let us know in the comments!
But the final, final thought I have is regarding this make shift prison. I have a feeling, housing all of these criminals in one place will eventually become a problem. We all know Arkham Asylum, and how often that place is taken over by the unsavory type living there. There is no doubt that this event happens here. That could be an exciting time though!
Violet’s Thoughts on Season 1 Episode 3 of The Flash: Things You Can’t Outrun
Last week I pointed out how The Flash format is similar to that of Arrow how it alternates between the present and flashbacks. At that time, I was positive that The Flash would continue said format, but I wasn’t sure what upcoming flashback sequences would be about. Well, we got our answer in this episode, which continued using flashbacks. This time, instead of a flashback to Barry as a child sneaking out to go see his dad, we got a flashback to what happened on the night of the particle accelerator accident. These flashbacks seemed to focus on the relationship between Caitlin and her fiance, and how he sacrificed himself to save everyone. However, while we saw that Cisco closed the doors after 2 minutes, as per Ronnie’s request, the episode also seemed to suggest that Caitlin is not aware that Cisco is the one who closed the doors on him. It looked like Cisco has been carrying guilt about this, and that he was about to confess to Caitlin what happened, but he got interrupted. My guess is that this is a big secret that will come out at some point, and Caitlin will be upset with Cisco, and some sort of conflict will ensue. In any case, it was nice to see Robbie Amell on my TV screen again, after The Tomorrow People got cancelled after its first season. I wonder if we’ll see more of him in other flashbacks? It appears that the purpose of the flashbacks in The Flash will serve to help us get to know the characters better, unlike on Arrow, where they’re mostly to show us what Oliver Queen was up to while he was missing.
Overall, I am continuing to enjoy The Flash, despite its cheesiness. Last week, I theorized that the reason I liked it was because we’re getting villains with actual superhuman abilities, which is a nice contrast to the more grounded Arrow. I thought the Mist was a pretty cool villain, and is definitely something that we wouldn’t see on Arrow. I suppose we will continue to see “meta-humans” pop up with varying abilities, and I’m curious to see what comes next!
By the way, I’m glad that Iris and Eddie are officially out in the open to Joe. I mean, he’s a detective. Did they really think he wouldn’t figure it out?
As a final note, I will continue to defend Dr. Wells and keep saying that Dr. Wells is not a bad guy. Okay, so he could somehow see the future and knew that Barry would gain his abilities. So what? I’m still waiting for some real evidence of his evil-ness, and in my opinion, we haven’t gotten it yet.
Scenes from The Flash, Season 1 Episode 4: Going Rogue
Here are scenes from the next episode of The Flash, titled Going Rogue:
Scenes from The Flash, Season 1 Episode 4: Going Rogue
P.S. It looks like our first crossover moments are about to happen! Felicity seems to be visiting Barry. Let’s see how that goes next episode!
