The Flash Season 5: 4 Ups & 1 Down From 'Seeing Red'

2. Seeing Red

If the purpose of any episode is to accelerate the story, up the ante and make us even more invested in the show we’re watching, then ‘Seeing Red’ ticked all the boxes. It kicked things off in the same middling place that the Team Flash/Cicada saga has been all season before slowly increasing the tension, as though it had spent all this time building up to this moment, before pulling the trigger.

The moment that Cicada broke Nora’s back, he was no longer just a grudge-holding metahuman that the heroes of Central City were determined to overcome, he was the archenemy of The Flash and, even more importantly, the man who harmed Barry Allen’s daughter. Similarly, in that moment, Barry wasn’t a masked superhero that vowed to keep the residents of Central City safe, he was an enraged father that was willing to do anything, even kill, to keep his daughter safe.

Much like Supergirl this week, The Flash finally remembered that it’s at its best when the antagonism directly impacts the core characters and, as a result, the rivalry between Team Flash and Cicada has finally escalated to a degree that it’s starting to become as gripping as some of the season’s other mysteries. It’s starting to feel like the main event that it should have been from the start and is no longer just a present-day footnote to a season devoted to the future.