Catching Up: The Flash Episode 421, "Harry and the Harrisons"

Instead of racing toward the season finale, THE FLASH seems to have entered into a slow jog. Seeking some method of attacking Devoe while circumventing all his powers, the team lands on the idea of seeking assistance from Amunet Black (KATEE SACKHOFF) because Devoe won't be able to use Kigore's powers to "hack" her metal fragments. One supposes he couldn't increase their gravity to make them fall, or sonically knock them out of the sky, or alter luck to make them miss, or shrink them to a molecular level, because he has all those powers as well, but they don't seem to have been accounted for.

In other words, the season's over and the writers have checked out.

This episode is split into two plot-like segments: in one, the team seek out Amunet and help her acquire her stolen metal fragments. But Caitlin Snow (DANIELLE PANABAKER) makes a side deal with Amunet -- use her genetic splicer on her to help free her Killer Frost persona, and she'll owe Amunet a favor. They retrieve the fragments, and Amunet gives them a fragmentation grenade to use against Devoe before he sets off his satellite weapon that will lobotomize all mankind. But Amunet also reveals that the gene splicer never worked -- that it's effect on Caitlin before was a placebo affect, and that therefore the key to freeing Killer Frost isn't physical, but psychological. It also means that whatever The Thinker did to Killer Frost, he didn't really do. And since there's no dark matter in Caitlin, we're left wonderuing just how in the world her powers ever manifested in the first place, other than Flashpoint.

There's another plot-like thingy going on alongside this that's even more forgettable. Harrison Wells (TOM CAVANAGH), who has been faster-than-slowly losing his intelligence, calls upon the Council of Wells from the Multiverse to pick their brains for a way to reverse his condition. But they evict him for no longer being smart, prompting Cisco (CARLOS VALDES) to form another council of other versions of Harry -- a Council of Harrisons, who deal more in feeling than thinking. Despite resistance, Harry manages to feel why Devoe has been inactive lately, and gives his empathic revelation to the team, who receive it with less-than-ecstatic news. (His revelation was dead on, however, intuiting that Devoe's inactivity is due to his wife having left him.)

The big ending moment traditionally makes us look forward to the next episode, or something furthering the super-secret plotline of the Mystery Girl from the future. This time it's used to show that Iris's blog is getting lots of reads in Central City, and people are reporting Devoe sightings.

Literal goosebumps.

The final episode has a lot of ground to make up.