This review contains spoilers.
5.8 What’s Past Is Prologue
Well, here we are. One hundred episodes of The Flash. Almost five years to the day since we first met Grant Gustin’s Barry Allen on Arrow in The Scientist. It’s been quite a race, and we’re nowhere near the finish line.
There were several ways What’s Past Is Prologue could have gone. The most obvious would have been to really lay on the syrup and turn this into a self-congratulatory fan-centric party. To their credit, they didn’t do it. Instead, The Flash episode one hundred exists firmly to advance the season’s story (which it does, in a couple of surprising ways), and almost gets a little playful with the conventions of anniversary episodes. With all the time-hopping back to specific episodes, could you almost consider this a clip show? I mean, of course not, but I have to wonder if that was anywhere in anyone’s mind when putting this together.
From its format to its defiant insistence on keeping the spotlight on a brand new character (Nora), to the fact that it moved the overall story of the season along better than arguably any episode since week four, and the aforementioned ‘clip show but not a clip show at all’ format, What’s Past Is Prologue sometimes plays like an almost subversive, anti-anniversary episode. For a show that occasionally gets caught up in sentimentality (and not always to its credit), this was a pretty gutsy move.
I sometimes can get a sense (a vibe, if you will) of how an episode will go inside of those first five minutes. I had a good feeling about this one from the start. The opening was a fun way to catch folks up who haven’t seen the last two, somewhat lacklustre chapters. If you’ve been slacking on this show, you could almost jump right in here to check in for the anniversary festivities and go from there.
Was the time travel and MacGuffin logic a little fuzzy? Sure. But when isn’t it when you’re dealing with this stuff? The exposition got its work done, and then it was time to go, as Huey Lewis said, “Back in Time.”
Really, Barry and Nora sneaking around in the background of key moments from this show’s history… shouldn’t work? Instead, it was downright cool seeing things like Thinker and Grodd inserted into the pilot’s origin sequence, or the casual mention of Hartley Rathaway by Wells to Cisco. Some of these bits worked better than others, but all in all, it got things done.
I would like to point out that I’m really into Barry this season. He can be assertive without being overbearing, and he’s every bit the confident, seasoned superhero. On the other hand, it helps that they show Iris talking some sense into him about allowing Nora to do her thing (as well as saving his ass physically and emotionally at key points in history). While Iris didn’t have much to do this week, at least they made it a point to spotlight those moments (and I’ve really enjoyed the evolution of the Iris/Nora relationship). But Barry’s “alright, let’s do it” and then later in the episode, when they know it’s time to go get Cicada, well… if I could have seen just those line deliveries five years ago, I would have known Grant Gustin was the perfect Barry Allen. I’ve loved watching this character mature into someone I absolutely believe could stand shoulder to shoulder with the Justice League.
All of this is good enough. But what really elevates this episode is the ‘season one’ scene with Barry, Nora…and Tom Cavanagh as Eobard Thawne. This is one of the greatest scenes in the history of the show. Why? Because it sums up just how insane the whole Flash timeline is, especially whenever Thawne is involved.
Matt Letscher has done a fine job picking up the Thawne mantle on this show and Legends Of Tomorrow, and he feels very much in line with the comic book version of the character. But nobody does Thawne like Tom Cavanagh. He casually gets right to the heart of how bizarre it must be for this guy to come from a future where he already knows everything that’s going to happen on this show, even though he himself hasn’t experienced the events yet (if he ever will). It’s not just about subtle menace, it’s about the weird, casual, way he rattles his future facts off.
Almost (but not quite) lost in the shuffle of a brilliantly played scene between Cavanagh and Gustin is how, with just a couple of lines of dialogue delivered by Thawne, the show restores the mystery and menace of Cicada. After over-exposing the villain with a maudlin origin story last week, Thawne’s smirking “the one that got away” crack, and the faraway look indicating he knows even more about Cicada, was a nice way to reestablish that tone that had been set in the early episodes of the season. Later on, Cicada reveals he intends to kill himself once his mission is complete, which certainly adds another weird layer to the character. Let’s see if they can carry all this into the second half.
But the season one wonders didn’t end there. Cavanagh has leaned so hard into the comedic aspects of the various Wells over the last couple of years that it’s easy to forget just how great he was as a villain. His Wells/Thawne is still the most well-realised baddie this show has ever had, and What’s Past Is Prologue really drives home that nobody has even come close, not even on the show’s very best day. But let’s not forget how compelling that version of ‘Wells’ was, either. Able to switch from affable, mysterious charm to suspicious, probably evil dick with nothing more than a sidelong glance, and yet I was always still left hoping that he isn’t a secret villain in those earliest episodes, no matter how much evidence there was to the contrary. And yes, Tom Cavanagh directed this episode, but the spotlight would have been on him anyway, and you can thank a smart script by Todd Helbing and Lauren Certo for the reminder of just what made the early Wells days some of the best in the show’s history.
Is it perfect? Not at all. Killer Frost miraculously saving the day was an incredibly lazy moment (although it was nice that Danielle Panabaker got something to do), and I had a chuckle when Cicada just casually strolls out the hospital door in full gear. It’s kind of funny when a show that has done powered superheroic action perhaps better than any other in TV history (ok, fine, I will also accept Supergirl as an answer) stumbled a little in its only big superheroic action moment for the big anniversary. It felt kind of obligatory, and didn’t quite live up to those previous scenes. All in all, these are pretty minor complaints.
And that ending with Nora and Thawne in 2049? Well, all my notes say is “oh shit.” After my ode to Cavanagh as Wells in this review, I have to wonder…is Sherloque a red herring? For that matter, is Cicada? Are we going to end up with the return of the original Reverse-Flash as the real threat for the second half of this season?
What’s Past Is Prologue is an elegant celebration of the weirder elements of this series over the last four plus years, leaning hard into the time travel/speed force/dark matter mumbo jumbo, and exploring key pieces of the show’s history with friendly nods rather than celebratory high fives. You could certainly make the argument that series stalwarts Iris, Cisco, and Caitlin got shortchanged in the course of all of this. For all of its crazy conceptualising, What’s Past Is Prologue is about as low key a one hundredth episode as you’re ever going to see from a superhero show. And you know what? I don’t think I would want it any other way.