The Flash 2x17 "Flash Back" Review (With Pied Piper!)

Let the brotp fanfic writing commence! #thebaes

Holy Harry Potter! That was insane!!! Prepare for spoilers and fangirling!!! (I promise, I will attempt to keep my exclamation marks to a minimum) This is kind of long so I'm making it into two parts. This will be a spoiler review. The next post will be an Easter Egg review. It will show all the little details that relate to the comics or other parts of the show. What you're about to read is a step-by-step walk through of the episode, with my opinions at each bend. If you guys like this 2-part review layout, I'll continue to do it for more episodes. At least the big ones with major Rogues.

Cisco's Catbug shirt is life.

 

So, let's start out with a quick summary of tonight's episode, "Flash Back", of season 2. Or season 1, kind of. "Flash Back" is exactly what it's name implies, one giant flashback to episode 1x11, a time where Harrison Wells was Eobard Thawne and Eddie was still alive and Zoom wasn't even in the equation. Barry, in a desperate need for speed, attempts to travel back in time to speak with his old mentor, the Reverse Flash, about a formula to make him run faster. He succeeds in the time travel part, but causes a lot of problems along the way.

"Caught you again." (Flash from the future)

"Wait What?"

 

Time for some juicy details. Barry first arrives in the past to see his old self battling his foe, Hartley Rathaway, also known as the Pied Piper(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). There is a series of déjà vu moments as clips from "The Sound and The Fury" are shown at different angles, but Barry wastes no time in knocking out the past Flash and taking over his identity. Instead of the long, drawn out fight shown in the original episode, future Barry is easily able to detain Hartley and put him behind bars, err, glass. Barry, remembering that Hartley has explosives in his earbuds, forces Pied Piper to take them out, thus avoiding a future battle with him. Eobard Thawne, disguised as Dr. Wells, is very suspicious as to how Allen knew about the bombs, but Allen plays it off as luck. Honestly, Barry is a horrible actor. He should stick to the CSI and hero work.
 

 

Hartley looking adorable as usual.

 

It's about then that the time wraith decides to come and look for Barry at the police station. What is a time wraith? Glad you asked. Time wraiths are these terrifying, creepy ghost-zombies that don't like it when speedsters mess up the time stream. Eobard explains to Barry (who at this point has already figured out that Barry is Barry from the future because the horrifying time wraith showed up), that the only reason Barry hadn't been caught by one when he time traveled before was because he got lucky. So, Barry is forced to deal with this monster all the while trying to convince everyone else who still thinks he's the present (past?) Barry that he is, in fact the present/past Barry. And he has to convince Eobard to help him with his speed by saying that Eobard gets to go back home in the future when in reality he actually gets killed because his descendant/Barry's love interest's boyfriend shoots himself. Confusing? I know. 

Eobard Thawne discover's Barry is from future (PS: Awesome scene).

 

Skip ahead a few minutes and the time wraith strikes again. This time it attacks Cisco, Caitlin, and Hartley at Star Labs. (It seems to me like the time wraith is causing more problems than Barry.) Luckily it's Pied Piper to the rescue! He puts on his awesome gloves and emits a certain sound frequency that sends the time wraith flying for its life. This is actually a really totally amazingly awesome moment, because we get to see Hartley have his first scene leading up to him becoming a good guy!!! At this point in the episode I already knew they were going to make Hartley turn hero. I mean honestly, he's the one that goes straight in the comics. I love him as a Rogue, but making him a good guy made me so happy happy I swear (! x infinity).
 

 Forget Zoom, Zombie-Flash is 10 times more scary.

 

In the end, a bunch of stuff happens, but basically Barry just gets a chip from Eobard with all the speed info and returns back the future. Yay, problem solved! Unfortunately...no. When Barry arrives in the present, the time wraith is there waiting for him.  Luckily it's Pied Piper to the resuce... again! Aparently all that screwing around with the time stream left Hartley as, what did I tell you, a hero!!! Hartley is so adorable as a hero. He gives off a kind of naïve, super cheerful, Atom vibe. But he pulls it off so much better than Ray Palmer (sorry Atom fans). Plus, he says some stuff about his parents that I really want to talk about, but I'll dive into that in the Easter Egg portion I'll be posting Thursday.

Pied Piper doing the Monster Mash. Probably.

 

So, that basically sums up the episode! I really liked what they did Pied Piper's character. I was kind of hoping they would make him a regular on team Flash, but considering they just added Harry and Jesse, I suppose they can't afford that big of cast. When the Rogues do finally decide to have an official team up, it will be interesting to see what stance Hartley will take. Will he stay as a hero forever or turn villain? And if he turns villain, will it be temporary or permanet? Write what you are hoping for in the comments below.

As a normal Flash fan, I give this episode 7 lightning bolts out of 10.

As a Rogues fan, I give this episode 9 and 1/2 sound vibrations out of 10.