Warning: spoilers ahead for the sixth episode of The Flash Season 4, called "When Harry Met Harry..."
The Flash has been handling its supervillain quite differently in Season 4, and not just because the big bad this time around isn't a speedster. The Thinker, a.k.a. Clifford DeVoe, has been ten steps ahead of Team Flash all season, and they spent the first several episodes chasing after his metahumans without cottoning on to the fact that there's one man pulling all the strings. Elongated Man finally dropped the name "DeVoe" a couple of weeks ago, and now The Flash has advanced the Thinker plot in a big way: Team Flash located his lair.
We learned last week that the Thinker is actually able to leave his lair in his high tech chair, so it seemed likely that his initial meeting with Team Flash would come about on their turf rather than his own. In "When Harry Met Harry," the Harrison Wells of Earth-2 was able to recruit the help of his doppelgangers from other Earths in the multiverse to help figure out a psychological and logistical profile for the mysterious DeVoe. While Barry was trying to teach Ralph how to be a hero as Elongated Man, the Council of Wells and Cisco were attempting to narrow down the search for the right DeVoe. When they ultimately found DeVoe's address, Barry decided that Team Flash should go after him themselves rather than involve the Central City Police Department.
The surprise came when Team Flash didn't discover a supervillain, his crony, and his high tech lair at the address. Instead, the Mechanic was dressed and styled like a civilian, and she opened the door of what looked like a perfectly normal suburban house. She was joined by her wheelchair-bound husband Clifford, who just so happened to be the Thinker in regular clothes, without a headpiece of wires attached to his head, and looking like nothing more than a man in his perfectly normal house.
Interestingly, "When Harry Met Harry" was the first time that we really saw the Thinker and the Mechanic disagreeing in a big way. The Mechanic seemed to believe that Team Flash was moving too quickly in tracking them down, while the Thinker appeared quite confident that he was too much smarter and had too many advantages for Team Flash to pose him any real threat. From what The Flash has shown so far with regard to the Thinker, his arrogance may be the only flaw for Team Flash to exploit if they're going to defeat him. Of course, the discord between the Mechanic and the Thinker could be interesting if it progresses through Season 4, but it's too soon to say what's in store with their dynamic.
You can catch new episodes of The Flash on Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on The CW. There are still some metas made by the Thinker wandering around, so Team Flash will probably have their hands full for a while. The big four-show crossover will hit the airwaves in a couple of weeks, and the promo indicates that we're in for a doozy of an event as the heroes of The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, Arrow, and Supergirl join forces.
