In ‘The Flash’ recap, Barry and the team face off with a meta-human who changes everybody’s luck while Wally makes a shocking announcement…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
As ‘The Flash’ season four continues, the team once again faced off with a meta-human of the week but there was finally a revelation about how these new villains received their powers years after the particle accelerator at STAR Labs exploded.
For the first time since the start of the show, Team Flash is facing off with a non-speedster but that doesn’t mean that Clifford DeVoe aka ‘The Thinker’ is any less formidable, especially considering what he’s been able to unleash thus far this season without actually revealing his true plans as of yet.
Meanwhile, an old friend returns this week as Harry Wells reappears from Earth-2 but his arrival also marked the exit of another character, who bid farewell before the episode was over.
And finally, Barry and Iris pushed forward with their wedding plans while Joe and Cecille received some life altering personal news of their own.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of ‘The Flash’ titled ‘Luck Be a Lady’….
If I Didn’t Have Bad Luck…
The episode opens with ‘The Thinker’ studying a subject that he hopes to use in his upcoming war against the Flash as he profiles a woman named Rebecca Sharpe, who seemingly has the worst luck of anyone on the planet. From her coffee being prepared incorrectly to her boyfriend cheating on her to losing her job after spilling a drink on a customer, if Rebecca didn’t have bad luck, she wouldn’t have no luck at all.
Across town at STAR Labs, the team arrives as a breach opens up to reveal the return of Harry Wells. Unfortunately, Wally West was expected his girlfriend Jesse Quick to make an appearance but instead it’s her father with a “breakup cube”. Apparently on Earth-2, this is how relationships come to an end and Jesse is calling it quits with Wally after they’ve been forced to spend so much time apart while she also needs time alone to figure out where she wants to go in life.
Wally is heartbroken while Harry ends up sticking around for a little while longer when the latest meta-human problem arises.
It seems Rebecca’s luck has turned around because she’s now capable of walking into a bank while simultaneously everyone guarding the money befalls some sort of mishap to distract them while she just goes in, grabs the money and exits without anyone noticing. When the Flash shows up to foil the crime, he just so happens to slide on a barrel of marbles that’s spilled on the street just seconds before his arrival.
A quick study by Harry shows that Rebecca’s not cursed with good luck or bad — she’s actually a meta-human and the positive and negative ions surrounding her have been shifted dramatically, which gives off the appearance that the jinx she used to live under has now been passed onto everybody around her.
Unfortunately that means the team is going to struggle to get anywhere near her without those negative forces causing them to suffer any number of unfortunate accidents. Barry suggests that perhaps Rebecca isn’t a bad person — just someone who is finally enjoying a run of good luck and maybe he can reason with her rather than try to go after her as the Flash.
The House is Falling
In more personal issues this week, Joe and Cecille are watching their house crumble down around them with plumbing issues springing up all over the place. Cecille hires a plumber to checkout the strange sounds that emanate from the house whenever a faucet gets turned on and he tells her that the entire pipe system needs to be replaced.
The $15,000 cost has Cecile thinking that it might be time for these two empty nesters to move into a smaller place of their own, but Joe is struggling to give up the house where he raised Iris and Barry.
Meanwhile, Iris and Barry are running into their own stretch of bad luck after two different wedding venues fall through as they try to schedule a date and location for their nuptials. To add to the problem, Barry races home and accidentally catches Iris trying on her wedding dress and she knows that a groom is never supposed to see the bride like this before the wedding or you’re just flirting with disaster.
Iris’ solution is to go to the wedding chapel right now and get married immediately so nothing else can go wrong.
Unfortunately just as the preacher is about to offer the wedding vows, he falls down ill thanks to an allergic reaction to the incense being used in the church so that’s one more piece of bad luck that’s hit the happy couple.
Jinxed
Back at STAR Labs, Harry and Cisco pinpoint the location where the wave of dark matter was unleashed on Central City that must have infected Rebecca Sharpe as well as Kilgore — the computer controlling bad guy from last week’s episode. The location reminds Barry that is where he emerged from the Speed Force when Team Flash rescued him. In other words, Barry flying out of the Speed Force was followed by a wave of dark matter that transformed a busload of people into meta-humans.
What Barry and the team don’t know, however, is that ‘The Thinker’ orchestrated every person who ended up on the bus that day but we still don’t know why or to what end he wanted to create these new meta-humans.
Barry then runs over to Jitters where he meets Rebecca for the first time and attempts to inform her that the string of good luck she’s encountering has resulted in bad luck for everyone else around her and it’s all caused by her powers as a meta-human. Despite his best efforts to talk her into getting help from STAR Labs, Rebecca rebuffs his offer of assistance and leaves undeterred while Barry watches everyone inside the coffee shop teetering on the brink of an accident until she exits.
The team is befuddled how to stop her but their plans have to shift in a hurry when Rebecca ends up at her old job where she was a dealer at a casino. Rebecca’s never ending string of good luck has caused a cloud of bad luck to permeate the city and the inhabitants are starting to fall prey to the unfortunate mishaps that are now getting worse and worse.
The Flash runs to the casino but accidentally falls and then somehow restrains himself with meta-blocking handcuffs. To make matters even worse, the catastrophic string of bad luck hits STAR Labs and the particle accelerator is re-activated, which means in just minutes the overload will happen again and flood Central City with dark matter.
That’s when Harry gets a bright idea — he reverses the polarity on the accelerator and allows it to overload, which washes the city in anti-matter thus negating the powers that Rebecca had received. Her luck turns back to normal and the Flash is able to put her into custody before placing her at Iron Heights prison. Of course no one mentions whether this latest wave of matter hitting Central City affected anyone else, but for now the day has been saved.
Not Goodbye but See You Later
With Rebecca Sharpe aka Hazard now in prison, Harry theorizes that this latest encounter with a meta-human is no accident at all. After hearing about the arrival of the Samuroid that helped necessitate the return of the Flash, Harry figures out that somebody must have plotted to help Barry return from the Speed Force and create these new meta-humans but to what end?
It’s clear ‘The Thinker’ isn’t ready to divulge his secrets just yet.
Meanwhile, Harry also reveals that he helped form a Team Flash of sorts back at home on Earth-2 for his daughter Jesse, but she eventually kicked him off the squad thanks to being overbearing and overprotective. That’s part of the reason why Harry made the personal visit to Earth-One because he needed to get away from home.
Cisco then reminds Harry that he’ll always have a home and family on Earth-One and perhaps giving Jesse some time and space that she’ll develop into her own kind of hero. Harry agrees and decides to stay on Earth-One for the time beings.
The team is then confronted by Wally West, who actually slipped off to Earth-2 to have a face-to-face conversation with Jesse before returning home. It seems this was all a test for Wally because Team Flash solved this problem with Hazard and didn’t even notice that he wasn’t around.
That’s when Wally reveals that he’s leaving Central City to go stay with a friend in Blue Valley. Much like Jesse has done on her Earth, Wally just wants to find his place in the universe and he can’t do that right now while acting as a third wheel on Team Flash. Wally gives everyone a heartfelt hug goodbye as he exits Central City with no clue on when or if he might return.
And finally, Joe returns home to Cecile, who is cleaning up the house from all the disasters that sprung up while Rebecca was wreaking havoc around town with her power of bad luck. Joe tells her that he’s decided that they can move to a new place but Cecile has opted to stay. She knows how much this house meant to Joe because that’s where he raised his family and it turns out he’s not done yet.
Cecille reveals that she’s pregnant as Joe sits with his jaw nearly on the floor after finding out that he’s about to be a father…again.
‘The Flash’ returns with a brand new episode next Tuesday at 8pm ET on the CW.
