The Flash Season 2 Episodes 14-15 review - Escape from Earth-2/Sharkbait

As the Flash takes a 4 week break, we look at episodes 14 and 15 of the series

Escape from Earth-2

Here comes the far superior cousin to the opener.

What can say? This episode is about to close to a perfect Flash episode I have seen this season. It embraces some of the silliness and doesn’t get bogged down in sappy melodrama or having our characters act like their brains took the day off, except for Jay at the end but relatively minor note.

So, with Flash at the mercy of Zoom it’s up to the Earth-2 Gang featuring Cisco Ramon to find him and save him. Meanwhile Geomancer continues to be a threat to Earth-1, but Caitlin may have a development to even the odds

If I can criticise two things, the first, why have the vortex thing break down so it can be fixed off-screen only for it to break down again. Also, the man in the metal mask’s mystery code is stupid. Minor gripes out of the way, let’s get to the fun

Barry Allen of Earth-2 gets some time in the spotlight this episode as we see his exact personality. Cowardly, but loyal, and otherwise Barry Allen taken up a couple of notches. Him and Iris-2 actually make a decent couple and their adventure is fun to watch, which is pretty much all I ask for, for one-off characters.

Killer Frost’s presence is heavy in this episode, and whilst I wouldn’t have minded her grieving more from the loss of Ronnie, she’s perfectly fine in this episode as she does what she was set in the episode to do and her actions fit her character profile, she may be cold, but she still had love, and Zoom took that away from her. It was fear that kept her in line and it’s her anger that eventually turned her around.

But let us not forget about the workings back home. Geomancer is a relatively simple villain but given the limited screentime he was getting it’s not surprising. His meta-abilities and fixation on finding the flash provided a limit for Jay and Caitlin to work together. Velocity 9 seems to be the pinnacle of their work, and it’s interesting to see if that’ll be of any use down the line

Then there’s the ending, where Jay is captured/killed by Zoom in a relatively suspicious way, there’s a lot of theory going around, especially since the masked dude in the prison cell was talking about Jay. I’m going to wait this out rather than presuming and hoping these episodes continue at this quality

Rating 8.5/10

Shark Bait

When you steal someone’s life in the way Barry did back in the first part of the Earth-2 2-parter, there are going to be repercussions. And here we are again

So we have the emotional fallout of the 2-parter. Wells working with his daughter again, Cisco’s paranoia, Barry’s usual devastation (I swear he’s like this more often than he isn’t) and of course Caitlin trying to get over the loss of yet another boyfriend (or potentially not, no shot angle I’ve seen yet confirms his death)

So, King Shark. A good idea to bring Diggle and Lyla into an episode. I’ve been told that Waller died in an episode of Arrow (she’s good but she’s no nick Fury when it comes to preparation) so it became a decent focal point for them to bring him back. The problem becomes apparent when he’s still about as dull as a brick. They don’t flesh him out, he’s just a monster that Zoom sent over and that is a great pity

However, you argue there’s enough character with the running subplots of the episode. Barry’s relationship with Wally suffers as his head is completely elsewhere during the episode which is understandable. What I don’t get is that he got into the nitty gritty about who the Earth-2 dopplegangers were. He could just say that Zoom killed Joe-2.

Wells did jack sh*t in this episode, he and his daughter bonded, natural after so long away but despite it being their responsibility to track King Shark, it’s actually Caitlin who manages to find a way.

Cisco’s paranoia was another focus of the episode, as he worried that her cold tendencies might cause her to become the Killer Frost. Ignoring two very obvious things though, one Caitlin has been like this before, a lot. And 2^nd, and this one’s kinda bigger to me, Ronnie was still alive on Earth-2 so the death of someone she loved was not the catalyst that made her become Killer Frost

This would’ve been a fluff episode if we didn’t get the final revelation. Zoom is a doppleganger of Jay/Hunter Zolomon

Rating 7/10

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Images used in this review are from The Flash and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use.