The Flash: Season 1, Episode 7, Power Outage Review

By Chris Murray

Warning this article contains Spoilers for this episode.

The Flash - Series 01.Episode 07 "Power Outage" ..Grant Gustin as Barry Allen / The Flash...© Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.

This week’s episode was quite a SHOCKER wasn't it!? You could say it was the most SHOCKING episode yet! Ok that’s enough puns. I’ll leave the rest for Paul to come up with. This week, Barry is faced with losing his powers. There’s a hostage situation at the police station involving a particular resident of Starling City, and Well’s pits Meta-Human against Meta-Human in order to buy some time.

At the start of the episode, we see a clip that goes back to the night of the explosion and introduces the main villain Barry has to face this week. The reason this particular Meta-Human has the powers he does, is because of climbing an electrical mast to get a better view of the particle accelerator switching on (Blowing up...). This of course turns Farooq Gibran into an electric eating vampire of sorts.

The first encounter with Barry is quite a cool one. However unfortunately for Barry, this is the part where he sort of loses his powers after “Blackout” (the name given to Farooq at the end of the episode by Cisco) drains them so to speak.

Doing this puts quite a nice spin on the episode as it really seems the S.T.A.R. Labs team and the rest of the cast are in real trouble and have no means of The Flash coming to save the day. This is particularly apparent during the scenes at the police station.

This is where The Clock King comes into the mix. If you watch Arrow, you'll know this character from an episode in Arrow’s second season. However, The Clock king seems so much more sinister this time around. Maybe not though?

The episode is largely split between this and the S.T.A.R. labs building. Clock King takes some members of the Central City Police Department hostage including Joe and Iris. As tensions grow throughout, things get pretty heated. To the point where Eddie Thawne among others actually gets shot. I was beginning to think he might die at one point. But no. There’s plenty of potential for this character still.

While this is happening, the S.T.A.R. Labs building comes under attack from Blackout. Angry with the death of his friends caused by his change of um character and ultimately the explosion of the accelerator. He puts the blame on Dr Wells for this and confronts him at the team’s base of operations.

The Flash - Series 01.Episode 07 "Power Outage" ..Danielle Panabaker as Caitlin Snow, Grant Gustin as Barry Allen / The Flash and Carlos Valdes as Cisco Ramon...© Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.

It’s pretty clear at this point what kind of role Well’s will play in this show with all the crazy end scenes and secret room business. We see more of this weirdness in this episode too. Early in the episode as well as throughout. In this episode though, we see the very sinister side of him come out like we did early on in the season. With Barry still not able to regain his power at this point, well’s resorts to setting Tony Woodward AKA, Girder (sort of) free in order to regain control of the situation. It turns out, Well’s did this to create a “necessary" distraction in which Woodward dies as a result. Barry isn't best pleased with this though.

I’ve rambled on enough about this week’s episode, but before I go I just want to point out next week’s is the start of a two part cross-over special. From both Flash and Arrow, so be sure to tune in as it looks like we could be in for an early Christmas treat from the shows!

The Flash: Season 1, Episode 7, Power Outage Review

Warning this article contains Spoilers for this episode.

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The Flash: Season 1 Reviews Page

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