Duck Fox

There cannot exist a hero without a villain. It’s a common adage in popular culture that villains and heroes feed off one another, existing together in some form of twisted symbiosis. The best heroes—whether they be of the “super” variety or the more mundane type, like police officers, firefighters and soldiers—have excellent, highly compelling foils. The Flash has a great hero for its main character. It has yet to present us a villain who is even memorable. Last week’s installment could get away with the terrible villain by focusing on the relationship between Barry and Joe, but this week relies heavily on themes the villain is explicitly representing.

Kyle Nimbus was an inmate literally sitting in the gas chamber before the infamous accelerator explosion. While the gas suffused the chamber, the accelerator was killing Caitlin’s boyfriend, Ronnie Raymond, and unleashing metahuman hell upon the unsuspecting population of the Gemstone cities. Nimbus gained gas powers which he decides to use to knock off everyone involved in his arrest and imprisonment. It’s a testament to the actors that they can explain and interpret his motivations without rolling their eyes. Nimbus is the epitome of cliché, but the show could have still at least created fun and diverse action sequences to explore his powers even if his characterization was just “psycho murderer”. Unfortunately, the most we see Nimbus do is turn into green mist and move through people. Even the method of defeating him boils down to… Wait until he gets tired. It’s hard to overstate how much of a supreme fail this is on the part of a show I was beginning to enjoy. 

Of course, staking the terms of an episode on its villain is doing a disservice to the other characters and themes that are explored. So… what else did “Things You Can’t Outrun” really want to say? Considering the title, it’d be easy to think the reference was to grief and regret. Joe West is reviewing footage of interviews Barry’s father gave, now that he’s certain Barry was right all those years ago. He even decides to visit Papa Allen by the episode’s end. While there’s poignancy to seeing Barry’s father interact with Joe and, in a later scene, his son, we don’t really learn anything new from their scenes. Thankfully, the S.T.A.R. Labs storyline is much more interesting. For starters, we get a lot of new information the night of the accelerator explosion. Turns out Ronnie Raymond (Robbie Amell of the sorely missed The Tomorrow People), Caitlin’s dead boyfriend, wasn’t supposed to be at the lab that night. He just wanted to visit his fiancé when the reactor started tripping balls, and he volunteered to engage the shutdown valve. Amell does an excellent job creating a character we genuinely care for with his boyish charm and coy wit, especially given his limited screen time. He and Panabaker really make this shortly remembered relationship ring true. I’m even more inclined to appreciate Cisco after the episode, since we learn Ronnie told him to keep the reactor door shut if he didn’t make it back in two minutes. Cisco channels courage and conviction I didn’t know he had by refusing to let Ronnie’s sacrifice be in vain. Just as Caitlin struggles to run from her depression after Ronnie dies, Cisco is struggling with his guilt. 

The purpose of all this reliving is to figure out a way to use the accelerator to contain the metahumans Barry faces every week, a necessary evil unless Barry plans on killing them all (he doesn’t). The end result, of a prison to house Kyle Nimbus (AKA The Mist), is that we see the characters able to fully put the painful memories of the accelerator behind bars and throw away the key as well. But this single proficient plot thread isn’t enough to stave off the feeling of aimlessness The Flash is beginning to conjure. Iris West is still trying to hide her and Eddie Thawne’s relationship for no conceivable reason. She mentions she didn’t want to define the relationship (“DTR” for all you cool kids that also watch MTV’s Awkward. What? No one? Alright then…) just yet, but it’s justification worthy of an eyeroll rather than genuine consideration. Beyond that, we still don’t have an idea of who Iris West is without focusing on the men in her life. It’s fine to have a love interest, but give her something other than romance to focus on. Laurel Lance over on Arrow is a successful District Attorney pursuing bad guys without having to put on a hood when the series starts, and now she’s beginning to go the hero route! The only thing I know about Iris West is how she feels about the men in her life. Three episodes in, this shouldn’t be a thing. 

While the third outing a TV series shouldn’t be expected to be a masterpiece, this show has the same creative team as Arrow, one of TV’s most compelling dramas with well written characters—both heroes and villains. If The Flash is to have any hope of being successful, it needs to up the ante on the bad guys and give us a reason to care for all the characters.