In ‘The Flash’ recap, Barry continues to train Ralph Dibny when a new meta-human shows up in town and Harry gets closer to discovering Clifford DeVoe’s identity…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
Much like Oliver Queen gave Barry Allen lessons on becoming a hero, he’s now returning the favor by helping his former Central City Police Department colleague Ralph Dibny do the same after he was granted meta-human powers following the dark matter wave that washed over a city bus when The Flash returned from the Speed Force.
Of course, Barry has somewhat attempted this role of mentor before when it was time for Wally West to become Kid Flash but that was more of a ‘who can run faster’ kind of situation.
This time around, Barry has to help a guy become a hero who was once a cop dedicated to justice that kind of lost his way over these past few years but now that he’s been granted some extraordinary abilities, it’s time to get him back on track.
Meanwhile, Harry Wells is doing his best to research the true identity behind ‘DeVoe’ — the man who paid Dibny to dig into the Central City mayor a couple of weeks back, which led to his encounter with Team Flash in the first place. Barry was able to remember in his brief peace with Savitar that he mentioned ‘DeVoe’ as one of the villains they had worked to defeat but there was no other information available.
With thousands of people with the last name DeVoe, Harry is left to figure out which one might be the person they are searching for but he’s going to need help and that requires a call to many Earths across the multi-verse.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of ‘The Flash’ titled ‘When Harry Met Harry’…
Save the Day
Barry is still trying to help Ralph get the hang of what it means to be a hero, but it’s not an easy job. For instance after picking up some morning coffee, the new dynamic duo is stopped by a mugger attempting to rob them.
Barry and Ralph discuss their plans to stop him but wait a little too long and the mugger fires at them with his gun. Unfortunately for the would be thief, his bullet ricochets through Ralph’s silly putty like body and shoots right back and hits him in the leg. A second bullet does the same, this time hitting the thief in the ass.
Ralph seems satisfied that the day has been saved, but Barry reminds him that their purpose is to save people first, stop criminals second. He then rushes the thief over to a hospital for treatment.
With the rest of Team Flash dedicated to tracking down this mysterious ‘DeVoe’ character, Barry and Iris get the idea of using hypnosis to try and draw out some memories from Ralph’s experience on the bus that day when the dark matter wave turned all of them into meta-humans. While his memories are vague, Ralph does remember one woman on the bus, who had a black bison on the back of her coat.
That information comes in handy when the meta-human villain of the week shows up because her name is Mina Chayton aka Black Bison (a gender swapped character who opposes Firestorm in DC Comcis) and she’s on the hunt for Native American artifacts that have been stolen from her people and she aims to return them — by any means necessary.
Mina’s powers allow her to transform inanimate objects into real life weapons as she can animate effigies (sculptures or figures that are animal or human) and control them. Barry and Joe get the first whiff of her abilities after an art collector transporting Native American pieces is killed and his blood is found in a tiger statue sitting nearby the murder scene.
A look into the Native American pieces being transported leads the team to some valuable information. They not only identify Mina Chayton as the culprit but realize that she’s trying to reassemble an ancient Bison necklace that belonged to the Sioux tribe. It turns out, Mina was once a successful professor who left teaching to pursue a life as an activist before she turned to violence to recapture stolen pieces from her heritage.
With these new powers, Mina is taking back the Sioux artifacts with brutality and her next target is another art dealer in town who possesses the second piece of the necklace.
When the Flash and Dibny — wearing a vanilla and rather hilarious looking costume made for him by Cisco — show up to foil the crime, Mina is able to get the drop on them by using a suit of armor to attack the man who owns the piece of the necklace. Of course, Barry’s first commitment is to save his life, which results in Mina getting away.
Ralph can’t reconcile how Barry could let the villain escape for the sake of saving this guy’s life but he finally figures out the lessons that he’s been taught when they encounter Mina a second time.
After she tracks down the third piece of the necklace, the Flash and Ralph show up to stop her again and this time she knocks down some power lines to serve as a distraction while she attempts to get way. Unfortunately Barry gets knocked down as well but Ralph is able to latch himself onto Mina’s car and stop her getaway.
Sadly, Ralph ignores the innocent bystanders and a little girl is injured from the falling power lines. It’s only after hearing that she’s in the hospital for the injuries she suffered does Ralph finally start to realize that the primary function of any hero is to save innocent people from harm first and then put the villains behind bars.
The Council of Wells
Back at STAR Labs, Harry is trying to figure out a way to narrow down the search to find this mysterious ‘DeVoe’ amongst a list of thousand potential candidates who could be the super villain pulling the strings behind this latest wave of meta-human attacks.
To help him deduce and find the right person, Harry calls on different versions of himself from throughout the multi-verse including Harrison Wolfgang Wells from Earth-12 — a smarmy German version, H. Lothario Wells from Earth-37, who bares a striking resemblance to Hugh Hefner and finally Wells 2.0 from Earth-22, a world where man and machine have merged to survive. FYI, Wells 2.0 looks strikingly like a Borg from ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’.
Anyways, Harry’s big plan to use this ‘Council of Wells’ to find ‘DeVoe’ starts out as a major catastrophe because none of them get along with each other and before long the entire meeting turns into a shouting match.
That’s when Cisco plays his part in the episode to help Harry understand that each version of himself from a different Earth is still feeling the same insecurities as him. Cisco suggests facing those insecurities and treating each other with kindness rather than bitterness would be a better way to get along and try to find an answer to this problem.
Sure enough, Harry reconvenes the council and this time the four of them are able to come up with a near scientific certainty that the man they are looking for is named Clifford DeVoe and he lives right in Central City.
Of course little do they know that DeVoe and his henchwoman ‘The Mechanic’ have already deduced that this would happen and they even predicted Team Flash figuring out his identity…only it’s taking place slightly sooner than expected.
A Hero in the Making
A despondent Dibny is feeling rather poorly after failing to save the young girl even though he ultimately caught Black Bison and put her behind bars. Barry gives him a pep talk and reminds him that becoming a hero isn’t an overnight process. It takes time and this is assuredly a lesson he’ll never forget again.
The new tag team gets a chance to put this plan into action when Black Bison escapes police custody by turning a tactical dummy against the cops before using it to help free her from jail.
Like a dog with a bone, Mina goes right back after the final piece of that necklace when Barry and Ralph arrive to stop her. This time, Mina animates a full Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton to attack the heroes as well as a security guard keeping an eye on the museum where the necklace was now secured.
This time around, Ralph passes his superhero test as he stops the rampaging dinosaur skeleton from hurting the guard while Barry races out to capture Mina and put an end to her rampage around the city.
Ralph does manage to do one more good thing before spending the evening entertaining the little girl who was hurt in the attack when he tells Barry that he sent the Bison necklace back to the Sioux tribe. Mina may have gone about things the wrong way, but Barry and Ralph both agreed that the artifacts deserved to go back to their rightful owners and that’s where at now.
Meet the Thinker
With Black Bison in jail and Dibny in good hands with his first hero duties in the book, Barry is anxious to track down Clifford DeVoe thanks to Harry’s investigation that reveals his identity.
Barry and Joe arrive at DeVoe’s house, which doesn’t exactly look like a villain’s evil lair, but they knock on the door with no idea what will greet them.
Surprisingly it’s ‘The Mechanic’ wearing a pretty summer dress and she says hello with a smile before calling her ‘husband’ Clifford DeVoe to the door where the police have arrived to ask him a few questions. That’s when DeVoe emerges from the back and he’s bound to a wheelchair — no longer decked out in his metal super suit and flying chair. DeVoe asks them how he can help as Barry and Joe can’t help but look stunned this is either the wrong guy or they are facing a whole new kind of mastermind behind these attacks.
‘The Flash’ returns with a brand new episode next Tuesday night at 8pm ET on the CW
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3YX6C7sNU4&feature=em-uploademail
