Check out Violet’s recap of Season 1 Episode 18 of The Flash, titled All Star Team Up, where Felicity and Ray visit Central City! Following the recap, both Josh and Violet share their thoughts about the episode.
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Episode Recap of The Flash, Season 1 Episode 18: All Star Team Up
This episode of The Flash begins with Barry helping Joe and Eddie apprehend various criminals all in one night. It seems like he’s having a fun time with it.
Over at Hudson University, as an engineering professor named Lindsay Kang gets into her car to leave, she is attacked and killed by a swarm of bees inside of her car. The next day, Barry, Joe, and Eddie investigate the death. Barry is hesitant to bring blood samples to STAR Labs for testing because he wants to avoid Dr. Wells. But Joe tells Barry he needs to act normal. However, he also doesn’t think that Barry should involve Cisco and Caitlin for now.
At STAR Labs, they figure out that the woman was killed by honey bees, although no dead bees or stingers were found. Felicity decides to drop by just then, and they all go outside to see Ray fly in wearing his ATOM suit. Cisco volunteers to help Ray fix the problems he’s been having with his suit, while the others continue to investigate the honey bee death.
Iris stops by the police station to see Eddie, and is suspicious that he’s working with The Flash, though he denies it. She thinks he’s been hiding something from her, but he says he’s not. After Iris leaves, Eddie tells Joe that he’s having trouble keeping this secret from her, but Joe insists it’s for her protection.
Felicity and Barry go to Jitters. She can tell something is bothering him. He says he doesn’t want to put anyone else in danger. Just then, Eddie shows up at Jitters and asks for advice about keeping the secret from Iris. Felicity suggests they all go to dinner that night, and he agrees.
Meanwhile, a woman sitting in an office building sends a bee after a man.
While Cisco and Ray work on the suit, Cisco begins to have flashbacks of the alternate timeline in which Dr. Wells killed him. Just then, Caitlin and Dr. Wells get wind of the bee attack, and inform Barry, who heads out to the scene of the attack. However, when he arrives, the man is already dead. A swarm of bees exit the man’s mouth, and begin to chase Barry, who runs outside, but not before the bees have stung him. Joe drives up and sees Barry collapse, as the bees fly away. Joe calls Cisco, who tells him there’s a defibrillator in Barry suit, which they remotely activate. They successfully revive him.
Back at STAR Labs, Cisco apologizes for leading Barry the wrong way. Apparently, the schematics were not up to date. Barry insists he’s fine, and he, Felicity, and Ray meet up with Eddie and Iris for dinner. Ray has bought out the entire restaurant for the occasion.
Cisco stops by the police station to see Joe, who gives him a file about the latest victim, Bill Carlisle, who was recently hired at Folston Tech in the Robotics Division. Cisco asks Joe if there’s something going on with Barry. Joe chalks it up to Barry being worried about when the Reverse Flash will show up again. Cisco has another flashback to the other timeline.
At dinner, Iris and Eddie get into an argument about Eddie keeping things from her. Barry gets uncomfortable when Ray brings up Dr. Wells, and excuses himself. Felicity follows him, and Barry confesses that he found out Dr. Wells killed his mother, and that he’s not sure who he can trust anymore. When they return to the room, Iris and Eddie’s argument has escalated, and Iris angrily leaves, saying she’ll be staying at her dad’s. Eddie leaves as well. Barry gets a call that there’s an emergency at STAR Labs.
Caitlin and Cisco are busy at STAR Labs trying to exterminate a rogue bee. Barry returns just then, and captures it. When they examine the bee, they discover that it’s actually a robot. Meanwhile, the bee woman is watching them through 360 degree multi-cameras on the bee.
Upon further investigation, with Felicity’s help, the STAR Labs team discovers that both bee victims are former employees of Mercury Labs.
Joe, Barry, and Dr. Wells go over to Mercury Labs to talk to Dr. Christina McGee. She tells them that they’re looking for Brie Larvan, who was fired when Kang and Carlisle informed Tina that Brie was weaponizing robotic bees. They warn Tina that she is probably on Brie’s hit list as well, but she says she can take care of herself.
Felicity and Barry meet up at Jitters, where she tries to reassure him that Caitlin and Cisco are good people.
Barry returns home to Joe’s house, and finds Iris there, just as she said she would be. She wonders what Eddie could be hiding from her. Barry tries to explain it away as the stress of the job.
Back at STAR Labs, the bee has reactivated. Felicity is able to trace it, and determines that the swarm of bees is headed toward Mercury Labs to attack Tina. Meanwhile, the swarm shows up outside of Tina’s office window and takes the vague form of Brie Larvan, who asks her to open the window.
Felicity is able to track where Brie is. Together, Cisco and Ray come up with a nickname for Brie: the Bug-Eyed Bandit. Barry can’t go help Dr. McGee, since the defibrillator on his suit is broken, so Ray takes the opportunity to test out his new and improved ATOM suit. Caitlin and Cisco head out in the van, while Ray flies over.
The bees begin to break through the window, but Felicity is able to redirect the bees onto a new target: Ray, who then flies in the other direction, while the bees follow.
The Flash shows up to confront Brie, but she has a ton more bees, which she begins to send after Barry. However, just before they are about to attack him, Felicity is able to hack in and stop them.
Ray flies to the ocean and underwater, which fries the bees. But it also fries his suit. However, it works long enough for Ray to fly into the back of the van.
Felicity and the Bug Eyed Bandit continue to fight back and forth with their tech abilities. However, Felicity is eventually able to disable all of the bees before they attack Barry. He then races over and restrains Brie.
Unfortunately, there is one more bee that has stowed away in Ray’s suit and is still operational. Cisco sees it heading for Ray, and throws himself in front of the bee. It stings him in the neck, causing him to collapse and go into shock. Barry runs over and vibrates his hands quickly upon Cisco, which has the effect of a defibrillator, and revives Cisco. Ray thanks Cisco for saving him, and Barry calls him a hero.
Dr. McGee stops by Barry’s lab to talk to him. He takes the opportunity to ask what happened between her and Dr. Wells. She says that they were very close, but everything changed after his wife, Tess, died. After that day, it was like Harrison Wells became a completely different person.
As Ray and Felicity say their goodbyes to Barry, Ray reveals that he has figured out the problem to his suit: the solution is to go smaller. Barry assures Felicity he’ll be okay, and thanks her for her advice.
Iris stops by the police station to see Eddie, and tells him that she talked to Barry, who was trying to help her see why Eddie has been so off lately. However, she says it doesn’t matter, because when you love someone, you tell them everything. So she gives him an ultimatum to tell her everything, or they’re over.
In the final scene, Caitlin and Cisco meet Barry and Joe at Barry’s lab. Barry has decided to reveal to them that Dr. Wells is the Reverse Flash. Caitlin is skeptical, but Cisco confesses that he’s been having dreams in which Dr. Wells is the Reverse Flash and kills him.
Violet’s Thoughts on Season 1 Episode 18 of The Flash: All Star Team Up
Yay, another crossover episode! These are always fun. Although, I was a little confused about the timing of this episode, considering what was going on in the most recent Arrow episode, with Felicity not saying the L word back to Ray, and with all the trouble that the Arrow Team was in with the police. It didn’t make sense that Felicity would up and leave them to go to Central City. It felt more like this should have happened before all those events. CW should be a little more conscious of the placement of these crossover episodes so that the audience isn’t confused.
As for the Bug Eyed Bandit, I was a little disappointed that this wasn’t a meta human, and instead just a robotics expert. But I guess that was so that Ray would have an opponent that he could handle. And it was cool to see his ATOM suit in action a little more. It was also nice to see Emily Kinney, who played Beth on The Walking Dead. In the comics, the Bug Eyed Bandit is supposed to be a guy, but they changed the first name to a girl’s name to accommodate a female character. I guess it worked, but I can’t help but feel that the whole reason for doing so was so that Felicity could go head to head with her tech skills against another technologically inclined female. The “tech off” was pretty cool, but I don’t think it was necessary to change the gender.
So, I made an interesting discovery after looking on the Imdb for this episode. The actress who plays Dr. McGee, who we have seen before, is actually reprising the role that she played on the 90s version of The Flash! So it’s not just Mark Hamill that came back, she did too. Plus there’s Barry’s dad, who previously played The Flash himself. It makes me wonder if the show will ever go into some time travel explanation of an alternate timeline, in which the Flash actually did exist back in the 90s… Hmm…
Anyway, so it looks like things are about to get really interesting now that everyone knows about Dr. Wells. Not sure how the rest of the team will handle this knowledge. I’m ready to see what happens next!
Josh’s Thoughts: The Flash, Season 1 Episode 18: All Star Team Up
I didn’t care for the “villain of the week” this week. Robotic bees? Really? I am sure there are plenty of other villains we could pull from! I also don’t understand why Barry had such a hard time with these. I would have thought he could move so fast, they wouldn’t even be able to touch him. I guess with superheroes that have extremely powerful abilities, I should suspend my disbelief a little more.
What was really interesting to me though, is the development on the investigation into Dr. Wells. It looks like Cisco is getting on board with this, given his “dreams” about Dr. Wells killing him. Caitlyn seems like she might need more convincing though. The big deal though is trying to keep this all from Wells without him finding it out. He can see the future after all, and Wells has already noticed changes in Barry’s demeanor. Spread that across Caitlyn and Cisco, I am sure Wells will definitely figure out something is up.
As for Eddie keeping Barry’s secret, that must be so hard for Eddie to do. I thought that Barry had smoothed things over with Iris when Barry talked to her about the situation, but Iris came firing back at Eddie again. I have a feeling someone is going to have to tell Iris about Barry, or Eddie is going to get really ticked off.
Scenes from The Flash, Season 1 Episode 19: Who is Harrison Wells?
Here are scenes from the next episode of The Flash, titled Who is Harrison Wells?:
