Catching Up: The Flash Episode 610, "Marathon"

Welcome back to another episode of "Iris West-Allen and her Amazing Friends." Not that The Flash (GRANT GUSTIN) doesn't make an appearance -- it's his show, titularly. Yes, if a waitress drops another tray at CC Jitters, you can bet The Flash will use his amazing speed to make sure it doesn't hit the floor. He's good for that.

"Marathon" is the first episode post-Crisis, and I end up walking away from it with several questions. I'll try to parcel them out through this recap rather than dump them all at once, tempting as it is.

With the Crisis having been resolved, Cisco (CARLOS VALDES) has several issues to work through. Although he was given his Vibe powers back by the Monitor, that seems to have been a temporary thing because they're gone again, and he's wondering if he'd have been able to sense the Anti-Monitor's activity if he had kept them in the first place. He's dismayed that his friends on Earth-2 are gone, and that none of them ended up on the newly merged Earth-Prime while they did get a whole passel of re-invigorated villains back on the street. He's even compiled his own "Who's Who of the Post-Crisis Earth' manual -- a set of trading cards -- to catalog them.

Okay. How? That's a time-consuming effort. Also, when Iris (CANDICE PATTON) encounters a new vilain...that villain just happens to be in the book: Kimiyo Hoshi, aks Doctor Light (EMMIE NAGATA).

Doctor Light is put on Iris's trail when Iris investigates the theft of a photon rifle from a Central City reserach facility, McCullough Technologies, headed up by Joseph Carver (ERIC NENNINGER). If you think the name "McCullough" is familiar, give yourself a gold star. That's the name of the Flash Rogue known as Mirror Master, who gets a gender swap reimaging in the cliffhanger ending of this episode.

It turns out Joseph is head of a ring of... terrorists? robbers? Let's just go with "bad guys" and he recruits the ones with light-based powers. When Iris first corrals him to get info for her story, he brushes her off. But, since this is Central City where security is of minimal concern, he gives her a badge to his building -- and lets her keep it. Not only that, but when she sees him again in a final confrontation, she tells him she has the badge, and he still doesn't confiscate it from her. Why? I mean, that's not just lazy, that's actively working against your own safety protocols. No wonder the company got robbed.

So apparently S.T.A.R. Labs isn't a security anomaly, it's the norm.

The "bad guy" organization is called Black Hole, and they come after Iris to stop her from exposing what they're up to. Fortunately for her, The Flash steps in and saves the day in an amazing application of super speed and forensic analysis.

Oh. Wait. No, Iris outmaneuvers the guy with the threat of "if anything happens to me my story gets released everywhere." And it works.

So where is the star of the show?

He's on Lian Yu. Yes, ARROW's old stomping grounds. He's there with John Diggle (DAVID RAMSEY) who guests in this episode because Oliver Queen left Barry something in his will -- his first mask. But...but there's a SWEAT STAIN on the mask! That has to mean something! That has to be some sort of hidden clue to some mystery to solve in a mission that Green Arrow passed on to Barry to continue! Right?

Nope. That's just Barry spinning his wheels hoping beyond hope to have something to do.

By the way, Diggle tells Barry his family is planning a move to Metropolis the next week, so these events happen before the crash of the ship with the Green Lantern ring we saw in the last episode of ARROW.

In the final moments of the episode, Iris has a revelation about McCullough and heads off there to get back in with her badge key. She enters the offices of Eva McCullough (who is in office AV3 -- because backward that spells her name, and that's EXACTLY the kind of thing that would identify who is in an office. I'm guessing Toova must have occupied the suite across the hall, and Wonva worked next door). Anyway, Eva's the new Mirror Master and pulls Iris into a mirror before the credits roll.

I'm sure she'll be fine.

After all.

It's her show.