By Mike McCarthy
The Flash: Rogue Time Review… Warning Spoilers below!!
Once Barry hit that wormhole and went back in time 36 hours, it was obvious that no good could come from him knowing the future. Barry kissing Iris and showing her his secret, Cisco finding out about Dr. Wells’ secret and being killed, the tsunami, all of which came to fruition based upon events beforehand. None of that happens in this episode, it all goes to crap Barry when he comes out of the wormhole.
The whole episode revolves around Barry’s time travel back to the day before when Mardon’s brother shows up and started causing havoc. Other than that specific part of the day before, everything goes awry. When Barry shows at the morgue like he did the day before, he starts spouting off exactly what happened, and Joe immediately gets suspicious on how the hell he knows what happened when he had just arrived there. After heading back to Star Labs, Barry once again starts repeating everything that Caitlin and Cisco had said, verbatim and at in sync with the others. Wells immediately notices and pulls him aside to ask him what is going on. After Barry explains, Wells tells him that going back one day can’t cause too many problems to the time continuum but to keep everything to himself, and to do everything exactly as he did the day before. Now we all know that is definitely not gonna happen, especially knowing what Barry knows about Iris’ feelings and Captain Singh being shot with a bolt of lightning and paralyzed.
Trying to speed up the process of getting to Mardon, and stopping the destruction that could occur, Barry goes looking for and finds Mardon in an old hideout and locks him up in the Star Labs containment facility. Dr. Wells straight out tells Barry that he may have stopped that disaster from happening, but only worse things could happen by disturbing the time-space continuum, and let’s just say that he is pretty correct on that. Did someone say disaster? Welcome back Captain Cold and Heat Wave to Central City and they aren’t alone. The two of them take out a mob boss and make plans to have some fun, the way that only they would know how.
With the capture of Mardon, and not having to be at the lab, Cisco has no reason to skip his brother’s birthday party this time. Caitlin goes with him, and it’s obvious that Dante is the favorite son of the Ramon parents. Dante makes a few snide comments to Cisco which just pisses him off and he and Caitlin take off. Cisco meets up with Barry at a bar, after Barry breaks it off with Linda, thinking that he is going to be with Iris very shortly. A woman comes over and starts to flirt with Cisco, so Barry takes off. She takes him back to her place, come to find out that it’s Snart’s sister. Snart and Mick had kidnapped and beaten Dante to force Cisco to make their guns from before for them. The sister, Lisa wants a pretty and toxic gun and wants it to be gold. They use these new toys to rob a casino that was once run by the mob boss they had killed earlier in the episode. Barry hears what is going in and rushes in and clears the room and then grabs Lisa aka Gold Glider and has her dead to rights. Barry lets her go when he finds out that Snart has Cisco.
Barry had met Iris for coffee and starts pushing very hard about how he knows how she feels about him and how she can’t stop thinking about him. Now most girls are not too keen on that kind of pressure, especially ones that have been your best friend forever and who has already told you that they aren’t interested in you that way. When Barry shows up at the casino with the police squad, Eddie walks over to him and cold cocks him for the way he was acting towards Iris. Singh puts an end to it quickly and Barry takes off to the Lab. Becoming very upset and distraught with everything not happening the way that he wanted or remembered, Barry confides in Wells about everything that had happened the day before. It is a butterfly effect situation here, you change one single thing and everything goes crazy. Barry, knowing that he goes back in time and tries to save his mother years in the future, is told by Wells that if he actually does go back and save Nora, how many people will die and how much will change by changing that event.
Now thinking about Wells has said, and obviously his motives for the future, what could change. He could no longer be the Flash, he wouldn’t live with Joe and iris and could possibly never meet Cisco, Caitlin or Dr. Wells. On the other hand, metahumans could potentially not be created by the particle accelerator exploding and people would go on living a normal life. Barry would have his mother and father in his life through all of his childhood, but who knows what tragedy could happen otherwise.
Snart is threatening to kill Dante if Cisco doesn’t give up the real identity of the Flash. he takes his cold gun and freezes Dante’s fingers to the first stage of hypothermia. Having already given up the identity, Cisco shows up STAR Labs and lets the team know what he has done, and that he is leaving forever so he doesn’t cause anymore problems. Barry hugs Cisco and tells him that he doesn’t blame him for trying to save his brother and understands. Now in the previous episode, we all know that Wells killed Cisco when he was testing the containment field trying to figure out why and how it may have failed before on Reverse Flash. Wells bring him down to the containment field this time to tell him, that they are all humans and make mistakes and that they all do what they can for family. Wells once again tells him that he thinks of him as a son, but this time does not kill him afterwards.
The real reason that Snart went after the casino was for them to take all of their money and move it, so they could rob it all from one place and get it all. Barry and the team figure this out and go after them right away, and grabs Snart off his motorcycle and takes him into the middle of nowhere. Confronting him face to face, man to man, Snart calls out Barry by name and says that if anything happens to him, his computer will upload the secret identity to the internet. Barry very calmly tells him that he could lock him up at anytime in their facility, and that if he stopped killing people and if him and his Rogues stay out of his way, they will have no more problems. Snart agrees and Barry goes back to Central City.
So not only has Barry screwed up his chance with Iris, he basically ran himself right back into the friendzone, as quickly as he got out. So as we said before, the butterfly effect basically ruined any chances, as of yet anyway that Barry had with Iris, and now he has no girlfriend since he dumped Linda. Barry is single again, Captain Cold and Heat Wave are back and Barry is growing suspicious of Dr. Wells and what he may have done in the past. On the plus side, Cisco is still alive due to the changes that Barry had made. So no matter how you look at it, the world is even once again with it’s good and bad. Making some morally different choices then he would normally make has made Barry more of a badass in the sense that he does what he wants, but still makes the right choices for everyone involved. No hero would’ve let Captain Cold go, but to keep his identity safe and basically saying I can kick your ass anytime leveled the playing field. Season is getting better and better and no going down from here. See you next Tuesday at 8PM .
All photos courtesy of CW