Barry Allen has faced many great foes over the years. We have seen him take on an essentric villain who used a snow gun. We have seen him getting brutally beaten by a huge gorilla. And he has even faced evil versions of his best friends from another Earth. But the thing about the main villains of the seasons: they have always been speedsters. And honestly, that trope has become very tiresome. We were engaged in his battle against Reverse-Flash because of the personal connection those two shared. That was something that was done again in Season 2, when it turned out that Zoom was actually also someone with a personal connection to Barry. In Season 3, they stepped up everything and made Savitar an evil version of Barry Allen from the future. So it's safe to say that "The Flash" has done a bit of everything. However, in Season 4 they are changing it up and are introducing the first non-speedster main villain, and as it stands, it looks like he could end up becoming the very best we've had so far.
This was an amazing episode of "The Flash," and certainly the best this season. This was the first episode in a long time that really had the same feeling as Season 1 did. It focused very little to nothing on the humor, and even gave Dibny a pass this week, which I think was the perfect decision, because this episode needed to be serious in tone. It had some great callbacks to previous seasons and showed the audience that DeVoe has actually been a part of Barry's life ever since the first episode of the show. The writers really did something great with this episode, and I hope this could be the turning point for Season 4.
The thing that this episode focused the most on was the character development of Clifford DeVoe. In past episodes, he has only appeared very briefly and never looked like someone who could pose a real threat to Barry. However, in this episode he came into the picture with a bang, proving that he may actually be Barry's most difficult foe to date. And even though they have gone away from the speedster villain, DeVoe still has that attribute of speed to him, given that he has the fastest mind. It will be interesting to see how Barry expects to fight someone like this.
And the cat-and-mouse game between them was introduced perfectly in this episode. The way DeVoe is always one step ahead and are planning to paint Barry as a homocide. And in many ways, Barry is turning into something he hasn't been before, but it's all because of DeVoe's tricks. He is able to make Barry do things that he never would have done before, and I will also give the credit to the showrunners. The choice to use DeVoe in the season right after he faced an evil future version of himself was brilliant, because it make Barry's decisions seem more real, especially to Barry himself.
We also got to see how DeVoe became this mad man that he is in the present day storyline. This is done through flashbacks that goes all the way back to Season 1, showing that he was actually affected by the particle accelerator explosion. This is a brilliant decision, because we have not seen anyone affected by the accelerator stand out as a real threat to Barry yet. The writers could have easily gone with the "another Earth" explaination, but to their credit, they didn't.
I will say that I have a hard time understanding what DeVoe's reasoning for what he did in the flashbacks were. I get that he wanted a faster mind, but I thought the motivation for what he and his wife did was a little bit underdeveloped. Maybe we will get to see more of this in a future episode. One could definitely hope.