‘The Flash’ season 2, episode 3 review: Jesse L. Martin shines; is Harrison Wells back?
Did “The Flash” really need to have a Captain Cold feature at this point? It’s a worthy question, and it goes back to what is one of the biggest catch-22s about launching an ambitious spin-off like “Legends of Tomorrow”: In creating the show, you are simultaneously introducing a great deal of risk that you will waste so much time setting it up that you harm the original product.
Clearly, The CW is going all-in on this new series, given that a certain percentage of this story was spent trying to make Leonard Snart somewhat more sympathetic. Him being “kidnapped” was really him being recruited by his father Lewis (Michael Ironside) to go on a specific mission, one that he was forced into by bomb material being injected into his sister. Barry and the team at STAR Labs had to help her, while at the same time also making sure that Lewis did not get everything that he wanted. You knew how this was going to end: We would eventually see Leonard show at least a few heroic tendencies, just as we would see Cisco be the one to really help Lisa out.
The one unfortunate thing is that most of this story just feels like filler for now, and we spent the majority of the hour waiting to see Zoom and the aftermath of that Harrison Wells cliffhanger from last week … or at least something more than Harrison showing up at the very end. This story was entertaining enough, but not something we’re going to remember in a few weeks.
The biggest moment for us this week was Jesse L. Martin killing it in a scene where Joe admitted to Iris that her mother is still out there. The two parties are going to meet, and that may be something we see in the near future. As for some other highlights, Barry got Patty Spivot’s phone number, and Jay Garrick helped to stabilize the Breach in a way that he could return to Earth-2. He decided not to do it yet, but that is clearly on his radar.
As for the big cliffhanger (aside from Wells’ arrival), Martin Stein is malfunctioning! His Firestorm lost his other half, and next week we will see a search for the other half. Grade: B-.
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