The Flash "Versus Zoom" (REVIEW)
written by Justin Prince (@prince_justin)
This is the fight we’ve been waiting for all season! After the reveal that Jay Garrick was in fact the villainous Zoom, Team Flash has been thrown for a loop. But Jay Garrick and his origins aren’t as simple as being a garden-variety villain. If you remember a few episodes back when Jay brought Caitlin to see his Earth 1 double, he mentioned that his name was Hunter Zolomon. This turned out not to be a just a case of adoption, with the Jay Garrick we’ve known all season to be deceiving Team Flash from the very start, the man was in fact Hunter Zolomon of Earth 2.
Barry Allen faces a monster
For fans of the comic series, you’ll know Hunter Zolomon as the Reverse-Flash to Wally West’s Flash, using the name Zoom this reveal ended up being obvious from the moment they revealed a Hunter Zolomon in the Arrowverse. Speaking of Arrow, this episode of The Flash takes cues from its CW-sister-show including flashback scenes explaining how Hunter Zolomon became a murdering psychopath. Like an ongoing theme among heroes and villains, the notion of being “one bad day” away from becoming the villain. Hunter Zolomon and Barry Allen are parallels of each other from parallel Earths, both saw their mother murdered violently… the difference was while Barry had the West family to help him through his darkest days, Hunter had nobody… and this deficiency of love turned him into a serial killer as opposed to the model citizen Barry turned in to.
“this once squeaky clean hero takes a dramatic turn for the dark side deliciously satisfying ways”
Back to it, Team Flash devises a plan to open up one of the breaches drawing Zoom back to Earth 1. Thanks to Flash training with the tachyon device Wellsobard (season one’s Harrison Wells) taught him to build, Flash is faster than ever… eclipsing Zoom and further bolstering his confidence that he can take him down.
Team Flash is thrown for a loop
The one point I need to make in reviewing this episode is how good Teddy Sears was. Over the past few weeks, I was getting bored with how vanilla Jay Garrick was. He was the quintessential boy scout hero, going out of his way to be the beacon of hope… even without his powers. This got boring fairly fast, and save for a few moments he went speedy… he was just boring. But as Zoom and with Team Flash in the know about everything, this once squeaky clean hero takes a dramatic turn for the dark side in deliciously satisfying ways.
When Zoom uses Barry’s family against him, leveraging Wally’s life for his speed, Barry is faced with a decision he just can’t win. Give up the speed and save Wally, or let Wally die and speed away to fight another day.
The season is coming to a close and with only a few episodes remaining and especially with how this episode ended, it’s going to be an uphill battle for Team Flash.
Zoom kidnaps Wally West
