RAMON ALVARADO

The Flash returned to television for its fourth season October 10. The season premiere included the return of “The Fastest Man Alive” Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) and a look at his new suit created by Cisco Ramon/Vibe (Carlos Valdes). Viewers were also treated a peek of this season’s big-bad, The Thinker (Neil Sandilands).

 

Season four’s premiere kicked off like many of The Flash’s past episodes. The opening sequence starts off with Team Flash trying to capture a metahuman, this time a returning face, Peek-a-Boo (Britne Oldford).

 

Though Team Flash successfully captures the metahuman, it doesn’t take long for the squad to remember the absence of their most important member: The Flash. The audience learns through the characters’ conversation that Barry Allen/The Flash has been imprisoned in the speed force for six months.

 

Meaning there’s a six month break in between the ending of season three and the beginning of season four. In that time, Kid Flash has taken the mantle of being Central City’s heroic speedster and his sister, Iris West, has taken the role of leading Team Flash.

 

When a flying, armored samurai invades Central City, he tells Kid Flash, Vibe and the CCPD they have 24 hours to bring him The Flash or he will destroy the planet.

 

Team Flash then heads back to Star Labs to recoup. The team is pondering a way to get rid of this samurai since Barry is trapped in the speed force.

 

That’s when Cisco tells the team he has been working on a way to get Barry out of the speed force without ruining Earth 1 entirely, he just needs one more thing. That one more thing is the help of Caitlin Snow (Danielle Panabaker), a.k.a Killer Frost.

 

At first Team Flash thinks they were unsuccessful, until they get a call informing them Barry was found on the street, however he wasn’t in his right mind. It took a major risk from one of the Star Labs crew members to get Barry back in Flash form.

 

With Barry back and faster than ever, he easily defeats the samurai. When the samurai mask is removed, we see that it was some type of robot. Team Flash doesn’t know it, but at the very end of the episode, the audience learns that the samurai was just a tool for this season’s villain, The Thinker. The Thinker is notably the first villain Barry takes on that isn’t a speedster.

 

Now that Barry is back as The Flash and The Thinker is ready to cause mayhem, season four looks primed to bring us something fresh and exciting.

 

The Flash will continue to air on the CW network every Tuesday at 7 p.m. pacific time.