The Flash Season 5 Episode 17: Time Bomb Review

Ariba BhuvadMarch 20, 2019n/a10 min

For our review of the last episode of The Flash, click here.

Synopsis: Team Flash finds out that suburban mom Vickie Bolen is in danger, and they race to save her; they discover she’s a metahuman who is hiding her abilities from her family; Barry encourages Vickie to share her secret with her family. (CW)

Writers: Kristen Kim and Sterling Gates

Director: Rob Greenlea

Rating: TV-PG

Running Time: 43mins

Airs: Tuesdays at 8pm on Space (Canada)/The CW (United States)

Nora’s secret is finally out, and Papa Barry is not exactly pleased with his future daughter’s indiscretions. Let’s just say Nora is grounded in the worst of ways, and there’s no telling where things are going to from here. I have to say that this episode was slightly better than previous ones, but I still don’t care much for the Cicada angle of it all.

Although Barry and the rest of Team Flash didn’t learn about Nora’s truth until the very end, there was quite a bit going on leading up to it. After the new Cicada popped up last week, everyone was scrambling to figure out exactly who it was. Of course, it’s pretty obvious that it would be Orlin’s niece, Grace (from the future), but hey, we’ll just pretend like we had no idea.

The episode begins with Nora confronting Thawne in 2049 frazzled over the emergence of the new Cicada, and it seems like he had no idea this would happen. He basically tells Nora that the only option she has now is to come clean about everything. This becomes quite the internal battle for Nora throughout the entire episode because telling her father the truth means risking her relationship with a family that hasn’t even technically had her yet. I almost wonder if this entire situation is why things are so rocky between Iris and Nora in the future, but who knows.

The Time Sphere from season 1 made an appearance in this week’s episode as the team learned that is how Grace was traveling to the past. Her reason for coming to the past was to confront the metahuman that killed her parents. There’s just one slight issue though, the metahuman that killed Grace’s parents didn’t mean to and has been hiding her powers from her husband and daughter. Her powers cause things to sort of explode and it was just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Barry tries to convince the woman to come clean to her family (irony, right?) and let the team protect her because the new Cicada was deadset on exacting revenge for her parents’ death. But no one ever listens to good advice, and the new Cicada ends up showing up at the woman’s daughter’s birthday party. Not only does her family learn about her metahuman powers, but is disappointed to learn that she hid it from them all this time.

One more showdown occurs when Grace/new Cicada shows up at the hospital to try and take down the woman. Luckily she fails to do any harm to the woman or her family, but she ends up killing her uncle instead. Yes, that’s right, R.I.P. OG Cicada. I’m not sure I’ll even miss you…

While all this is going down, Sherloque is busy trying to figure out what Nora is hiding–and he does! It turns out that between Nora’s journal, the Time Sphere sketches, and an old video of Thawne, Sherloque figures out what Nora has been doing all this time. Talk about persistence, he never gave up and it ended up working out in his favor.

After the Cicada debacle, Sherloque tells everyone Nora’s truth before she has the opportunity to come clean (I’m not sure she was planning to). He lays out every step of her plan and how it ties back to Thawne, and as much as the rest of the Team wants to believe it’s not true, Barry knows the truth. He wastes no time in locking Nora up and never has a father looked more devastated and heartbroken than Barry after learning the truth.

Kudos to Grant Gustin for killing it in that scene and portraying Barry’s emotions perfectly. He made the entire episode worth watching while giving off plenty of feels. It was a reminder why the show manages to pull off season after season despite having its questionable villains and storylines.

In other parts of this week’s The Flash, Cisco was busy announcing his relationship status to the world while Ralph tried to convince him to bring his girlfriend around the team. While he still didn’t manage to do that by the end of the episode, he will surely come around to it. But hey, we can’t blame the guy for wanting to keep something normal away from the madness of his metahuman life.

Score: 7/10

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