WARNING: The following article contains spoilers from The Flash Season 5 Episode 21 titled “The Girl With The Red Lightning”. Do not read if you have not seen the episode or read ahead at your own risk.
With the season finale of The Flash just one week away, Team Flash tried to do everything to stop Cicada II aka Grace, but they might have unleashed something much worse in the process.
Tuesday’s episode kicked off in the future with Thawne’s countdown clock reaching 0:00. I was a tad surprised by this considering I thought that would not happen until the season finale. The guard comes in and tells him that after 15 years, his life is about to end. But more on that in moment.
Elsewhere, Barry and the rest of the team need to stop Cicada II from completing her quantum tunnel converter, a device that would allow her to kill metahumans nationwide. The team finds out she needs one final piece – a hyper conduit prototype – but Barry is too late and she steals it from a lab. So now she has everything she needs and that just spells bad news.
Back at S.T.A.R. Labs, Ralph makes a really interesting point, asking why Thawne would have Nora come back to create a Cicada that’s more powerful. Barry and the team brush him off and that decision bites them in the ass at the end of the episode.
The team knows they need a safe place for the metas and they decide on the CCPD. Thanks to Nora getting into Grace’s mind via their dark matter connection, Cicada II is headed right for the station with the meta killing device. Barry and the team – minus Nora – head to the CCPD to stop the villain.
As they arrive to the station, they engage Cicada II in a fight, giving Cisco time to disable the device and take out the dagger to destroy it. Grace says she never needed the dagger before she came back to 2019, which got Ralph thinking.
Ralph remembers back to his visit to 2049 and realizes Thawne had Cicada’s dagger under his vest the entire time. Suddenly, Thawne’s plan was crystal clear: the dagger was used to capture Thawne and is dampening his powers. He used Nora and manipulated the timeline to help Team Flash destroy it, so he could be free just as he was going to be executed.
Anyway, Barry was about to blast the dagger to hell but Ralph screams to not shoot it as the episode ends.
Episode Notes
- The other plot of the episode involved Joe West taking over the CCPD for Captain Singh, who was away at City Hall. Joe struggled to really be a leader until he talked with his wife. Basically, this is all setting up Joe becoming the captain in the future.
- The fact Thawne had all of this planned out 15 years in advance. Talk about a master manipulator and planner.
What did you think of the episode? Let me know in the comments!
The Flash airs its Season 5 finale next Tuesday at 8/7c on The CW.