Spoilers below for The Flash's latest episode, titled "When Harry Met Harry."
In The Flash's most recent episode, it appeared Team Flash had unlocked a major clue in their quest to find and take down The Thinker. Rather than the villain bursting into S.T.A.R. Labs as foes have in the past, Barry & Co. delivered a house-call to Clifford DeVoe's home address. But instead of finding a blue-tinged brainiac flying around and playing holographic chess, they met a seemingly domesticized DeVoe, with his assistant posing as his wife. According to the show's stars, though, coming face to face with The Thinker only makes things harder for Team Flash. According to Candice Patton:
It kind of ends up driving Barry crazy, because he thinks he knows more about this guy, that's he's not all that he's cracked up to be, or that's he's portraying himself to be. It pushes Barry to do some things that could possibly get him in trouble. Devoe is extraordinarily smart and he's always three, four, five steps ahead of Barry and everyone on Team Flash. So, they have to work really hard to figure out how to get ahead of him.
While this might be something of an exaggeration, it sounds like Barry is going to go to some Fatal Attraction-ish lengths in order to try to understand everything about DeVoe. In talking with ComicBook.com, Candice Patton says that Barry's actions are troublesome for Iris, because she's watching her future husband get bogged down over obsessing about DeVoe in ways that don't necessarily follow GCPD protocol. Something tells me the rule-eschewing Ralph Dibny will play a big role in Barry going beyond the law in his quests, but will we see Barry end up back in jail at some point?
It was previously teased that The Flash would be taking some darker turns in Season 4 tied to Barry's maddening infatuation with The Thinker. (Not as dark as the Savitar situation, mind you.) We all know how hard it is to get one's mind off of something once the fixation sets in, and even though most of us haven't busied ourselves with tracking down evil nemeses with impossible knowledge about the future, we can still understand Barry's mental plight, as well as everyone else's worries that he might be losing sight of the bigger picture.
Because they're definitely going to need to look at the big picture in order to figure The Thinker out. The big bad is apparently capable of visualizing the myriad outcomes that will follow any given situation, which guides all of his actions. His assistant, known as The Mechanic, showed some worries in the episode that gave viewers a reason to suspect that DeVoe's arrogance could be his downfall. But until Team Flash figures out a few more pieces of this puzzle, DeVoe is probably safe to ooze confidence so freely.
Here's Carlos Valdes' explanation for what will have to be done for Team Flash to get the upper hand at some point.
So basically, DeVoe has this overarching plan that involves all sorts of circumstantial minutia. Whether the team knows it or not, they're already conducting actions that are part of DeVoe's plan and sort of falling for his trap. So it's really more a matter of Team Flash sort of discovering their place within what his plan. Just when you think that the team is getting close to figuring out what DeVoe's intentions are, it goes beyond that, exponentially. I think viewers can expect to go on the ride of their lives.
I don't know about you guys, but I'm having fun picturing DeVoe and The Mechanic blindly running around their suburban abode, changing clothes and shoving all kinds of evil tech gadgets under rugs and into closets. Until we know where things are going, keep watching The Flash every Tuesday night on The CW at 8:00 p.m. ET. If you're wondering when we'll see Katee Sackhoff's Amunet Black again, here's what the actress told us. And check out everything left to debut in 2017 with our fall TV premiere schedule. And our big cancellation rundown will clue you in on everything that ended this year.
