The Flash – Attack on Central City

By: Stacy Miller

The episode opens with Barry (Grant Gustin) having cooked up a fabulous breakfast for Iris (Candice Patton).  Saving the world from Meta Humans and criminals is extremely important, but having super speed comes in handy for doing something romantic for the woman you love.

Meanwhile, H.R. (Tom Cavanagh) is decorating STAR Labs for Friend’s Day – the equivalent of Valentine’s Day on Earth-19. Harrison doesn’t appreciate the sentiment, but then again Wells doesn’t appreciate anything H.R. does. Suddenly, Gypsy (Jessica Camacho) bursts through a breach and immediately attacks Team Flash.  Harrison is able to subdue her with a fancy stun gun type weapon. When she awakes in the pipeline, Gypsy doesn’t know why she is on Earth-1. She was on Earth-2’s Africa investigating a breach.  It seems that Grodd must have used mind control to get her to do his bidding. Pesky gorilla needs to go off somewhere and eat a banana.

Grodd is in Central City planning his invasion.  This is bad on several fronts.  Giant gorillas attacking the city is so not a good thing and also if Grodd’s army does attack that’s just another part of the future Barry didn’t change, which puts them closer to Iris’ impending death. Jesse (Violett Beane) tells her dad that she wants to move to Central City and Harrison seems okay with it.

Cisco (Carlos Valdes) wants Gypsy to help them fight Grodd, but she says that the battle isn’t her fight and just wants to return home. In order to find out where Grodd is planning on attacking, Team Flash decide to have Cisco vibe the future.  The Flash, Kid Flash (Keiynan Lonsdale) and Jesse Quick arrive and the location Cisco saw to stop Grodd.  But the mind controlling monkey does his thing again and speaks through Joe (Jesse L. Martin) to get Barry’s foster father to shoot himself in the head.  Thank God for super speed as Barry is able to stop the bullet from blowing Joe’s brains out. Team Flash realizes that Grodd never intended to attack there and only wanted to distract them from his real target. Since Grodd was also inside Harry’s head, he is able to make a suggestion in order to recall the memories to learn Grodd’s next move. Harry also tells Wally that he is ill and may be dying, but asks him not to tell Jesse. Later, Wally is in the pipeline and tells Jesse that he doesn’t think she should move to Central City because her father is dying.  And Jesse bursts into an uncontrollable fit of sobbing?  No, she’s actually angry with Harrison and accuses him of lying to Wally.

Harry finishes the device he is working on to help restore Joe’s memories so he’ll be able to tell them Grodd’s next move. Once Joe is connected to the device, West is able to draw a sketch of Grodd’s next target. He is General McNally (Paul Jarrett) and is in charge of a military missile because Grodd took control of the general’s mind to force him to activate the missile.  But Barry wonders if there is a similar solution to stopping Grodd: The Flash can kill him.  He reasons that if Grodd is dead then the future where Iris is killed won’t come to fruition.  However, even if he is able to save her life Iris won’t let Barry kill because it’s not him or The Flash.

It’s a race against time when The Flash arrives at the military base because in order to stop the missiles from launching he needs to put in the code to stop them. And oh yeah, he has very little time to figure out what is the right code.  Good thing Barry is The Flash and has super speed.  He tries every known numerical combination to discover the correct one. It’s always interesting to see how long seconds last when a hero on a television show is trying to diffuse bomb. The Flash stops the missiles from going off. But by this time Grodd is preparing his army for the attack on Central City.  I found it amusing that for an episode titled “Attack on Central City” that the actual attack didn’t occur until more than halfway into it. So, The Flash, Kid Flash and Jesse Quick go back downtown to fight Grodd’s army while Cisco travels to Earth-19 to again ask Gypsy to help.  It’s obvious that Gypsy likes Cisco.  Although she doesn’t join the fight, she sends something better and gets Solivar to come back to Earth-1 to fight Grodd.  Yes, because two apes fighting is a hundred times more exciting that one huge gorilla fighting three tiny humans. Solivar defeats Grodd, but shows mercy and doesn’t kill him thanks to The Flash.

Having successfully stopped the gorilla’s invasion of Central City, it’s time for some goodbyes and returns back to their Earths: Gypsy to Earth-19 and Harrison back to Earth-2 after giving Jesse his blessing to stay on Earth-1. I’m going to miss seeing H.R. and Harrison together.  I know it’s only one actor playing both parts, but Tom Cavanagh brings such distinctive character traits to them that it feels like two different people.  I especially love how Harrison is always pointing out that he thinks H.R. is a moron.

The episode concludes with Barry getting down on one knee and proposing to Iris. But we’ll have to wait until the next episode to get her answer. And Wally goes to Big Belly Burger for Jesse, but runs into Savitar instead.  Uh oh…this can’t be good!