Plenty of metas have come after me, the people that I love. You know the one thing they have in common? They failed.
With the Enlightenment underway, Barry uses DeVoe's chair and Cecile's powers to project himself into his mind.
Tropes
- 11th-Hour Ranger:
- Marlize completes her Heel–Face Turn and helps Team Flash finally defeat the Thinker for good. In fact, she is the one who essentially dealt the killing blow.
- Ralph, whose mental state is actually safely preserved in DeVoe's mindscape, helps Barry fight the hundreds of Thinker clones, and soon after that, with him having control of his body again, joins Barry and Cisco in saving Central City from the falling satellite.
- Barry receives an unanticipated aid in destroying the Colony Drop from the Mysterious Girl, although he couldn't identify her until the end of the episode.
- All According to Plan: Even to the very end, DeVoe insists that he foresaw everything, even the possibility of his defeat. Though he likely didn't anticipated Nora's interference (let alone her existence).
- Arc Words:
- DeVoe puts his own spin on "Run, Barry, run!"; "Run, Mr. Allen, run!"
- We finally learn the relevance of "This house is bitchin'."
- The Atoner: Marlize, not only helping to stop her husband, but afterwards going out into the world to help people in order to make amends.
- Bash Brothers: Barry and Ralph become this when they team up to fight off the DeVoe clones inside The Thinker's mind.
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: Barry forces himself into DeVoe's head to fight him. He's joined by Ralph after finding him trapped there.
- Big Blackout: The Enlightenment shuts down all the technology in Central City.
- Big "NO!": DeVoe, when Ralph takes back his body.
- Birth-Death Juxtaposition: On the night DeVoe is defeated for good, Joe and Cecile's daughter Jenna is born.
- Bittersweet Ending: DeVoe is defeated, Barry has his old job back, Ralph retakes his body, and Marlize has redeemed herself. However, the bus metas other than Ralph are dead and while Harry recovered most of his memories, he lost his scientific knowledge. Harry sees his new status as a blessing, since he has a balance between his heart and his mind.
- Brain Uploading: Just before being ejected from Ralph's body, DeVoe uses Kilg%ore's powers to transfer his mind into his chair.
- Brick Joke: Nora's first words on entering the West home.Nora: This house is bitchin'.
- Brought Down to Normal:
- Since it was her pregnancy that gave her telepathy in the first place, Cecile loses it after giving birth.
- Harry's mind is restored, but without his genius intellect.
- The Bus Came Back:
- Ralph returns in DeVoe's mind.
- DeVoe's original look as The Thinker returns, chair, Thinking Cap, and all, in DeVoe's Mental World. Between body-hopping, and no longer needing the chair for life support, we hadn't seen his full supervillain look in quite some time.
- But Now I Must Go:
- Marlize is offered a place on Team Flash, but chooses to instead move on to using her intellect to help other people as a way to atone for her actions.
- After getting his brain fixed, Harry returns to Earth-2 to spend time with Jesse.
- Call-Back:
- Cecile wears the cerebral inhibitor to help build a psychic link between Barry and DeVoe.
- Wally mentions Mallus (but not by name) from Legends.
- Harry starts quoting the brain-scattered Barry's ramblings from the start of the season, complete with writing down the same symbols.
- When Nora reveals herself to Team Flash, they all recognize her from her various encounters with them over the course of the season.
- Barry's first attempt to destroy the satellite has a similar score, scream, and outcome to the first time he traveled back in time.
- The Cameo: Keiynan Lonsdale appears just before the episode ends at the party celebrating the arrival of Baby Jenna.
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You: DeVoe didn't erase Ralph's consciousness because if he did, his body would die along with him.
- Chekhov's Gun: Harry's Cerebral Inhibitor, which previously failed to stop DeVoe, is successfully used by Cecile to help Barry enter DeVoe's mind. Harry even gets a reminder that his invention is being put to good use after all.
- Chekhov's Skill: Cecile's powers are key to entering DeVoe's mind.
- Clear My Name: Iris' blogposts were enough to convince the Mayor of Barry's innocence of DeVoe's murder, and she has given Singh the thumbs up to reinstate Barry as a CSI.
- Clipped-Wing Angel: After DeVoe's physical form is defeated, he briefly returns as a Virtual Ghost that's been Kilg%re-embedded into the chair...before Marlize simply removes the power source, making him Deader than Dead. He's still able to use this final form to pull a Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum, however.
- Clothing Damage: Barry's suit is damaged after he destroys the satellite. The suit has one side of the mask broken and other holes showing Barry's bare skin with bruises. This and the backwards sequence imply Barry was going to die while punching the satellite.
- Colony Drop: DeVoe's backup plan/final spiteful act is to increase the mass on the S.T.A.R. Labs satellite and bring it crashing down into Central City. The computer also determines that the force of the impact will result in an extinction-level event.
- Crazy-Prepared: When Barry suggests bringing some of their other allies to help, Marlize explains that DeVoe arranged for his specific combination of powers to make sure none of Flash's allies would stand a chance against him, even Supergirl.
- Death of Personality: DeVoe dies when Ralph, with Barry's help, retakes control of his old body and snuffs out DeVoe's personality. DeVoe manages to upload his mind into his chair, but then Marlize pulls the central component and definitively kills him.
- Declaration of Protection: Having found the Thinker's good side dead, Ralph believes all hope is lost, and tells Barry that he should just get out of here and spend what time Barry has left with his family. Barry asserts that he's not leaving without Ralph, because Team Flash is his family, too.
- Don't Celebrate Just Yet:
- Ralph manages to overwhelm DeVoe's consciousness and retake his body, but just as he fades, DeVoe hits the back of his chair. This allowed him to transfer his mind into it.
- Similarly, the gang uses Marlize's attempt at a cure for Harry. He goes from wandering in a daze and babbling incoherently to being able to speak and act as he did before, and everyone's sure he's back to normal...and then...
- Earn Your Happy Ending: While a bit of a Bittersweet Ending (they haven't saved Harry completely, and there's Nora West-Allen asking them for help for a mistake she made), this is still the most uplifting compared to the previous season finales.
- Easily Forgiven: Considering that Marlize was directly involved in the deaths of several people, she gets off quite easily and even leaves on amicable terms with Iris and Barry.
- "Eureka!" Moment: After not finding the repressed good version of DeVoe at various places from his past, Ralph is the one who has the correct idea of looking at his old work place.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: DeVoe is ultimately taken down by the heroes' "emotional attachments" he spent so long dismissing as a weakness.
- Evil Is Petty: DeVoe is willing to completely wipe out humanity just to spite Team Flash in general and Marlize in particular for stopping him.
- Exact Time to Failure: The dark matter field won't affect anyone until it reaches 100% saturation. It's eventually stopped at 99.9% with no apparent side-effects.
- Exact Words: Harry uses his Thinking Cap one last time in a desperate attempt to help Barry's search in DeVoe's mind for the villain's "good" self, leading him to the conclusion that Barry will find "him" at Oxford. Barry rushes there and finds...Ralph.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: As Barry and Iris discuss the idea of having kids for the first time, who else would knock on the door but their Kid from the Future, Nora? Also counts as Tempting Fate in this case.
- Foe-Tossing Charge: Barry and Ralph escape DeVoe's mind by racing through the clones and knocking them away.
- Friendship Moment: Harry hugs Cisco before having his Thinking Cap removed. Later, when his memory is mostly restored he tells Cisco he would always be his friend. A Shout-Out, but still...
- A God Am I: As if trying to use his Super-Intelligence to "lead" a newly stupefied world wasn't enough, DeVoe also seeks to trap Barry within his own consciousness and get access to the Speed Force to gain control over all of time, somewhat similar to Savitar's final plan.
- Godzilla Threshold: No one on Team Flash even remotely questions the idea of working with Marlize when Iris brings her in, presumably due to the situation being so desperate that they're entirely out of other options.
- Guest-Star Party Member: Marlize helps Team Flash against DeVoe.
- Heroic Willpower: Joe resists DeVoe's telepathic command to shoot himself in the head.
- He's Back!: At the end of the episode, Ralph has his body back.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Barry uses DeVoe's own hoverchair, which DeVoe had been relying on all season, to enter his mind.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: This was Marlize's original plan to stop DeVoe, as she believes Barry can go inside of DeVoe's mind and reach the part of him that's still good. Unfortunately, she's proven wrong when Barry finds his good side to be literally dead. Fortunately, while DeVoe's own good side is no longer in there, Ralph is, so they adjust the plan accordingly.
- Imperiled in Pregnancy: DeVoe attacks and tries to kill Cecile when she's not far from giving birth.
- It Was with You All Along: Barry's and Ralph's search for the good side of the Thinker fails, but then Barry realizes that there was an alternate solution standing right in front of him: the mind may be DeVoe's, but the body is still Ralph's, so all he needs to do is escape with Ralph and thus allow the latter to take back his body.
- Karma Houdini: Marlize. Even if she did turn against her husband, she was still an accomplice or accessory to the dozens of crimes Clifford committed, including murder. And yet Team Flash (including Joe) is perfectly willing to let her just walk away.
- Karmic Death: After a whole season of killing people by stealing their bodies, overwriting their personalities with his own and abusing his wife, DeVoe is killed when his own personality is re-rewritten with that of one of his own victims and his wife destroys the copy of him in the flying chair.
- Just in Time: Barry and Ralph exit DeVoe's mind just when the latter is intending to kill Cecile.
- Left Hanging: The season ends with Caitlin's quest to bring back Killer Frost still unresolved.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In his mind, DeVoe gives a meta nod to the show's format:DeVoe: There'll be no defeating the Big Bad this year, Mr. Allen!
- Lens Flare: Everything inside DeVoe's mind has a very specific horizontal type of this, making all the light sources look a bit like they're smeared across the screen.
- Lighter and Softer: While the bus metas other than Ralph died and Harry's genius IQ was erased, this season finale is far happier than the previous ones. No member of Team Flash dies, the one who apparently died returns and DeVoe's defeat does not leave big consequences. The season also ends on a much smaller cliffhanger than the last three.
- Like Father, Like Son: Nora traveled back in time, and apparently "made a big, big mistake".
- Megaton Punch: Barry needs to pull a supersonic punch to destroy the satellite before it can impact the city, with Nora also throwing one to help deliver the force needed.
- Me's a Crowd: DeVoe conjures numerous copies of himself to fight Barry and Ralph in his mind.
- Multiversal Conqueror: Why did the Thinker keep the Flash alive after all this time? DeVoe plans to spread the Enlightenment throughout space and time, and that's where he's going to need the Flash (as well as the Speed Force).
- Mythology Gag:
- DeVoe uploading himself to his hoverchair is a nod to how his comic counterpart turned his mind into an AI in order to avoid dying.
- The Battle in the Center of the Mind between the Flash and the Thinker is a Whole-Plot Reference to The Flash Vol. 2 #187, complete with one of them pulling a Me's a Crowd Zerg Rush (although in the comics' case it was the Flash [Wally West], not the Thinker) against the other.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In the final minute of the show, Nora shows up and states that she made a huge mistake. Given that she's a time-traveling speedster named Allen, one can make an educated guess what that mistake was, and it most likely involves saving a parental figure from an unexpected death...
- No Ontological Inertia: Zigzagged. While expelling The Thinker from Ralph's body didn't stop the Enlightenment, since the satellites were no longer protected by his powers, Marlize was able to shut them down.
- Not Quite Dead:
- Turns out Ralph didn't die, his consciousness still resides in his body. Barry realizes that DeVoe kept him trapped because Ralph "dying" or escaping meant The Thinker would lose control and be erased.
- DeVoe is seemingly killed by Ralph retaking control of his body. But then it turns out that he transferred his mind into his chair, giving him enough time to trigger his last plan and gloat before Marlize kills him by ripping out the key component.
- Now You Tell Me: Cisco isn't pleased when he finds out that Cecile would lose her powers after giving birth, with Barry still in DeVoe's mind. Oddly, Cisco seems to have forgotten when Caitlin mentioned this would happen to Cecile while he was still in the room.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: When the restored Harry quotes Wrath of Khan, Iris incorrectly identifies it as a Star Wars reference.
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Joe almost falls victim to DeVoe's mind control, but resists.
- Psychic Static: DeVoe's mental embodiments can use telepathy to predict the Flash and Elongated Man's attacks. Ralph's response? Throw his fists around wildly while thinking of nothing but shrimp entrees.
- Psychic Strangle: DeVoe tries to strangle Cecile with his gravitational powers.
- Put on a Bus: Harry returns to Earth-2 to reconnect with his daughter.
- Race Against the Clock: The heroes actually have two clocks to beat. The time before the Enlightenment fully encroaches the globe, and Cecile's delivery (if she gives birth, she loses her telepathy, which is Barry's only way out of the mindscape). This goes From Bad to Worse when in addition to this, DeVoe himself starts hunting them down, coming very close to killing Cecille.
- Rewind, Replay, Repeat: The show pulls one of these during Barry's supersonic punch. Right before he hits the satellite - with Marlize happening to suggest that, were he to do so alone, a combination of the falling satellite's velocity and enhanced mass would end up killing him - the whole scene is thrown into reverse until the very start of his run-up. The second time he sets off, Nora's yellow/purple lightning catches up and follows along as she goes to punch the satellite with him.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Marlize gives one to DeVoe just before Ralph takes back control.Marlize: Their emotional attachment to Mr. Dibny has made them stronger than you will ever be, Clifford. But then you wouldn't understand.
- The Reveal:
- The Mystery Girl turns out to be Barry and Iris' daughter Nora from the future.
- The mysterious symbols that have been appearing throughout the season are revealed to be a binary code for the Thinking Cap.
- Sequel Hook:
- Cecile perceives Killer Frost mentioning something about "Thomas". The reason behind Killer Frost's origins and if she will ever return also has yet to be known.
- The episode ends with Nora West-Allen, the future daughter of Iris and Barry coming to Team Flash, to ask them to help her fix a mistake.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: It's implied Nora stepped in to save her father from being killed by punching the satellite, as moments before he hits it the sequence reverses and then she's shown joining him to add her own punch.
- Shout-Out:
- As mentioned above, Harry uses a line from Wrath of Khan to affirm his restored mind. Although Iris mistakes it for Star Wars.
- Ralph refers to DeVoe's mental copies as "Attack of the Clones". And once again, there's DeVoe pulling a Force Choke on a woman (Cecile); a pregnant woman, not unlike Revenge of the Sith.
- While possibly a coincidence, Barry and Ralph's final battle in a mentally projected city with multiple apparitions of the Big Bad is quite similar to the Matrix sequels.
- Cisco references Inception.
- Ralph refers to the entry way to the nexus of Devoe's mind as "the Hellmouth, and DeVoe refers to himself as the Big Bad."
- So Proud of You: Joe tells Wally how proud he is of him when he hears that he has finally found his calling on the Waverider.
- Special Edition Title: The "The Flash" title card is changed here to look more electronic and lacks the red background. Specifically, the background is of a web of cerebral synapses; rather fitting as the episode deals with the final showdown against The Thinker, moreso as it is a Battle in the Center of the Mind.
- Stable Time Loop: Nora ultimately helps her father destroy the satellite, preventing a extinction event that would have likely prevented her from even being born and traveling back in time. It was also implied Barry might not have survived the impact doing it alone.
- Sore Loser: In the event of the Enlightenment failing and him being killed, DeVoe's contingency plan was to sabotage the S.T.A.R. Labs satellite and send it hurtling right into Central City with enough force to cause an extinction-level event in the ultimate act of Evil Is Petty.
- Superman Stays Out of Gotham: Barry suggests bringing Oliver (imprisoned at the moment), Kara or Wally since he has his reservations on Marlize's idea, but Marlize tells him that not even bringing a Legion of his friends will work against DeVoe. One wouldn't be surprised if DeVoe managed to obtain some kryptonite, just in case Kara showed up.
- Taking You with Me: DeVoe's final trick up his sleeve, after he loses Ralph's body, is to increase the mass of the S.T.A.R. Labs satellite so it will fall out of orbit and onto Central City with enough force to cause an extinction-level event.
- That Man Is Dead: Literally. Unfortunately, the good part of DeVoe's consciousness is already dead in his classroom by the time Ralph and Barry reach him.
- This Cannot Be!: DeVoe's last moments before being ejected from Ralph's body is ranting about how it's not possible.DeVoe: YOU BEAT ME?!
- Three-Month-Old Newborn: The team welcomes their newest member: Jenna Marie West, who looks nothing like a newborn baby despite being minutes old.
- Undignified Death: First, Ralph painfully takes back his body from DeVoe and then Marlize literally pulls his plug, putting an end to him once and for all.
- Unwitting Pawn: Harry was DeVoe's guinea pig for the Enlightenment. DeVoe knew that if he could reboot the mind of Harrison Wells, he could do it to everybody else!
- Villainous Breakdown: DeVoe completely loses it when he actually loses, screaming at the top of his lungs in disbelief about his defeat. His Virtual Ghost is composed, but still essentially tries to Rage Quit and kill everyone on the planet out of pure spite.DeVoe: THIS IS NOT MY WILL!!!
- Virtual Ghost: Devoe briefly becomes one of these in his chair thanks to Kilg%ore's powers.
- Wham Line:
- "Rookie?" which is what Barry hears while in the Thinker's mindscape, from the most unexpected source.
- "I don't know what that means."
- "I'm Nora, your daughter from the future. And I think I made a big, big mistake."
- Wham Shot: Barry's race to supersonic punch the satellite going in reverse, without Barry even knowing, and the scene just repeats itself, only this time there's a speedster racing after Barry, with a familiar yellow-and-purple lightning trail...
- What Happened to the Mouse?: At the end of the day, it is not addressed what exactly is the fate of the Weeper.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Joe gives Marlize a lecture about her part in all of DeVoe's plans.
- Would Hit a Girl: Combined with Would Hurt a Child, DeVoe has unsurprisingly zero scruples about hurting the pregnant Cecile.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Barry says this when he enters DeVoe's mind and sees a copy of him floating around.
