The Flash season 5 episode 19 review: Is Nora evil? Thomas’ sacrifice
While we’re sure that these two would’ve loved all of the time in the world to have more conversations on this, there are two things that make that a tad complicated. For starters, it seemed as though Older Grace kidnapped younger Grace, which has to be blowing up a time continuum somewhere. Also, Thomas Snow a.k.a. Icicle was back in town causing a little bit of chaos. Because of his arrival, Caitlin was forced to do something that she often tries to avoid — work with Dr. Tannhauser, her mother, in order to try to get answers, and also to survive.
What happened over the course of the night is that Icicle eventually kidnapped both Caitlin and her mother, which forced the two of them to try and work together while he worked overtime in order to figure out a way to silence the good part of his personality, and maybe others’, for good.
Is Icicle a good villain? He’s certainly formidable enough, but his biggest issue is that he’s underdeveloped. We’ve only seen a little bit of Kyle Secor this season and because of that, it’s hard to be as invested in what’s going on with this character as we should be. That doesn’t change the fact that the culmination of this episode, watching Barry try to do what he can in order to save Caitlin’s mom from a cryogenic chamber, was any less exciting. The same goes for watching Icicle and Killer Frost battle it out in an ice battle that took to the skies. As cool as this battle was, it was actually Thomas who was able to save the day. When Caitlin was in danger, the kinder part of him took over and then won out.
Yet, the victory here was ultimately short-lived as shortly after Thomas’ victory against his second self, Cicada II arrived and he sacrificed himself to save his daughter. Apparently, being a father of a series regular is one of the worst things you can be on The Flash. Ask Barry about it.
Dibny and Iris’ quest in the future
While we know that there was a lot of serious stuff at the center of what Iris and Barry were going through, we’ll admit that we had ourselves some great fun watching Iris work with Ralph in order to make his way back to the future. Ralph hasn’t really been used all season for much, so this was fun!
However, soon after that things started to take a little bit of a dramatic turn. Earlier on in the episode, we saw Thawne introduce Nora to the idea of the Negative Speed Force, a way for her to go back to Barry undetected. However, in the process of this, what he didn’t tell her was that venturing back through said speed force was going to change her. It filled her with rage and when Iris arrived to see her at Thawne’s cell, all she could do was fixate on her father’s absence before tearing off in a rage.
The aftermath of everything
With Thomas gone, it does seem as though Caitlin and her mother are doing their best to bond in a way that they did not before. Meanwhile, Barry and Iris decided that it was time for a proper conversation all about what happened, including her decision to travel to the future. Iris concurred with him that Thawne is manipulating Nora, and he made it clear that he shouldn’t have made a unilateral decision.
In the closing seconds of the episode, we saw Nora return to the present-day timeline (seemingly evil), while we got another appearance of Grace with her younger self.
CarterMatt Verdict
Tonight’s The Flash was held back slightly by the absence of Cisco, who has basically become a secondary character on this show this year and it’s not entirely clear why. The rest of the story was compelling, though Thomas’ death could’ve been so much more if the show used him with a little greater regularity.
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