The Flash Season 1 Episode 14 "Fallout" Review

Accept It

Last week's episode was an explosive climax to the Firestorm rises story arc set in motion the moment Ronnie Raymond was introduced. Now like all great nukes, there tends to be quite a lot of fallout. The Nuclear Man definitely has left quite a bit of it, and not the kind you would expect. Now not only do we have Ronnie and Caitlin back together(dashing hopes to all the Snowbarry fans) and Stein with his wife, but we now have one very ambitious general looking for America's next great weapon. Thats right, General Wade Eiling returns to "help America" once again. This time by trying to learn the secret behind the Nuclear Man. But how can he learn the secret if the man has been split into men? Lets find out!


First off I want to talk about Ronnie and Dr.Stein. I loved their interactions with one another, especially when they first broke their bond. I know its more dangerous when they disagree in the Firestorm form, but I always enjoyed a little bickering between the body and mind to all versions of Firestorm. I also found it humorous how Stein began to think more like Ronnie after their seperation. Jittery and Pizza hungry old men just make me laugh for some reason. While these two worked well together, Eiling's return fell a bit flat. Now I get he wants the Firestorm for the sake of America, thats the beauty of the character, but in this he was definitely leaning towards the murderous side. He was to willing to put a bullet in the head of the guy who is called the Nuclear man. Also I didn't understand how he was prepared for Firestorm. I can understand the kinetic needle bomb for Barry, but he knows near nothing to Firestorm, so how is he able to pull out a bomb that nullifies his power? I'm knitpicking at this point, but Eiling could have been portrayed much better this outing.

Storywise, this picks up right after the explosion from last episode and we learn throughout the episode what it means to be Firestorm; what is he and what are his problems? We see both halves of the hero try to return to return to their normal lives, but in this post-particle accelerator world, that is impossible. It made me a little sad nonetheless due to the fact they just reunited with their loved ones, hoping it will all go back to normal. When they finally learn to accept their bond however, Firestorm was glorious(though those eyes, they fit. I wish we could have seen more action from the pair of metahumans against Eiling. The side-stories were also pretty good this week as well, with the exception of one. The discussion of time-travel with Harrison Wells opens up the possibility of a Flashpoint-inspired storyline. This would be an interesting idea to play with, but for now we'll need to wait. The one storyline I had an issue with was with Iris agreeing to look into STAR labs. If they wanted to do something like this then they should have done this when she first received her job at the newspaper. Her storyline is, ironically, moving much to slow in comparison to the rest of them. Besides that one storyline falling flat, the stories were a pretty intriguing set up for the events to come.

FINAL VERDICT
This episode was able to accomplish two things. The first was to end the Firestorm rises arc, and boy was that an epic meta-human arc to end. The second is that it set up for events to come, which kills me knowing we won't have new episodes until March 17th  I loved seeing the issues of Firestorm, and I can't wait to see him again in the season finale. Eiling fell flat this time around, and I do hope he comes back(even though that end credit scene says otherwise). Iris' storyline needs to speed up a little or risk having us lose interest in her character.

That was my review to the Flash! What did you think of it? leave a comment and i'll see you next time!