In ‘The Flash’ recap, Barry finds out a former cop has been transformed into a meta-human and Cisco meets Gypsy’s father for the first time…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
‘The Flash’ has introduced many beloved characters from the history of DC Comics and the latest episode was no exception as Ralph Dibny aka Elongated Man made his debut albeit under strange circumstances.
As Barry and the rest of Team Flash continue to track down the 12 people transformed into meta-humans as a result of his escaping the Speed Force, he finds out that one of them is a former colleague that he helped drum out of a job at the Central City Police Department.
The introduction of Ralph Dibny also just so happens to coincide with some corruption at the mayor’s office in the middle of a re-election campaign.
In the other major story this week, Cisco gets closer to Gypsy but first has to spend some quality time with her father known as Breacher, who just so happens to be played by the ever so menacing Danny Trejo.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of ‘The Flash’ titled ‘Elongated Journey Into Night’…
Stretchy Situation
In the aftermath of the dark matter wave that created 12 new meta-humans running loose in Central City, Barry is starting to believe Harry’s theory more and more that this was no accident but instead an orchestrated plan set up by a villain the team hasn’t encountered yet.
Unfortunately, tracking down the 10 remaining people from the bus — the other two Kilgore and Hazard have been captured and put into prison at Iron Heights — isn’t going to be easy. The department of transportation has no detail on who boarded the bus other than saying 900 plus people were on board during that particular day and there’s no cameras inside to identify the passengers.
The only clue they have to go on comes from the driver, who suspiciously drowned in his own bathtub after the dark matter wave washed over all of them. Digging through the bus driver’s belongings, Barry and Joe spot a familiar name from their past — Ralph Dibny — a disgraced dirty cop who is now operating as a private investigator in Central City.
When pressed for details about why Barry dislikes this guy so much, he refuses to say but it’s clear he has history with Dibny from the time he was first on the force.
Barry and Joe pay him a visit and the shared disdain between the two of them and the former cop is palpable but Dibny denies being on the bus that day and hasn’t experienced any issues that would make them believe he’s a meta-human. They leave the office but a few seconds later two thugs walk in to brace Dibny for some kind of information. To get their point across, they dangle Dibny from the rooftop until his legs stretch like silly putty until his torso hits the ground just as Barry and Joe are walking by.
Obviously, Dibny was on the bus that day after all!
Back at STAR Labs, Team Flash — particularly Caitlin — take an interest in trying to figure out what kind of power Dibny gained from the transformation into being a meta-human. It seems his DNA turned elastic from the dark matter, which means Dibny’s body now stretches but he can’t seem to get any of his limbs to return to normal.
Caitlin promises that she can fix him but she needs some sample of his DNA from before the bus encounter, which sends Barry and Joe back to his office to find something.
When they arrive, the office has been ransacked as Barry and Joe begin foraging for some kind of DNA sample. Barry also comes clean about what happened with Dibny all those years ago.
It seems Dibny was the lead detective on a murder case where it was all but obvious that the husband killed his wife but there was no physical evidence at the scene. Dibny miraculously produced the murder weapon with the husband’s fingerprints, but Barry figured out that the knife turned in as evidence didn’t match the wounds on the victim. Barry turned the information over to the captain and Dibny was drummed out while the husband was set free.
Barry and Joe find a brush at the office with a sample of Dibny’s hair, which should do the trick for Caitlin but during their investigation they also dig into his phone records and find out that the private eye had called the mayor’s office 15 times just recently. Why would a dirty cop be calling the mayor’s office? Barry and Joe want some answers.
Father’s Day
Cisco continues to get closer to his girlfriend Gypsy, despite not actually knowing her real name, but their romantic interlude is interrupted when her father Breacher — one of the greatest bounty hunters across the multi-verse — explodes into his bedroom and goes on the attack.
Cisco is mortified of Gypsy’s father and does his best to impress him — including a little white lie that Barry is actually his assistant and he runs STAR Labs — and he finally decides to take his girlfriend and Breacher out for coffee to try and get to know each other.
Sadly, Cisco then finds out that coffee was eradicated by alien invaders on Breacher’s Earth and he vowed to never taste the beverage again. Gypsy offers to get him some tea instead but Breacher has another idea. He tells Cisco to go on the run for the next 24 hours and Breacher is going to hunt him. Neither of them can use their powers but Breacher wants to see what kind of a guy his daughter is dating — apparently he did this with her last boyfriend as well…he’s dead now.
Cisco goes on the run and Harry suggests perhaps instead of just trying to hide that he should use his smarts against Breacher rather than just fleeing until the 24 hours are up. Cisco takes his advice and actually traps Breacher in the same force field he used to capture the Reverse Flash. Cisco believes he’s got the better of him but then Breacher brandishes a powerful knife that cuts right through the force field.
Cisco is on the run again but before Breacher leaves STAR Labs he gets a look at Dibny with his limbs all stretched out and he recognizes him as Plastoid — an evil villain from his Earth and now the bounty hunter is on the hunt for someone else.
We Can Be Heroes
As much as Barry wants to condemn Dibny as a dirty cop and criminal, Caitlin reminds him that she wasn’t exactly in the best place when she transformed into Killer Frost but he still fought for her. Perhaps Dibny wasn’t such a bad guy, but rather he just did something terrible when trying to right a wrong.
Either way, Caitlin mixes a serum that gets Dibny back to normal although he’s still just as stretchy as ever, he’s just able to put himself back together again.
Meanwhile, Barry and Joe visit the mayor to find out what reason he had to talk to Ralph Dibny on 15 separate occasions just recently. The mayor claims that Dibny found out that he was cheating on his wife, snapped some risqué photos and threatened to expose him if he didn’t cough up a pile of cash. This is all Barry needs to hear to convince him that Dibny is the same criminal he’s always been at heart.
Unfortunately, Barry is slightly off base when the mayor actually orders his goons — the same two guys who nearly tossed Dibny off a building earlier — to get those photos back and get rid of the cops if they get in the way.
Later that night, Barry and Joe are sharing a beer when the goons show up dressed as police and try to shoot them but thankfully a speedy rescue knocks them both unconscious. That’s when Barry realizes that perhaps the mayor wasn’t the victim in this whole thing after all or at the very leas maybe Dibny wasn’t the dirty criminal he was painted out to be.
That’s when Barry starts to question his own morals — after all Team Flash have captured dozens of meta-humans and kept them in the pipeline or sent them to Iron Heights with no trial whatsoever. Maybe Barry has misjudged Dibny as he was trying to put a criminal behind bars but he just went about it the complete wrong way.
Barry has his chance to find out what kind of man Dibny really is when he uses a tracker he placed on the former cop to interrupt a meeting he’s having with the mayor. It seems the mayor tried to pay him off, Dibny refused and he gets shot in the face for his troubles. Thankfully, Dibny’s new rubber face allows him to just spit out the bullet and it looks like the mayor will be captured but out of nowhere Breacher appears and opens fire on the two of them.
The mayor uses the distraction to get away with Joe as a hostage, escaping in a helicopter.
Cisco shows up in full Vibe mode to stop Breacher from any further attack while explaining that Dibny isn’t the same person from his Earth. Unfortunately, the Flash is now unable to run fast enough to make it into the helicopter and Cisco can’t vibe him up there without bringing down the helicopter. That’s when Barry reveals his true identity to Dibny and asks him for help by throwing his stretchy arm up at the helicopter so he can run to save Joe.
Dibny does his thing, the Flash does his thing, Joe is saved and the mayor is headed for jail. And seconds after he’s been rescued, Joe blurts out that Cecille is pregnant and he’s going to be a father again.
See You Soon
Back at STAR Labs, Breacher says he still hates Cisco but he’s impressed by him enough to allow the relationship with his daughter to continue. Before leaving he also drops one extra nugget as he reveals Gypsy’s first name as Cynthia while his is Josh. Breacher is much more menacing.
Barry pays Dibny a visit and decides to offer him a job — he will begin training immediately at STAR Labs to become a hero where they will work alongside each other to help save more people in Central City. Dibny was once a great detective, who was misguided in his attempts to put criminals in jail. Now he has a second chance to make things right.
Before leaving, Barry asks about how Dibny got put onto the mayor’s case in the first place and that’s when he reveals that a man named DeVoe hired him over the phone to do the investigation. That’s when Barry flashes back to last season when Abracadabra teased him about a foe he would face named DeVoe and then an incident with Savitar where he talked about a weapon that Team Flash made to defeat the same villain. That’s when Barry realizes that this mysterious DeVoe must be the one who orchestrated his return from the Speed Force and thus created the 12 new meta-humans but to what end?
Finally, Caitlin returns home from a hard day’s work and she finds an ominous message scrawled across her front door from some old friends who miss her. It seems this is a perfect segue to find out what happened when Caitlin was locked away as Killer Frost for the past six months while Barry was gone and she was in league with an arms dealer named Amunet Black.
‘The Flash’ returns with a brand new episode next Tuesday night at 8pm ET on the CW.
