Season two of The Flash has been perfectly enjoyable so far, but it’s been missing something that gave the first season a strong narrative drive: a fantastic villain. The search for Reverse-Flash carried so much weight to it thanks to his involvement in the death of Barry’s mother, and as events revealed themselves throughout the season, that story became even more emotionally charged. As an antagonist, Zoom just doesn’t have that going for him.
Thankfully, “Enter Zoom” has made some strides towards making Zoom a worthy adversary (it doesn’t hurt having Tony Todd’s “chainsaw in a pile of gravel” voice). The final showdown with Barry has given us our first real taste if what kind of a villain Zoom is. Not just in regards to how powerful he is (catching Barry’s lightning bolt was a phenomenal, Oh shit!” moment), but what kind of a personality he has. He’s vain about being the true “fastest man alive”and wants to humiliate Barry as much as he wants to kill him. This leads me to a new bit of theorizing about Zoom’s identity:
Is Zoom Barry Allen from Earth-2?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t remember seeing or hearing anything about Earth-2’s Barry as of now. The prevailing theory about Zoom’s identity has always been Eddie Thawne, and seeing how Zoom is so corpse-like in appearance, that would still seem like the safe bet. But in watching this episode, there was a shot where Zoom’s suit looked to be a very, very dark red instead of the black it’s looked like in other pictures. If so, this would be a really great twist and I’d love to see Grant Gustin playing an evil version of himself.
I wonder how Gustin’s role on the show is going to change with him being paralyzed by Zoom. I know that Wally West is due to show up sometime soon, so is Barry going to become this season’s Harrison Wells; mentoring a new and inexperienced Flash? If so, I hope it’s for a short period of time. We also have the possibility of Harry’s daughter becoming a speedster sometime soon (did you catch her getting called Jessie Quick? See my “Unfavorite moment” section below), so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Barry isn’t sidelined for too long.
I’m also hoping that we’ll be made aware of Zoom’s identity by the halfway point of this season. Even though he’s proven himself to be a malicious entity, he still needs something extra to make him as enjoyable to hate as Reverse-Flash.
You’ll notice that I didn’t talk about the majority of this episode which involved training Linda Park to pretend to be Dr. Light. Honestly, the bulk of this episode wasn’t doing a whole lot for me. All the juicy stuff was jam-packed into the end, so if you’d like to chat about all the non-Zoom related stuff that happened in this episode, I’ll be chilling out in the comments.
Also, next week gives us the return of Grodd. Time to get excited.
Favorite moment: Zoom speeding a severely beaten Barry around town to show off the Scarlet Speedster’s broken body. That was grade-A villainy right there.
Unfavorite moment: “That’s my Jess, always so… quick.” Okay, I’m all for the abundance of comic book references, but sometimes they come off a little forced.
Next Episode: Gorilla Warfare