This week on The Flash, Nora started to see her mother in a new light — thanks to a sneaky Cecile and a fearless Iris.
After the events of last episode (in which Nora revealed that Future Iris dampens her daughter’s speedster powers), Nora goes off the grid for a stretch, crashing at Joe and Cecile’s. And even when she pitches in to play hero, her lack of training nearly smokes an elderly couple on the street. Iris calls out “Miss Thing” for skipping training sessions, and Nora rails that she cannot listen to her mother’s voice anymore — and that she had gotten quite sick of it in the future as well, always telling her “No.”
Nora tries to sulk and badmouth Mom at the West house, but Cecile isn’t having any of it. She then tasks Nora with helping out with IKEA-style crib assembly (a little late for that?), in trade for anecdotes about her dad that aren’t in any museum. Later, we see Nora completely endeared by all the stories Cecile has shared (via Joe, who may be off-screen for a stretch) — only to realize that they have all actually been about Iris!
Nora’s epiphany that she has given Mom a bum rap is cemented during the final face-off with the Meta of the Week, Rag Doll (played by the truly bendy Troy James). When Rag Doll pushes Barry off the roof of a building, Iris leaps after her husband! Mid-freefall, she catches up to Barry (is that how physics works? I forget) and gingerly unlocks the meta-cuffs, allowing him to power up and save both their lives. Nora finds it all very schway, and later at STAR Labs she is seen flipping through the Iris-centric scrapbook that Cecile gave her.
“Look, Nora, I am not that person in the future,” Iris says, sitting down next to her daughter. “I am not going to say no. i want you to live your life. And I want you to be a part of mine. No secrets and lies, just us, being who we are today.” And like that, mother and daughter embark on a “really great path.”
Elsewhere in the episode:
* While following a lead on Thomas Merkel aka Rag Doll, Barry turned the investigative outing into a “date night” by inviting Iris to dance with him at a ritzy gala — thus giving them the “first dance” they never got. (How did Oliver and Felicity not cut in?!)
* With Barry kidnapped/powerless, Cisco nursing bad vibes more than ever, Nora unreachable and Killer Frost still on ice, Ralph valiantly stepped up to join Iris in saving Barry from Rag Doll — by swinging him and Iris to the aforementioned rooftop, Spider-Man-style. (It was something he saw in a comic book. #RIPStanLee)
* After commiserating with Caitlin over their similar sense of feeling useless to the team, now that his vibe powers ae on the fritz (thanks to lingering dark matter from Cicada’s dagger), Cisco found his purpose anew by hacking into DeVoe’s other, launched satellites. Naming them HAL, Robby, Data and Colossus, he hopes can help them find Caitlin’s father, who’s hidden in a Tannhauser black ops site.
What did you think of the episode “Doll’d Up”?
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